Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Insignificance   Listen
noun
Insignificance  n.  
1.
The condition or quality of being insignificant; lack of significance, sense, or meaning; as, the insignificance of words or phrases.
2.
Lack of force or effect; unimportance; pettiness; inefficacy; as, the insignificance of human art.
3.
Lack of claim to consideration or notice; lack of influence or standing; meanness. "Reduce him, from being the first person in the nation, to a state of insignificance."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Insignificance" Quotes from Famous Books



... and keeping office that he had no leisure, even if he had had ability, for the higher work of government. He was restless, quick in movement, rapid and confused in speech, lavish of worthless promises, always in a hurry, and at once headlong, timid, and rash. "A borrowed importance and real insignificance," says Walpole, who knew him well, "gave him the perpetual air of a solicitor.... He had no pride, though infinite self-love. He loved business immoderately; yet was only always doing it, never did it. When left to himself, he always plunged into difficulties, and then shuddered for the ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... Their language fell into disuse, and grew to be a learned tongue studied by the priests and the literati; their Cushite character was lost, and they became, as a people, scarcely distinguishable from the Assyrians. After six centuries and a half of submission and insignificance, the Chaldaeans, however, began to revive and recover themselves—they renewed the struggle for national independence, and in the year B.C. 625 succeeded in establishing a second kingdom, which will be treated of in a later volume as the fourth or Babylonian Monarchy. Even when this ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson

... have been achieved by taking a cab, had she not wished the open air to fan into flame the glow kindled by Mary's words. For among all the impressions of the evening's talk one was of the nature of a revelation and subdued the rest to insignificance. Thus one looked; thus one spoke; such ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... off early in the evening to Spanish Town to gather what news they could. One of them came in and reported that the squadron of horse which had gone up with the officers to bring back Morgan had come back without him and without the officers. The spy's insignificance prevented him from learning why this was, but hope instantly sprang up in Hornigold's breast upon receipt of this news. Knowing Morgan as he did, he was convinced that he had found some means to dispose of the two officers and send away ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... view of those far-off "Delectable Mountains," towards which they had been journeying. In the face of Jack's misfortune and all that he was giving up, her part of the sacrifice sank into comparative insignificance. Her suffering for him was so great that it dulled the sharpness of her own renunciations, and even dulled her disappointment for Joyce. The year in Paris had meant as much to her as the course at Warwick Hall ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston

... "The dice of God are always loaded." Doubtless we must always pay for greatness by isolation, or some more bitter toll. And for our insignificance, in turn, come the Bobbies as reward. It behooves those of us, then, who are insignificant, to appreciate our blessing, to cherish our penguins, the more since we, when "the world is too much with us," when the tyranny of economic conditions ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... whole responsibility of the Confederate government was rested upon his shoulders. Talk about other battles, victories, shouts, cheers, and triumphs, but in comparison with this day's fight, all others dwarf into insignificance. The sun beaming down on our uncovered heads, the thermometer being one hundred and ten degrees in the shade, and a solid line of blazing fire right from the muzzles of the Yankee guns being poured right into our very faces, singeing our hair and ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins

... the same company which had brought this expedition to a successful issue next turned their attention to a small country house occupied by a widow, whom I had often begged to take refuge with us. But, secure in her insignificance, she had always declined our offers, preferring to live solitary and retired in her own home. But the freebooters sought her out, burst in her doors, drove her away with blows and insults, destroyed her ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... finds that "the Ten Commandments will not budge"; he sees the need of law and order; he organizes a vigilance committee; he impanels a jury, even though the old Spanish law does not recognize a jury. The new land settles to its rest. The output of the gold mines shrinks into insignificance when compared with the cash value of crops of hay and potatoes. The old picturesque individualism yields to a new social order, to the conception of the rights of the state. The story of the West is thus an epitome of the individual human life as ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry

... crimes which they have committed, the massacres and the conspiracies already proved against them." The decree was passed. But Napoleon, strong in popularity, became so convinced of the powerlessness and insignificance of these Jacobins, that the decree was never enforced against them. They remained in France. But they were conscious that the eye of the police was upon them. "It is not my own person," said Napoleon, "that I seek to avenge. My fortune which has preserved me so often on the ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott

... Howard's good-humoured irony and putting on a supercilious look that brought out more strongly the insignificance of his face. "Journalism is not a career. It is either a school or a cemetery. A man may use it as a stepping-stone to something else. But if he sticks to it, he finds himself an old man, dead and done for to all intents and purposes ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)

... boat came alongside the pilot-shed with noise and fuss out of all proportion to the insignificance of the occasion. ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... giving and beautifying sun, all-nourishing and all-enlightening; calling into existence and fructifying, not only the rich, and rare, and lovely, but also the noxious and poisonous plant and the creeping worm. These have also the right of life: if left to themselves, they soon die of their own insignificance or nothingness—die under the contempt of all the good ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... face, her eyes were dilating with it; she seized and threw on a large flannel gown which lay on a chair by the bed, and forgetful of her master who stood there, out she sprang to the floor. All minor considerations faded to insignificance beside the terrible dread which had taken possession of her. Clasping the flannel gown tight around her with one hand, she laid the other on ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... dewy, clear, starry nights, oppressing our spirit, crushing our pride, by the brilliant evidence of the awful loneliness, of the hopeless obscure insignificance of our globe lost in the splendid revelation of a glittering, soulless universe. I hate such skies. Daylight is friendly to man toiling under a sun which warms his heart; and cloudy soft nights are more kindly to our ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... was ready to "receive the kingdom of God as a little child," to begin to learn on a level with the darkened fishermen whom he had gently patronized. As soon as he had resolved that night on Self-abnegation, as soon as the lightning conviction of his own insignificance had flashed through him, he humbly but "boldly" came "to the Throne of Grace." Like every one else who thus draws near to God through the Saviour's merit, he learned what it is to "obtain mercy"; a brooding calm took possession of his purified soul, and he ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman

... the most surpassing of all loves; it is the eighth wonder of the world; it is a mystery before which that of the Sphinx shrinks to insignificance; it is the one love which asks for so very little in ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest

... don't know how. I can not talk brilliantly. I couldn't impress people as your wife must. I am not even educated in any regular way. I've just grown up in my own fashion—in the shade as it were—and the strong sunlight would only emphasize my insignificance." ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston

... feared to be injured themselves, while men who could get the upper hand by force might disregard them. Of these ruffians, Herakles in his wanderings cut off a good many, but others had escaped him by concealing themselves, or had been contemptuously spared by him on account of their insignificance. But Herakles had the misfortune to kill Iphitus, and thereupon sailed to Lydia and was for a long time a slave in that country under Omphale, which condition he had imposed upon himself as a penance for the murder of his friend. During ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... of the greatest needs of the South. The advances have been conditioned upon the planting and cultivating a given amount of cotton. During recent years no other staple has so fallen in price, and the result has been hard on the farmers. All else has faded into insignificance before the necessity of raising cotton. The result on the fertility of the soil is also evident. Luckily cotton makes light demands on the land, but the thin soil of many districts has been unable to stand even the light demands. ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey

... did she remember her own private embarrassment. And, by then, the incident had taken its proper place in her mind—had sunk to the level of insignificance to ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... costumed pageant of High Life in the Twentieth Century this trio drifted, rather than merely walked like mortals, across the terrasse and into the Cafe de l'Univers (which seemed suddenly to shrink in proportion as if reminded of its comparative insignificance in the Scheme of Things) where an awed staff of waiters, led by the overpowered proprietaires, monsieur et madame themselves, welcomed these apparitions from Another and A Better World with bowings and scrapings and a vast bustle and movement of chairs and ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... must retain lively impressions; and to witness such displays of the Creator's power, must ever be considered as happy events in our lives. While viewing scenes like these, we must ever exalt the energy of creating power, and sink under the thoughts of our own insignificance. The works of nature are admirably well calculated to impress us deeply with a sense of the mighty power of God, who can separate two mountains by a channel of awfulness, or fill the bowels of a huge mountain with beauties, that man, with ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous

... been appointed priest (Mahanta) to a temple (Math) erected at Varaha Chhatra, and well endowed. According, indeed, to my authority, the priests, his successors, seem to have held a distinguished place in the state; but, since the conquest, they have sunk into insignificance, although the Gorkhalese still allow them ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton

... appearance was fairly entitled to be called a moderationist. He had nothing of the splendid savagery of Mr. Paul Barr, whose luxuriant and matted head of hair now struck my attention, nor the student-like insignificance of Mr. Fleisch. He was neither tall nor short, stout nor inadequately spare; and he was in evening dress like anybody else. Had I met him without knowing who he was, I should never have imagined him a celebrity. ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant

... He stood outside the great offices of The Morning World and looked across the valley at the great dome that squatted above the moving threads of living figures. He was absurdly upset by this unfortunate interview. What could he have expected? Of what use was it that he should fling his insignificance against that kind of wall? Moreover he must try many times before his chance would be given him. It was absurd that he should mind that rebuff. But the hatchet-faced young man pursued him. He seemed to see now as he looked up and down the street, a hostility ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... and, for instance, "bring her music" and sing after dinner when Lucia asked her? As regards music, it was possible that she might be almost too great an addition, and cause the rest of the gifted amateurs to sink into comparative insignificance. At present Lucia was high-priestess at every altar of Art, and she could not think with equanimity of seeing anybody in charge of the ritual at any. Again to so eminent an opera-singer there must be conceded a ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... to muse upon Dunolly, with its dreams of other days. As we sweep round the base of the promontory, a scene bursts on our view so wildly grand that any single feature of the imposing landscape shrinks abashed and owns its insignificance. We are making direct for the entrance to the Sound of Mull; but behind and to the north of us is stretched out a panorama of rock and hill and deeply indented coast of incomparable grandeur. To the left of us rise ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... mildness of the position of women in general that has prevented a revolution on this same subject long ago. One hundred thousand such fire-eaters as Susan B. Anthony or Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the land, could raise a rumpus which would cause the late unpleasantness to pale into insignificance. Armed and equipped, what a sight would be presented by an army of strong-minded women! There would be no considering the question of whether the cavalry should ride side-saddle, or a la clothes-pin. Such detail would be ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... us to a proper sense of our insignificance, pulpit orators sometimes make an unfair use of the grave and its worms. Let us put no faith in their doleful rhetoric. The chemistry of man's final dissolution is eloquent enough of our emptiness: there is no need to add imaginary horrors. The worm of the sepulchre ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... be points of detail, admitting differences of opinion as to the relative advantages of a purely local or general Military Force for India; but these are mere trifles, which sink into insignificance in the Queen's estimation, when she has to consider the duty which she owes to ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... forgotten the right use of adversity. Afflictions from Heaven 'are angels sent on embassies of love.' We must improve, and not abuse them, to obtain the blessing. They are commissioned to stem the tide of impetuous passion; to check inordinate ambition; to show us the insignificance of earthly greatness; to wean our affections from transitory things, and elevate them to those realities which are ever blooming at the right hand of God. When affliction is thus sanctified, 'the heart at ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... the young officer of the watch. "Hard a-port! Midships! Hard a-starboard! Port 20! Steady as she goes!" And ceaselessly the engine-room telegraph tinkled, and the handy little craft, with death and terror written in her workmanlike lines for the seaman, for all her slim insignificance to the landlubber on the towering decks of the great liner, swung smartly through the crowded water-way out to the perils lurking 'neath the seeming smile of the open sea: the guardian angel of our commerce it went, to meet—what Heaven ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various

... Canterbury would be so stimulating, the presence of a Live Person at the head of the Church instead of a glorified Penny-in-the-Slot Machine would be so far-reaching in its results, that all questions of agreement and disagreement would sink into insignificance. ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis

... looking at every familiar place of his youth. He knew now that every foot of it would be his. He had no bitterness in his heart. Not he, for in the love and constancy of Alice Westmore all such things seemed unspeakable insignificance to ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... came into the sky, the wan moon, half-way down the west, sank into insignificance. On the shadowy land things began to take life, plants with great leaves became distinct. They came through a pass in the big, cold sandhills on to the beach. The long waste of foreshore lay moaning under the dawn and the sea; the ocean was a ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... in one small room, and when the three girls followed Mr. Ashby to the place, they were amazed at the insignificance of their exhibition. ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... Milan with the Netherlands, and so give the Spanish policy a necessary preponderance in the affairs of Europe." Richelieu spoilt this fine prospect just as it seemed about to become a reality, and the Spanish Hapsburgs gradually sank into insignificance, and their line disappeared in 1700, on the death of Charles II., the most contemptible creature that ever wore a crown, and scarcely man enough to be a respectable idiot. Such was the termination of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... that lonely waste"; and the sense of his own dignity enables him to sustain the shock of considerable hazard with spirit and fortitude. But, in London, the feeling of self-importance is totally lost and suppressed in the bosom of a stranger. A painful conviction of insignificance—of nothingness, I may say—is sunk upon his heart, and murmured in his ear by the million, who divide with him that consequence which he unconsciously before supposed he possessed in a general estimate of the world. While elbowing my way through the unknown multitude ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt

... read your account of this unfortunate being, and his forlorn piece of self-history, with that smile of half-interest which the annals of insignificance excite, till I came to where he says, "I was bound apprentice to Mr. William Bird, an eminent writer, and teacher of languages and mathematics," etc.; when I started as one does on the recognition ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... withdrawal from Graham and himself. When she was around he was his old punctilious self, gravely kind, more than ever considerate. Beside his failure to her, her own failure to him faded into insignificance. She was as she was, and through no fault of hers. But he was what he had ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... in the place where a bonnet is least required. I have seen a farmer, whose worth, intelligence, and manly dignity found fitting expression in the dress that he daily wore, sacrifice this harmonious outward seeming in an hour, and sink into insignificance, if not vulgarity, by putting on a dress-coat and a shiny stove-pipe hat to go to meeting or to "York." A dress-coat and a fashionable hat are such hideous habits in themselves, that he must be unmistakably ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... sitting on his doorsteps, from beneath whose classic foreheads there glares a wild and hungry eye, to be pacified only by a satisfactory interview. The last exploit of the "Champion Nine" sinks into insignificance beside this great, this momentous event, and the man who walked a hundred miles in twenty-four hours is nowhere. He realizes the cruel fact that Fame is fickle, and he makes one desperate effort to grasp it, by offering determinedly to walk around the world in ninety days, stopping ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various

... encounters of this kind leave me dejected. The gloomiest past is dearer than the brightest present. In my case there seems to be a special reason for feeling this way. My sense of triumph is coupled with a brooding sense of emptiness and insignificance, of my lack of anything like a great, ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... us sometimes close to the lake, sometimes at a considerable distance from it, over moorish grounds, or through half-cultivated enclosures; we had the lake on our right, which is here so wide that the opposite hills, not being high, are cast into insignificance, and we could not distinguish any buildings near the water, if any there were. It is however always delightful to travel by a lake of clear waters, if you see nothing else but a very ordinary country; but we had some beautiful distant views, one in particular, down the high ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth

... been an illustrious one. It happens, however, that in the gigantic mass of his intellectual work these researches, though intrinsically of such importance, assume what might almost be described as a relative insignificance. ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... seclusion in which we were wandering on that height, whence we beheld immensity, infinity, in which our weakness was lost: for the higher we ascend, the more the horizon expands, and the more conscious we become of our own insignificance. ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... responsible for such perversion in the navy are: first, the herding of the male sex together and for long periods; second, the mode of dress in which little boys begin their sea life. These are the problems before which all others sink into utter insignificance. The army and navy of Great Britain, is recruited very largely from the slums of great cities. The most ignorant, the most brutal and most immoral of mankind are drafted by the incentive of a better life than they have ever known; ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine

... sometimes suffer wrongfully from hunger and want, that they occasionally have just grievances, and that their efforts to present them, so far from being ludicrous, are the most serious parts of history, beside which the struttings of kings and courtiers sink into insignificance. ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy

... the utmost, and if fault could be found with our numerous visits there, it was that we had too good a time, so good that the undoubted local interest of the place quite faded into insignificance beside its purely social side. There were luncheons and dinners given us on shore; and dinners and luncheons given by us on the ship; there was a delightful tea on the gunboat, and a concert by the infantry band in our honour; there were horseback rides for those who cared for them, ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel

... the ocean, ended as gloriously as it had begun. In four victorious fights the disparity in loss had been so great as to sink the disparity of force into insignificance. Our successes had been unaccompanied by any important reverse. Nor was it alone by the victories, but by the cruises, that the year was noteworthy. The Yankee men-of-war sailed almost in sight of the British coast ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt

... and accumulation of capital and of personal property, in contrast to real estate, in the hands of the middle class, the nobility had dwindled into complete insignificance—even into actual dependence upon the enriched middle class. If the nobles wished to maintain their place beside the middle class, they must renounce all class traditions and begin to adopt the same methods of industrial acquisition ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... complain were so palpable, that I conceived a remedy would—of necessity be applied in the ordinary course of things. But now that a system is adopted which must very soon bring the naval service of His Imperial Majesty to utter insignificance and ruin, I can no longer abstain from calling on your Excellency as Minister of State for the internal affairs of the empire, to interfere before it is ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... master sinks into insignificance, when compared with the far-famed wickedness of another slave-holder, known all over the island as "Old Joe Eddings." There seem to have been no bounds to his cruelty and licentiousness; and the people tell tales of him which make ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... unimportant. For I would have you know I am a monstrous clever fellow. As for you, you are either a delusion or a god or a degraded Realist. But whatever you are, you have lied to me, and I know that you have lied, and I will not believe in the insignificance of Jurgen." ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... and itself. At Peterborough the great portico stands indeed, as here, in advance of a west front with two towers. But it may be said to have supplanted that front. One tower was never finished; the other was thrown into insignificance. The portico is of the full height, and became the real west front. Here at Saint-Evroul the portico was not the whole of the west front, but only part; the towers must have risen a long way above it. One would like to be able to judge of the effect ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman

... duration of ontogeny shrinks into insignificance when we compare it with the enormous period that has been necessary for phylogeny, or the gradual development of the ancestral series. This period is not measured by years or centuries, but by thousands and millions of years. Many millions ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel

... pursued and the humanity of his politics, but by the mixture of his nature. His vices come in, essential to my issue. He is dead and gone, all his immediate correlations to party and faction have faded to insignificance, leaving only on the one hand his broad method and conceptions, and upon the other his intimate living personality, exposed down to its salacious corners as the soul of no contemporary can ever be exposed. Of those double strands it is I have to write, of the subtle protesting perplexing play of ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... the last village, Cashapalca, 13,236 feet above the sea. Its inhabitants are chiefly employed in mining. Formerly, vast quantities of silver were obtained here. But most of the mines are now either under water or exhausted, and the village, with its mine works, has dwindled into insignificance. Beyond Cashapalca there is a tract of marshy ground, which being passed, a narrow winding road of about two leagues leads up the acclivity. The soil is clayey, and thinly bestrewed with alpine grass, intermingled with syngenesious and cruciferous plants. ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... the benefactions of the other rich men of the period waned into insignificance compared to those of Girard. His competitors and compeers had given to charity, but none on so great a scale as Girard. Distinguished orators vied with one another in extolling his wonderful benefactions,[66] and the press showered encomiums upon him as that of the greatest benefactor of the ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... Whenever a flash of lightning broke I looked if the boat was drifting in, and there I saw it still dancing about upon the waves, whilst the elements were so mighty in their power that I felt shrunk up to nothing, and tremulous in my own insignificance. ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... and why? Their enthusiasm is such that these matters are accepted as part of the inevitable, and the higher, nobler aim is so real that the lower and meaner consideration of personal comfort sinks into insignificance. What is the soldier's favorite tale? Not that all through the war he had to drink his coffee without cream, that he did not have sheets on his bed, and that he ate from a tin plate. Would he ever speak of such things, except to show that a man can for a noble aim accept inconvenience, ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery

... was expressing her envy of him one winter morning as they were strolling down the Avenue together. Now it should be explained that Mrs. Warren Hampton, even if she was small to insignificance and blond to towness, thus increasing her resemblance to a naughty little boy, was nevertheless a very important ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... Regiment, fell at Fort Wagner, the brave soldiers of that regiment gladly contributed to a fund for a monument to his memory, but which, upon reflection, was appropriated to building the Shaw School at Charleston, S. C. And yet all these sums sink into insignificance when compared to that contributed by the negro soldiers to the erection of a monument to the memory of President Lincoln, at the capitol of the nation; seventeen hundred of them gave ten thousand dollars. But let the record speak for itself, for it is only a people's patriotism that can ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... refusal to repay. The Exchequer was empowered to retain grants due for various purposes in Ireland and to recoup itself in proportion to the defalcation in any county. It should be added that individual failures have been rare to the point of insignificance, and that no combined refusal has been attempted, or advocated, even during periods of ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... calamity of this unfortunate period sinks into insignificance compared with the destruction of the greater part of the Greek race by the savage incursions of the Seljouk Turks in Asia Minor. Then followed the Crusades, the first three inflicting permanent evils on the Greek race; while the fourth, which was organised in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... which there is something specially solemn and impressive in the untouched and primitive simplicity of a country which stands now just as it came from the hands of the Creator. The self-sufficingness of nature, the insignificance of man, the mystery of a universe which does not exist, as our ancestors fondly thought, for the sake of man, but for other purposes hidden from us and for ever undiscoverable—these things are more fully realised and more deeply felt when one traverses a ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... that it all but reconciles him to the National Debt; and when applied to private proprietorship, it secures deference for lowness of mind, birth, habits, and pursuits.... Ambition and money-love, if they tend to ennoble a country, reduce to insignificance the human particles of which the nation is composed. In their pursuit of riches, the English are gradually losing sight of higher characteristics; ... our pursuit of railway bubbles and every other ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... of Prudence, the youngest sister, now Mrs. Todd, paled into insignificance beside that of the others, but it was a very pretty thing in tempers nevertheless, and would have been thought remarkable in any other ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin

... pined; nothing was to my mind; everything went wrong with me; I spent whole days thinking intensely about her ... I pined when away,... but in her presence I was no better off. I was jealous; I was conscious of my insignificance; I was stupidly sulky or stupidly abject, and, all the same, an invincible force drew me to her, and I could not help a shudder of delight whenever I stepped through the doorway of her room. Zinaida guessed at ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev

... friends at home about the trouble they experience over obtaining and keeping good servants, and there is no doubt that the servant problem is a serious one in England, and is getting worse every year; but it pales into insignificance when compared with the trials and tribulations of those who live in the Argentine and ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various

... crossed an open space, paused and glanced out over the flood with its rushing burden of drift. The thought terrified her—of being out there alone in a boat. Then came the thought of her unknown captor. Who was he? When would he return? And with the thought the terror of the water sank into insignificance beside the terror of the land. Reaching the edge of the bank she peered cautiously over. There, just at the end of a clump of willows, a boat floated lazily at the end of its painter. She could see the oars in their locks, and a man's coat upon the back ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx

... the Republican form of Government; in such an argument, addressed mainly to Presbyterians and other zealots for a State Church, the question of Disestablishment was rather to be avoided; nay, for himself, that question had faded into insignificance for the time in comparison with the vaster question whether the Republic should be preserved or the Stuarts brought back, and most willingly would he have been, assured of the preservation of the Republic even though a State Church should continue to be part and parcel ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... should sink into insignificance if he condescended to gainsay the principles of these resolutions. For the sentiments he has uttered, on soil consecrated by the prayers of Puritans and the blood of patriots, the earth should have yawned and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... ignore without wilfully risking the life of her baby. They should be taught to prepare special articles of diet when they are needed. If every mother were educated to the extent as indicated in the above outline the appalling infant mortality would fall into insignificance. It is not a difficult task nor would it take a long time to carry it out; it is the work for willing women who have time and who perhaps spend that time in less desirable ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague

... he comes down on you like a thousand of bricks,' Walker agreed heartily. He remembered observations which Alec on more than one occasion had made to recall him to a sense of his great insignificance. 'It's not for nothing the natives call him Thunder ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham

... brave among birds of prey in deeds of daring, and no less relentless than reckless, the shrike compels that sort of deference, not unmixed with indignation, we are accustomed to accord to creatures of seeming insignificance whose exploits demand much strength, great spirit, and insatiate love for carnage. We cannot be indifferent to the marauder who takes his own wherever he finds it — a feudal baron who holds his own with undisputed sway — and an ogre whose victims are so many more than he can eat, that ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... accidental, the miraculous. Just as the poor illuminations of a village fete, or the tapers of a procession, are put out by the great marvel of the sun, so the small local miracles, with their meanness and doubtfulness, will sink into insignificance beside the law of the world of spirits, the incomparable spectacle of human history, led by that all-powerful Dramaturgus whom we ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... 'Specimens,' we have been impressed with a sense, if not of their absolute, yet of their comparative mediocrity. Beside such neglected giants as Henry More, Joseph Beaumont, and Andrew Marvell, the Pomfrets, Sedleys, Blackmores, and Savages sink into insignificance. But when we come to the name of Swift, we feel ourselves again approaching an Alpine region. The air of a stern mountain-summit breathes chill around our temples, and we feel that if we have no amiability to melt, we have altitude at least to measure, and strange profound secrets of nature, like ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... veterans they were also dealing with veterans who were masters of the situation in their overwhelming force and their knowledge of the comparative insignificance of their opponents, whose numbers had been quite accurately ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe

... discipline, exercises a constant control over his thoughts, his speech, and his acts. Nine-tenths of the vicious desires that degrade society, and which, when indulged, swell into the crimes that disgrace it, would shrink into insignificance before the advance of valiant self-discipline, self-respect, and self-control. By the watchful exercise of these virtues, purity of heart and mind become habitual, and the character is built up in ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... it is described both in the Iliad and the Odyssey as being very populous (a hundred cities, Iliad II.; ninety cities, Odyssey XIX.), and to its capital, Knossos, alone among Greek cities does Homer apply the epithet 'great.' All which offers a striking contrast to the comparative insignificance of the towns of the Argolid in later Greek history, and to the uninfluential part played ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie

... of these glaciers, composed entirely of blue and green ice and the purest snow, are fifteen and twenty miles in length. They are by far the finest we have, any of us, ever seen; and even those of Norway and Switzerland sink into comparative insignificance beside them. The mountains here are not so high as those of Europe, but they really appear more lofty, as their entire surface, from the water's edge to the extreme summit, is clearly visible. At this end of the Straits they terminate ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... Davenant exaggerated to Betterton his own influence or his exertions, we cannot tell. Another account assigns the credit of the intervention to Secretary Morris and Sir Thomas Clarges. After all, it is probable that he owed his immunity to his insignificance and his harmlessness. The formality of burning two of his books by the hands of the hangman was gone through. He was also for some time during the autumn of 1660 in the custody of the serjeant-at-arms, for on ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... invasion, exhausted with toil, had been seized by a fever and had died. It is said that the young King Ladislaus rejoiced in his death, for he was greatly annoyed in having a subject attain such a degree of splendor as to cast his own name into insignificance. Hunniades left two sons, Ladislaus and Matthias. The king and Cilli manifested the meanest jealousy in reference to these young men, and fearful that the renown of their father, which had inspired pride and gratitude in every Hungarian heart, ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... mesa above Hudson's yard, still stood aloof. It had towered there ahead of them as they jerked and toiled across the interminable flat in their accompanying cloud of dust. The great circle of the world had dwarfed them to a bitter insignificance: a team of crickets, they seemed, driven by a gnome. The hushed tone of Thatcher's voice made unconscious ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt

... Asiatic Society, give less ancient traditions of the adaption of chess relating to the time of Alexander the Great and Indian Kings, Fur, Poris, and Kaid; in one of these the reward of a grain of corn doubled sixty-four times was stipulated for by the philosopher, and the seeming insignificance of the demand astonished and displeased the King, who wished to make a substantial recognition worthy of his own greatness and power, and it occasioned sneers and ridicule on the part of the King's treasurer and accountant at Sassa's supposed lack of wisdom and judgment. However, ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird

... faded into insignificance. The operator went back into his hut and stayed close by the telephone instrument for the next ten minutes ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton

... soft cooing of the cushat doves; and every interval was filled up by the bursts of song from the small finches, thrushes, and other denizens of the wooded hill. In one fir tree there was a pair of tiny gold-crested wrens, beautiful little birds, which seemed to consider that their insignificance was quite enough to keep them from harm. So tame were they that they could have been struck down by a stick, which would have been their fate but for the interposition of Philip, who seized his brother's arm as he was raising his hand to deal the blow. ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn

... for a strenuous afternoon," he said to them sharply. "I am going after the biggest game that history records. Colonel Methuselah has just told me of a quarry alongside of which all that we have landed in the past months sinks into insignificance." ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs

... under him, and showed Las Cases a great scar on his thigh which he said had been received in a bayonet charge at Toulon. "Men wondered at the fortune which kept me invulnerable; I always concealed my dangers in mystery." The hypothesis of his insignificance appears unlikely when we examine the memoirs written by his contemporaries, and consider the precise traditions of a later generation; it becomes untenable in view of what happened on the next day, when the commissioners nominated him for the office of general ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... have all men," replied Belfield, "whether philosophers or ideots, act for themselves. Every one would then appear what he is; enterprize would be encouraged, and imitation abolished; genius would feel its superiority, and folly its insignificance; and then, and then only, should we cease to be surfeited with that eternal sameness of manner and appearance which at present runs through all ranks ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney

... it can admit the theory of evolution and whether its records of history are authoritative. These questions are so fundamental that the strife of Calvinism and Arminianism and the question of the double procession of the Holy Spirit, which seemed vital to our fathers have faded into relative insignificance. ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various

... organized as completely as had the army and navy for the prosecution of the war with the sole object in view of preventing Germany ever again from using the Peninsula as a territory for exploitation. The propaganda for Italia Irredenta suddenly sank into insignificance beside the determination to throw off, once and for all, the German commercial, industrial, and financial yoke, revealing the abiding faith of the Italian people that their army would attend to the former as ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... to me, but where I now rarely visit. I am on these sad terms (and blush to confess it) with Wordsworth, Horace, Burns and Hazlitt. Last of all, there is the class of book that has its hour of brilliancy - glows, sings, charms, and then fades again into insignificance until the fit return. Chief of those who thus smile and frown on me by turns, I must name Virgil and Herrick, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a tract of conquered territory, the Norfolk dockyard, and the mouth of the James River. The Confederates would gain little by its capture; the Federals would hardly feel its loss. It was most improbable that a single man of Hooker's army would be detached to defend a point of such comparative insignificance, and it was quite possible that Longstreet would be unable to get back in time to meet him, even on the North Anna. General Lee, however, anxious as ever to defer to the opinions of the man on the spot, as well as to meet the wishes ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... had confessed his faith, and says that he gives him charge 'before God' (for the same word is used in the original in both verses), 'who quickeneth all things, and before Christ Jesus.' So the earthly witnesses of the man's confession dwindle into insignificance when compared with the heavenly ones. And upon these thoughts is based the practical exhortation, 'Keep the commandment without spot.' So, then, we have three things: the great Witness and His confession, the subordinate confessors who echo His witness, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... the publicity man, sank into insignificance. Even his pale spats, at which Bassett had shot a contemptuous glance, his highly expensive tailoring, failed to make him appear more than he was, a little, dapper man, with a pale cold eye and a rather too frequent ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... Iroquois in another volume. [Footnote: "The Jesuits in America."] Throughout a wide semicircle around their cantons they had made the forest a solitude,—destroyed the Hurons, exterminated the Neutrals and the Eries, reduced the formidable Andastes to a helpless insignificance, swept the borders of the St. Lawrence with fire, spread terror and desolation among the Algonquins of Canada; and now, tired of peace, they were seeking, to borrow their own savage metaphor, new nations ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... nations, resembling individuals, do not become illustrious from their mere physical proportions; as in both, renown has its moral sources; so, in examining the causes which conduced to the eminence of Greece, we cease to wonder at the insignificance of its territories or the splendour of its fame. Even in geographical circumstance Nature had endowed the country of the Hellenes with gifts which amply atoned the narrow girth of its confines. The most ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... last of them had left me, for a dozen or so had lingered to play lansquenet after the others had departed. With those that remained my wager had soon faded into insignificance, as their minds became engrossed in the fluctuations of their ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini

... the way Radicofani, who is loquacious in his cups, bragged to Leonora of how neatly he had captured you. The Owlet took counsel with me, and together we so intimidated the Captain with threats to report him to the Grand Duke, convincing him at the same time of your utter insignificance (for Leonora declares that you confessed to her mistress in her presence that you were not the Earl of Essex), that he consented ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... though in her heart she thought, though she did not admit the thought, that in the end she would win his love by her love for him. But what reason had she for thinking that there was anything between Sabine and him? How could he, so clever as he was, love a little creature whose insignificance and mediocrity were patent? She was reassured,—but for that she did not watch Christophe any the less closely. She saw nothing all day, because there was nothing to see: but Christophe seeing her prowling about him all day long without any sort of explanation was peculiarly irritated by it. ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... whom they call Jehovah, mighty God of my fathers, hear me, Ephraim, a young inexperienced lad, of whom, in his insignificance, Thou hast probably never thought. I ask nothing for myself. But the people, whom Thou dost call Thine, are in sore peril. They have left durable houses and good pastures because Thou didst promise ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... blithesome Hicks' lack of confidence, it was that sunny Senior, after all, whom fate—or fortune, accordingly as each nine viewed it—destined to be the hero of the Bannister-Ballard Championship baseball contest, the game itself is shoved into such insignificance that it can be briefly chronicled by recording the events that led up to T. Haviland ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice

... female voting have descended legitimately to us from the Old World; yea, more than anything else, from that common law which we lawyers have all studied as the first element in jurisprudence. That system of law really sank the female to total contempt and insignificance, almost annihilated her from the face of the earth. It made her responsible for nothing. So far was she removed from participating in anything or being responsible for anything, that if she even committed a crime in the presence of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... me, and slanted round his best ear, and once, when I was speaking of some trifling, tender reminiscence, drew a long breath, with such a tremor in it that a little more and it would have been a sob, why, then I felt there must be something of nature in them which redeemed their seeming insignificance. Tell me, man or woman with whom I am whispering, have you not a small store of recollections, such as these I am uncovering, buried beneath the dead leaves of many summers, perhaps under the unmelting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... creation through the creative word, of the perfection of his works, of man bearing the image of God. We should even see that idea of God which presents itself to us out of all other characteristics of that record in such spotless purity and sublime magnitude, sink down to a decided insignificance through the identification of the divine days of creation with our earthly days of twenty-four hours. All this certainly brings near to us the question: do we make a correct exegesis, do we correctly read that record, when we think that the ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... made a headlong progress downwards. So utterly, also, were the tables turned, that, whereas in the fifteenth century her chief superiority over Christendom had been in the three points of artillery, discipline, and fixed revenue, precisely in these three she had sunk into utter insignificance, whilst all Christendom had been continually improving. Selim and Mahmoud indeed had made effectual reforms in the corps of gunners, as we have said, and had raised it to the amount of sixty thousand men; so that at present they have respectable field-artillery, whereas previously ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... that sort; but at The Hague things still remained in such a posture that three or four minute and backward states could outvote the British Empire or the United States. Therein lies the clue to the insignificance of The Hague. Such projects as these are idle projects and we must put them out of our heads; they are against nature; the great nations will not suffer them ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells

... sooner we make up our minds to sink into insignificance the better," observed Desmond, who had a telescope to his eye. "I make out clearly enough the frigate and corvette at anchor; however, we shall have a jolly time of it giving the other fellows ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... womanhood to the noblest in the land—suffered before our very eyes an amount of misfortune that, had one not seen it for oneself, one would never have believed Fate could have accumulated upon the head of any single individual. Beside her woes our own poor troubles sank into insignificance. We had used to grieve, as my mother in a whisper reminded my father, if now and again we had not been able to afford meat for dinner. This poor creature, driven even from her wretched attic, compelled to ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... fish he has caught, at this well-remembered spot and that, rise up out of the past and flick their tails at him; and all the stretches between—stretches of water that have never for him held anything but shiners, stretches of time diversified by not even a nibble—sink into pleasant insignificance. ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge

... The wild and dangerous attempt which has for some time been persisted in to obtain an act of our Legislature, to abolish so very important and necessary a branch of commercial interest[578], must have been crushed at once, had not the insignificance of the zealots who vainly took the lead in it, made the vast body of Planters, Merchants, and others, whose immense properties are involved in that trade, reasonably enough suppose that there could be no danger. The encouragement ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... approach the gates, the stalls and wares dwindle into insignificance, until they disappear altogether; and so we pass out of the city to the picturesque promenades which surround it. Afar off we hear the booming and occasional squeal of the real Fair. It is not without its drollery, and, if not equal to "Old Bartlemy" in noise and rude humour, has a ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... triangular note, sealed with a thick heraldic crest. 'I hope,' he found in the note, 'that you as a man of honour will not allow yourself to hint by so much as a single word at a certain promissory note which was talked of this morning. You are acquainted with my position and my rules, the insignificance of the sum in itself and the other circumstances; there are, in fine, family secrets which must be respected, and family tranquillity is something so sacred that only etres sans cour (among whom I have no reason to ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev

... his plodding back on the girl and retraced his laborious steps towards his own home, which he had just passed. There come times for all souls when the broad light of the path of humanity seems to pale to insignificance before the intensity of the one little search-light of personality. Granville Joy felt as if the eternal problem of the rich and poor, of labor and capital, of justice and equality, was as nothing before the desire of his heart for that one girl who was disappearing ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... involuntary shudder as she thought of the narrow escape they had had on that occasion. But in the light of the other and more serious menace which now hung over them like a storm cloud, the adventure with the wild beasts faded into insignificance. Human enemies, more deadly perhaps than any of the animal kingdom, threatened, and if signs counted for anything it would be no long time ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham

... Since you have no objection to give me the Black Sea, I shall make no opposition to the extension of your empire to the shores of the Mediterranean. Italy, like Germany, is a prey to petty princes. Rescue the Italians from their national insignificance, sire, and throw the aegis of your protection over the site of the old Roman empire. Do you not bear the title of King of Rome? Give to that title, meaning and substance. Yours is the south and west, mine is the east, and together we ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... the wars to which it gave rise, made Germany for a time the most conspicuous state in Europe, but its ultimate effect was to reduce that state to a degree of material poverty, political insignificance, and intellectual torpidity unknown before in her experience. Civil war was long delayed; the political necessities and the astute policy of Charles V., the conservative instincts and patriotic scruples of Luther, and the doubtful position of many of ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney

... hand, so as to give the picture the cast of a bravo. "That like Mat Lewis?" said Duke Henry, to whom it had passed in turn; "why, that is like a MAN!" Imagine the effect! Lewis was at his elbow.[11] Now Moore has none of this insignificance; to be sure his person is much stouter than that of M.G.L., his countenance is decidedly plain, but the expression is so very animated, especially in speaking or singing, that it is far more interesting than the finest features could have ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... reprove mankind for what it is, or praise it for what it is not, or—generally—to teach it how to behave. Being neither quarrelsome, nor a flatterer, nor a sage, I have done none of these things, and I am prepared to put up serenely with the insignificance which attaches to persons who are not meddlesome in some way or other. But resignation is not indifference. I would not like to be left standing as a mere spectator on the bank of the great stream carrying onward so many lives. I would fain claim for myself the faculty of so much insight ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad

... Rawles appeared before young Mr. Brewster and indicated by his manner that the call was an important one. Brewster was seated at his writing-table, deep in thought. The exclamation that followed Rawles's cough of announcement was so sharp and so unmistakably fierce that all other evidence paled into insignificance. The butler's interruption came at a moment when Monty's mental arithmetic was pulling itself out of a very bad rut, and the cough drove it ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon

... is the ascent of a large body of water into the clouds—one of those gigantic operations by which nature, apparently without effort, accomplishes her will, pointing out to man the insignificance of his ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... cannot with any truth be called the "epitome of mankind." On the contrary, the distinguishing features of his life are its incompleteness, aimlessness, imperfection, insignificance, neglect of talents and waste of opportunities. "He saw and approved the best," says Brian Fairfax, "but did too often deteriora sequi." He is more severely but more justly judged by himself. In gay ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... other days. It is no doubt wrong, immoral, unworthy of a reformed outcast, but if my real heart's desire could be fulfilled, I would live over again those few months of exquisite happiness, and die before waking to the terrible reality of my insignificance in the sight of him who was more than life to me—die while I was still something to be missed, to be regretted. He would have tired of me had I been his wife, and that would have been as terrible as my present lot—even more, for I must have seen his ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... most singular I have ever seen," whispers Honeyman. "In entering one of these assemblies, one is struck with the immensity of London: and with the sense of one's own insignificance. Without, I trust, departing from my clerical character, nay, from my very avocation as incumbent of a London chapel,—I have seen a good deal of the world, and here is an assemblage no doubt of most respectable persons, on scarce one of whom I ever set eyes ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... is reached in the sign of the Twins; under which Dante himself had been born. At this point Beatrice directs him, before entering on the final blessedness of heaven, and doubtless with the ulterior view of leading him to a just sense of the insignificance of earthly things, to look back over the course which he ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler

... the mare round and stood motionless, waiting for her to pass. He sat arrogantly at his ease. She could not fail to note that his horsemanship was magnificent. The mare stood royally as though she bore a king. The man's very insignificance of bulk seemed to make him the ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell

... of your confidence, your assurance of being heard. There is more. Think of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God's own Son, sent into your heart to cry, Abba, Father, and to be in you a Spirit of Supplication, when you know not what to pray as you ought. Think, in all your insignificance and unworthiness, of your being as acceptable as Christ Himself. Think in all your ignorance and feebleness, of the Spirit making intercession according to God within you, and cry out, "What wondrous grace! Through Christ I have access to the Father, by the Spirit. I can, I do believe ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray

... death by the bowstring. The orders were given to a merciless eunuch, who commonly executed his acts of vengeance. There happened at that time to be in the king's chamber a little dwarf, who, though dumb, was not deaf. He was allowed, on account of his insignificance, to go wherever he pleased, and as a domestic animal, was a witness of what passed in the most profound secrecy. This little mute was strongly attached to the queen and Zadig. With equal horror and surprise he heard the cruel orders given. But how to prevent the fatal sentence that in a few hours ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... served, there will remain a residuum of eatable matter, which can only be profitably disposed of to the voracious and necessary pig. I foresee the rise of a piggery in connection with the new Social Scheme, which will dwarf into insignificance all that exist in Great Britain and Ireland. We have the advantage of the experience of the whole world as to the choice of breeds, the construction of sties, and the rearing of stock. We shall have the major part of our food practically for the cost of collection, and be able ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... with one of the first-rate powers of Europe, but should prefer security to aggrandizement, satisfied with a consort selected from a less prominent, and, therefore, less exposed, position. If there be safety, therefore, in comparative weakness and insignificance, we know not that, on such a ground, any other princely house throughout Europe, could offer inducements preferable to those possessed by those of Saxe-Coburg. Objections against this individual member of the family might, ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... that Allis found him when she reached Ringwood. Oh, but she was glad; and small wonder. What she had done was as nothing; it shrank into insignificance under the glamourous light of the change that had come over the home. What a magic wand was deserved success; how it touched with fairy aspect all that drooped with the fearsome blight of anticipated ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... she would say." And then she spoke to me of God, who alone can determinate man's trials, either by the end He ordains, or the resignation He inspires. I felt myself carried with her into the regions where our sorrows shrink into insignificance as the horizon broadens around them. And I remember she uttered this fine thought, "See how my son has suffered! It makes one believe, Monsieur Fabien, that the elect of the earth are the hardest tried, just as the stones that crown the building are ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... into the woods and live in misery. I instilled courage into your hearts in order that this Bhima who is possessed of the strength of ten thousand elephants and whose prowess and manliness are widely known, might not sink into insignificance and ruin. I instilled courage into your hearts in order that this Vijaya, who was born after Bhimasena, and who is equal unto Vasava himself might not be cheerless. I instilled courage into your hearts in order that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... course of every thoughtful childhood an event takes place, by the side of which, to the child himself, all other events sink into insignificance. It is not one that is recognized and chronicled by the world, for it is wholly unconnected with action. No one but the child is aware of its occurrence, and he never speaks of it to others. Yet to that child it marks ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... surely Attic or Eleusinian in origin. Can we in any way fix its date? Firstly, it is certainly not later than the beginning of the sixth century, for it makes no mention of Iacchus, and the Dionysiac element was introduced at Eleusis at about that period. Further, the insignificance of Triptolemus and Eumolpus point to considerable antiquity, and the digamma is still active. All these considerations point to the seventh century as the probable date of ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod

... conscience, and the other of granting it. Who art thou, vain dust and ashes! by whatever name thou art called, whether a king, a bishop, a church, or a state, a parliament, or anything else, that obtrudest thine insignificance between the soul of man and its Maker? Mind thine own concerns. If he believes not as thou believest, it is a proof that thou believest not as he believes, and there is no earthly ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... as to return home with such valuable acquisitions of property as we had bestowed upon Omai; and, with the advantages he reaped from his voyage to England, it must be his own fault if he should sink into the same state of insignificance. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... that he lived only in Bernardine's presence, and that without her life would be but a blank to him. His love for Bernardine became the one great passion of his life. Compared with her, all other women paled into insignificance. ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey

... Notwithstanding my comparative insignificance, there was no real security in remaining long in Charleston, and it was my strong desire to quit the place. As "beggars cannot be choosers," I was glad to get on board the schooner Carpenter, bound to St. Mary's and Philadelphia, for, and with, ship-timber, ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper

... morning activity, and consulted the time-tables quite as eagerly as John. He wanted her; that was enough. She cared nothing now for the censorious tongues. Her gentle, sweet-spirited husband awaited her return. All else melted away into insignificance. He was a beacon in the darkness, a very mountain of light on the horizon. He was calling on her—this hero of schoolgirl days, this ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley

... the great arable region of wheat, that takes in Athabaska and Saskatchewan, where the flies are a nuisance for 6 or 7 weeks, but no more so than they were in Ontario, Michigan, Manitoba, and formerly England; and where the cultivation of the land will soon reduce them to insignificance, as it has invariably done in other similar regions. It is quite remarkable in the north-west that such plagues are most numerous in the more remote regions, and they disappear in proportion as the country is ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton

... bitter hatred of the Guelphs and Ghibellines had died away, and the factions which divided northern Italy had sunk into insignificance, nearly a century before this period, the memory of their feuds was still kept up by their great grandchildren, and Venice was still severed into two parties or communities, separated from each other by the grand canal. Those who dwelt on the western or land side of this boundary were ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... slowly, and walked in a dejected manner in the direction of the Palmer House. He began to think that he was a failure. When he was a student of Euclid College he was in his own estimation, a person of importance. Now he felt his insignificance. If the world owed him a living, it seemed doubtful if it was inclined to ...
— Walter Sherwood's Probation • Horatio Alger

... know of what the sun is made, and how many miles distant he is, do we find his risings and settings less moving in their endless splendours? Do we less marvel at the stupendous order of the solar and astral circles? Do we feel less awe before the infinitude of space and the insignificance of our own selves? Do waterfalls "haunt us like a passion" any the less because the water is chemically known as H2O and because we believe no longer in nymphs and water-sprites? On the contrary, if there is one fact in the history of literature ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... disguise her charm or grace. It seemed to him that she was putting herself a little further away from him, that she was approaching the business of life with a determination, a spirit, a zest, that dwarfed to insignificance his own preoccupation with far less important matters. She turned to glance back at a group of children they had passed audibly speculating as to the character of teacher the day held in ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... my countrymen, but at the same time to the defects of the Russians, to whom it is more unpardonable; because they know what is right, have grown up among good examples, and here, as if they have forgotten their mission, and their active nature, they sink, little by little, into the insignificance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... the skill of a satirist, then let me say, there is no "ludicrous side" to life; there is nothing in human conduct that is simply absurd. The least transaction has a moral cast, and every word and act reveals spiritual relations. The interest of man can never be thrown into insignificance by his conditions; these draw interest from him. And, whatever his post in the world, however limited or broad his sphere of observation, for him life is real, and has intense relations. We must not stand so far apart from the crowd as to occupy ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... this slight and doubtful clue, however, sank into insignificance when, having unlocked and unstrapped the trunk which Mrs. Weston pointed out, he saw to his infinite satisfaction that it held Mr. Roberts' clothing—the one thing in the world toward which at this exact moment his curiosity mainly pointed. ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green

... I am not very much mistaken. The last time I saw him, he was very near his end, and spoke of his death as calmly and tranquilly as if he had lived the purest life imaginable. He is long since in his grave, and his family has sunk into insignificance. I do not believe a more thorough villain ever walked ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson

... day; so that, perceiving the benefits which the laws, as now enacted and administered, ensure to their native Land, they may feel towards you who make the wiser choice the gratitude which you will have deserved.—The beginnings of great troubles are mostly of comparative insignificance;—a little spark can kindle a mighty conflagration, and a small leak will suffice to sink a stately vessel. To that loyal decision of the event now pending, which may be confidently expected, Britain may owe the continuance of her ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth



Words linked to "Insignificance" :   significance, unimportance, meaninglessness



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com