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More "Rarity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... W. M. R. E. (Vol. vii., p. 341.) that, though I have never met with a printed copy of the "Itinerary to the Holy Land" of Gabriele Capodilista (the Perugia edition of 1472, mentioned by Brunet, being undoubtedly a book of very great rarity, and perhaps the only one ever printed), I have in my possession a very beautiful manuscript of the work on vellum, which appears to have been presented by the author to the nuns of St. Bernardino of Padua. It is a small folio; and the first page is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... because of the rarity of prehistoric dwellings of either type that the cliff villages of the Mesa Verde were conserved as a national park, nor only because they are the best preserved of all North American ruins, but because they disclose a type of this culture ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... aware that etchings are usually sought as much for their rarity as their excellence, and to have determined that his own ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... friend's hand. It contained Scottish, English, and foreign coins of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Most were silver but some were of gold, and, as even the Antiquary allowed, of exceeding rarity. ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... presents, or see such curiosities as came up? and proposed to accompany me to where they were. I answered, that I could not do this till I had delivered my master's message and presents to the king, after which I should wait upon his highness with his presents, and that every rarity that came to me should be sent after him. He pressed me to pass my word for the performance of this, which I did, and then I had the letter for Surat made ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... he would say drily. "And told with a greater ingenuity—not to mention veracity—than pertain to the legends and histories of you old campaigners. Between ourselves, I'm not for war at all, but for the far finer and more wholesome rarity called peace. Captain, Captain!" (and here would he grasp the Paymaster by the coat lapels with the friendly freedom of an old acquaintance,) "Captain, Captain! it is not a world for war though we are the fools ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... finest of all. Professor Andreas was a quiet, dry, elderly man, with a clean-shaven face and an impassive manner, but his dark eyes sparkled and his features quickened into enthusiastic life as he pointed out to us the rarity and the beauty of some of his specimens. His hand lingered so fondly over them, that one could read his pride in them and the grief in his heart now that they were passing from his care into that ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... [Footnote: Op. cit., p. 75.] I offered this as a conciliatory olive-branch to my enemies. But they, as is only too common with such offerings, trampled the gift under foot and turned and rent the giver. I had counted too much on their good will—oh for the rarity of Christian charity under the sun! Oh for the rarity of ordinary secular intelligence also! I had supposed it to be matter of common observation that, of two competing views of the universe which in all other respects are equal, but of which the first denies some ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... a rarity for the bibliophile—began Blake's system of giving his literary works and many of his extraordinary artistic productions their form and being. Like a poet-printer of our own day, Mr. William Morris, Blake insisted that each page of text, all his delicate ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... with his equine neigh of scorn. But in this case he seemed knocked down by a superior simplicity, as if his eccentric attitude were rebuked by the innocence of a child. He could not dissociate anything that this woman said or did or wore from an idea of spiritual rarity and virtue. Like most others under the same elemental passion, his soul was at present soaked in ethics. He could have applied moral terms to the material objects of her environment. If someone had spoken of "her generous ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... Roberts. "Yes, sir—antics. I said antics," cried the officer sharply, "so don't repeat my words and force me to do the same. A boy's a boy, sir, and a man's a man. A good boy is a rarity on shipboard, but very valuable when you get him; and a good man—a really good man at sea is worth his weight in gold; but I detest a hobbledehoy who apes the man, and I generally look upon him as worthless. Don't grunt, Mr Roberts. It's disrespectful to your ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... same ample, oratorical tone, will help Borrow to genial, substantial effects such as the dinner with the landlord and the commercial traveller: "The dinner was good, though plain, consisting of boiled mackerel—rather a rarity in those parts at that time—with fennel sauce, a prime baron of roast beef after the mackerel, then a tart and noble Cheshire cheese; we had prime sherry at dinner, and whilst eating the cheese prime porter, that of Barclay, the only ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... corded and tense muscles seem to be bursting, even in repose. Their only dress, as a general thing, is a pair of loose pantaloons, to which the more elegant add a fancy colored bandanna knotted about the head, with its wing-like ends flying in the wind; but shirts are a rarity in working hours and their absence shows a breadth of shoulder and depth of chest remarkable, when contrasted with the length and lank power in the nether limbs. They are a perfectly careless and jovial race, with wants confined to the only luxuries they know—plenty to eat, a short pipe and a ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... they were known only in the fossil condition from incomplete specimens; and though they still have their representatives among the type of Echinoderms as it exists at present, yet, partly owing to the rarity of the living specimens and partly to the imperfect condition of the fossil ones, the relation between them was not recognized. The errors about them certainly did not arise from any want of interest in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sand by John Grot's house are found many small pleasant buckies and shells, beautified by diverse colours, which some use to put upon a string as beads, and account much of their rarity. It is also observed of these shells that not one of them can be found altogether like another, and upon the review of the parcel I had I discovered some difference among them which variety renders ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... insecure. Such are known as dry, in contradistinction to the water presents exchanged between relatives and friends. The latter are wholly, or at any rate in part, articles of food prized among the Chinese for their delicacy or rarity, perhaps both; and so to all appearance are the baskets of choice oranges, &c., sent for instance by a District Magistrate with compliments of the season to His Excellency the Provincial Judge. But the Magistrate and the Judge know better, for beneath that smiling ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... be so much in your news," said Betty, in a disappointed tone. "To be sure, strangers are a rarity in our little village, but, judging from the strangers who have visited us in the past, I imagine this one ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... moment, and showed the heads of the two young people close together, for the shutters were now wide open; an instant later the light went out and the music began again. It was a madrigal this time, airy and changing, and sung by four men, one of whom had a beautiful male contralto, which is a rarity even in Italy. Stradella recognised it instantly, for he had often sung at the Lateran and knew ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... of the greatest rarity, and was unknown to Ames, Herbert, Warton and Ritson. A MS. note, in a contemporary hand, says the author was one Henry Roberts, whose initials ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 26. Saturday, April 27, 1850 • Various
... better than claret, champagne, or burgundy. I have a sad vulgar appetite. I remember Ppt used to maunder, when I came from a great dinner, and DD had but a bit of mutton. I cannot endure above one dish; nor ever could since I was a boy, and loved stuffing. It was a fine day, which is a rarity with us, I assure (you). Never fair two ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... then covers it up by pretending that contributions to the party funds are 'public services.' Everything now is to be had for a price, a Chancellery at so much, a Knighthood at so much more; an Order of the this, that, or the other, in exact proportion to its prestige or its rarity. Last year they had a debate on it in the House, a debate where, between them, the corruptors and the corrupted were in a majority! And they solemnly took a vote on it, and declared that there was no corruption, though everybody ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... devotion I have always followed you in thought, and how I feared to trouble you with my writings. In sooth, I make it my first care, that since there is nothing else to commend my letters, that their rarity may commend them. Next, as out of that most vehement desire after you which I feel, I always fancy you with me, and speak to you, and beheld you as if you were present, and so, as always happens in love, soothe my grief by a certain vain imagination of ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... few which are not preserved in the British Museum—and a greater tribute to its rarity could not be devised—was called, "A Good Suggestion as to ye Proper Use of ye Chinne Whisker," and consisted of a few lines of doggerel printed beneath a caricature of the king, with the crown hanging from his goatee, ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... to them was barley-flour and camels' and goats' milk; of the latter, however, they had abundance. Sometimes they were treated with a few dates, which were a great rarity, there being neither date-trees, nor trees of any other kind, in the whole of the country round. But as the flocks of goats and sheep consisted of a great number, from one hundred and fifty to two hundred, and as they were at a distance from the town, Adams and ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... very much at my Ease. My Master, who was a rich Farmer, went the next Day to Ludbitallya, the Metropolis of the Kingdom, about Forty Miles from his Home, to acquaint his Landlord who was a Minister of State, what a Rarity he had in Possession. He set out about Six in the Morning, and returned at Noon; for the Cacklogallinians will fly at the Rate of Twenty Miles an Hour. His Landlord came in less than that Space after in great State. He was preceded by Half a Dozen Servants, who carried large Battens in their right ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... some things greater than art, who will set me down as a Philistine for saying so. And, above all others, we should protect and hold sacred those types, Nature's masterpieces, which are first singled out for destruction on account of their size, or splendour, or rarity, and that false detestable glory which is accorded to their most successful slayers. In ancient times the spirit of life shone brightest in these; and when others that shared the earth with them were taken by death they were left, being more worthy of perpetuation. Like immortal ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... author of Two Tragedies in One absolutely nothing is known. There is no mention of him in Henslowe's Diary, and none of his contemporaries (so far as I can discover) make the slightest allusion to him. The Two Tragedies is of the highest rarity and has never been ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... aspiration is a rarity; but who has not some small ambition, none the less keen for being narrow—keener, perhaps? Mrs. Bazalgette burned to be great by dress; Mr. Fountain, member of a sex with higher aims, aspired to be great in ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... in our seventh number, gave us both a lift and a shove. Nothing else was talked of for a long while; and after 10,000 copies had been sold, it became a very great rarity, quite a desideratum.... The sale of the Quarterly is about 14,000, of the Edinburgh upwards of 7,000.... It is not our intention, at present, to suffer our sale to go beyond 17,000.... Mr. Murray, under whose auspices our magnum opus issued for a few months ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... in the stream by day and set lines by night. They trapped rabbits and hares in the woods, and one day even got a silver fox, a skin greatly prized by the fur traders on account of its rarity. Kalitan insisted that Ted should have it, though he could have gotten forty dollars for it from a white trader, and Ted was rejoiced at the idea of taking it home to make a ...
— Kalitan, Our Little Alaskan Cousin • Mary F. Nixon-Roulet
... and thereafter—for cigars were a rarity on the frontier—puffed half the length of the weed in wordless content. The Mexican went impassively about his work, cleared the table and washed the dishes methodically. The labour complete, he rolled a cigarette swiftly and, followed by a vanishing trail of ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... rather chose to die in the flames than owe his safety to the enemies of his country: an example worthy of that much lauded antiquity, which offers nothing to surpass it, and which we admire the more from the rarity of any similar occurrence. Whatever could be recovered from the ruins, was restored for the use of the children, and carefully conveyed to their friends; nor was the republic less grateful; for as long as they lived, they were supported at ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... gradually descended from the rank of new publications, and may be found on every quay, spread out, for a few centimes, side by side with old weather-beaten books, odd volumes, refuse of libraries, which book-lovers daily finger through in the hope of finding some pearl, some rarity, in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... the majesty of his aspect, and the grandeur of his step. The genius of Hamilton was a flower, which gratifies, surprises, and enchants; the intelligence of Washington was a stately tree, which in the rarity and true dignity of its beauty is as superior, as it is ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... It is a very widely diffused and plentiful mineral, and seems to belong almost equally to all geological formations. 2. Eagle cents issued in 1858 are of no value to collectors, because they lack rarity. 3. Your exchange ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... garden and stood before the moss-rose bush. "Oh, beautiful!" exclaimed Jacqueline, and touched the rose with her lips. It was sunny in the garden, and the box smelled strong and sweet. The Major plucked a sprig and studied it as though box were a rarity. "I have found," he said, "Ludwell Cary's visit highly agreeable. He has come home to Virginia as likely a man as one could find in a summer day. He adorns the state. I predict for him a long ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... saleswomen replenishing her stock from my shelves. She had sold out all the books that had been provided, and in a mad moment of enthusiasm for the cause parted with a volume I had secured after much difficulty in London to complete a set of some rarity for about seven dollars less than the book ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... hands. I imagine these copies were "ground up" in the manner of worthless stock, for I saw a single example of the book quoted the other day in a book-seller's catalogue at ten dollars, and I infer that it is so rare as to be prized at least for its rarity. It was a very pretty little book, printed on tinted paper then called "blush," in the trade, and it was manufactured in the same office where we had once been boys together, unknown to each other. Another boy of that time had by this time become foreman in the office, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... every night to places of public amusement, can hardly enter into the fresh gala feeling with which an opera or a concert is enjoyed by those for whom it is a rarity: I am not sure that I expected great pleasure from the concert, having but a very vague notion of its nature, but I liked the drive there well. The snug comfort of the close carriage on a cold though fine night, the pleasure ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... forward past the National Gallery, in a medium, it seemed, of greater rarity and quiet than ordinary air, there slipped into his mind the recollection of a certain entry in Whitcomb Street hard by, where he might perhaps lay down his tragic cargo unremarked. Thither, then, he bent his steps, seeming, as he went, to float above the pavement; and there, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Pilgrim's painter to a stone, and go scrambling over the hillside in search of flowers, bearing in mind the Boy's constant plea, to "Get only one of a kind," and leave the rest for seed; for other travelers may come this way, and 'tis a sin indeed to exterminate a botanical rarity. But we find no rarities to-day—only solomon's seal, trillium, wild ginger, cranebill, jack-in-the-pulpit, wild columbine. Poison ivy is on every hand, in these tangled woods, with ferns of many varieties—chiefly maidenhair, walking leaf, and bladder. ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... name, Mr. Parmalee stepped forward and was introduced to me. He proved to be a local detective, a young man who always attended Coroner Monroe on occasions like the present; but who, owing to the rarity of such occasions in West Sedgwick, had had ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... to be dressed and to sit up. He was pale and weak, and his head was still bound up, but he welcomed the girl affectionately, though with a mild reproach as to the rarity of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... house in Yalbury Wood appeared exactly as was usual at that season, but a frantic barking of the dogs at the back told of unwonted movements somewhere within. Inside the door the eyes beheld a gathering, which was a rarity indeed for the dwelling of ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... kindred virtues through which we are strong and irresistible, so that the world has today nothing anywhere of equal glory and power, spring from the chastity of our women, which is conspicuous and clear-shining, and in the modesty and shamefastness of our young heroes, and the extreme rarity of lawless relations between men and women in Ulla, the servile tribes excepted, of whom no man maketh any account. Against such lawlessness our wise ancestors have decreed terrible punishments. According to the laws of the ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... tall cliff", etc. Lucan, Statius, and Claudian have been supposed to have helped Goldsmith to this fine and deservedly popular simile. But, considering his obvious familiarity with French literature, and the rarity of his 'obligations to the ancients,' it is not unlikely that, as suggested by a writer in the 'Academy' for Oct. 30, 1886, his source of suggestion is to be found in the following passage of an Ode addressed by Chapelain ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... earliest epoch down to the time of Lope de Vega, chronologically arranged, and accompanied with critical analyses, and copious illustrative extracts from pieces of the greatest merit. The Second Part is devoted to the publication of entire pieces of various authors, which from their extreme rarity, or their existence only in manuscript, have had but little circulation. The selections throughout are made with that careful discrimination, which resulted from poetic talent combined with extensive and thorough erudition. The criticisms, although sometimes warped ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... advantage of it; but Duchambon and some of his officers, remembering the mutiny of the past winter, feared to make sorties, lest the soldiers might desert or take part with the enemy. The danger of this appears to have been small. Warren speaks with wonder in his letters of the rarity of desertions, of which there appear to have been but three during the siege,—one being that of a half-idiot, from whom no information could be got. A bolder commander would not have stood idle while his own cannon were planted by the enemy ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... pigments, or have never been introduced as such. The former could not well be omitted in a work of this kind, and the latter deserve notice as being at least suggestive. At present, many of them must be regarded as mere curiosities, being obtainable only from materials of excessive rarity. In time, however, the sources whence they are derived may possibly be found in greater abundance, and these now fancy products prove of value to the palette. The new metal indium, for instance, furnishes a bright yellow sulphide, like that of cadmium. The colour could not be ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... 'Goldsmith has acquired more fame than all the officers last war, who were not Generals.' JOHNSON. 'Why, sir, you will find ten thousand fit to do what they did, before you find one who does what Goldsmith has done. You must consider, that a thing is valued according to its rarity. A pebble that paves the street is in itself more useful than the diamond upon a lady's finger.' I wish our friend Goldsmith ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... period was the almost undisturbed unity, readiness, and practical energy of every branch of the public service; the devotion of each one in his own sphere to the common end; the general co-operation in the means by which that end was to be reached; the remarkable rarity of treason, even of self-seeking; the steadfast exercise, amid the comfortlessness of camps and the temptations of the council-hall of the highest ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... place, entering into their ideas, and making himself their rival. If life was laborious under his ferula, it was also merry. The best proof of this is the fact that of all his colleagues at the lyce he was the only one who had no nickname, a rarity in ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... would not mind that. It would be like the cuddy thing that comes up on the deck of a ship, that you sit against, only here you would not have the sea-sickness. She thought she should like it, for a rarity. She might use it for ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... dear Sir, say on," the minister answered, with his most genial smile; "your real thoughts are just what I want to get at. A man's real thoughts are a great rarity. If I don't agree with you, I shall ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... surrounded with walls of a vast height and solidity. You go up to the castle by a way hewn out of the rock, and which is so easy of ascent, that loaded horses and camels get up without difficulty. The greatest rarity in this castle is Joseph's well, so called, either because the Egyptians are pleased with ascribing what is most remarkable among them to that great man, or because such a tradition has been preserved in the country. This is a proof, at least, that the work in question ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... without daintiness. The food is common, but excellent of its kind. The service is simple, yet exquisite. All that is mere show, all that depends on vulgar opinion, all fine and elaborate dishes whose value comes of their rarity, and whose names you must know before finding any goodness in them, are banished without recall. Even in such delicacies as they permit themselves, our friends abstain every day from certain things which are reserved for feasts on special occasions, and which ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... they presented it to Baxter in regard to the Procrustes. Baxter making no objection, the subscribers who might wish their copies delivered sealed were directed to notify the author. I sent in my name. A fine book, after all, was an investment, and if there was any way of enhancing its rarity, and therefore its value, I was quite willing to enjoy ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... Collectors' Monthly Gazette, published at St. John, New Brunswick, in September, 1869, shows that the rarity of the 12d was already recognised as witnessed by the fact that "even $5" could be obtained for a specimen. We give ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... They could not laugh David out of it. This was so, partly because he had no sense of humor, and partly because he had a great-great-grandfather. Among the salesmen on lower Broadway, to possess a great-great-grandfather is unusual, even a great-grandfather is a rarity, and either is considered superfluous. But to David the possession of a great-great-grandfather was a precious and open delight. He had possessed him only for a short time. Undoubtedly he always had existed, but it was ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... you were no longer here, and sure of reigning undisturbed—began to bully me, I, observing that my wife, in the most perfect contrast to him, was most kind and amiable towards me who had neglected her so much, the idea occurred to me of becoming a model husband—a rarity, a curiosity, at the court; and I had an idea of getting very fond ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... cursory student. Passages like these arouse the suspicion that Naude knew books better than men, that at any rate he did not realize that men are to be found, and not seldom, who take pleasure in magnifying their foibles into gigantic follies, and their peccadilloes into atrocious crimes; while the rarity is to come across one who will set down these details with the circumstantiality used by Cardan. There is one defect in the De Vita Propria—an artistic one—which Naude does not notice, namely, that in his narrative of his early days Cardan often over-reaches himself. His show ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... the weight of one of his hives, and just after I lost chase of a very peculiar-looking beetle, from his squeezing himself away from me under a boulder, I had caught sight of a bit of white heather, and then bethought me of gathering a nosegay (to include this rarity) of moor flowers and grasses for Mrs. Wood. So when we reached the lane on our way home, I bade Isaac good-night, and said I would just run in by the back way into the farm (we never called it the Academy) and leave the flowers, that the school-mistress might ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... which are almost independent of weather. During the greater part of the year a clear sky from the morning to the evening zyda may be reckoned upon with almost absolute confidence. A heavy dew, thoroughly watering the whole surface, rendering the rarity of rain no inconvenience to agriculture, falls during the earlier hours of the night, which nevertheless remains cloudy; while the periods of sunset and sunrise are, as I have already said, marked almost invariably by dense mist, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... typical districts; and, to state a general rule, we may say that, while the apsidal chancel is foreign to no part of England, and occurs in unexpected places, as in the chapel of Old Bewick, Northumberland, it is never general in any single region. Its rarity is an important fact. Were our parish churches the work of masons sent out from the larger churches and monasteries, we should expect to find it a common feature; for in those buildings the apsidal plan prevailed. But, in the hands of local masons, ...
— The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson
... yourself for this evening. I am going to bring you a bridegroom! Prepare a nice hearty little lunch for us. Put out on the table as much of our old silverware as possible, also bring out the fruit-vases, so that he is impressed by our table! Let him see that each and everything we have is a rarity!" ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... "It is the second hardest metal we know—it is not as hard as chromium, but far less brittle. It is malleable, ductile, very very strong, very tough, especially when alloyed with iron, but those alloys are used only in very particular work because of iron's rarity." ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... chapters from the second to the eleventh constitute the second part, and in them Tsze-sze quotes the words of Confucius, 'for the purpose,' according to Chu Hsi, 'of illustrating the meaning of the first chapter.' Yet, as I have just intimated, they do not to my mind do this. Confucius bewails the rarity of the practice of the Mean, and graphically sets forth the difficulty of it. 'The empire, with its component States and families, may be ruled; dignities and emoluments may be declined; naked weapons may be trampled under foot; but the course of the Mean can not be attained to ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... in certain peculiarities, which do not characterise the immediate parents, and therefore cannot have been derived from them, frequently appearing in the offspring of two breeds when crossed, which peculiarities never appear, or appear with extreme rarity, in these same breeds, as long as they are {40} precluded from crossing. As this conclusion seems to me highly curious and novel, I will give the ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... of colored stevedores and engineers while in France. The majority were from the South, where there is a friendly, warm sun many months of the year. When I talked with them no sun of any kind had greeted them for weeks. It was the rainy season when a clear sky is a rarity and a downpour of rain is a daily occurrence. Yet, there was not one word of complaint heard, for they were 'doing their bit' as expected of real soldiers. Naturally they expressed a desire to get home soon, but this was a wish I often ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... think it would not be amiss if every one traveled separately into different countries, so that you might not meet each other. And, as you know I am very curious, and delight in everything that's singular, I promise my niece in marriage to him that shall bring me the most extraordinary rarity; and for the purchase of the rarity you shall go in search after, and the expense of traveling, I will give you every one a ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... their interiors were for the most part unharmed, but nearly everything else had disappeared. Horses, cattle, hogs, livestock of all kinds had vanished before the advancing hosts of hungry soldiers; and there was one thing which was even more a rarity than these. That was money. Confederate veterans went around in their faded gray uniforms, not only because they loved them, but because they did not have the wherewithal to buy new wardrobes. Judges, planters, and other dignified ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... in a neat little wooden mansion approached by a courtyard. I gained admittance by ringing a bell (then a rarity in Moscow), and was received by a mincing, smartly-attired page. He either could not or made no attempt to inform me whether there was any one at home, but, leaving me alone in the dark hall, ran off down a still darker corridor. For a long time I waited in solitude in this ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... for the rarity Of Christian charity Under the sun! Oh! it was pitiful Near a whole city full Home ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... upon a pocket scale conveyed by pilgrims, and reverenced by the Arabs, but the body of any Faky, who in lifetime was considered extra holy, is brought from a great distance to be interred in some particular spot. In countries where a tree is a rarity, a plank for a coffin is unknown; thus the reverend Faky, who may have died of typhus, is wrapped in cloths and packed in a mat. In this form he is transported, perhaps, some hundred miles, slung upon a camel, with the thermometer above 130 degrees ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... Geneva, as Calvin's compurgators. It was generally considered a failure; and a refutation appeared, which was so skilful as to produce a great sensation in the Protestant world.[285] This famous tract, now of extreme rarity, did not, as has been said, "contain the pith of those arguments which have ultimately triumphed in almost every part of Europe;" nor did it preach an unconditional toleration.[286] But it struck ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Mr. Nicknack, is indeed a very strange Creature, but 'tis no Rarity, I'm pester'd with 'em at all Seasons, they are continually intruding like one's poor Relations, more pragmatically impertinent than one's Chaplain, and, were it possible, as impudent as ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... which, save the low brow, are not of the Roman type, there is a commingling of just that loveliness and melancholy which must have come to Psyche when she lost her god. In the corners of the mouth, in the droop of the eyelids, in the moulding of the chin, you may see that rarity—beauty and intellect in one—and with it the heightening shadow of an eternal regret. Before her Marcus Aurelius, her husband, stands, decked with the purple, with all the splendor of the imperator, his beard in overlapping curls, his questioning eyes dilated. Beyond ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... the knaves of the present time, I don't know but we may be reduced to defend our castles. If you retain any connexions with Northampton, I should be much obliged to you if you could procure from thence a print of an Alderman Backwell.(1101) It is valuable for nothing but its rarity, and it is not to be met with but there. I would give eight or ten shillings rather than not have it. When shall you look towards us?, how does your brother John? make my compliments to him. I need not say how much ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... more fully in the book called, 'Ludus Literarius, or the Grammar school, chap. 8.'" Notwithstanding a title so pretentious, it contains a translation of no more than the first 567 lines of the first Book, executed in a fanciful and pedantic manner; and its rarity is now the only merit of the volume. A literal interlinear translation of the first Book "on the plan recommended by Mr. Locke," was published in 1839, which had been already preceded by "a selection from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, adapted to the Hamiltonian ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... ones! But when one considers how little of a rarity children are in this world, one has only to open one's mouth to say so, and people are all up in arms and make such a stir and such an ado about their little ones! Heart's-dearest! People may call them angels as much as ever they will, but I would willingly have my knees free from them! But worst ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... not certain that this period of immense gifts of money is really a period of increased liberality in the church from the time, thirty or forty years before, when a millionaire was a rarity to be pointed out on the streets, and the possession of a hundred thousand dollars gave one a place among "The Rich Men of New York." In 1850 the total wealth of the United States was reported in the census as seven billions of dollars. In 1870, after twenty years, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... the mutual confidence of the electors, a calm national mind, and what I may call rationality—a power involving intelligence, yet distinct from it. It demands also a competent legislature, which is a rarity. In the early stages of human society the grand object is not to make new laws, but to prevent innovation. Custom is the first check on tyranny, but at the present day the desire is to adapt the law to changed conditions. In the past, however, continuous legislatures were rare ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... sayings, but it contained epigrams and dialogues derived from other sources as well. The book was of a kind to be popular, as well as to excite the bitterest aversion of the adherents of the Roman Church. It long since became a volume of excessive rarity, most of the copies having been destroyed by zealous Romanists. The famous scholar, Daniel Heinsius, within a century after its publication, believed that a copy which he purchased, at a cost of a hundred ducats, was the only one remaining in the world, and he inscribed the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... framing of the great rose window of less angularity, it would indeed produce a remarkable effect of grandeur. The other windows, and the arcading of the triforium, are singularly graceful; not lacking either strength or firmness, though having no glass of great rarity or excellence. In this transept is the altar of St. Romain, a seventeenth-century ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... on their shoulders—the shirt to their back—often stood the hazard of the die; and hence it not unfrequently happened, that a rusty pourpoint and ragged chausses were all the covering which the luckless dicers could enumerate, owing, no doubt, "to the extreme rarity and penury ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... tear of years of poverty; his bills are disputed or allowed to run on year after year unnoticed; he is often dismissed because he cannot put himself in the place of Providence and save life, and a truly grateful, generous patient is almost an unknown rarity. I do not speak of these things to complain of them. I suppose they are a necessary part of that whole providential plan by which God moulds and fashions and tempers the human soul, just as my petty, but incessant household cares are. If I had nothing to do but love my husband and children ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... follow him. There was a grand collation for the Princesses, his daughters, who took their friends there, and indeed all the women went to it if they pleased. One day the Duchesse de Gesvres took it into her head to go to Trianon and partake of this meal; her age, her rarity at Court, her accoutrements, and her face, provoked the Princesses to make fun of her in whispers with their fair visitors. She perceived this, and without being embarrassed, took them up so sharply, that they were silenced, and looked down. But this was not all: after the collation ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of the Emerald Isle. On their march up from Huntsville, Alabama, toward Louisville, Kentucky, on the renowned parallel run between Buell and Bragg, the command were short of provisions. Half-rations were considered a rarity. Father Cony, who is at all times assiduous in his duties to his flock, had called his regiment together, and was instilling into their minds the necessity of their trusting in Providence. He spoke of Jesus feeding the multitude ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... in quarto, uniform with the Club-Books, and the series is now completed. Their value chiefly consists in the rarity and curiosity of the pieces selected, the notes being very few in number. The impression of each work ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... the Moon is likened unto Grammar because it is possible to find a comparison to it. For if you look at the Moon well, two things are seen to be proper to it which are not seen in the other stars: the one is the shadow which is in it, which is no other than the rarity of its body, in which the rays of the Sun can find no end wherefrom to strike back again as in the other parts; the other is the variation of its brightness, which now shines on one side, and now on the other, according as the Sun sees it. And these two properties Grammar has: ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... s'pose so. I s'pose such things will spread, bein' a sort of a rarity. I'd heard that it had got out, way ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... with a shew before mentioned, to witt, The Seven Dayes in the Weeke, to which, by this time, there was somewhat added, but not much: all was most kindly accepted, and the nighte was spent in great mirth. For the straungenes of the matter, and rarity of the fashion of their action pleased ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... the legal decisions, but these are only where the penalty had already been commuted from death or punishment to payment or restitution. They are better taken as examples of civil law. But this distinction is not the cause of their rarity or absence. When a man had to be put to death, scourged, or exiled, there was no need for a written bond. Hence the only references which we have outside the Code and the phrase-books, are the penalties set down in marriage-contracts ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... stamps, distinguished by the lion, which has been adopted as the Company's badge, are well executed and in considerable demand with stamp collectors, owing to their rarity. ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... descendants. Only an able and labouring womanhood can permanently produce an able and labouring manhood; only an effete and inactive male can ultimately be produced by an effete and inactive womanhood. The curled darling, scented and languid, with his drawl, his delicate apparel, his devotion to the rarity and variety of his viands, whose severest labour is the search after pleasure, and for whom even the chase, which was for his remote ancestor an invigorating and manly toil essential for the meat and life of his people, becomes a luxurious and farcical amusement;—this male, ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... illustration. For instance, we would not tie the noble and the aristocratic to any particular kind of viands, but would allow them to illustrate their self-value of the "porcelain of all human clay" by the richness and rarity of their subscriptions. Whilst a SIBTHORP, with a fine sense of humility, might be permitted to give his weight in calves' or sheeps' heads (be it understood we must have the whole weight of the Colonel, for if we were to sink his offal, what in the name of veal would remain?), a Duke of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... perhaps, complain as much of the frequency of my letters now, as you were wont to do of their rarity. I think this is the fourth within as many moons. I feel anxious to hear from you, even more than usual, because your last indicated that you were unwell. At present, I am on the invalid regimen myself. The Carnival—that is, the latter ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... example, the two compositions of Polygnotus at Delphi, of which we possess an extremely detailed account in the pages of Pausanias, depicted the sack of Troy and the descent of Odysseus into Hades. But it is worth remarking, in view of the extreme rarity of historical subjects in Greek relief- sculpture, that in the Stoa Poicile (Painted Portico) of Athens, alongside of a Sack of Troy by Polygnotus and a Battle of Greeks and Amazons by his contemporary, Micon, there were two historical scenes, a Battle ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... up and down by the long pink frames with true diplomatic strides. The display was really extraordinarily beautiful: and the particular forms and colors of the different flowers, the advantages of one over the other, and their rarity, gave at last occasion to a sort of conversation which appeared to get quite friendly; at which we others rejoiced the more because we saw the most precious old Rhine wine in cut decanters, fine fruits, and other good ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... perceive, even under the equator, certain mountains covered with eternal snow, upon observing the rapid diminution of temperature which the strata of the atmosphere undergo during ascents in balloons, meteorologists have supposed, that in the regions wherein the extreme rarity of the air will always exclude the presence of mankind, and that especially beyond the limits of the atmosphere, there ought to prevail a prodigious intensity of cold. It was not merely by hundreds, it was by thousands of degrees, that they had arbitrarily measured ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... material, when the waters recede, with which they form nests, that are impervious to water." And in India there is a swallow that collects a glutinous substance for this purpose, whose nest is esculent, and esteemed a principal rarity amongst epicures, (Lin. Syst. Nat.) Both these must be constructed of very different materials from those used by the swallows ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... death, their bones would usually be left on dry land, where they would slowly decay under atmospheric influences. Only under very exceptional circumstances would they become embedded in aqueous deposits; and instead of being surprised at their rarity we should rather wonder that so many have been discovered ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... of his feet upon the causeway began the business of the day; for the village was still sound asleep. The church tower looked very airy in the sunlight; a few birds that turned about it seemed to swim in an atmosphere of more than usual rarity; and the Doctor, walking in long transparent shadows, filled his lungs amply, and proclaimed himself well ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a slightly higher temperature than one similarly exposed to the sun (when at the same altitude) at the sea-level. But the air does not get warmed to the same degree, simply because, owing to its rarity and relative dryness, it fails to retain any portion of the heat ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... sort of guarantee of my conduct in the matter. She knows the worst of me and still allows me to retain her acquaintance. She was brilliant and full of charm when she was a young woman, and she is even more so now because she is—of a rarity! If I were a girl and might earn my living in her service, I should feel that fortune had been ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... The data of meteorologists are mainly taken from the same localities. Places between 8000 and 10,000 feet in height and further from the plains enjoy a finer climate, being both cooler and drier in summer. But they are less accessible, and weakly persons would find the greater rarity of ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... phenomenon, whom kings and princes delighted to honor. As Leonardo da Vinci died in the arms of Francis I., so Chaucer rested in his grave near the bodies of those sovereigns and princes with whom he lived in intimacy and friendship. It was the rarity of his gifts, his great attainments, elegant manners, and refined tastes which made him the companion of the great, since at that time only princes and nobles and ecclesiastical dignitaries could appreciate his genius or enjoy ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... intent upon the herbage, one lopping here and there in quest, but none out of range of a quick hand. Above his head, high in the blue, birds were wheeling, now up, now down. Peewits tumbling heavily, pigeons with beating wings, sailing jackdaws—higher yet, serene in rarity, a brown kestrel oared ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... Minerals and Stones, by dissolving them in severall Menstruums, and Crystallizing them, to see what Figures will arise from those several compositums: 5. By compounding & coagulating several Salts together into the same mass, to observe the Figure of that product: 6. By inquiring the closenes or rarity of the texture of those bodys by examining their gravity, and their refraction, &c. 7. By examining what operations the fire hath upon several kinds of Salts, what changes it causes in their figures, Textures, or {30} Vertues. 8. By examining ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... lower classes, whose natures, if gross, retain their primitive sincerity. Even with women of the world, depraved though they be by the temptations that assail them, nature asserts herself; and it is no rarity to see them devote an entire life to one idea, one thought, or one affection! Their lives do not know the thousand distractions which at once disturb and console men; and any idea that takes hold upon them easily becomes fixed. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... fire, and the few that are to be met with are generally, if not always, deficient in some leaves. The title-page to this copy (as in Mr. Grenville's) is supplied by the title to the 4th Decade, and a few leaves are wanting. For the rarity of this work, see Bibliotheca Grenvilliana, vol. i. ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.01 • Various
... These necessary adjuncts must be supplied by a man, who is no part of the machine, but something carried by it. The bird is a complete machine in itself. Our aerial ship must be machine plus man. Now, a man is, I believe, heavier than any bird that flies. The limit which the rarity of the air places upon its power of supporting wings, taken in connection with the combined weight of a man and a machine, make a drawback which we should not too hastily assume our ability to overcome. The example of the bird does not prove that man can fly. The hundred ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... hermetic to bar the poison, yet admit some oxygen; or else, the place may have been absolutely air-tight at the time of the cloud, and some crack, which I have not seen, opened to admit oxygen after the poison was dispersed: in any case—the all-but-infinite rarity of the chance! ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... which the poets proceeded in such subjects. It is not unentertaining, though the subject- matter is for the most part contained in the Odyssey; only the pranks of Silenus and his band are occasionally a little coarse. We must confess that, in our eyes, the great merit of this piece is its rarity, being the only extant specimen of its class which we possess. In the satiric dramas Aeschylus must, without doubt, have displayed more boldness and meaning in his mirth; as, for instance, when he introduced Prometheus bringing down fire from heaven to ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... immediately; and Miss Garth considerately followed their example. When an easy-tempered man does assert himself in his family, the rarity of the demonstration invariably has its effect; and the will of that easy-tempered ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... without exception, the coal miners age early and become unfit for work soon after the fortieth year, though this is different in different places. A coal miner who can follow his calling after the 45th or 50th year is a very great rarity indeed. It is universally recognised that such workers enter upon old age at forty. This applies to those who loosen the coal from the bed; the loaders, who have constantly to lift heavy blocks of coal into the tubs, age with the ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... expected at first to make more use of horses than was afterwards found to be necessary, and that was the reason why this noble animal, which we had been the first to establish in Equatorial Africa, was still a much-admired rarity everywhere outside of Freeland, particularly in Masailand, where the horse was regarded as the ideal of ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... cloak still retains a smack of it in the way they disregard the sleeves and hang it from their shoulders. These men are decidedly not so ugly as the women, and vary wonderfully in size, colour and complexion, though a big Portuguese is a rarity. The strong point in both sexes is their natural gift for wearing colour, for choosing ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... in the world friendships, companionships, that might eclipse the memory of the mind so lofty in its antique mould—so tender in its depths of unsuspected sweetness—which had been withdrawn from her existence before she could fully comprehend its rarity, or appreciate ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... are a rarity in this district. How did they escape the enemy? All the trees in the country around ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... Very many of them had never heard the ideas of Geneva stated at all. "So late as 1596," writes Dr. Hay Fleming, "there were above four hundred parishes, not reckoning Argyll and the Isles, which still lacked ministers." "The rarity of learned and godly men" of his own persuasion, is regretted by Knox in the Book of Discipline. Yet Catholics thus destitute of opportunity to know and recognise the Truth, are threatened with confiscation, exile, and death, if they cling ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... then she thought a night-cap would be better. Only they would be a world too large for the child. But she succeeded in pinning it to the right shape, though she grudged the two pins. They were a great rarity in those days, and if one was lost hours ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... as much as the latter, as he is often an Oriental. On that particular day, however, the party of scavengers presented a novelty, in having the two Tejanos in it; with a yet greater one in the odd juxtaposition of Cris Rock and his diminutive "mate." In Mexico, a man over six feet in height is a rarity, and as Cris exceeded this by six inches, a rarer sight still was he. The colossus coupled to the dwarf, as Gulliver to Lilliputian—a crooked Lilliputian at that—no wonder that a knot of curious gazers ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... helps, and you see how little I know about it and how anxious I am to learn. Well, midgets, as a class are attractive and a rarity too. Except for yourself, I do not know of another. People want to see them. They go to circuses and theaters just to see little people. I have no doubt, that in many cases, people are ill-mannered—stare ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... engraver in mezzotint. After his son's disappearance he lived in complete retirement at the Hall, and was found dead in his studio on the third anniversary of the disaster, having just completed an engraving of the house, impressions of which are of considerable rarity. ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... was not that she recognised all these truths at the hour, but they were falling into order before her. For the moment she only said to herself that this "new relation" would perhaps prove her very most distinguished. Madame Merle had had that note of rarity, but what quite other power it immediately gained when sounded by a man! It was not so much what he said and did, but rather what he withheld, that marked him for her as by one of those signs of the highly curious that he was showing her on the underside ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... her wedding should be a romantic one; she said that it was by no means an every-day affair, and therefore it should be carried out in a style proportionate to its rarity. After consulting Mrs. Pendergast, and searching through a pile of 'New York Dashers,' she was much inclined to a midnight wedding, especially as Mrs. Pendergast offered to loan her patent lamp for the occasion; but ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... page in universal history!" Histories far more limited and modest than a universal history, not only have a right, but are bound to shed their light only upon those men who have deserved it by the eminence of their talents or the important results of their passage through life; rarity only can claim to escape oblivion. And save two or three, a little less insignificant or less hateful than the rest, the Merovingian kings deserve only to be forgotten. From A.D. 511 to A.D. 752, that is, from the death of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... has been gradual in most of the European countries. In France it received an impulse in the 16th century from the high-minded chancellor, Michel de L'Hopital. In England judicial corruption has been a crime of remarkable rarity. Indeed, with the exception of a statute of 1384 (repealed by the Statute Law Revision Act 1881) there has been no legislation relating to judicial bribery. The earliest recorded case was that of Sir William ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... said the dying Power and Thrust. "Only maintain Us and you shall be surprised at the result. For our enemy Drift decreases in respect of distance with the increase of altitude and rarity of air, and there is no limit to the speed through space if only our strength remains. And with oxygen for pilot and passengers and a steeper pitch[11] for the Propeller we may then circle the Earth ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... cougar's occasionally itself making the attack, and dogging to his death some unfortunate wayfarer. Many others laugh such tales to scorn. It is certain that if such attacks occur they are altogether exceptional, being indeed of such extreme rarity that they may be entirely disregarded in practice. I should have no more hesitation in sleeping out in a wood where there were cougars, or walking through it after nightfall, than I should have if ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... flowers, with a melancholy air, and looked as if they had not the courage to keep up the prices. Ladies and housekeepers wandered from stall to stall followed by their maids, a few of whom wore picturesque caps, conspicuous in their rarity: for even Breton stubbornness has yielded very much, where, for once, it should have been firm as a rock, and it is only in the remoter districts that costume is still general. We were invited to many purchases as we looked ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... morning I roused myself and jumped out of bed with excitement, as though it were all about to happen at once. But I believed that some radical change in my life was coming, and would inevitably come that day. Owing to its rarity, perhaps, any external event, however trivial, always made me feel as though some radical change in my life were at hand. I went to the office, however, as usual, but sneaked away home two hours earlier to get ready. The great thing, I thought, is not to be the first to arrive, ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... observed a growing tendency in many persons to put, as it were, electric lights in all the corners and attics of their brains, until it is too much a rarity to find any one who will admit a twilight in his whole establishment. This is carrying mental housekeeping too far. I will confess that I prefer a light at the foot of the back stairs, where the steps are narrow at the turn, for Annie is precious to us. I will confess, ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... large gem of great value, beautifully cut in many facets, and clear set in massive gold. This precious stone, said to be a chrysoprasus, had been given to the Bishop by a Russian prince, in acknowledgment of a great service rendered him when he came on pilgrimage to Rome. The rarity of these gems arose partly from the fact that the sovereigns of Russia had decreed that they should be held exclusively for royal ornament, forbidding their use or purchase by people of ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... Cuban women have also been justly famed for their graceful carriage, and it is indeed the poetry of motion, singular as it may appear, when it is remembered that for them to walk abroad is such a rarity. It is not the simple progressive motion alone, but also the harmonious play of features, the coquettish undulation of the face, the exquisite disposition of costume, and the modulation of voice, that engage the ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... Hayes. The horses were to be picketed in a field, and the company were to sleep in the tent and the out houses. Posters were scattered over the country, announcing that a performance would be given there the next day, the agent thinking that, as a show was a rarity in that region, a considerable number of small farmers would ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... of such revolutions that we always see the worst of them at first. Till men have been some time free, they know not how to use their freedom. The natives of wine countries are generally sober. In climates where wine is a rarity intemperance abounds. A newly liberated people may be compared to a northern army encamped on the Rhine or the Xeres. It is said that, when soldiers in such a situation first find themselves able to indulge without restraint in such a rare and expensive luxury, nothing is to be seen but ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... in June—nearly a year from the time of the "understanding"—a day made more beautiful because of its being in the mountains and on a Sunday afternoon. Dorian and Carlia lived in the midst of its rarity, seated as they were on the grassy hill-side overlooking the dry-land farms near at hand and the valley below, through which tumbled the brook. The wild odor of hill plants mingled with the pungent fragrance of choke-cherry blossoms. The air was as clear ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... February, swept round an intervening cape, and came in sight of the infant settlement of Astoria. After eleven months wandering in the wilderness, a great part of the time over trackless wastes, where the sight of a savage wigwam was a rarity, we may imagine the delight of the poor weatherbeaten travellers, at beholding the embryo establishment, with its magazines, habitations, and picketed bulwarks, seated on a high point of land, dominating a beautiful little bay, in which ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... concluding scene, in which trial is made of the obedience of the new-married wives (so triumphantly for Petruchio), is a very happy one.—In some parts of this play there is a little too much about music-masters and masters of philosophy. They were things of greater rarity in those days than they are now. Nothing, however, can be better than the advice which Tranio gives his master for ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... identification, if any of your readers are acquainted with the existence of a copy of the production, or of any portion of it. The above stanza, being numbered "5," of course it was preceded by four others, of which I can give no account. Another stanza, from this literary and bibliographical rarity, may not be unacceptable; it is ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.26 • Various
... and, in 1539, the final suppression of all the monasteries in England was decreed. Then followed the seizure of all the church property in England connected with monasteries—shrines, relics, gold and silver vessels of immense value and rarity, lands, and churches. Canterbury, Bath, Merton, Stratford, Bury St. Edmonds, Glastonbury, and St. Albans, suffered most, and many of those beautiful monuments of Gothic architecture were levelled with the dust. Their destruction deprived the people of ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... insecurity of incompletely developed resources we can see the chain which hangs heavily on their feet and confines their movements within a narrow space. As a consequence their numbers are small, and from this again results the small total amount of intellectual and physical accomplishment, the rarity of eminent men, the absence of the salutary pressure exercised by surrounding masses on the activity and forethought of the individual, which operates in the division of society into classes, and the promotion of a wholesome division ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... infraction of law, breach, of law, violation of law, violation of custom, violation of usage, infringement of law, infringement of custom, infringement of usage; teratism^, eccentricity, bizarrerie^, oddity, je ne sais quoi [Fr.], monster, monstrosity, rarity; freak, freak of Nature, weirdo, mutant; rouser, snorter [U.S.]. individuality, idiosyncrasy, originality, mannerism. aberration; irregularity; variety; singularity; exemption; salvo &c (qualification) 469. nonconformist; nondescript, character, original, nonesuch, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... contradiction of Experience more glaring in this case than in that of the miraculous histories which ingenious sceptics have held up to contempt: all the advocates of miracles admit that they are rare exceptions to the general course of nature; but contend that they must needs be so, on account of the rarity of those extraordinary occasions which are the reason of their being performed: a Miracle, they say, does not happen every day, because a Revelation is not given every day. It would be foreign to the present purpose to seek for arguments ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... The naked recollection of that time, And what may rather have been called to life 615 By after-meditation. But delight That, in an easy temper lulled asleep, Is still with Innocence its own reward, This was not wanting. Carelessly I roamed As through a wide museum from whose stores 620 A casual rarity is singled out And has its brief perusal, then gives way To others, all supplanted in their turn; Till 'mid this crowded neighbourhood of things That are by nature most unneighbourly, 625 The head turns round and cannot right itself; And though ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... earlier authority for these lines than the Musarum Deliciae; a fact which I learn from a volume now open before me, the great rarity of which will excuse my transcribing the title-page ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.19 • Various
... winding among them, and, pursuing their various avocations, for which this building offers a common and convenient ground. Here the merchants assemble and meet each other. Here various articles of more than common rarity are brought and exhibited for sale. Here the mountebanks resort, and entertain the idle and lovers of amusement with their fantastic tricks. And here strangers from all parts of the world may be seen walking to and fro, observing the customs ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... well-recognised principle in political economy, that generally wages, salaries, remunerations of all kinds, are in pretty exact relation to the value of the services performed—this value being of course determined, in a great degree, by the easiness or difficulty of the work, the commonness or rarity of the faculties and skill required for it, the risk of non-success in the profession, and so forth. Many a good fellow who feels that his income is inconveniently small, and wonders why it is not greater, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... the colour of the lower parts, which are a blackish-grey. The upper parts are sometimes as black as a mole, sometimes grizzled with brown" ('Mammiferes,' p. 284). The brown specimen with the dark belly is evidently a rarity. ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... hour, but they were falling into order before her. For the moment she only said to herself that this "new relation" would perhaps prove her very most distinguished. Madame Merle had had that note of rarity, but what quite other power it immediately gained when sounded by a man! It was not so much what he said and did, but rather what he withheld, that marked him for her as by one of those signs of the highly curious that he was showing her on the underside of old ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... literary notices of baptism are far from conclusive in favour of submersion, and are often to be regarded as merely rhetorical. The rubrics of the MSS., it is true, enjoin total immersion, but it only came into general vogue in the 7th century, "when the growing rarity of adult baptism made the Gr. word [Greek: baptizo]) patient of an interpretation that suited that of infants only."[2] The Key of Truth, the manual of the old Armenian Baptists, archaically prescribes that the penitent admitted into the church ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... most privileged, after all, of the group. Wasn't it he who had in a manner invented the wonderful creature—through having seen her first, caught her in her native jungle? Hadn't he more or less paved the way for her by his prompt recognition of her rarity, by preceding her, in a friendly spirit—as he had the "ear" of society—with a sharp flashlight ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... The New Paul and Virginia run about with knives and forks in their sides pleading to be eaten. The Bibliotaph said he did not despair of buying Poe's Tamerlane for twenty-five cents one of these days; and that a rarity he was sure to get sooner or later was a copy of that English newspaper which announced Shelley's death under the caption Now he Knows whether there is a ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... settlement. Upon seeing the boat approaching, the Highlanders marched out to meet him, and made a most manly appearance in their plaids, with claymores, targets and fire-arms. Captain MacKay invited Oglethorpe to lie in his tent, where there was a bed with sheets—a rarity as yet in that part of the world. He excused himself, choosing to lie at the guard-fire, wrapped in his plaid, for he had on the Highland garb. Captain MacKay and the other gentlemen did the same, though the ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... not quite do for a great city feast, But I think I may venture to say A minnow or tittlebat there might be cooked, As a rarity ...
— The Wonders of a Toy Shop • Anonymous
... from four hours' jolting in a springless carriage, always on the point of overturning. We should have done better to have come on horseback in the usual way; but Rashid, having chanced upon the carriage, a great rarity, had decided on that way of going as more fashionable, forgetful of the fact that ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... from the brimming tankard beside him. Then he looked round, and lifted his hand to request silence; and, ascending the chair, rose in full view of all. Every one felt that the Squire was about to make a speech, and the earnestness of the attention was proportioned to the rarity of the event; for (though he was not unpractised in the oratory of the hustings), only thrice before had the Squire made what could fairly be called 'a speech' to the villagers of Hazeldean—once on a kindred festive ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... surprised to find this young woman—who though but a milkmaid had just that touch of rarity about her which might make her the envied of her housemates—shaping such sad imaginings. She was expressing in her own native phrases—assisted a little by her Sixth Standard training—feelings which might almost have ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... be marching up even to her walls and suburb trenches, that then the people, or the greater part, more than at other times, wholly taken up with the study of highest and most important matters to be reformed, should be disputing, reasoning, reading, inventing, discoursing, even to a rarity and admiration, things not before discoursed or written of, argues first a singular goodwill, contentedness and confidence in your prudent foresight and safe government, Lords and Commons; and from thence derives itself to a gallant bravery ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... about arming them. But with respect to the three hundred, inasmuch as they were men engaged in maritime affairs and money lending, and had the chief part of their substance in slaves, the words of Cato stood no long time in them, but oozed out, just as bodies which have a great degree of rarity easily receive heat and again part with it, being cooled when the fire is removed; in like manner Cato, while they saw him, fanned the flame and warmed those men; but when they began to reflect by themselves, the fear of Caesar drove out of them all regard to Cato and to honour. ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... to occupy (I said), and it had riveted my attention when I looked down from up yonder. A visitor was a rarity, I should suppose; not an unwelcome rarity, I hoped? In me, he merely saw a man who had been shut up within narrow limits all his life, and who, being at last set free, had a newly-awakened interest in these great works. To such purpose I spoke to him; but I am far from ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... as much of the frequency of my letters now, as you were wont to do of their rarity. I think this is the fourth within as many moons. I feel anxious to hear from you, even more than usual, because your last indicated that you were unwell. At present, I am on the invalid regimen myself. The Carnival—that is, the latter part of it, and sitting up late o'nights, had knocked ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... mole. Many curious views of Tangier were taken by Hollar, during its occupation by the English; and his drawings are preserved in the British Museum. Some have been engraved by himself; but the impressions are of considerable rarity.—B.] ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... be some time yet,' I interrupted, not desiring the invitation she seemed about to force herself to utter; 'and I fear there are not many in this neighbourhood who will appreciate the rarity and value of the library—if the other rooms should turn out as rich as ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... barrenness of Hinduism. The Golden Threshold; its authoress—her poetry; the four kinds of religion; her motherly instincts; her letters; her father; her search for beauty; her portrait. Rarity of happy Hindu ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... in most men a sense of quality, a power of divination in regard to value which, on occasions when they are confronted by a stranger whose worth they do not know, informs them immediately of the comparative rarity or commonness of his type. This sense may at first be baffled by the delusive disguises in which men sometimes present themselves, but as a rule a chance word, an artless gesture, or even a glance, quickly corrects the initial error of the eye, and in a moment the original estimate is ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... may deceive. Lavender Mistrust. Lemon Blossom Discretion. Lady Slipper Capricious beauty. Lily of the Valley Return of happiness. Lilac, White Youth. " Blue First emotions of love. Lily, Water Eloquence. May Flower Welcome. Marigold Sacred affection. Marigold and Cypress Despair. Mandrake Rarity. Mignonette Your qualities surpass your charms. Morning Glory Coquetry, Affectation. Mock Orange Counterfeit. Myrtle Love in absence. Mistletoe Insurmountable. Narcissus Egotism. Nasturtium Patriotism. Oxalis Reverie. Orange Blossom Purity. Olive ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... and not the exception, where the people itself is only the army in mufti. In its mere aspect to the eye it was something like an invasion by a strange race. The English professional soldier of our youth had been conspicuous not only by his red coat but by his rarity. When rare things become common they do not become commonplace. The memory of their singularity is still strong enough to give them rather the appearance of a prodigy, as anyone can realise by imagining an army of hunchbacks or a city of one-eyed men. The ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton
... floor where the family slept at night. There he opened our basket, and then, with anxious care, hung clothes and rough draperies about us that our meal might be unwatched by one or two friends who had followed us in with breathless interest. Still further to entertain us a great rarity was brought out and laid at Vanna's feet as something we might like to watch—a curious bird in a cage, with brightly barred wings and a singular cry. She fed it with fruit, and it fluttered to her hand. Just so Abraham might have welcomed his guests, and when we left with words of deepest gratitude, ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... "De Constantia," were passionately fond of tulips. The rage for possessing them soon caught the middle classes of society, and merchants and shopkeepers, even of moderate means, began to vie with each other in the rarity of these flowers and the preposterous prices they paid for them. A trader at Harlaem was known to pay one-half of his fortune for a single root, not with the design of selling it again at a profit, but to keep in his own conservatory for the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... majesty of his aspect, and the grandeur of his step. The genius of Hamilton was a flower, which gratifies, surprises, and enchants; the intelligence of Washington was a stately tree, which in the rarity and true dignity of its beauty is as superior, as it is ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the Court, men and women, to follow him. There was a grand collation for the Princesses, his daughters, who took their friends there, and indeed all the women went to it if they pleased. One day the Duchesse de Gesvres took it into her head to go to Trianon and partake of this meal; her age, her rarity at Court, her accoutrements, and her face, provoked the Princesses to make fun of her in whispers with their fair visitors. She perceived this, and without being embarrassed, took them up so sharply, that they were silenced, and looked down. But this was not all: after the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... might be their tempter's motive, the pair thought primarily of the white slave's well-preserved beauty and the rarity of women in the far West. With that came a stinging remembrance of her glaring Hayle likeness and then of their father's old scheme—averted by their mother—to sell the girl forever out of sight and reach. And then came the pleasanter ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... compiled, and printed about eight quarto pages for every working-day of his life, from his reaching man's estate to the day of his death. Though his books were for the most part appropriated by the trunkmakers, they now command almost fabulous prices, chiefly because of their rarity.] ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... of the native American chestnut (Castanea dentata (Marsh) Borkh), first appeared on Long Island in 1904 and destroyed this magnificent nut and timber tree. A Phytophthora root disease added its toll so that a bearing tree of this species is a rarity in the East at the present time. The U. S. Department of Agriculture began making introductions of two species of chestnut from the Orient in 1906, both of which were resistant to the blight which was then ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... the richly furnished conservatory in which a splendid snow-white dahlia with a scarce perceptible rosy tinge in its innermost petals was just then beginning to bloom. It was a great rarity in Europe at that time. Rudolf thought this specimen very beautiful, and maintained that only at Schoenbrunn was a more beautiful one to ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... the coarse negro type which prevailed in the forest and over the grass-lands, but rather inclined towards a Semitic type. Thick lips were the exception, not the rule, and a broad flat nose was also a rarity. The only sign of barbarity was in the hair which, when the head was not clean shaven, was allowed to grow straight out in every direction, giving a very wild appearance to its owner. The hair of some, however, seemed to be softer, for it hung down to the ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... upholstering were of blue watered-silk. Beyond, in a small drawing-room. Miss Mary sat down to play chess with Maryan; Cara took her place near them in the character of observer, and Irene unrolled in the lamp-light a piece of church stuff, very old and time-worn, which the baron had brought her as a rarity, and which she intended to repair by embroidering it ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... however, states, but without entering into full details, that some plants of Caltha palustris produce only male flowers, and that these live mingled with the hermaphrodites. (Introduction/20. 'Geographie Botanique' tome 4 page 488.) The rarity of such cases as this last one is remarkable, as the presence of hermaphrodite and male flowers on the same individual is not an unusual occurrence; it would appear as if nature did not think it worth while to devote ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... Hall, and reads the "Atlantic Monthly." We believe there is less fidgeting in Boston than in any city of the country. We think that the average of human life must be longer there than in most cities. Dyspepsia is a rarity; for when a mutton chop is swallowed of a Bostonian it gives up, knowing that there is no need of fighting against ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... one may say or do, wisdom, justice, reason, and goodness will never be anything more than special cases and the heritage of a few elect souls. Moral and intellectual harmony, excellence in all its forms, will always be a rarity of great price, an isolated chef d'oeuvre. All that can be expected from the most perfect institutions is that they should make it possible for individual excellence to develop itself, not that they should produce the excellent individual. Virtue and genius, grace and beauty, will ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that comes to his hand—particularly novels—and is an inveterate patron of picture shows. "Under no strain trying to hear 'em talk," he confidences. While such occasions really are very rare, once in an age he becomes depressed—a peculiar fact (their rarity) in one so temperamental. After the fifth call within a month to act as pall-bearer at a funeral, he was in the depths. A friend was ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... Tribunals of Justice, and all society (except the scarecrows), the Fancy Ball descended to the Common Executioner: who, in pursuance of the charm, was required to officiate "frizzled, powdered, in a gold-laced coat, pumps, and white silk stockings." At the gallows and the wheel—the axe was a rarity—Monsieur Paris, as it was the episcopal mode among his brother Professors of the provinces, Monsieur Orleans, and the rest, to call him, presided in this dainty dress. And who among the company at Monseigneur's reception in that seventeen hundred and eightieth year ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... copper," said Tonlos. "It is the second hardest metal we know—it is not as hard as chromium, but far less brittle. It is malleable, ductile, very very strong, very tough, especially when alloyed with iron, but those alloys are used only in very particular work because of iron's rarity." ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... heart's desire, And so you're—riding double! Pleasant to see dear Charity Close pillion-poised behind you, Eager to bid her gifts fly free, We're happy so to find you. Ride on, and scatter largesse wide! Sore need is still no rarity, For all our Progress, Power, and Pride, We can't dispense with Charity. Ride on, kind pair, and may the air With happiness be humming, And poverty shake off despair, Because—"Christmas ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 24, 1892 • Various
... The rarity of good books in every department, and the enormous quantity of imperfect, insincere books, has been the lament of all times. The complaint being as old as Literature itself, we may dismiss without notice all ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... cried Aubertin with enthusiasm—"the death's head moth! a great rarity in this district. Where found you this?" Riviere undertook ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... in order to give vraisemblance to his picture, as the authorities are widely scattered, and can only be brought together by those who know where to look for them; for often they lie hidden in illuminated MSS., or in books of considerable rarity, seldom looked at by the general reader, and only fully appreciated by literary men and students. We propose to show how varied and curious the history of any article of dress becomes if studied carefully, and how such minor details indicate clearly defined ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... which served as a hobby for himself, and an amusement for his friends. A wealthy man of refined and eccentric tastes, he had spent much of his life and fortune in gathering together what was said to be a unique private collection of Talmudic, cabalistic, and magical works, many of them of great rarity and value. His tastes leaned toward the marvellous and the monstrous, and I have heard that his experiments in the direction of the unknown have passed all the bounds of civilization and of decorum. To his English friends he never alluded to such matters, and took the tone of the ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... had ever seen; and he, like Stafford, though in another sphere—that of the Secret Intelligence Department—had travelled far and wide in the world. Perfectly beautiful he did not call her, though her face was as near that rarity as any he had known. He would only have called a woman beautiful who was tall, and she was almost petite; but that was because he himself was over-tall, and her smallness seemed to be properly classed with those who were pretty, not the handsome or the beautiful. But there ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... one. The dress of the men is the same as at the coast, except that they wind strings of shell-money about their waists in manifold rows. The women wear a bunch of leaves in front and behind. The weapons are the same as elsewhere, except that here we find the feathered arrows which are such a rarity in the Pacific. It is surprising to find these here, in these secluded valleys among the pygmy race, and only here, near Talamacco, nowhere else where the same race is found. It is an open question whether these feathered arrows are ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... lodging, where after supper they were entertained with a shew before mentioned, to witt, The Seven Dayes in the Weeke, to which, by this time, there was somewhat added, but not much: all was most kindly accepted, and the nighte was spent in great mirth. For the straungenes of the matter, and rarity of the fashion of their action pleased ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... reason why cost, or the circumstances which are its basis, should not, like other practical values, heighten the tone of consciousness, and add to the pleasure with which we view an object. In fact, such is our daily experience; for great as is the sensuous beauty of gems, their rarity and price adds an expression of distinction to them, which they would never have if ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... rarity; but who has not some small ambition, none the less keen for being narrow—keener, perhaps? Mrs. Bazalgette burned to be great by dress; Mr. Fountain, member of a sex with higher aims, aspired to be great in ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... young man," he suddenly began, in a dry, sharp, snuffling voice.—"That is a rarity nowadays. Allow me to congratulate you. You have ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... by the hunter, and still more by the laboring squaw; gratitude sprang from the great need—and rarity—of mercy or service; and hospitality is always found in proportion to the distance, difficulty, and danger of traveling. Courage, as the preeminent virtue of manhood, rose to this prominence later in history, under conditions ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... was an officer of varied service, and like all such, some more, some less, abounded in anecdote of his own experiences. A great deal that might be instructive, and more still that is entertaining, is lost by our slippery memories and the rarity of the journal-keeping habit. I remember distinctly only two of his stories. One related to a matter which now belongs to naval archaeology,—"backing and filling in a tideway," by a ship under sail. In this, in ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... unentertaining, though the subject- matter is for the most part contained in the Odyssey; only the pranks of Silenus and his band are occasionally a little coarse. We must confess that, in our eyes, the great merit of this piece is its rarity, being the only extant specimen of its class which we possess. In the satiric dramas Aeschylus must, without doubt, have displayed more boldness and meaning in his mirth; as, for instance, when he introduced Prometheus bringing down fire from heaven to rude and stupid man; ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... magnificos. Their beauty and rarity have attracted sufficient attention in their day. Yet we should like to handle a few of those Spanish splendors which Queen Isabel II. wore at the reception of the ambassadors from Morocco. That day she shone in diamonds alone ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... yearly with rich presents, merely to get a print of the precious relic. This holy relic was nothing more than the tooth of a white monkey; and some say that the cause of its being so much admired was owing to the rarity of the colour, like the white elephant of Siam. Others say that the monkey was held in such veneration for having discovered the wife of an ancient Indian king who had eloped from her husband. Some again alleged that it was the tooth of a man who had performed that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... representative central council, but very many of the old rights and powers have not been yet restored. The condition of society is peculiar absence of towns, social equality, no abject poverty or great wealth, rarity of crime, making it easy for the whole country to be administered as a co-operative commonwealth without the great and striking changes rendered necessary by more ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... known as much as L10 asked for a copy; but a first edition (a rarity) may be purchased sometimes of a respectable ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... the Alpha and Omega of stamp collecting, every collector of standing would bemoan lost opportunities. Many a great rarity of to-day could have been had for a few shillings a few years ago. The Cape errors were sold by Stanley Gibbons at 2s. 6d. each. The "Transvral" error was sold by the same generous firm at 4s., and others in similar proportion in the ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... Yet no one could say he seemed happy. Courteous, grave far beyond his years, silent and thoughtful, he impressed them all as a man who had suffered too much ever again to be light-hearted. Then it was more than believed he had fallen deeply in love with Nellie Travers; and that explained the rarity and sadness of his smile. To the women he was a centre of intense and romantic interest. Mrs. Waldron was an object of jealousy because of the priority of her claims to his regard. Mrs. Hurley—the sweet sister who so strongly ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... imposed on a passive material are as nothing to the splendour and grace that transfigure even the meanest instrument when it is wielded by the energy of thinking purpose. The contempt that is cast, by the vulgar phrase, on "mere words" bears witness to the rarity of this serious consummation. Yet by words the world was shaped out of chaos, by words the Christian religion was established among mankind. Are these terrific engines fit play-things for the idle humours of ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... Greville, afterwards Lord Brooke (see Greville to Walsingham, August 23, 1586, in the State Papers, quoted by O. Sommer in Introd. to facsimile edition, 1891). The remainder of the romance was made up by the Countess of Pembroke from Sidney's loose papers, and published by Ponsonby in 1593. The rarity of the present edition suggests that the publication of the complete work was intrusted to Ponsonby on condition of his recalling the earlier issue. The 1590 edition cannot be regarded as surreptitious, but there ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... There was little affectation of your more showy opulence. The furniture in the rooms was apparently simple, but, in truth, costly, from its luxurious comfort; the ornaments and china scattered about the commodes were of curious rarity and great value, and the pictures on the walls were gems. At dinner, no plate was admitted on the table. The Russian fashion, then uncommon, now more prevalent, was adopted, fruit and flowers in old Sevres ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... heteroclital, and such as want name or precedent, there is ofttimes a sin even in their history. We do desire no record of enormities: sins should he accounted new. They omit of their monstrosity as they fall from their rarity; for men count it venial to err with their forefathers, and foolishly conceive they divide a sin in its society.... In things of this nature, silence commendeth history: 'tis the veniable part of things lost; wherein ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... bit of property. It is commodious; about twenty miles in diameter. Its internal heat is such that it has a delightful climate in spite of the extreme rarity of atmosphere common to even the best of asteroids. It has a small lake; in fact it has about everything a man could want. Yet, as I ...
— The Planetoid of Peril • Paul Ernst
... show an Aprile, a David, a Pippa loosening the tangle of more complicated lives with a song. Pompilia is a sister of the same spiritual household as these. But she is a far more wonderful creation than any of them; the same exquisite rarity of soul, but unfolded under conditions more sternly real, and winning no such miraculous alacrity of response. In lyrical wealth and swiftness Browning had perhaps advanced little since the days of Pippa; but how much he had grown in Shakespearian realism is fairly measured by the contrast between ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... and the Emperor said to him, "At least say something, Marshal." There had been for some time a little coolness between him and the Emperor, and his Majesty reproached him with the rarity of his visits, but he could not dissipate the cloud which darkened every brow; for the Emperor's secret had not been as well kept as he had hoped. After supper the Emperor ordered Prince Eugene to read the twenty-ninth bulletin, and spoke ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... think, Mr. Mordacks, on the whole," said the rector, who studied this man gently, "that sometimes you are rapid in your conclusions. Possibly of the two extremes it is the more desirable; especially in these parts, because of its great rarity. Still the mere fact of some caves existing, in or out of my parish, whichever it may be, scarcely seems to prove that all the people of Flamborough live in them. And even if we did, it was the manner of the ancient seers, both in the ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Glaciation of Scotland. Mammoth in Scotch Till. Marine Shells in Scotch Glacial Drift. Their Arctic Character. Rarity of Organic Remains in Glacial Deposits. Contorted Strata in Drift. Glaciation of Wales, England, and Ireland. Marine Shells of Moel Tryfaen. Erratics near Chichester. Glacial Formations of North America. Many Species of Testacea and Quadrupeds survived the Glacial Cold. Connection of ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... let Julie tell us the "Windmill Story" over again, when her imagination was at a loss for a new one. Windmills, I suppose from their picturesqueness, had a very strong attraction for her. There were none near our Yorkshire home, so, perhaps, their rarity added to their value in her eyes; certain it is that she was never tired of sketching them, and one of her latest note-books is full of the old mill at Frimley, Hants, taken under various aspects of ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... documents discovered in the Tarim basin[922] date from this period. The absence in them of Buddhist personal names and the rarity of direct references to Buddhism indicate that though known in Tibet it was not yet predominant. Buddhist priests (ban-de) are occasionally mentioned but the title Lama has not been found. The usages of the Bonpo religion seem familiar to the writers ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... black and white hair, which is short all over the body, except on the shoulders, where it is three spans long, exceedingly fine, pure white, and in many respects more beautiful than silk. I brought some of this hair to Venice as a rarity. Many of these oxen are tamed and broke in for labour, for which they are better adapted, by their strength, than any other creatures, as they bear very heavy burdens, and when yoked in the plough will do twice the work of others. The best musk in the world is found in this ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... hunter hopes some day to stumble on, where elephants are said to have gone away to die of old age, and where there should therefore be almost unimaginable wealth of ivory. The legend, itself as old as African speech, is probably due to the rarity of remains of elephants that have ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... entering into their ideas, and making himself their rival. If life was laborious under his ferula, it was also merry. The best proof of this is the fact that of all his colleagues at the lyce he was the only one who had no nickname, a rarity in scholastic annals. ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... which Place, the first Town of Note that I came to, was Saint Sebastian. A very clean Town, and neatly pay'd; which is no little Rarity in Spain. It has a very good Wall about it, and a pretty Citadel. At this Place I met with two English Officers, who were under the same state with my self; one of them being a Prisoner of War with me at Denia. They were going to Bayonne to embark for England ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... deer, and none of the above mentioned plants (Cycas, oak, pine, magnolia and rose), which would be replaced by numerous others, all distinct from those of the Jheels, and many of them indicative of the influence of salt water, whose proximity (from the rarity of sea-shells) might not otherwise ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... was bearing the brunt of the transition between the strong, simple life of the past, and the rapid, complex life of the present. Thus the squire opposed to the indifference of the time a rigidity of habits, which, to even small events, gave that exceptional character which rarity once imparted. He felt every thing deeply, because every thing retained its importance to him. He had great reverence. He loved, and he hated. All his convictions and prejudices were ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... of tiny fish can be vouched for by people far more careful of their facts than Hamed—fish which have intruded themselves on the oysters and have been encased in nacre. Probably the rarity which fell into Hamed's hands was the pearly presentment of a crustacean, for marine frogs are infinitely rarer than pearls. Several molluscs admit tenants, one particular species a rotund crab; but in the case in point the wrong mansion was entered and, so to speak, the ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... such revolutions that we always see the worst of them at first. Till men have been for some time free, they know not how to use their freedom. The natives of wine-countries are always sober. In climates where wine is a rarity, intemperance abounds. A newly-liberated people may be compared to a northern army encamped on the Rhine or the Xeres. It is said that when soldiers in such a situation first find themselves able to indulge without restraint in such a rare and expensive luxury, nothing is to be ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... Pauline were expostulating with him on the rarity of his visits, Juliette bent down and whispered to Helene, who, despite her supreme ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... richer in bird life. Nevertheless, England is not poor; the species are not few in number, and some are extremely abundant. Unfortunately many of the finer kinds have been too much sought after; persecuted first for their beauty, then for their rarity, until now we are threatened with their total destruction. As these kinds become unobtainable, those which stand next in the order of beauty and rarity are persecuted in their turn; and in a country as densely populated as ours, where birds cannot hide themselves from human eyes, ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... public property, and no one is compelled to trade upon any particular author. But it is not so much a subject of wonder, at a time when to read and write was of itself an honorary distinction, when learning was almost as great a rarity as genius, and when in fact those who first transplanted the beauties of other languages into their own, might be considered as public benefactors, and the founders of a national literature.—There are poets older than Chaucer, and in the interval between ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... request without hesitation, but in his gratitude John the Grammarian expatiated so unwisely on the extreme rarity of the manuscripts and their inestimable value, that Amr, on reflection, feared he had overstepped his power in granting the learned man's request. "I will refer the matter to the caliph," he said, and thereupon wrote immediately to Omar ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... Gertrude, stopping before Mr. Wentworth and smiling, with a smile the sweeter, as her smile always was, for its rarity; "do let them live in the little house over the way. It ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... to be so much in your news," said Betty, in a disappointed tone. "To be sure, strangers are a rarity in our little village, but, judging from the strangers who have visited us in the past, I imagine this one cannot be ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... him. He gave up gaming in time, protesting that it was the bane of four much better things—health, money, time, and thinking. For the last two, perhaps, he cared little. Before his death he is said to have been a Christian, which was a decided rarity in the fashionable set of his day. Walpole answered, when asked if he was a Freemason, that he never had been anything, and probably most of the men of the time would, if they had had the honesty, have said the same. They were not atheists professedly, but they neither believed in ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... into public life, and terminates with my exit from it. The figures in the tableau will not be of the largest size, but the ascendancy of honest men, for such I think them to have been (Ilium fuit), will be interesting on account of great rarity." But, to the same friend, a few weeks later, he took a desponding view, expressing the fear that the power which had passed from the Democratic party would not return to as honest hands. His financial condition, too, caused him much uneasiness. He ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... warrant that no just pretense 50 Of mine for dowry will be disallowed; Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though, Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, 55 Which Claus of Innsbruck cast ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... are the rule even with the least sociable carnivores and rapacious birds; and that they derive a special interest from being the field upon which tenderer feelings develop even amidst otherwise most cruel animals. It may also be added that the rarity of associations larger than that of the family among the carnivores and the birds of prey, though mostly being the result of their very modes of feeding, can also be explained to some extent as a consequence of the change produced in the animal world by the rapid increase of ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... architecture of the Piazza or canals, was the event most eagerly looked forward to, and the one that gave most satisfaction to the Venetian's love of his State, and to his love of splendour, beauty, and gaiety. He would have had them every day if it were possible, and, to make up for their rarity, he loved to have representations of them. So most Venetian pictures of the beginning of the sixteenth century tended to take the form of magnificent processions, if they did not actually represent them. They are processions in the Piazza, as in Gentile Bellini's "Corpus Christi" ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson
... reached him he could, on occasions, catch the tones of Spaniard, Frenchman, Swede, and Italian, together with all the varieties of English speech from Highland Scotch to Cockney; but none of the intonations of his native land. The comparative rarity of anything American in his city of refuge, while it added to his sense of exile, heightened his feeling of security. It was still another of the happy circumstances that had ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... greatest Affront imaginable to call a Woman Mistress, though but a retail Brandy-monger. Adieu.—One thing more, to morrow is our Country-Court, pray do not fail to be there, for the rarity of the Entertainment: but I shall see you anon at Surelove's, where I'll salute thee as my first meeting, and as an old Acquaintance in England—here's Company, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... together with silicon and germanium, form a family in Group IV of the periodic table. Silicon has been discussed along with the non-metals, while germanium, on account of its rarity, needs only ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... quarto, uniform with the Club-Books, and the series is now completed. Their value chiefly consists in the rarity and curiosity of the pieces selected, the notes being very in number. The impression of each work is most ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... real uneek to cook one, or a hornet's nest, and would be a rarity for the Jonesvillians, and in the winter, if we run out of bird's-nest, you ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... took to go and return, Messer Alfonso said to Messer Alberto: "I will tell you why I do not care any longer to look at vases; it is that I once beheld a piece of silver, antique, of such beauty and such finish that the human imagination cannot possibly conceive its rarity. Therefore I would rather not inspect any objects of the kind, for fear of spoiling the unique impression I retain of that. I must tell you that a gentleman of great quality and accomplishments, who went to Rome upon matters of business, had this antique vase ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... but from thence for a distance of 16 miles, the coast retains a barren sandy character to Port Phillip, which we reached on the afternoon of the 18th. We scarcely found any ripplings in the entrance, an occurrence of extreme rarity; for it will readily be imagined that a body of water required to fill a bay thirty miles deep and twenty broad, passing through an entrance one mile and a half in width, must rush with great violence; and when we take ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... instructive. If, when riding at a height, say, of 2,000 feet, a charge of gun-cotton be fired electrically 100 feet below the car, the report, though really as loud as a cannon, sounds no more than a mere pistol shot, possibly partly owing to the greater rarity of the air, but chiefly because the sound, having no background to reflect it, simply spends itself in the air. Then, always and under all conditions of atmosphere soever, there ensues absolute silence ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... simple keenness which is a rarity in Venice. He rejoices in his church and in your pleasure in it. He displays first the Bellini—a Madonna with the strong protective Bellini hands about the child, above them bodiless cherubim flying, and on the right a delectable city with square towers. The ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... possibly, and for the sake of a clearer understanding of the effects of the varying distance, which is the object of our present inquiry, find a loophole to admit the chance that yet there may be living beings there. We might, for instance, suppose that, owing to the rarity of its atmosphere, the excessive heat was quickly radiated away, or that there was something in the constitution of the atmosphere that greatly modified the effective temperature of the sun's rays. But, having satisfied our ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... these observations on the intellectual tendencies of capital I speak generally. Not only individual capitalists, but great corporations, exist, who are noble examples of law-abiding and intelligent citizenship. Their rarity, however, and their conspicuousness, seem to prove the ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... covers with its own excrement, and does no little injury." Again, "I have often observed the caterpillar of a little moth that takes its station in damp old books, and there commits great ravages, and many a black-letter rarity, which in these days of bibliomania would have been valued at its weight in gold, has been snatched by these devastators," ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... ever murdered a monarch: and still fewer, perhaps, can hope to know all that is to be known of the text of the play. But for value, Gentlemen, let us not rank these three achievements by order of their rarity. Shakespeare means us to feel—to be—Hamlet. That is all: and from the play it is the best ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... labour, and expense of acquiring the talents, but for the discredit which attends the employment of them as the means of subsistence. The exorbitant rewards of players, opera-singers, opera-dancers, etc. are founded upon those two principles; the rarity and beauty of the talents, and the discredit of employing them in this manner. It seems absurd at first sight, that we should despise their persons, and yet reward their talents with the most profuse liberality. While we do the one, however, we must ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... he was welcomed every where, might easily have been foreseen, particularly when we keep in mind the universal hospitality which distinguishes the higher classes of Russian society, and the comparative rarity in this country of literary celebrity, which tends to render merit of that nature certain of a respectful, if not exaggerated appreciation. "The three years," to quote the words of one—himself a personal friend of the poet's—who ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... friendships, companionships, that might eclipse the memory of the mind so lofty in its antique mould—so tender in its depths of unsuspected sweetness—which had been withdrawn from her existence before she could fully comprehend its rarity, or appreciate ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is possible to find a comparison to it. For if you look at the Moon well, two things are seen to be proper to it which are not seen in the other stars: the one is the shadow which is in it, which is no other than the rarity of its body, in which the rays of the Sun can find no end wherefrom to strike back again as in the other parts; the other is the variation of its brightness, which now shines on one side, and now on the other, according ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... This Rarity may now be seen In Lambeth, at a Garden Green, Bowen his Name, who in high Tone, Calls it the Tree of Silver Spoon, Which all the Maids of curious Eyes May there behold of ...
— The Ladies Delight • Anonymous
... gave a copy of the Gospels ornamented in this manner to York Minster, his biographer described the book as a thing almost miraculous. Manuscripts entirely composed of leaves of purple vellum are of the greatest rarity, and many are described by palaeographers as purple-stained when they are only partially so. The age of a manuscript may sometimes be determined among other characteristics by the fineness and whiteness ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... itself, and she settled into the trust that Giles would soon grow weary and return. The good man felt bound to show her all hospitality, and the civilities to country cousins were in proportion to the rarity of their visits. So Mrs Headley stayed on after Tiptoff's return to Salisbury, and had the best view feasible of all the pageants and diversions of autumn. She saw some magnificent processions of clergy, she was welcomed at a civic banquet ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to those who were dearest to him. On the contrary, he used to censure this as a degree of weakness in several of his neighbours, and particularly in poor widow Butler. It followed, however, from the rarity of such emotions in this self-denied and reserved man, that his children attached to occasional marks of his affection and approbation a degree of high interest and solemnity; well considering them as evidences of feelings which were only expressed ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... travels, with quaint pictures which never depart from the memory. By and by, so thoughtless is this invalid father, who has suffered enough, surely, himself from this disease, that he will allow his boy to open parcels of books, reeking with infection, and explain to him the rarity of a certain first edition, or show him the thickness of the paper and the glory of the black-letter in an ancient book. Afterwards, when the boy himself has taken ill and begun on his own account to prowl through the smaller bookstalls, his father will listen greedily ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... highly extolled. But their ungraceful obesity displeased him, and they were immediately dismissed. A few days after he fell violently in love with Madame Foures, the wife of a lieutenant of infantry. She was very pretty, and her charms were enhanced by the rarity of seeing a woman in Egypt who was calculated to please the eye of a European. Bonaparte engaged for her a house adjoining the palace of Elfy Bey, which we occupied. He frequently ordered dinner to be prepared there, and I used to go there with him ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... rewrite it, look at it, repeat it. He had a copy-book, a kind of scrap-book, in which he put down all things, and thus preserved them." He spent long evenings doing sums on the fire-shovel. Iron fire-shovels were a rarity among pioneers. Instead they used a broad, thin clapboard with one end narrowed to a handle, arranging with this the piles of coals upon the hearth, over which they set their "skillet" and "oven" to do their cooking. It was on such a wooden shovel that Abraham ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... us most valuable assistance during the rebellion. She was one of those women whom the East has occasionally produced, endowed with conspicuous talent and great strength of character, a quality which, from its rarity amongst Indian women, gives immense influence to those who possess it. Lord Canning congratulated the Begum on the success with which she had governed her country, thanked her for her timely help, and ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... with common'st dregs! I suffer for their guilt now, and my soul, Like one that looks on ill-affected eyes, Is hurt with mere intention on their follies. Why will I view them then, my sense might ask me? Or is't a rarity, or some new object, That strains my strict observance to this point? O, would it were! therein I could afford My spirit should draw a little near to theirs, To gaze on novelties; so vice were one. Tut, she is stale, rank, foul; and were it not That those that woo her greet ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... would hold me to her, and the strength of the marriage chain would not constrain us. Even if we should by chance be parted from time to time, the joy of our meetings would be all the sweeter by reason of its rarity. But when she found that she could not convince me or dissuade me from my folly by these and like arguments, and because she could not bear to offend me, with grievous sighs and tears she made an end of her resistance, ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... wrath against the dead man seized him. He threw books about the room. He cried out vile insults and mingled words of an unfortunate commonness with others of extreme rarity. He wanted to go off to Kensal Green and hammer at the grave there and tell the departed knight exactly what he thought of him. Then presently he became calmer, he lit a pipe, picked up the books from the ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... power." (2) Though some men enjoy gifts which nature has not bestowed on their fellows, they are not said to surpass the bounds of human nature, unless their special qualities are such as cannot be said to be deducible from the definition of human nature. (3) For instance, a giant is a rarity, but still human. (4) The gift of composing poetry extempore is given to very few, yet it is human. (5) The same may, therefore, be said of the faculty possessed by some of imagining things as vividly as though they ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... in its finest development; and here, also, the poisonous fumes of the holyday shop-boy's bad cigar told all resident nostrils when it was Sunday, as plainly as the church bells could tell it to all resident ears. The one permanent rarity in this neighborhood, on week days, was to discover a male inhabitant in any part of it, between the hours of nine in the morning and six in the evening; the one sorrowful sight which never varied, was to see that ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... Stamp Collectors' Monthly Gazette, published at St. John, New Brunswick, in September, 1869, shows that the rarity of the 12d was already recognised as witnessed by the fact that "even $5" could be obtained for a specimen. We give the ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... so cautious and reliable an investigator in this field, has been betrayed into a reference in this connection (The Declining Birth-rate, 1911, p. 41) to the "increasing rarity of altruism," though in almost the next paragraph he points out that the large families of the past were connected with the fact that the child was a profitable asset, and could be sent to work when little more than an infant. The "altruism" which results in crushing the minds and bodies ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... the other under the chin, examining her bosom. These familiarities making little Jennings forget the part she was acting, after having pushed him away with all the violence she was able, she told him with indignation that it was very insolent to dare—"Ha! ha!" said he, "here's a rarity indeed! a young w——, who, the better to sell her goods, sets up for virtue, ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... huts were still left standing, and their interiors were for the most part unharmed, but nearly everything else had disappeared. Horses, cattle, hogs, livestock of all kinds had vanished before the advancing hosts of hungry soldiers; and there was one thing which was even more a rarity than these. That was money. Confederate veterans went around in their faded gray uniforms, not only because they loved them, but because they did not have the wherewithal to buy new wardrobes. Judges, planters, and other dignified members of the community became hack drivers from the necessity ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... German military party. This had attained a degree of power in the State rarely equalled in history, and the rarity of the phenomenon was only exceeded by the suddenness of its terrible collapse. The most striking personality in this group was General Ludendorff. Ludendorff was a great man, a man of genius, in conception, a man of indomitable energy and great gifts. But this man required a ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... most part than the English themselves, their fringe, and then the wealthier of the tradespeople. It is proven every day that a democracy is the happiest hunting ground for a man with a title. The very rarity of the distinction makes it more precious to those who value it, and the titled governors of one of our great colonies occupies a position which is vastly higher in public esteem than that of his fellow-noblemen at home. He is the local fount of honour. To sit at his table, and to be ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... it is not certain that this period of immense gifts of money is really a period of increased liberality in the church from the time, thirty or forty years before, when a millionaire was a rarity to be pointed out on the streets, and the possession of a hundred thousand dollars gave one a place among "The Rich Men of New York." In 1850 the total wealth of the United States was reported in the census ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... and Spanish poets. But literature was yet confined to professed scholars, or to men and women of high rank. The publick was gross and dark; and to be able to read and write, was an accomplishment still valued for its rarity. ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... passion in the treatment of children is the characteristic," says Meadows, "of the lower stages of civilisation." I mention this incident only because of its rarity. In no other country in the world, civilised or "heathen," are children generally treated with more kindness and affection than they are in China. "Children, even amongst seemingly stolid Chinese, have the faculty of calling forth the better ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... since, deals strongly in sentiment, and, being unfortunately debarred by circumstances from indulgence in the soothing luxury on her own behalf, loves to promote matches more poetical—she calls it more 'harmonious'—than her own very prosaic one, she, dear lady, was delighted with such a rarity as a bashful privateersman—her 'tame corsair,' as I heard her call your humble servant.—I was a hero, sir, a perfect hero of romance in the course of a few days! On the strength of this renown thrust upon me I found grace before ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... hear that I am accused of rating my books at too high a price, at a price which no other person would demand. To answer this accusation, it is necessary to inquire what those who urge it, mean by a high price. The price of things, valuable for their rarity, is entirely arbitrary, and depends upon the variable taste of mankind, and the casual fluctuation of the fashion, and can never be ascertained, like that of things only estimable ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... have turned away his eyes from the consideration of this rarity for some time, if the voice had not once more made itself heard. It ordered him to turn round and look at the glass chest which was standing opposite. How his admiration increased when he saw therein a maiden of the greatest beauty! She lay as if asleep, and ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... colour. From the two extremities of the semicircle arose, towards the region away from the Sun, two long luminous streaks which limited the tail. Between the brilliant circular semi-ring and the head, the cometary substance appeared to be dark, of great rarity, ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... and a garrison. On more solemn days there were diplomatists and men in political office; sometimes great musical artists, and occasionally a French actor. But the dinners were always the same; dishes worthy of the great days of the Bourbons, and wines of rarity and price, which could not ruin Neuchatel, for in many instances the vineyards belonged ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... was so sheltered that it would easily have a two weeks' lead over the surrounding country, and the desirability of her crop should lie in its perfection rather than rarity. Single violets in frames, lilies-of-the-valley for Easter and spring weddings, sweet peas, in separate colours, peonies, Iris, Gladioli, asters, and Dahlias: three acres in all. Upon these was her hope built, for with a market waiting, what lay ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... know that my dear old people are goodness itself. They never had any children, the blessed ones! That is what they call them here in the town; blessed ones! They both dress alike, in a sort of loose striped gown, of such good material, also a rarity, not to be found nowadays. They are exactly like one another, except that one wears a mob-cap, the other a skull-cap, which is trimmed with the same kind of frill, only without ribbons. If it were not for these ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... dramatic work is primarily based upon the edition of 1724, four volumes, by far the best and most reliable edition of the collected theatre. Each play, however, has been carefully collated with the original quartos, some of which are of excessive rarity, and if, in the case of any divergence, the later reading is preferred, reason why is given in the Textual Notes upon that specific passage. To the Dramatis Personae are in each case added those characters which hitherto were negligently omitted: I have, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... numerous, but their differences are generally slight: only at long intervals of time a strongly marked modification appears. On the other hand, it is a singular and inexplicable fact that, when plants vary by buds, the variations, though they occur with comparative rarity, are often, or even generally, strongly pronounced. It struck me that this might perhaps be a delusion, and that slight changes often occurred in buds, but from being of no value were overlooked or not recorded. Accordingly I applied to two great authorities ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... is hardly indeed worth while to remark, is another mistake; Marlow and several other dramatists having used blank verse (but how inferior to the divine man's!) before Shakspeare. Coleridge somewhere quotes a verse or two forming itself in prose composition as a rarity and a fault; but, though it had better perhaps be avoided, and though its frequent recurrence would be offensive, yet, when words in their natural order do form a verse, it might be difficult to give a good reason why they may not be permitted to do ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
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