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Insignificant   Listen
adjective
Insignificant  adj.  
1.
Not significant; void of signification, sense, or import; meaningless; as, insignificant words.
2.
Having no weight or effect; answering no purpose; unimportant; valueless; futile. "Laws must be insignificant without the sanction of rewards and punishments."
3.
Without weight of character or social standing; mean; contemptible; as, an insignificant person.
Synonyms: Unimportant; immaterial; inconsiderable; small; inferior; trivial; mean; contemptible.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Insignificant" Quotes from Famous Books



... itself in its glorified aspect. Thus it is easy to understand how a title like the Golden Bough, so little descriptive of its usual appearance on the tree, should have been applied to the seemingly insignificant parasite. Further, we can perhaps see why in antiquity mistletoe was believed to possess the remarkable property of extinguishing fire, and why in Sweden it is still kept in houses as a safeguard against conflagration. Its fiery nature marks it out, on ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... sympathy, but they could do no more, for the soldiers overawed them. Huguette flung her arms about him, sobbing. The grasp of his captors tightened and Villon shivered at the clasp. Suddenly the little insignificant burgess at the table rose and advanced ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... scope of our really pitifully meager world-experience cannot be—our finite minds cannot grasp that which may not exist in accordance with the conditions which obtain about us upon the outside of the insignificant grain of dust which wends its tiny way among the bowlders of the universe—the speck of moist dirt we so proudly call ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... not dead—they would make a preacher of him! To this end he was sent to the "Fredericianium," a graded school of no mean quality. The master of this school was a worthy clergyman by the name of Schultz, who was attracted to the Kant boy, it seems, on account of his insignificant size. It was the affection of the shepherd for the friendless ewe lamb. A little later the teacher began to love the boy for his big head and the thoughts he worked out of it. Brawn is bought with a price—young men who bank on it get it as legal tender. Those who have ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... the the one, the remembrance of which he thus cherished. He had been present at many a scene of carnage, where blood flowed in deluges, compared with which the libations of slaughter poured out at Valmy would have seemed scant and insignificant. But he rightly estimated the paramount importance of the battle with which he thus wished his appellation while living, and his memory after his death, to be identified. The successful resistance, which the new Carmagnole ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... in insignificant Brougham Street, and his mother was still a sempstress! These were apparently insurmountable truths. All the men whom he knew to be members were somehow more dashing than Denry —and it was a question of dash; few things are more mysterious than dash. Denry was ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... not seem worth seeking. What are we to say to a man who spends a quarter's income on a diamond pin which he sticks in a greasy cravat? A man who calls public attention on him, and appears in a slovenly undress? Am I to bestow applause on some insignificant parade of erudition, and withhold blame from the stupidities of style ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes

... musical ambition. He now learnt to play upon his father's old piano, but with little melodious result; and he became eager to possess a finger-organ, but had no means of procuring one. About this time, a neighbouring parish clerk had purchased, for an insignificant sum, a small disabled barrel-organ, which had gone the circuit of the northern counties with a show. The clerk tried to revive the tones of the instrument, but failed; at last he bethought him that he would try the ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... given, even the most insignificant, were worked afresh for the purpose, and thus, not merely faithful representations, but also lucid and intelligible explanations of ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont

... my father happened to be an earl, his daughters had a courtesy title; and when he looked a little shocked, as if he were wondering whether he had been indiscreet, I nodded toward the house, as our taxicab stopped before the insignificant green door. "You see by where we live how unimportant we are!" I excused myself in such a pleading voice that he laughed. Then he flashed away to make arrangements for ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... little distance for a time, lest the irritated and wronged bees should set upon them and take an ample revenge. Had they known their power, this might easily have been done, no ingenuity of man being able to protect him against the assaults of this insignificant-looking animal, when unable to cover himself, and the angry little heroes are in earnest. On the present occasion, however, no harm befell the marauders. So suddenly had the hive tumbled that its late occupants appeared to be astounded, and they submitted to their fate as ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... relations with the students, they well knew that this must be the final consummation, but then it looked a great way off. That they really loved the young men, no one can doubt. It would not be strange for a little shop-girl to even adore a talented university student, however insignificant he might be to other people. To her he is everything that is great and noble. These girls knew well that they were not wives, but mistresses, yet when the day of separation came, it was like parting husband and wife. But there was ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett

... violate his nature. All the sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of his being, as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how you gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza;—read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... possible. The approach to his house was free, and he loved to pass through the city unattended, and to pay unexpected visits to his friends. He thirsted for no senator's blood, and used severity against the delatores alone. There was but one insignificant conspiracy against him during ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... John Johnson's Royal Greens, as Henry afterward learned; and with them was the infamous John Butler, or "Indian" Butler, as he was generally known on the New York and Pennsylvania frontier, middle-aged, short and fat, and insignificant of appearance, but energetic, savage and cruel in nature. He was a descendant of the Duke of Ormond, and had commanded the Indians at the terrible battle of the Oriskany, preceding Burgoyne's capture ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler

... that the hostility of the inhabitants of the United States is confined to one class, and that class, though numerically large, is politically insignificant. Do not believe it for one instant; the hostility to England is universal, it is more deep-rooted than any other feeling, it is an instinct and not a reason, and consequently possesses the dogged strength of unreasoning antipathy. I tell you, Mr. Bull, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... country walks in spite of his lame limb; he could deny himself even the commonest necessaries of life for their sake; he could watch over each of them with a fervour, a moral intensity which wore him out. In this, in some insignificant journalism for a religious paper, and in thinking, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... To any one else, these words would have represented only the insignificant observation of a child; and Shears himself listened without paying much attention and continued his inspection. But, suddenly, he started running after the child, whose last phrase had all at once impressed him. He caught her at the top of the ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc

... he sent his clerk out of the room and, motioning Mr. Jacks to take a seat by his side, leaned back in his own chair with the air of one prepared to relax for a moment. He was a man of somewhat insignificant presence, but he had keen gray eyes, half the time concealed under thick eyebrows, and flashing out upon you now and then ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... heart. For this reason the Jews, in all the countries which have entered upon the new path, have begun to take a share in all the great works of civilization, in the triple field of science, of art, and of action; and that share, far from being an insignificant one, is out of all proportion to the brief time that has ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... cats, dogs, monkeys, etc. This is what the ancients called Metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls; a doctrine which is still held by the natives of India, who scruple to destroy the life, even of the most insignificant animal, not knowing but it may be one of their ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... however, is the shortage of potatoes, which at present is simply catastrophic. The English crop was the worst for a generation past. The imports are altogether insignificant. Captain Bathurst stated on April 19 that in about four weeks the supplies of potatoes in the country would ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin

... Johnson's nursery-ground, is forthwith engaged, and the aforesaid young ladies, from mere charity, exhibit themselves for three days, from twelve to four, for the small charge of one shilling per head! With the exception of these classes of society, however, and a few weak and insignificant persons, we do not think the attempt at imitation to which we have alluded, prevails in any great degree. The different character of the recreations of different classes, has often afforded us amusement; and we have chosen it for the subject of our present sketch, in the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... Benson, by some strange chance, happened to remember that slight metallic sound of something falling to the floor while Millard was speaking. Now, Jack bent over, holding the candle to aid him in his hunt. Ah! There it was! Yet how utterly insignificant—nothing but a hairpin! ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham

... south-western coasts, and as these comprise not only the capital, but also the large towns of Abo and Viborg, they may be regarded as the most important, politically, commercially, and socially, in the country. Here lakes are still numerous, but insignificant in size compared with those of the interior. On the other hand, the vegetation is richer, for the oak, lime, and hazel do well, and the flora, both wild and cultivated, is much more extensive than in the central and northern districts. Several ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... Gallician, north-west regions. Which was perfectly successful,—Lord Cobham leading;—and made much noise among mankind. Filled all Gazettes at that time;—but now, again, is all fallen silent for us,—except this one thrice-insignificant point, That there was in it, 'in Handyside's Regiment,' a Lieutenant of Foot, by name STERNE, who had left, with his poor Wife at Plymouth, a very remarkable Boy called Lorry, or LAWRENCE; known since that to all mankind. When ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... and progress that in the future there will be no nobility, no bourgeoisie no pariahs. The economist replies, with the impassibility of destiny: You are condemned to produce much, and to produce cheaply; otherwise your industry will be always insignificant, your commerce will amount to nothing, and you will drag in the rear of civilization instead of taking the lead.—What! among us, generous men, there are some predestined to brutishness; and the more perfect our industry becomes, the larger will grow the number of our accursed brothers! ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... from consideration the Glee Unions of England, and the quartets, which correspond to them, in this country. They are not cultivators of choral music, and the music which they sing is an insignificant factor in culture. The male choirs, too, need not detain us long, since it may be said without injustice that their mission is more social than artistic. In these choirs the subdivision into parts is, as a rule, into two tenor voices, first and second, and two bass, ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... long trial he was found guilty of treason, and received the sentence of death usually pronounced on such occasions; but whether he earned forgiveness by some material discovery, or the minister found him so insensible and insignificant that he was ashamed to take his life, he escaped execution, and was pardoned, on condition of going into perpetual exile. The severity of the government was much about the same period exercised on Dr. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... the country can hardly have exceeded five or six millions, and the burthen of all the vessels engaged in ordinary commerce was estimated at little more than fifty thousand tons. The size of the vessels employed in it would nowadays seem insignificant; a modern collier brig is probably as large as the biggest merchant vessel which then sailed from the port of London. But it was under Elizabeth that English commerce began the rapid career of developement ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... pounds of meat a year; the Japanese, four pounds; the people of South China less—practically none at all. Taking the human race as a whole, meat fills only a very insignificant place in the world's bill of fare. Bread is the staff of life, and nuts, the real meat, are gradually recovering their old prestige. It is only in comparatively recent years that meat has entered so largely into the bill of fare ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... and fanatic plots. This work may be more properly called "A History of Scotland during the Author's Time, with some Digressions relating to England," rather than deserve the title he gives it. For I believe two thirds of it relate only to that beggarly nation, and their insignificant brangles and factions. What he succeeds best in, is in giving extracts of arguments and debates in council or Parliament. Nothing recommends his book but the recency of the facts he mentions, most of them being still in memory, especially the story of the Revolution; which, however, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... want not a single negro for any other purpose than his immediate liberation. I consider every individual thus unshackled as the source of future generations, not to say nations, of freemen; and I shudder when I think that so insignificant an animal as I am is invested with this monstrous, this horrid power."[5] The Randolph estate, however, was so cumbered with debts that the desired manumissions could not then be made. At Richard's death in 1796 he left a will of the expected tenor, providing ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... he had gone to watch a storm a little over a week ago. A week? It seemed so remote that for the moment he could not recall the events of that last visit; his head ached so that everything but physical suffering was temporarily insignificant. There was no moon to-night. The sky was covered with black, scurrying clouds, and he could only hear the angry, boiling waters, not see them. He felt suffocated. He had felt so all the evening. Besides the pain in his head there was a pressure on his brain; he must have air; ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... Parliament that does the real work. It does not govern Ireland, for example. If the manufacturers want to change a tariff, they form a commercial league, and they effect their purpose. It is the same with the abolition of slavery, and all our great revolutions. Parliament has become as really insignificant as for two centuries it has kept the monarch. O'Connell has taken a good share of its power; Cobden has taken another; and I am inclined to believe,' said Tancred, 'though I care little about it, that, if our order had any spirit or prescience, they would put themselves at the head of ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... McLean. "Successes! One ice-cream-soda success. And she"—Lin's still wounded male pride made him plaintive—"why, even that girl quit him, once she got the chance to appreciate how insignificant he was as compared with the size of his words. No, sir. Not one of ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister

... shattered asteroids; so, perhaps, even among them there are such things as disease and death. Yet just to look at them must remind a man of what a bacillus of a thing he is—the whole human race like some sprinkling of impalpable powder upon the surface of one of the most insignificant fly-wheels of a monstrous machine. But there's order in it, Bertie, there's order! And where there is order there must be mind, and where there is mind there must be sense of Justice. I don't allow that there can be any doubt as to the existence of that central Mind, or as to the possession by ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro

... no longer. He thrust his plate away and interrupted the deliberate and insignificant stream of talk. "Here," he said, "I have made a fool of myself, if I have not made something worse. Do you judge between us - judge between a father and a son. I can speak to you; it is not like ... I will tell you what I feel and what ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... to inquire what thoughts, predetermination or prevision, might be in the head of these men! Record of their thought remains not; Death and Darkness have swept it out utterly. Nay if we even had their thought, all they could have articulately spoken to us, how insignificant a fraction were that of the Thing which realised itself, which decreed itself, on signal given by them! As has been said more than once, this Revolutionary Government is not a self-conscious but a blind fatal one. Each man, enveloped ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... to her tender inquiries into his religious condition. To his parents and sister the disgruntled medicus expressed freely his disappointment at the provision which the duke had made for him. A hard fate, indeed, to have studied seven years for the privilege of starving one's mind and body as an insignificant army doctor! ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... remarkable than the singular constancy of structure preserved throughout a vast period of time by the family of the Pycnodonts and by that of the true Coelacanths; the former persisting, with but insignificant modifications, from the Carboniferous to the Tertiary rocks, inclusive; the latter existing, with still less change, from the Carboniferous rocks to ...
— Geological Contemporaneity and Persistent Types of Life • Thomas H. Huxley

... head and looked about him to find how insignificant a restaurant it was in which he could not buy even a cup of coffee. He had reached Maiden Lane. As his glance ran up and down the north side of that street, it was arrested by ...
— The Tipster - 1901, From "Wall Street Stories" • Edwin Lefevre

... they are based or supposed to be based on ascertained facts, are very few and insignificant. The chief of them ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland

... saints in the flesh, even though they are "pillars of the church," need more than a "sea-change" before they can become proper citizens of "Jerusalem the Golden;" but having compared a raspberry bush, bending gracefully under its delicious burden, with the insignificant seed from which it grew, we are ready to believe in all possibilities of good. Thus we may gather more than berries from our fruit-gardens. Nature hangs thoughts and suggestions on every spray, and blackberry bushes give many an ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... exact shade of colour is immaterial when we present a new coat to a blind man. Had Hammerfeldt left as his legacy the union with some rude healthy creature, to follow his desire might have been an easy thing—one which, on a broad view of my life, would have been relatively insignificant. I should have disliked my duty and done it, as I did a thousand things I disliked. But I should not have been afflicted with the sense that where I endured ten lashes another endured a thousand; that, being a fellow-sufferer, ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope

... think so if you saw the cupboard," Mrs. Orban said. "It is a little, insignificant-looking thing—low and rather deep, and, as we then found, built into the wall. The back of the lower shelf was a sliding panel; and your grandfather's theory is that the last person who used the secret chamber left the panel open. Without nearly standing on one's ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield

... expanse of mountain-girt valleys, on the edges of which these hidden ranches lie, make even the largest fields seem comic in size. The smallest, however, are by no means insignificant in a pecuniary view. On the east side of the Toyabe Range I discovered a jolly Irishman who informed me that his income from fifty acres, reinforced by a sheep range on the adjacent hills, was from ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... ground and ascend his dress in search of an aperture to enter. In these encounters the individuals in the rear of a party of travellers in the jungle invariably fare worst, as the leeches, once warned of their approach, congregate with singular celerity. Their size is so insignificant, and the wound they make is so skilfully punctured, that both are generally imperceptible, and the first intimation of their onslaught is the trickling of the blood or a chill feeling of the leech when it begins to hang ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... roadsides, and often called the White Vine; it also bears the name of Tetterberry, from curing a disease of the skin known as tetters. It climbs about with long straggling stalks, which attach themselves by spiral tendrils, and which produce rough, palmated leaves. Insignificant pale-green flowers spring in small clusters from the bottom of these leaves. The round berries are at first green, and afterwards brilliantly red. Chemically, the plant contains "bryonin," a medicinal substance which is intensely bitter; also malate and phosphate of lime, with ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... be published, and it is this which makes them so valuable, for I must confess, for my own part, that letters which are very elaborately written, and originally intended for the press, are generally the most insignificant, and very little worth any person's reading' (2 Atkyns, ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... naturally and really pleasantly. Elliott almost jumped again, she was so startled. To her, there was something repulsive in the sight of so much human flesh. At the same time it discouraged her. In the presence of these two she felt insignificant, even while she pitied them. She wished to get away, but instinctive breeding held her in her chair, chatting. She hoped what she said wasn't too inane; she didn't know quite ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist

... down and back it with some documentary evidence. Unfortunately, the local archives and libraries do not abound in traditions relative to my subject; after two days of conscientious rummaging, I had collected but a few rare and insignificant documents, which may be summed up in these two lines; "Rozel Abbey, in Rozel township, was inhabited from time immemorial by monks, who left it when it ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet

... insignificant looking young men," she murmured to herself as Ethra and her acquisition walked away along ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers

... was less thought of. Poor Mrs. Beaufort, yet but partially acquainted with the terrors of her husband, still clung to hope for Arthur. Her affection for him brought out from the depths of her cold and insignificant character qualities that had never before been apparent. She watched—she nursed—she tended him. The fine lady was gone; nothing but the mother was ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... in anything that would hold them. The place rioted with the joy and the passion of roses, for buying and selling. There were other flowers, nasturtiums, cornbottles, mignonette, but they had a diminished insignificant look in their tied-up bunches beside the triumph of the roses. Farther on, beyond the cage of the money-changer, the country people were hoarse with crying their vegetables, in two green rows, and beyond that where the jostling crowd ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... background, the black shadow of a bright picture, the inevitable evil in the cycle of every nation. India has become decrepit and has fallen down, like a huge memorial of antiquity, prostrate and broken to pieces. But the most insignificant of these fragments will for ever remain a treasure for the archeologist and the artist, and, in the course of time, may even afford a clue to the philosopher and the psychologist. "Ancient Hindus built like giants and finished their work like goldsmiths," says Archbishop Heber, describing his travel ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... rose flush, and light, like a gracious benediction, fell slowly into valley and gorge, while myriad shades of color pulsated into new life in earth and sky. The two men watched this magic beauty of the dawn in silence. So wondrous was it, so majestic, so far beyond the schemes and thoughts of insignificant man, that it was almost impossible not to see in it some portent, something of promise or warning. Even Seth, practical and farseeing as he was, forgot the actualities of life for a little space, while Richard's dreams took flight into that upper world of rosy flame and forgot the deep valleys, ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner

... the now silent No Man's Land that had passed into the pages of history. One by one the other units were picked up, standing guard over captured positions. Everything had been swept into the Allied pocket at an insignificant cost. ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... your whole strength; as may happen in more ways than one. One of these ways was that taken by Tullus and Metius, when each staked the existence of his country and the credit of his army on the valour and good fortune of three only of his soldiers, that being an utterly insignificant fraction of the force at his disposal. For neither of these kings reflected that all the labours of their predecessors in framing such institutions for their States, as might, with the aid of the citizens themselves, maintain them long in freedom, were rendered futile, when ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli

... dwarfish; spare, stunted, limited; cramp, cramped; pollard, Liliputian, dapper, pocket; portative^, portable; duodecimo^; dumpy, squat; short &c 201. impalpable, intangible, evanescent, imperceptible, invisible, inappreciable, insignificant, inconsiderable, trivial; infinitesimal, homoeopathic^; atomic, subatomic, corpuscular, molecular; rudimentary, rudimental; embryonic, vestigial. weazen^, scant, scraggy, scrubby; thin &c (narrow) 203; granular &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... said, as of his two great predecessors, that woman plays an insignificant role in his dramas. Most of the nineteen plays which have come down to us of the ninety-two he wrote are named after women; and Bulwer-Lytton was quite right when he declared that "he is the first of the Hellenic poets who interests us intellectually in the antagonism and affinity ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... it is a calibrated galvanometer wound with a coil of high resistance. The object to be attained is that it shall receive only an insignificant portion of current and that such portion shall suffice to actuate it. If connected in parallel with any portion of a circuit, it should not ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... narrowed, and embittered. Broad Churchmen, on the other hand, were looked upon by those who differed from them as altogether Latitudinarians in religion, and Whigs in politics—terms constantly used as practically convertible. Danger from Rome, although by no means insignificant, was no longer so visible, or so pressing, as it had been in James II.'s reign. Meanwhile, it had become apparent that the Church of England was menaced by a peril of an opposite kind. Not High Churchmen only, but all who desired to see the existing character of the Church of England ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... was a proud soul, and no assistant surgeon on an insignificant sloop would answer her—when he got his surgeon's commission she would marry him. And it was seven years before she journeyed to England alone with that delightful object in view. He had to serve for her as Jacob did ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... delicately-tinted blossoms, but never faltering in their good work. They peer into the crevices of the bark, scrutinize each leaf, and explore the very heart of the buds, to detect, drag forth, and destroy those tiny creatures, singly insignificant, collectively a scourge, which prey upon the hopes of the fruit-grower, and which, if undisturbed, would bring his care to naught. Some warblers flit incessantly in the terminal foliage of the tallest trees; others hug close to the scored ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... "Lancelot" was not completed by Chretien, we are told, but the poem is his in such large part that one would be over-scrupulous not to call it his. The other three poems mentioned are his entire. In addition, there are quite generally assigned to the poet two insignificant lyrics, the pious romance of "Guillaume d'Angleterre", and the elaboration of an episode from Ovid's "Metamorphoses" (vi., 426-674) called "Philomena" by its recent editor (C. de Boer, Paris, 1909). All these are extant and accessible. But since "Guillaume d'Angleterre" and "Philomena" ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes

... small states in the south continued until 980. Before it was ended, the Sung tried to extend their influence in the south beyond the Chinese border, and secured a sort of protectorate over parts of Annam (973). This sphere of influence was politically insignificant and not directly of any economic importance; but it fulfilled for the Sung the same functions which colonial territories fulfilled for Europeans, serving as a field of operation for the commercial class, who imported raw materials ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... one whose chief delight lies in the passive contemplation of the Four Books and the Five Classics, should be selected by destiny to fill a position calling for great personal courage and an aggressive nature? Assuredly it can only end in a mean and insignificant death, perhaps ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah

... from this moment Jussuf paid little more attention to his business. This absence of mind increased every moment, and often caused him to ask quite a trifling sum for very precious goods, and an unconscionably high one for those equally insignificant. He could scarcely conceal his chagrin whenever new customers made their appearance; and all saw with wonder, how—contrary to his usual custom—he hailed with joy the time for closing his warehouse, and how joyously he departed with his ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... Italy. And then, as a crowning catastrophe, when, after prodigies of will-power, after miracles of perseverance, they were entitled to think that the Golden Fleece was won, it all came to nothing. The list of the Twenty-seven had no more value than the most insignificant ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc

... impression on Thompson, since he had reached the stage where he was keenly susceptible to external impressions from any source whatever. Those hurrying multitudes, that unending stir, the kaleidoscopic shifts of this human antheap made him at first profoundly lonely, immeasurably insignificant, just as the North had made him feel when he was new to it. But just as he had shaped himself to that environment, so he felt—as he had not at first felt in the North—that in time, with effort, he ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... Thought comes into your Mind again, first of all consider with yourself, what an insignificant Figure a Woman makes when she is parted from her Husband. It is the greatest Glory of a Matron, to be obedient to her Husband. This Nature dictates, and it is the Will of God, that the Woman should wholly depend upon ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... the first running stream that joins the Morumbidgee, in a course of more than 340 miles. It came from the S.E., and made a visible impression on the river at the junction, although in tracing it up, it appeared to be insignificant in itself. The circumstance of these tributaries all occurring on the left, evidenced the level nature of the country to the north. In the afternoon, we passed a dry creek also from the S.E. which must ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt

... sun, in the same way that the magnificent rings of Saturn surround that planet. Of such nebulae as this there are from 2000 to 3000 visible in the regions of space, compared with which the dimension of ours is insignificant: at the same distance, and sought for with the same ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various

... immediately restored it to life and liberty. The agonies of a prisoner at the stake, while the fire and instruments of torture are preparing, could not be more severe than the sufferings of that poor mouse; and, insignificant as the object was, I felt at that moment the sweet sensation that mercy leaves in the mind when she ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... in Washington, but we know of nothing which shows so strongly the perilous fascination of the place as the fact that a man of his extraordinary moral and mental qualities could ever have thought for a moment of accepting a position so insignificant and incongruous as that which he was more than willing to assume when he left Congress. He would have filled the place with honor and credit— but at a monstrous expense. We do not so much refer to his exceptional career and his great figure in history; ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... to me in life, and courage and fidelity to conscience. I feel it to be honor enough and joy enough for a life-time that I am his first biographer, though but a late born child and of merit entirely insignificant. The literary work is, indeed, but of home-made quality, yet it serves to hold together what is the heaven-made wisdom of a great teacher of men. It will be found that Father Hecker has three words in this book to my one, though all my words I tried to make his. His journals, letters, ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... but the market, which was in complete possession. "This intricate, curious, but lifeless town," Murray calls it; yet to me it appeared overflowing with life. Its streets are mere crooked, dirty lanes, bordered with perfectly insignificant houses; but they were filled with the same clatter and chatter that I had found at the hotel. The market was held partly in the little square of the hotel de ville, a structure which a flattering woodcut in the Guide-Joanne had ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... He can spin yarns all right. Lie after lie and never trips. And such an ugly insignificant-looking creature, too. Why, it seems to me I could crush him with my finger nails. But wait, I'll make you talk. I'll make you tell me things. [Aloud.] You were quite right in your observation, that one can do nothing in a dreary out-of-the-way place. Take this town, for instance. You lie ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol

... Lagauchetiere, Olier, Mance, Longueuil, and others equally well named, will carry down to future generations the memory of those who were prominent in the making and moulding of Canada. It is strange that one of the most insignificant streets in the city, a mere lane, of a single block in length, should bear the name of Dollard, the hero of one of the most illustrious deeds recorded in history, an event which has rightly been called the ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway

... him not to touch you, you little fool, you ought to fall at his feet. For what he has done for you, you ought to steal the wide world and give it to him. And you refuse your footling little insignificant self. If you had a thousand selves, they wouldn't be ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... each. Immediately after moulting the head appears very large, and seems much too heavy for the size of the body. At the end of a feeding period and just previous to another moult the body has grown until the head is almost lost from sight, and it now seems small and insignificant; so that the appearance of a caterpillar depends on whether you examine it before or ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter

... making it a matter of athletic prowess the boys carried their loads to the destination. But the little heaps on the dusty earth looked pitifully insignificant. Skinny borrowed a pin and lanced the white protuberance at the base of ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely

... faced with. To watch every thought that passed within him, lest it should by the slightest sign betray him; to regulate and veil every look and every word he spoke to her; never for a second to forget that these other persons were actual and dangerous, not merely the insignificant and grotesque shadows that they seemed. It would be perhaps for ever a part of his love for her to seem not to love her. He did not dare dream of fulfilment. He was to be her friend, and try to bring her happiness—burn and long for her, and not think ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... equal obligation to those cool heads, which are not to be seduced into the acceptance of symmetrical formulae and bold generalisations for solid truths because of their brilliancy and grandeur; to the men who cannot overlook those small exceptions and insignificant residual phenomena which, when tracked to their causes, are so often the death of brilliant hypotheses; to the men, finally, who, by demonstrating the limits to human knowledge which are set by the very conditions of thought, have warned mankind ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel

... landscape; and the more we study them, the more are we convinced, that, in whatever direction we turn our observations, we may extend them to infinity. There is no limit to any study of Nature, and even one so apparently insignificant as the flight of birds leads to an endless series of interesting facts, and opens the eyes to new beauties in the aspect of Nature and new sources of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... Church. Fully realizing that adulteration of any part of the Christian doctrine was bound to infect also the doctrine of faith and justification and thus endanger salvation, they earnestly warned against, and opposed, every deviation from the clear Word of God, no matter how insignificant it might appear. They loved the truth more than external peace, more even than their own lives. Hence they found it impossible to be silent, apathetic, and complacent spectators while the Philippists and ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... It may be clever; I have no doubt it is. But I would rather see the worst music-hall show that was ever put up than the best picture-play that was ever filmed. The darkness, the silence, the buzz of the machine, and the insignificant processions of shadows on a sheet are about the last thing I should ever describe by the word Entertainment. I would as soon sit for two hours in a Baptist Chapel. Still, Mr. C. Chaplin has ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... join, which he took with the intention of breaking it; and the rebels, perhaps seeing cause to distrust him, carried him off to Wyatt as a prisoner.[226] That night the insurgents rested at Gravesend. The next day (January 31) they reached Dartford. Their actual numbers were insignificant, but their strength was the disaffection of London, where the citizens were too likely to follow the example which had been set ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... instance, who am but a country gentleman in a small way—an obscure bachelor, abiding from year's end to year's end on my insignificant farm—have witnessed things in my time, which, had they been said and done nearer the tropics, would have been cited far and near in evidence of the turbulence of human passions, and that "the heart is deceitful above all things, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... acting with the Pope's consent made his conduct none the less execrable in the eyes of the French bishops. The episcopal lords resolved to appeal from a Pope ill informed to one with wider knowledge; for they held the authority of the Bishop of Rome to be insignificant in comparison with the authority of the Council. They groaned: the abomination of desolation was laying waste Christian Gaul. In order to pacify the Church of France thus roused against him, my lord of Bedford convoked at Paris the ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... degree than in the greater part of other considerable societies of the same kind; and I look upon this circumstance as the real cause of their present excellence. In the Medical College of Edinburgh in particular the salaries of the professors are insignificant. There are few or no bursaries or exhibitions, and their monopoly of degrees is broken in upon by all other universities, foreign and domestic. I require no other explication of its present acknowledged superiority over every other society of ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... great buildings of a metropolitan character, unless amongst such buildings are to be included hotels, newspaper offices, and dry goods stores, some of which are really enormous piles. Generally speaking, New York may be described as a city consisting of comparatively insignificant parts greatly exaggerated, and almost infinitely multiplied. It may be want of taste; but on the whole, I was better pleased with Chicago. The season of my visit was doubtless unpropitious. Who could admire ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles

... alone in a small boat on the open sea is exactly similar. You feel so very, very small and you realize then what an insignificant part of nature you really are. I have felt it, too, amid vast mountains when I have been toiling up a peak which stretched thousands of feet above me with others rearing their majestic forms on every side. Then, nature seems almost alive and full ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews

... much too young in her independence, and too insignificant in all eyes but her own, to reason and act for herself, except on points that pressed too obviously on her immediate concerns to be overlooked; but the great social principles,—or it might be better to say, the great social interests,—that then distracted Europe, produced ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... the parents, as they say in melodrama; and in a minute or two we followed. What struck me first was that these insignificant and inadequate people had the command of the grand gesture—had la ligne. The mother had laid aside her knitting—not dropped it—and stood waiting with open arms. But even in clasping her son she seemed to include me in her welcome. I don't know how to describe it; but they ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton

... door, on a stone which once served as a horse-block for equestrians, Risler watches with a smile the exit from the factory. He never loses his enjoyment of the outspoken esteem of all these good people whom he knew when he was insignificant and humble like themselves. The "Good-day, Monsieur Risler," uttered by so many different voices, all in the same affectionate tone, warms his heart. The children accost him without fear, the long-bearded designers, half-workmen, half-artists, shake hands with him as they pass, and address him ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... soul—my uncle!" That excellent man caught me in the act of eating the provender, and—my bones ache at this very moment as I think of the licking I got! I forgot to mention that I had a rather insignificant brother, four years older than myself, who became my uncle's apprentice, and who joined that gentleman in his persecutions against me. My kind relatives were rather blissful people in the way of ignorance, and they hated me because they imagined that I regarded myself as their superior—a ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson

... true manhood to challenge general outside sympathy, or to command the respect of other nationalities. The numerous revolutionary outbreaks upon the island—so frequent in the last half century as to be chronic—have all been of the most insignificant character, compared with the importance of the occasion and the object in view. These efforts have mostly been made from without, almost entirely unsupported from within the borders of Cuba, with the exception of that of 1868. It appears incredible that an intelligent people, within ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... that an Austrian force had been reported approaching from the south, moving on Krupanie, and that it had seemed so insignificant that a small detachment of third reserve troops had been sent to hold it back. But this enemy force now developed ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... importunities by marrying him; either of which she found equally difficult and impossible to execute. She did not know that Dick was putting on a bold front; that his attitude was assumed; that, like her, he was at his wits' end; that, if she suffered, he suffered tenfold. Her annoyance was insignificant in comparison to the cyclonic outbursts that ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... induce them to hunt up their works. A book of reference, such as this book must be to most of those who shall use it, is bound to make mention of writers whose names are of rare occurrence, but who had their parts, though they may have been insignificant ones, in building up their country's literature. Of the great writers, Professor Craik devotes but little space to Shakspeare and Milton, because their works are in everybody's hands; while from Chaucer and Spenser, Swift and Burke, ample specimens are given, the author ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... what immense conclusions, touching our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor, may be reached by means of very insignificant premises. This is eminently true of manners and forms of speech; a movement or a phrase often tells you all you want to know about a person. Thus, "How's your health?" (commonly pronounced haaelth)—instead of, How do you do? or, How are you? Or calling your little dark entry a "hall," ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... it. After the sermon the volunteers in the church will take the oath of war upon the swords of their officers. I have been ardently yearning for this day, and now I shall probably be unable to participate in its services, for—do not laugh, madame, at my insignificant mishap—the tailor refuses to make me a uniform by that time, and in citizen's clothes, as a fashionable dandy, I really cannot appear among the brave men who will proudly walk about in their litefkaes. The tailor says it is impossible for him to make a uniform at so short a notice; he pretends ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach

... which was awaiting California—of the splendour which would rest on little Yerba Buena in the lapse of time. Yerba Buena was the early name of the settlement. This was applied also, as we have learned, to Goat Island. The pueblo was then insignificant and apparently with no prospect of expansion or grandeur. There were only a few houses there, chiefly of adobe construction, clustering about the Plaza. The Presidio, west of the stray hamlet, and the Mission Dolores, to the southwest, ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey

... independent of the allurement of sex. A clean and perfectly sane satisfaction was the immediate result; he felt that he had grown larger in his own eyes—that the old Adam who had ruled over him so long had become suddenly dwarfed and insignificant. "To like a woman and yet not to make love to her," he repeated in his thoughts. "By Jove, it will be something decent, something really worth while." Then he remembered that he had never known intimately a woman ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... little black ship, solid, sturdy, compact, strong and resistant as any vessel built by mortal hands can be, yet utterly insignificant in comparison with the white, cold adversary she must fight. And on this little ship are sixty-nine human beings, men, women, and children, whites and Eskimos, who have gone out into the crazy, ice-tortured channel between Baffin Bay and the Polar Sea—gone out to help ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary

... the odd chance which had induced two boys to stroll, in the middle of winter, along the bank of an insignificant outlet of a Thames backwater, what a fine place, I told myself, this would have been for the concealment of a crime! Even without the weights, which had probably become detached from the sack by tangling among the roots under the surface of the water, the ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson

... squshy mud-cap," "Bi-Colored-Python-Rock-Snake," and "satiable curtiosity." No one could substitute other words in this tale; for contrasts of feeling and humor are so tied up with the words that other words would fail to tell the real story. If an interjection has seemed an insignificant part of speech, note the vision of tropical setting opened up by the exclamation, "O Bananas! Where did you learn that trick?" This is indeed a tale where the form is the matter, the form and the message are one complete whole ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready

... seemed that there had been unusually heavy June rains through that section, which accounted for Boggy being in its dangerous condition. Millet's foreman had not considered it necessary to test such an insignificant stream until he got a couple of hundred head of cattle floundering in the mire. They had saved the greater portion of the mired cattle, but quite a number were trampled to death by the others, and now the regular crossing was not approachable for ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams

... periodical overflowing of the Nile which recurred regularly almost to a day, they had before them wide irregular plains, owing their fertility not to inundations, but to occasional rains or the influence of insignificant streams; hills of varying heights covered with vines and other products of cultivation; mountains of different altitudes irregularly distributed, clothed with forests, furrowed with torrents, their summits often crowned with snow even in the hottest period of summer: and in this region ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... listened and frowned, and looked about him as though to take counsel with his officers. But the best of these were away at the fight, and those with him were few and insignificant and inexperienced. ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... .. < chapter xciii 15 THE CASTAWAY > It was but some few days after encountering the Frenchman, that a most significant event befell the most insignificant of the Pequod's crew; an event most lamentable; and which ended in providing the sometimes madly merry and predestinated craft with a living and ever accompanying prophecy of whatever shattered sequel might prove her ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... a laudable monument of national taste and religion; and the enthusiast who entered the dome of St. Sophia might be tempted to suppose that it was the residence, or even the workmanship, of the Deity. Yet how dull is the artifice, how insignificant is the labor, if it be compared with the formation of the vilest insect that crawls upon the surface of the temple! [Footnote 103: Among the crowd of ancients and moderns who have celebrated the edifice of St. Sophia, I shall distinguish and follow, 1. Four original ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... line of moving dots, the little company trailed a slow way across this ocean of green. Nothing on its face was more insignificant than they. The birds in the trees and the bees in the flowers had a more important place in its economy. One afternoon David riding in the rear crested a ridge and saw them a mile in advance, the road stretching ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... have made or lost the most money. There was a prevailing desire among them to make out that they came from or were going to same very large place; and our friends fancied an actual mortification in the face of a modest gentleman who got out at Penelope (or some other insignificant classical station, in the ancient Greek and Roman part of New York State), after having listened to the life of a somewhat rustic- looking person who had described himself as belonging near New ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... their hearts or stimulating their minds, only darkened their ideas and depressed them; it was made up of rigid old women, withered and graceless, whose conversation turned on the differences which distinguished various preachers and confessors, on their own petty indispositions, on religious events insignificant even to the "Quotidienne" or "l'Ami de la Religion." As for the men who appeared in the Comtesse de Granville's salon, they extinguished any possible torch of love, so cold and sadly resigned were their faces. They were all of an age when mankind is sulky ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac

... even should the sneers of the {585} ignorantly-wise, or the frowns of the pompously-grave, be directed toward the unconscious wight, who, immersed in mud, gropes with the keenness of a money-gatherer, for the to them insignificant objects, which have exercised the wisdom and the providence of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various

... will have me afraid to meet the Herr. After holding him up as such a paragon, is it any wonder I should feel as small and insignificant as ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond

... was Miss Madge Hampton, an amateur of some small private means, and he thought no more about her. Rehearsal in an insignificant part displayed her as capable ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... perforce be produced, for our dramatic authors, on general principles, seldom give us opportunity to become acquainted with more than the outside skin of the man, which, to be sure, is the same for Napoleon as for his most insignificant corporal. In exceptional cases when they allow us a glimpse into the heart and reins, they expect us to take a narrow interest in a peculiarly organized individual, and are wanting in every kind of background. However the psychological side in our drama ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... our ancestors were furnished with a compact and complete criticism of life. They were told how the world began, and how it would end; they learned that all material existence was but a base and insignificant blot upon the fair face of the spiritual world, and that nature was, to all intents and purposes, the play-ground of the devil; they learned that the earth is the centre of the visible universe, and that man is the cynosure of things terrestrial; and more especially is it inculcated that the ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... shown a marked preference for and indulgence towards her. Such being the case, one can readily imagine how a woman of such a weak, selfish nature would resent the quiet dethronement of her young favourite, and see the honours she had been accustomed to take now won by an insignificant girl of no particular birth or station in society. Ada, not slow to find all this out, viewed it with supreme delight, and was careful to fan the flame by various hints and insinuations thrown ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... the interior of France. He actually entered Burgundy, while the Spaniards from the Netherlands made progress in Picardy; and John De Werth, a formidable general of the League, and a celebrated partisan, pushed his march into Champagne, and spread consternation even to the gates of Paris. But an insignificant fortress in Franche Comte completely checked the Imperialists, and they were obliged, a second ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.

... did the delicate chinking of coins and the announcements of roulette numbers, but jarring and ruffling its smooth surface: little sudden rustlings and squabblings, disputes between players in French or German, sharp and mean, yet insignificant as the quarrelling of a nestful of birds in the ample peace of ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... is,—the sister's soul! With her 'Twas winter yesterday; now, all is warmth, The green leaf's springing and the turtle's voice, "Arise and come away!" Come whither?—far Enough from the esteem, respect, and all The brother's somewhat insignificant Array of rights! All which he knows before, Has calculated on so long ago! I think such love, (apart from yours and mine,) Contented with its little term of life, Intending to retire betimes, aware How ...
— A Blot In The 'Scutcheon • Robert Browning

... victorious over us? If Austria had followed such a policy, she could have had no other aim than to resume her former position in Germany: for this was really the only thing she had given up in 1866. There had been no other important conditions, and the pecuniary ones had been insignificant. Well then, what would have been the position of Austria as the presiding power in the German Union, if she had to confess that in alliance with France she had taken from Germany the left bank of the Rhine, that she had reduced the south German states ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... often seemed—whether a lesson were well or ill learned, who made such a fuss about trifles, and set such hard tasks, and made such unreasonable rules, behold! they were just as anxious and troubled as if Lobelia had been one of their own number, instead of the most insignificant freshman in the whole school. Miss Boyle was not simply a mathematical machine, Rose Barclay found out. She really cared about them, cared enough to call them into her room, and want to hear all about that last walk, ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards

... view from this elevated spot, should the day be favourable, certainly repays the adventurer; but not unfrequently an envious mist or a passing shower will render these efforts unavailing, to scan the wide creation—or rather but a circlet of that creation—from an insignificant hillock, scarcely an atom in the heap of created matter, that is itself but as a grain of dust in the vast space through which it rolls. But to our tale, or rather, it may be, to our task—for the author is now sitting ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... I turned cold with fear that Madonna was already taken, and, by contrast with such a fear as that, the reflection that he might carry out his threat to hang me from that black beam of his, faded into insignificant proportions. ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini

... distant cousin; Lady Diana Angersthorpe was taken in hand by her aunt, the Dowager Marchioness of Carrisbrook; and James Steadman would have had to find employment among strangers, if Lady Diana had not pleaded so urgently with her aunt as to secure him a somewhat insignificant ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... of their white-topped wagons, the close black carriages in which the traders travel and sleep, large droves of animals, and men on horseback and on foot. They all stopped on the meadow near us. Our diminutive cart and handful of men made but an insignificant figure by the side of their wide and bustling camp. Tete Rouge went over to visit them, and soon came back with half a dozen biscuits in one hand and a bottle of brandy in the other. I inquired where ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... may have given weeks and weeks before? The magistrate, however, remembers it; and twenty times, if need be, he brings it up again. And as the small snowflake may become an irresistible avalanche, so an insignificant word, uttered at haphazard, forgotten, then recalled, commented upon, and ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau

... contriving that the road below should not be overlooked by any one. The moon had gone down, so that it was difficult to see ten paces. He produced an ekka from somewhere—one of those two-wheeled carts drawn by one insignificant pony that do most of the unpretentious work of India; and he and Ismail, the Afridi gateman, drove off into the darkness ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy

... limited, minute, scanty, small, diminutive, little, narrow, short, tiny, inconsiderable, mean, paltry, slender, trifling, infinitesimal, microscopic, petty, slight, trivial. insignificant, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... after he had done all kinds of mischief to the city, he very nearly let it fall into the hands of the Aetolians. By this time Aratus, being grown a youth, was in much esteem, both for his noble birth and his spirit and disposition, which, while neither insignificant nor wanting in energy, were solid, and tempered with a steadiness of judgment beyond his years. For which reason the exiles had their eyes most upon him, nor did Nicocles less observe his motions, but secretly spied and watched him, not out of apprehension of any such considerable ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... the object presented to us? In itself it seemed comparatively insignificant. It may have been but a broken column, a lonely pool with a star-beam on its quiet surface,—yet it awes us. We remember it when phantasmal pictures of bright Damascus, or of colossal pyramids, of bazaars in Stamboul, or lengthened caravans that defile slow amidst the sands of Araby, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... had an opportunity of seeing and hearing a remarkable proof of your uncle's hold upon the most insignificant verbiage that chance had poured into his ear. I was staying with him at Bowood, in the winter of 1852. Lord Elphinstone—who had been many years before Governor of Madras,—was telling one morning at ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... illustrious Hari had slain the Nagas in the great lake, he, by sight alone, is capable of slaying those Asuras called the Nivatakavachas, along with their followers. But the slayer of Madhu should not be urged when the task is insignificant. A mighty mass of energy that he is, it swelleth to increasing proportions, it may consume the whole universe. This Arjuna also is competent to encounter them all, and the hero having slain them in battle, will go back to the world ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... of his thoughts by a strong effort, he began to vaguely wonder why and how it happened that the place where he now was, . . this small and insignificant court,—had so far escaped the fire, and was as cool and sombre as a sacred tomb set apart for some hero, ... or Poet? Poet!—The word acted as a stimulant to his tired struggling brain, and he all at once remembered what Sah-luma had said to him at their first meeting: "There is but ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... natural process. Unless you and I take upon our lips, though with far deeper meaning, the words with which the heathen centurion gazed upon the dying Christ, and say, 'Truly this was the Son of God!' His Cross is common and trivial and insignificant; but if we can thus speak, then it stands before us as the crown of all God's manifestations in the world,' the wisdom of God and the power ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... those amusements in life which suited him best; and hung up a little picture of his cousin in his sitting-room, amidst the French prints, the favourite actresses and dancers, the racing and coaching works of art, which suited his taste and formed his gallery. It was an insignificant little picture, representing a simple round face with ringlets; and it made, as it must be confessed, a very poor figure by the side of Mademoiselle Petitot, dancing over a rainbow, or Mademoiselle Redowa, grinning in red boots and ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... pretensions also. Now there are great mutations in states. Spain, once the most important kingdom of Europe, has much less influence to-day than Prussia, a power of yesterday. Then the minister of the most insignificant prince claimed precedency over the representative of the most potent republic. This might have passed while republics were insignificant and dependent; but no one can believe that a minister of America, ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... at Craythew on Sunday evening threw such insignificant details as these into the shade, and brought out the true character of the chief actors, amongst whom ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford

... knowingly. "Only one insignificant life in three days?! How little you know the Anarchists. I want you to understand, sirs, it is our wont to use just five minutes for each act, which means 864 lives in ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... the thundering echo, indifferent to his agonies, despising his frailties, flinging him, sea-wreck of the most miserable, to any insignificant end.... ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... of the dancer are far from insignificant to the character he is representing. Their expression should be strictly conformable to his subject. The eye especially should speak. Thence it is that the Italian custom of dancing with uncovered faces, cannot but be more advantageous than that of dancing masked, as is commonly done in France; ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini

... the seas, it may readily be gathered how comparatively insignificant the proportion in which the British colonies are amenable for the cost of the British navy; and, on the contrary, how large the cost incurred for the guardianship of the foreign commerce of Great Britain. In the absence of those authentic data which would warrant the construction of approximate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... interesting as mine, it would have been worth while to have had Gurney to take it down in short-hand. The words of kings and queens are precious, but it would be hardly fair to record a Royal after-dinner colloquy.... After a few insignificant questions and answers,—gracious smile and inclination of head on part of Queen, profound bow on mine, she turned again to Lord Grey. Directly after I was (to my satisfaction) deposited at the whist table ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... in the mechanical works mentioned above; nevertheless, even here, he shows himself to be the child of his age. For example, he almost always paints the interiors of his Gothic cathedrals on broad canvases of insignificant height, which causes the pointed arches and vaulted structures of the foreground to be cut off at the top. In spite of the mathematically correct drawing the general plan of the picture therefore reveals that the age of Peter Neefs ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... the dead-level wage each year anyway? Good clerks suffer because of the negligence of indifferent ones; but the former bring up the average of work—and that is all the bank cares. The staff of a bank is something to be worked en masse; the individual is an insignificant part of the works. ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... of Oropus,[2] a frontier town which Athens claimed, and their treatment of the towns just mentioned, towards which the Athenians were kindly disposed. The Phocians, who had until recently been unwilling allies of Thebes, were now hostile and not insignificant neighbours, and about this time entered into relations with both Sparta and Athens. The subject of contention was the possession or control of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, which the Phocians had recently taken by force from ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes

... You and your democracies are only a fleeting phase, an infinitesimal fraction of the aeons to be represented, perhaps, in some geological record of the future, by a mere insignificant conglomerate of dust and bones, and ballot-boxes, and letters in the Spectator and other articles characteristic of this especial period. What a dream of Science that, interstellary communication established, some being of knowledge and capacities as infinitely ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang

... embodiment of ambition; "I should much like to emulate him." The description of the untamed faun as he then appeared is not flattering: his complexion sallow, his hair stiff, his figure slight, his expression lusterless, his manner insignificant. Moreover, his behavior was sullen, and at first, of course, he spoke broken French with an Italian accent. Open-mouthed and with sparkling eyes, however, he listened attentively to the first rehearsal of ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane



Words linked to "Insignificant" :   unimportant, superficial, nonmeaningful, hole-in-corner, minor, insignificance, thin, significant, significance, inappreciable, trivial, peanut, hole-and-corner, fragile, slight, meaningless, light, unnoticeable



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