"Second hand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... time and, if not wicked, certainly frivolous and nonsensical. So the boy remained at home, but, in spite of the parental order, he practiced some of the figures of the quadrilles and the contra dances in his comrades' barns, learning them at second hand, so ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... lamentably premature death. I happen to possess a letter from my father's sister to her sister Anne in which she gives an account of this event, and print it because it conveys the reality more vividly than a narrative at second hand. The reader will pardon the reference to myself. It matters nothing to a dead man—as I shall be when this page is printed—whether at the age of fourteen days he was considered a fine-looking child or ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... touched twelve on Brion's watch, then the minute hand. The second hand closed the gap and for a tenth of a second the three hands were one. Then the ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... followed Roman literature in other departments, and had only the Greek traditions at second hand. During the disturbance occasioned by the invasion of the barbarians there was little opportunity for such leisure as would enable men to devote themselves with tranquillity to medical study and writing. Medical traditions were mainly preserved in the monasteries. Cassiodorus, ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... development of Jewish ideas, which recalls the work of the Alexandrian school. This was, indeed, to be expected, seeing that in both cases there was a mingling of Hebraism and Hellenism. In Spain, however, the Jews acquired Hellenism at second hand, and through the somewhat distorted medium of Arabic translations or scholastic misunderstanding, and hence the harmony is neither complete nor pure. They endeavored to show that the teachings of Aristotle are implicit in the written ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... even the solemnest of Shakespeare's tragedies were exhibited in this way. There is no possibility of doubt that Bunyan must have often stood agape at these exhibitions, and thus have received much of the highest literature at second hand. ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... persons for whose use they were meant; and he found by experience the great impressions which they made on the philosopher, as well as on the divine: for, to say the truth, there is no kind of flattery so irresistible as this, at second hand. ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... My sister and father go to Apsley House, where the Duke of Wellington gives a grand entertainment to the King of Prussia. We were asked too, but, though rather tempted by the fine show, it was finally concluded that we should not go, so we shall only have it at second hand. This is all my news for the present, dear Harriet. God bless you. Good-bye. If you ever wish to hear from me, drop me a line to ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... him in his own right; henceforth, what he is, or has, devolves upon him only through delegation. His property and his person now form a portion of the commonwealth. If he is in possession of these, his ownership is at second hand; if he derives any benefit there from, it is as a concession. He is their depository, trustee and administrator, and nothing more.[2102] In other words, with respect to these he is simply a managing director, that is to say a functionary like others, with a precarious appointment and always revocable ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... bearded, &c. as also closer, closely, closenesse, glosingly, hourely, majesticall, majestically. In like sort we grasse upon French words those Buds, to which that soile affordeth no growth; as, chiefly, faultie, slavish, precisenesse. Divers words we derive also out of the Latine at second hand by the French, and make good English, tho' both Latine and French haue their hands closed in that behalfe, as in these verbes, pray, point, paze, prest, rent, &c. and also in the adverbes, carpingly, currantly, colourably, actively, &c. Againe, in other ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... honoured positions in it; but the most important part of this encyclopaedic work is that relating to American man. In it the author embodies all the documents he himself collected, and analyzes and criticizes those which came to him at second hand, on physiological types, and on the manners, languages, and religions of South America. A work of such value ought to immortalize the name of the French scholar, and reflect the greatest honour on the nation ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... blessed with a child—you may by deep inquiry and constant intercourse with him learn how a man lives comfortably on nothing a year. But it is best not to be intimate with gentlemen of this profession and to take the calculations at second hand, as you do logarithms, for to work them yourself, depend upon it, will cost you ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... all his sighs were noted. The disappearance of the greater part of the legend of the Three Companions certainly deprives us of some touching stories, but most of the incidents have been preserved for us, notwithstanding, in documents from a second hand. ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... at the book on the table—the book that he had been reading when I entered the room. These sophistical confidences of his were nothing but Rousseau at second hand. Good! If he talked false Rousseau, nothing was left for me but to talk genuine Pratolungo. I let myself go—I was just in ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... take on second hand from nobody, least of all from her kind father, whose estimate of human nature in general inclines rather to what ought to be than to what is. Of Fanny I would judge for myself, and that not hastily ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... faithful gentlemen vowed to the Reform, and I owe my American birthright to the honourable fact that they fought on the losing side. As I myself am endowed with a fair allowance of stubbornness, and with a strong distaste to taking my opinions at second hand, I certainly should have been with my kinsfolk in that fight had I lived in their day; and since my destiny was theirs to determine I am strongly grateful to them for ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... her sex precluded this silent spirit of the Girondists from taking part in these counsels, if, instead of acting second hand through her husband, she could have taken the lead, as her genius, perception, honesty, and courage entitled her to do, who knows that she might not have averted the disasters which befell the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... the movement is to be made. Secondly we see all the instruments getting together, and being prepared for the work, particularly the three heroes of the attack. Finally we observe Ulysses inquiring and learning all about the situation in Ithaca; he obtains everything that information at second hand can give. But hearsay is not enough; he must see at first hand. Thus we pass to the palace, and out of the first series of four Books, which we ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... which small matter we may allow Dorothy to correct him. The fact of the old gardens having been closed may account for Dorothy referring to the place as "New Spring Gardens." Knight also quotes at second hand from an account of Spring Gardens, complaining that the author is unknown to him. This quotation is, however, from one of Somers' Tracts entitled "A Character of England as it was lately represented in a Letter to a Nobleman of France, 1659." ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... same hanger-on or sycophant of Ben Jonson's who was caricatured by Dekker in his "Satiromastix" under the name of Asinius Bubo. The gross assurance of self-complacent duncery, the apish arrogance and imitative dogmatism of reflected self-importance and authority at second hand, are presented in either case with such identity of tone and coloring that we can hardly imagine the satire to have been equally applicable to two contemporary satellites of the same ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... his soul in patience till twelve o'clock, the hour being yet barely 11:30 a. m., Theydon tackled a page of reviews, since there is always consolation for a writer in learning at second hand what ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... after that every scout for himself. This is called a hunter's stew because you have to hunt for the meat in it, but it's got plenty of e-pluribus unions in it. The potatoes and dumplings go to the patrol leaders, carrots to first and second hand scouts; tenderfeet get nothing because the stew ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... testimony of contemporaries as to the effect which the oration produced. The fiery utterances of Adams, Otis, and Quincy were either not reported at all or very imperfectly reported, so that posterity can judge of them only at second hand. Patrick Henry has fared better, many of his orations being preserved in substance, if not in the letter, in Wirt's biography. Of these the most famous was the defiant speech in the Convention of Delegates, March 28, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... plunged her hand deep into the hollow trunk, and flushed with triumph as her fingers came in contact with something loose and soft. It was not a paper parcel, it felt more like cloth—cloth with knotted ends all ready to pull. Darsie pulled with a will, found an unexpected weight, put up a second hand to aid the first, and with a tug and a cloud of dust brought to light nothing more exciting than a workman's handkerchief, knotted round a lumpy parcel which seemed obviously a ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the forms in which this truth is expressed are not always adequate to the idea they are meant to convey, and if we are only acquainted with them at second hand they will probably appear even less adequate than they are. When Athanasius, e.g., speaks of God's truth in this connection, and then reduces God's truth to the idea that God must keep His word—the word which made death the penalty of sin—we may feel that the ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... erasure, and with every letter delicately and distinctly finished, was only the outward and visible sign of the inward labor which she had taken to work out her ideas. She never drew any of her facts or impressions from second hand; and thus, in spite of the number and variety of her illustrations, she had rarely much to correct in her proof-sheets. She had all that love of doing her work well for the work's sake which she makes prominent characteristics of ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... told her highness of such difficulties, straits, and annoyance, as did not appear therein to her eyes, nor, I found, could be brought to her ear; for her choler did outrun all reason, though I did meet it at a second hand. For what show she gave at first to my lord deputy at his return, was far more grievous, as will ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... law-maker; he, and he alone, is above the law. But a judge, a person exercising a judicial capacity, is neither to apply to original justice, nor to a discretionary application of it. He goes to justice and discretion only at second hand, and through the medium of some superiors. He is to work neither upon his opinion of the one nor of the other; but upon a fixed rule, of which he has not the making, but singly and solely the application to ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... his superficial delusion to the contrary, especially if he has written a book that has set everyone talking, because it is of a vital interest. It may be of a vital interest, without being at all the kind of book people want to buy; it may be the kind of book that they are content to know at second hand; there are such fatal books; but hearing so much, and reading so much about it, the author cannot help hoping that it has sold much more than the publisher says. The publisher is undoubtedly honest, however, and the author had better ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... dwells solitary; it readily finds boon companions. And at one period of the night she began to look back upon her experience with a curious sense of prior familiarity—to see it as a story already known to her at second hand. She viewed it as the first stage of one of those tragedies that later find their way into the care of family physicians, into the briefs of lawyers, into the confidence of clergymen, into the papers ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... approached him, but Disraeli raised his hand as if to deprecate their interference, and they stole back to their places conscious that they were forbidden to interrupt. Then, at last, when the second hand of the clock had passed three times round its course, the most remarkable silence which the House had ever experienced within living memory was broken as the Tory leader slowly ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... stayed home and helped me fix up the nursery. Yes, I was expecting in the spring. That's why he was so for keeping things from me. We painted the woodwork white and gave a couple of coats to a little brown crib I had picked up second hand. He was for buying an enameled one on casters—he loved the best. Next night—next night—he—didn't come home—and at eight o'clock the following morning the extras were on the street—about the killing. ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... God shall we be independent of men round us, and be able to say, 'With me it is a very small matter to be judged of you or of man's judgment.' That new life ought to make men original, in the deep and true sense of the word, as drawing their conceptions of duty and their methods of life, not at second hand from other men, but straight from God Himself. If the Christian Church was fuller of that divine life than it is, it would be fuller of all varieties of Christian beauty and excellence, and all these would be the work of 'that one and the selfsame Spirit dividing to every man severally ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... creature, notwithstanding, only very unpleasant if one happened to step on the toes of a pet ignorance. Mary soon discovered that there was no profit in talking with her on the subjects she loved most: plainly she knew little about them, except at second hand—that is, through the forms of other minds than her own. Such people seem intended for the special furtherance of the saints in patience; being utterly unassailable by reason, they are especially trying to those who ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... correction. Either have the witness determine the time in terms of some familiar form, i. e., a paternoster, etc., or give him the watch and let him observe the second hand. In the latter case he will assert that his ten, or his five, or his twenty minutes were, at most, no more than a half ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... in form, but false utterly in heart and spirit. The opinion then that is hurtful is not that which is formed in the depths, and from the honest necessities of a man's own nature, but that which he has taken up at second hand, the study of which has pleased his intellect; has perhaps subdued fears and mollified distresses which ought rather to have grown and increased until they had driven the man to the true physician; has puffed him up ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the Wazir Dandan said to Zau al-Makan, "Thus spake the second hand maid to the King who hath found mercy, Omar bin al-Nu'uman. 'Quoth a man to Mohammed bin Abdillah, Exhort thou me!' 'I exhort thee,' replied he, 'to be a self ruler, an abstainer in this world, and in the next a greedy slave.' 'How so?' asked the other ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... second hand I know various amiable little odds and ends such as are commonly reported by the uncharitable and censorious," Ludovic answered mildly. "Probably more than half of these little treasures are pure fiction, generated by ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... was too wary to be drawn into an argument with the man of books. She could air her father's opinions second hand with an assumption of great assurance, but she was no hand at argument or fence, and had no desire for ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... him and you will know as easily why he succeeds, as, if you see Napoleon, you would comprehend his fortune. In the new objects we recognize the old game, the Habit of fronting the fact, and not dealing with it at second hand, through the perceptions of somebody else. Nature seems to authorize trade, as soon as you see the natural merchant, who appears not so much a private agent as her factor and Minister of Commerce. His natural probity ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... again. The minute hand was moving with the speed at which the second hand usually traveled. Three ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... and never prefixes to the name the title of Saint; it is always "Austin," for example, and not "St. Austin." Also it may be noted that he is punctual in making it clear whether he quotes from his own knowledge or at second hand. Thus, referring to Wycliffe's view of Marriage as put forth in one of his writings, he says, "This book, indeed, through the poverty of our Libraries, I am forced to cite from Arnisaeus of Halberstadt on the ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... liquor and cause chemical combustion necessary to bring about the state of intoxication in which he delights. He may and does enter saloons, where he interpolates his body into the body of a physical drunkard, so that he may obtain his desires at second hand as it were, he will incite his victim to drink more and more. Yet there is no true satisfaction. He sees the full glass upon the counter but his spirit hand is unable to lift it. He suffers tortures of Tantalus until in time he realizes the impossibility of gratifying his base desire. Then ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... my word, and a very good thing you must make of it; for I see you dressed like a gentleman from top to toe. Are you not ashamed to go about the world in such a trim, with honest folk, I dare say, glad to buy your cast-off finery second hand? Speak up, you dog," the man went on; "you can understand English, I suppose; and I mean to have a bit of talk with you before I ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... written in after years and commonly utilized—as it has been utilized here—to form the narrative of the haunting. Not only this, but a rigorous division of the contemporary evidence into first hand and second hand still further eliminates the element of the marvelous. Admitting as evidence only the fact set forth as having been observed by the relators themselves, the haunting is reduced to a matter of knocks, groans, tinglings, squeaks, ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... religion, or morality, in ordinary duodecimo, equals not the years of their unfinished, or just completed minority, imagine that they have got far in advance of the vulgar herd, and are both philosophers and gentlemen if they have learned at second hand, a few scoffs and sneers at the Bible, from Paine, Voltaire, Bolingbroke, or Hume. One would think, could he listen to their impudence, that Bacon, Newton, Locke, and all the great masters of science, were ...
— The Christian Foundation, May, 1880
... honorably commemorated among the worthies consigned to immortality in that precious and entertaining medley of fact and fancy, enlivened by a wilderness of quotations at first or second hand, the Magnolia Christi Americana, of the Reverend Cotton Mather. The old chronicler tells his story so much better than any one can tell it for him that he must be allowed to speak for himself in a few extracts, transferred ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... reading matter by filching the complete works of Sterne (in one volume) and the poetry of Milton—from an outside stand of a second hand book store.... ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... is ruthless and reckless will the higher safety really arrive. As a concrete example let me read a page from the biography of Antoinette Bourignon, a good woman, much persecuted in her day by both Protestants and Catholics, because she would not take her religion at second hand. When a young girl, in her ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... Bishop still stands in the Atlantic, and Leopold, now the second hand, explains to the Margate trippers the wonders of the North ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... forward on his hands. The clock on the mantel struck. Could it be that when the second hand had ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... as trees, when he cannot blossom Book that they are content to know at second hand Business to take advantage of his necessity Competition has deformed human nature Conditions of hucksters imposed upon poets Fate of a book is in the hands of the women God of chance leads them into temptation and adversity Historian, who is a kind of ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of William Dean Howells • David Widger
... philosophy as a whole shows little sympathy for Buddhism but a wondrous resemblance both in thought and language to the Vedanta. This is the more remarkable because there is no trace in his works of Sanskrit learning or even of Indian influence at second hand. A peculiarly original and independent mind seems to have worked its way to many of the doctrines of the Advaita, without entirely adopting its general conclusions, for I doubt if Sankara would have said "the positive relation of every appearance as an adjective to reality ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... itself at various critical points—is that between the willingness to defend and the willingness to attack, between the defensive and the aggressive mentality. It is the difference between docility and enterprise, between a faith at second hand dependent on neighbor or leader, and a faith at first hand capable of assuming for itself ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... of it, he felt in sudden depravity, from a just regard for St. John's right to privacy in his own premises, but no lying, not the boldest, not the most ingenious, could now avail. Scores of people could witness that they had heard Hewson tell the story at first hand; at second hand hundreds could still more confidently affirm its truth. But if he admitted the truth of the fact and denied merely that it had happened at St. Johnswort, he would have Miss Hernshaw to deal with and what could he hope from truth so relentless as hers? ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... understanding of the individual addressed. The day, happily, is long since past when conversation between men and women was confined to unmixed flattery on the one side and blushing acceptance on the other. That "the best flattery is that which comes at second hand," no one can deny, yet, judicious praise is not only acceptable but useful many times in giving the needed incentive, without which the flagging footsteps might have faltered ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... fall, and sometimes he read aloud to her a little, but in spite of Pearl's intelligence she had never cared much for books. She craved no record of another's emotions and struggles and passions. No life at second hand for her. She was absorbed ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... it surprising that monarchs should take pleasure in the stage, since the theatre is one of the places which brings them and their subjects together in the enjoyment of common emotions, and shows them, if only at second hand, the domestic lives of millions, from personal acquaintance with which their royal birth ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... said Johnny civilly, but with meagre interest. This long dead mother had bequeathed him not even a memory of herself—was as unreal to him as a dream at second hand. From the chilly contemplation of her he turned back impatiently to his own affairs, which were burning, insistent. And scenting a vague sympathy in this stranger uncle who, like himself, had drifted out from the intimacy ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... I quite held my breath as I listened. It was the written scheme of another book—something put aside long ago, before his illness, but that he had lately taken out again to reconsider. He had been turning it round when I came down on him, and it had grown magnificently under this second hand. Loose liberal confident, it might have passed for a great gossiping eloquent letter—the overflow into talk of an artist's amorous plan. The theme I thought singularly rich, quite the strongest he had yet treated; and this familiar statement ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... Dr. Coutras related to me in his words, but in my own, for I cannot hope to give at second hand any impression of his vivacious delivery. He had a deep, resonant voice, fitted to his massive frame, and a keen sense of the dramatic. To listen to him was, as the phrase goes, as good as a play; ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... 'With a second hand on board to steer while I conned I should have felt less of an ass. As it was, I knew I ought to be facing the music in the offing, and cursed myself for having broken my rule and gone blundering into this confounded short cut. It was giving myself away, doing just ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... the second hand make one revolution—a minute. Within that minute it is possible to print, cut, fold and stack in neat piles one thousand big newspapers! To do that is putting "pep" in printing, and Henry A. Wise Wood is the man who ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... bar!" agreed Tommy, and sufficient has now been told to show that he had found a way. Even Gav acknowledged a master, and, when the accoutrements of war were bought at second hand as cheaply as Tommy had predicted, applauded him with eyes and mouth for a full week, after which he saw things in a new light. Gav of course was to enter the bursary lists anon, and he had supposed that Cathro would have ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... contents. He foresaw that in the end he should have to rely upon the taste of mercenaries in his warfare against rubbish, and more and more he found it necessary to expend himself in it, to read at second hand as well as at first. His greatest relief was in returning to town and watching the magical changes which the decorator was working in his store. This was consolation, this was inspiration, but he longed for the return of Margaret Green, that she might help him enjoy the realization ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... all fundamentally a matter of testimony. We have, or we have not, a body of fact for which we are in debt to observation. The observation may be first hand—as in Sir Oliver Lodge's sittings where he reports what he saw and heard. It may be second hand as the cases reported in the larger part of the authoritative literature of psychic phenomena. (Second hand, that is, for the authors and those who depend upon them.) Trustworthy observation is probably more difficult here than ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... enough to let you know the whole truth, and to tell it you myself," she said in cut tones; "that you might not consider yourself slighted by hearing of it at second hand. I have even owned the extreme fact that I do not love him. I did not think you would be so rough with me for doing so! I ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... senior was really pleased, and told his son he would present him with the works of any standard writer whom he might select. The young man chose the works of Bacon, and Bacon accordingly made his appearance in ten nicely bound volumes. A little inspection, however, showed that the copy was a second hand one. ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... mart for booksellers, of old and second hand books, is now nearer the Seine; and especially in the Quai des Augustins. Messrs. Treuttel and Wuertz, Panckoucke, Renouard, and Brunet, live within a quarter of a mile of each other: about a couple of hundred yards from the Quai ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... to the center of the improvised ring, their guards up, while Astro stood off the edge of the mat and watched the sweeping second hand ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... sit on the box this time," says I, grabbin' up the basket. "Besides, I don't want any second hand report." ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... six, seven," said the Second Hand, and then he lost count. "One, two, three, four, ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... pure air of the fore-castle deck. For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. But wherefore it was that after having ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the name of Joseph Wilmot, was brought before the police court. His clothes looked as if they had been bought second hand in his ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... necessary that I should acquaint myself with it) I own that my own knowledge of these miscellaneous writings was by no means thorough. It is now pretty complete; but the idea which I previously had of them at first and second hand, though a little improved, has not very materially altered. Though in all this hack-work Fielding displayed, partially and at intervals, the same qualities which he displayed eminently and constantly in the four great books here given, he ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... the second time at 2 hr. 10 min. 546/11 sec. (twice the above time); next at 3 hr. 16 min. 219/11 sec.; next at 4 hr. 21 min. 491/11 sec. This last is the only occasion on which the two hands are together with the second hand "just past the forty-ninth second." This, then, is the time at which the watch must have stopped. Guy Boothby, in the opening sentence of his Across the World for a Wife, says, "It was a cold, dreary winter's afternoon, and by the time the hands of the clock on my ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... of the front, from the Lago di Garda to the Stelvio and the frontier of Switzerland, is not at present the scene of important operations, so I contented myself by ascertaining at second hand how matters stand between the Valtellina and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... correspondent as a prying busybody, as a sort of spy, and when he is snubbed and suppressed he feels he is properly punished. Perhaps the reader also resents the fact that while the correspondent goes abroad, he stops at home and receives the news at second hand. Possibly he envies the man who has a front seat and who tells him about it. And if you envy a man, when that man comes to grief it is only human nature ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... hundred and fifty years, of having been a saint of a rare type. Those who were nearest to him in fellowship called him "a good man," "a Godlike man," "a servant and friend of God," "a serious practicer of the Sermon on the Mount"; and we who know him only afar off and at second hand feel sure nevertheless that these lofty words were rightly given to him. His scholarship was wide—he had "a vastness of learning," as Patrick says; but his main contribution was not to philosophy nor to theology, it consisted rather of an exhibition of ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... supply copies of the desired work. In the matter of current intelligence the case of the speaker of the small language is still worse. His newspaper will need to be cheaply served, his home intelligence will be cut and restricted, his foreign news belated and second hand. Moreover, to travel even a little distance or to conduct anything but the smallest business enterprise will be exceptionally inconvenient to him. The Englishman who knows no language but his own may travel well-nigh all over the world and everywhere meet some ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... Braybridge found himself in for it, be forgot that he meant to go away, and said good-morning, as if they knew each other. Their hostess found them talking over the length of the table in a sort of mutual fright, and introduced them. But it's rather difficult reporting a lady verbatim at second hand. I really had the facts from Welkin, who had them from his wife. The sum of her impressions was that Braybridge and Miss Hazelwood were getting a kind of comfort out of their mutual terror because one was as badly frightened as the other. It was a novel ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... New hats, blouses, and entire costumes of the most fashionable kind were to be seen in the streets every Sunday. Large sums of money were lost and won at coursing matches. Nearly everyone had a bicycle, and old Malone bought, second hand, a rather dilapidated motor-car. Work of almost every kind ceased entirely, except in the big house, and nobody got out of bed before ten o'clock. In mere gratitude, rents of houses were paid to Sir Tony which had not been paid ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... the northern part of Europe and Flanders, which had become wealthy and powerful by their own industry, and a participation of the trade to India with the Italians, (though at second hand,) were on the decline, through ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... his conversation with Arbuthnot, described at second hand the Solomon Islands, the beauties of reef and palm, the delights of a new, free life and laid before her the guarantee of a competence and the possibilities of a fortune. As he talked, Elodie's dark face grew sullen and her eyes hardened. ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... I went down to Newark and bought books ... very cheap, second hand ones, at Breasted's ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... beneath his feet and over his head; and though it was a slow pattern, only twice as fast as the crawl of a second hand around the face of a clock, ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... dwell therein. I wish, indeed, that these "Impressions" could have been given in her own words. The work would have been much better done, and far more interesting; but failing this, I must endeavor, following a recent illustrious example, to give them at second hand. During the earlier months of her stay among us, she lived somewhat the life of a recluse. Shut up in a pretty villa under the shadow of the Hampstead Hills, she saw little society but that of a few fellow artists, who found their way to her on Sunday afternoons. Indeed, she almost shrank from ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... account for this effect I find no difficulty about it. I find that, as a rule, when a thing is a wonder to us it is not because of what we see in it, but because of what others have seen in it. We get almost all our wonders at second hand. We are eager to see any celebrated thing—and we never fail of our reward; just the deep privilege of gazing upon an object which has stirred the enthusiasm or evoked the reverence or affection or admiration of multitudes of our race is a thing which we value; we are profoundly glad ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... must discharge. Generally, nay, with much fewer exceptions, perhaps, than would be readily believed, they are merely simulators of the part they sustain; speaking not out of the abundance of their own hearts, but by skill and artifice assuming or personating emotions at second hand; and the whole is a business of talent, (sometimes even of great talent,) but not of original power, of genius, [7] ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... go on with her story, though only at second hand, before I proceed with my own, which for a time took me from the scene of my friend's troubles. This is written for her grandchildren as much as my own and my sister's, and it is well they should know what a woman she truly was, ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tongue," said Reginald fiercely, "if we are to hear what my father says at second hand through an imp ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... in these days were apt to be accompanied by the stories, which Jewel related to him with much enthusiasm while they cantered through wood-roads, and it is safe to say that the tales furnished full as much entertainment at second hand as they ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... Masters. It is quite likely that a part of your mother's forbearance came from training. The GOOD kind of training—whose best and highest function is to see to it that every time it confers a satisfaction upon its pupil a benefit shall fall at second hand upon others. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... boys to atrophy their independence. We teach them to take their patriotism at second hand; to shout with the largest crowd without examining into the right or wrong of the matter —exactly as boys under monarchies are taught, and ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... H W Reeve an bos dear sir I like to git me a par [pair] second hand pance dont a fail or elce I will be dout [without] a pare to go eny where so send me something. Dont a fail an send me a par of youre pance [or] i will hafter go to work for somebody to git some. I don't think ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... and early history Tacitus is among the best authorities. In this department the works of Prichard and Latham have been my chief reliance. Grimm and Zeuss, though often referred to, I regret to say I have been able to consult only at second hand. ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... observation, and was at pains to verify experimentally the observations of others which came within his field. Without verification he would not rely upon them. Indeed, he was so careful to give nothing at second hand that one of his scientific friends gently reproached him for wasting his time in re-investigating matters already worked over by competent observers. "Poor ——," he remarked afterwards, "if that is his own practice, his work will never live." Of his most important public addresses, two may be noted ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... me, now that I have got it up so as to give the heads in a page. Depend on it, my saying is a true one—viz. that a compiler is a great man, and an original man a commonplace man. Any fool can generalise and speculate; but oh, my heavens, to get up at second hand a New Zealand Flora, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... post where the line cut through, each on the soil of his own country. So bitterly did they hate one another that they did not speak but wrote their messages, though they could have shaken hands where they sat. Even that was too close quarters, and they ended up by negotiating at second hand through the foreign ambassadors, all at the same table, but each looking straight past the other as if he were ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... they approved in chorus. Possibility of pardon and reinstatement, though only heard of at second hand, had brought unity into being. And ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... caught his fancy, and after having pondered for some time on the alternative, whether he should postpone legs in favour of head, or vice versa, he concluded on the former, saying to himself that Hermes would be snatched up by the first person who saw it; but that the second hand silk stockings could be got at any time. The volume was eighteen pence; yet so restricted was our hero's finances, that this little sum deranged his ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... has been described to me, at first hand and at second hand. All descriptions tally in one respect: Kazmah has remarkably large eyes. In Miss Halley's evidence you will note that she refers to them as 'larger than any human eyes I have ever seen.' Now, Mareno ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... heavy bird of feeble wing; it flies low, seeing only the things of the earth. When they describe heaven, it has houses of marble and streets of gold. Their pretense to sight of higher things is either sheer pretense or sight at second hand. Susan was of the few whose fancy can soar. She saw the earthy things; she saw the things of the upper regions also. And she saw the lower region from the altitudes of the ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... of the world for the last quarter of a century to an intelligent and once well-educated man who has known nothing of what has happened in all that time except what he might learn from ignorant natives, who had obtained their knowledge second hand from Spanish tax collectors only a ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... pulled out a huge silver watch, almost as big as a Norfolk turnip. A Jew had sold him the watch; the boatswain had heard of repeaters, and wished to have one. Moses had only shown him watches with the hour and minute hands; he now produced one with a second hand, telling him ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... part in a dispute impossible of decision if one had to be fair to all the phantoms in possession—to the reputable that had its claims and to the disreputable that had its exigencies. I can't explain to you who haven't seen him and who hear his words only at second hand the mixed nature of my feelings. It seemed to me I was being made to comprehend the Inconceivable—and I know of nothing to compare with the discomfort of such a sensation. I was made to look at the convention that ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... must at times have got rather weary of her heavy husband with his one outlook towards the universal in the person of George James Fox, and the Whig policy of 1802. I am under some disadvantage in telling this part of my story, because I was far away from home, and only knew afterwards at second hand what the course of events had been; but I learned them from one who was intimately concerned, and I do not think I can be mistaken on any essential point. I imagine that by this time Mrs. Butts must have become changed into what she was in later ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... whose clothes might have been bought at a second hand dealer's for a very moderate sum—for they were rent in various places, and no attempt had been made to patch them—was the first speaker, and he howled in the most approved manner, and even our political friends might have taken a lesson from him. He had not spoken ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... the year round. But gradually they were all changed, and the rails were made the same on railroads all over the country, and then these people were able to get their cars and the other things they needed second hand. And it's plenty good enough, of course, for all the use anyone wants ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart
... always said he was no speaker, he had never hesitated to accept invitations to take part in League conventions. But this was different. He made no answer for a minute. And in the pause his mind was busy with all he knew, and all he had acquired at second hand, about the relations of colored Christians and white, and particularly about what might be thought and said if it should be announced that he was to speak at a Negro Epworth League convention. And then he had the grace to blush, realizing that this colored pastor, ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... them, and the same is true of a larger part than we suspect of what we think. The reason is a good one, because our short life gives us no time for a better, but it is not the best. It does not follow, because we all are compelled to take on faith at second hand most of the rules on which we base our action and our thought, that each of us may not try to set some corner of his world in the order of reason, or that all of us collectively should not aspire to carry reason as far as it will go throughout the whole domain. In ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... enter upon the full satisfaction of cultivating even a small piece of land at second hand. To be accepted as One Who Belongs, there must be sweat ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... me for a conjurer, which is no joke in Scotland, I must tell you that Frank Stanley, your friend, who has been seized with a tartan fever ever since he heard Edward's tales of old Scottish manners, happened to describe to us at second hand this remarkable cup. My servant, Spontoon, who, like a true old soldier, observes everything and says little, gave me afterwards to understand that he thought he had seen the piece of plate Mr. Stanley mentioned, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... a widow who held the position of "second hand" in the dress department of "The Ladies' Paradise." Au Bonheur ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson |
