"Nothing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had the last time we were in Rochester. I liked this one best. There, you know, the ladies came all dressed up, carrying little velvet or satin work-bags, and we just had thin bread and butter and such things for tea—nothing very good. Here some of the ladies—of course I mean the ones from the village—came in calico dresses and sun-bonnets. And they were so free and easy—sewed fast and talked fast while they were there; and then if they had to go home a little bit, they'd just pop on their bonnets and off they'd ...
— A Missionary Twig • Emma L. Burnett
... following a twelve-year illness spent in a secondary house, she went to visit a daughter living near Lake Tahoe. When she returned to Dresslerville her two sons had torn down the shed and disposed of all their father's possessions. In deference to their mother's rather modern views about funerals, nothing had been placed in ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... a second rod, and cast in about a yard above, and your third a yard below the first rod; and stay the rods in the ground: but go yourself so far from the water-side, that you perceive nothing but the top of the floats, which you must watch most diligently. Then when you have a bite, you shall perceive the top of your float to sink suddenly into the water: yet, nevertheless, be not too hasty to run to your rods, until you see that the line goes clear away; then creep ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... behind at Elmhurst. Fagin had not been overtaken, although the Rangers had engaged in a skirmish with some of his followers, losing two men. Colonel Mortimer had been wounded slightly. As to Eric he knew nothing—no one had ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... had sought, by various modes of punishment, other than chastisement, to enforce obedience in this particular case. Now he was resolved to try the severer remedy. Andrew had expected nothing farther than to be shut up, alone, in the room, and to go, perhaps, supperless to bed, and he was nerved to bear this without a murmur. But when the rod became suddenly visible, and was lifted above him in the air, his little heart was ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur
... young man, that the ladies saw nothing of you between three and five o'clock on that Sunday. That's rather a ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... to take leave of me, being in a sound sleep, after a very indifferent night. Perhaps it was as well. Emotion might have hurt her; and nothing I could have expressed would have been worth the risk. I have foreseen, for two years and more, that this menaced event could not be far distant. I have seen plainly, within the last two months, that recovery was hopeless. And yet to part with the companion of twenty-nine ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Hilda whispered in a gentle tone, kissing her forehead delicately as she spoke: 'cry and relieve yourself. There'a nothing gives one so much comfort when one's heart is bursting as a regular good downright cry.' And, suiting the action to the word, forthwith Lady Hilda laid her own statuesque head down beside Edie's, and so those two weeping women, rivals once in a vague way, and now bound to one another by ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... there is plenty of alliteration in "Alison." That ornament is too grateful to the English ear ever to have ceased or to be likely to cease out of English poetry. But it has ceased to possess any metrical value; it has absolutely nothing to do with the structure of ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... take an exactly contrary view. We say: "To fight it out settles nothing, since it is not a question of who is stronger, but of whose view is best, and as that is not always easy to establish, it is of the utmost importance in the interest of all parties, in the long run, to ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... the crafty counsel of the bishop, and determined to advance without delay. He mounted his war horse, Orelia, and rode among his troops assembled on that spacious plain, and wherever he appeared he was received with acclamations; for nothing so arouses the spirit of the soldier as to behold his sovereign in arms. He addressed them in words calculated to touch their hearts and animate their courage. 'The Saracens,' said he, 'are ravaging our land, and their object is our conquest. Should they prevail, your very existence as a nation ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... muzzles menacing the king's plump back; the fourth had passed his weapon behind his neck, and held it there with arms extended like a backboard. The visit was extraordinarily long. The king, no longer galvanised with gin, said and did nothing. He sat collapsed in a chair and let a cigar go out. It was hot, it was sleepy, it was cruel dull; there was no resource but to spy in the countenance of Tebureimoa for some remaining trait of Mr. Corpse the butcher. His hawk nose, crudely depressed and flattened at the point, did truly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to say that Sir Robert, though still very ill, is freer from pain, his pulse is less high, and he feels himself better; the Doctors think there is no vital injury, and nothing from which he cannot recover, but that he must be for some days ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... and acquitted himself to the satisfaction of his employers, though the whole plan ended in nothing, and the Bishop, finding that France had joined Holland, made haste, after pocketing an instalment of his subsidy, to conclude a separate peace. Temple, at a later period, looked back with no great satisfaction to this part of his life; and excused himself ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that longing for pure radiance which animated her great colourists. It is a perfect bath of light, and I couldn't get rid of a fancy that we were cleaving the upper atmosphere on some hurrying cloud-skiff. At Torcello there is nothing but the light to see— nothing at least but a sort of blooming sand-bar intersected by a single narrow creek which does duty as a canal and occupied by a meagre cluster of huts, the dwellings apparently of market- gardeners and fishermen, and by ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... genius or a masterpiece. In all human sentiments there are, as it were, primeval flowers bred of noble enthusiasms, which droop and fade from year to year, till joy is but a memory and glory a lie. Amid such fleeting emotions nothing so resembles love as the young passion of an artist who tastes the first delicious anguish of his destined fame and woe,—a passion daring yet timid, full of vague confidence and sure discouragement. Is there a man, slender in fortune, rich ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... in his bringing up of Jason, AEsculapius, and Achilles, but most perfectly by Homer, in the fable of the horses of Achilles, and the part assigned to them, in relation to the death of his friend, and in prophecy of his own. There is, perhaps, in all the "Iliad," nothing more deep in significance—there is nothing in all literature more perfect in human tenderness, and honor for the mystery of inferior life—than the verses that describe the sorrow of the divine ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... overhears and catches fragmentary echoes) when Darwin published his 'Origin of Species.' That great book consisted simply of a theory as to the causes which led to the distinctions of kind between plants and animals. With evolution at large it had nothing to do; it took for granted the origin of sun, moon, and stars, planets and comets, the earth and all that in it is, the sea and the dry land, the mountains and the valleys, nay even life itself in the crude form, everything in fact, save the one point of the various ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... however, was beheld, nothing but a tumultuous crowd of men and women, and some one in their midst, earnestly talking to them. As my comrade advanced, this person came forward and proved to be no stranger. He was an old grizzled sailor, whom Toby and myself had frequently seen ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... are our evill fortunes, And nothing sincks us but [our] want of providence. O you delt coldly, Sir, and too too poorely, Not like a man fitt to stem tides of dangers, When you gave way to the Prince to enter Utrecht. There was a blow, a full blow at our fortunes; ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... attention to this lamentable state of public morals, and seems to have concurred with his great predecessor Sully, that nothing but the most rigorous severity could put a stop to the evil. The subject indeed was painfully forced upon him by his enemies. The Marquis de Themines, to whom Richelieu, then Bishop of Lucon, had given offence ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... to leave. He is amazingly entertaining, to be sure. He remarked what a torment of his life Mr. Reed, the postmaster in Cambridge, was. He is an old man, about a hundred and forty years old, who always made him think of the little end of nothing sharpened off into a point. He had but one joke—to tell people sometimes when they asked for a letter that they must pay half a dollar for it; and then, if in their simplicity they gave it, he would laugh, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... about un-American activities in the Navy Yard. I told him I didn't and he told me to go back to work and not to say anything about having been called before them. Now I do not understand why you ask me all these questions. The Congressman told me not to talk and I am saying nothing more. Nothing." ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak
... why Dora can't come over here a little while before the party. There's plenty of time and I do want to have it off my mind. Besides that, I might coax her to assist me in dressing, for she has good taste, if nothing more; I mean to write her a few lines asking ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... will not only hold the members of the organization together for a longer time, because of their cordial personal attitude toward him, but will find himself much less fatigued at the end of the rehearsal; for nothing drains one's vitality so rapidly as scolding. A bit of humorous repartee, then, especially in response to the complaints of some lazy or grouchy performer; the ability to meet accidental mishaps without anger; even a humorous anecdote to relieve the strain of a taxing ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... seem to indicate that some messenger had arrived with despatches. At length all these sounds became hushed and still. No longer were the voices heard; and except the measured tread of the heavy cuirassier, as he paced on the flags beneath, nothing was to be heard. My state of suspense, doubly greater now than when the noise and tumult suggested food for conjecture, continued till towards noon, when a soldier in undress brought me some breakfast, and told me to prepare speedily for ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... of the novel, as it had been worked out by the English masters of prose-poetry, George Eliot added nothing essential. Thackeray, Mrs. Gaskell, Miss Austen, Miss Mitford, Fielding and Richardson had preceded her along the way she was to follow. Their methods became hers, she accepted their influence, and her work was done in the spirit ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... than an epitomator, who wrote more than 200 years after Saxo's death. Saxo tells us that his father and grandfather fought for Waldemar the First of Denmark, who reigned from 1157 to 1182. Of these men we know nothing further, unless the Saxo whom he names as one of Waldemar's admirals be his grandfather, in which case his family was one of some distinction and his father and grandfather probably "King's men". But Saxo was a very common name, and we shall see the ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... in no injury: for the cause is lost. On the contrary, as the friend of that most excellent gentleman, your father, I regard it as a sort of duty to speak thus—to say to you 'Don't throw away your life for nothing. Do your duty, but do no more than your ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... fidelity is the origin of justice. The distinction between good and bad, between success and failure, depends on fidelity. When both prince and subjects are faithful then there are no duties which cannot be accomplished, but when both are unfaithful nothing can be done. ...
— Japan • David Murray
... was brought to Gwyn, who politely offered him food, but "I will not eat of the leaves of the tree," cried the saint; and when he was asked to admire the dresses of the crowd, all he would say was that the red signified burning, the blue coldness. Then he threw the holy water over them, and nothing was left but the bare hillside.[417] Though Gwyn's court on Glastonbury is a local Celtic Elysium, which was actually located there, the story marks the hostility of the Church to the cult of Gwyn, perhaps ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... you want to about your Chicago," Perkins was rattling on, "but you can bet your life Cincinnati 's the greatest town in the West. Chicago 's nothing but a big overgrown country town. Everything looks new and flimsy there to a fellow, but here you get something that 's solid. Chicago 's pretty swift, too, but there ain't no flies on us, either, when it ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... I breathed easier to think that the road agents had got away with nothing, and was so pleased that I went back to the wire to send the news of it, that the fact might be included in the press despatches. The moon had set, and it was so dark that I had some difficulty in finding the pole. When ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... great authority on the Bubi language says it is a Bantu stock. {56} I know nothing of it myself save that it is harsh in sound. Their method of counting is usually by fives but they are notably weak in arithmetical ability, differing in this particular from the mainlanders, and especially ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... absolutely impossible to figure on the Eskimo dog's uncertain tenure of life. The creatures will endure the severest hardships; they will travel and draw heavy loads on practically nothing to eat; they will live for days exposed to the wildest arctic blizzard; and then, sometimes in good weather, after an ordinary meal of apparently the best food, they ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... Ringfield at once withdrew, fortunately without meeting anyone on the stairs or verandah. And now once more for him prospects were partly fair. Pauline's denial satisfied him; easily deceived on such a score, he knew nothing of intermediate stages of unlicensed and unsanctified affection. In his opinion women were either good or bad, married or unmarried, and to find this coveted one free was enough. The problem was how to manage the future; whether he would ever be in a position to marry, for it had come to ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... to him?" asked Effie, with a glimmer of interest in her listless face, as she picked out the sourest lemon-drop she could find; for nothing ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... of the report at once," the first uneasily continued. "More harm may come of this than we know of. Poor Mr. Boldwood, it will be hard upon en. I wish Troy was in—Well, God forgive me for such a wish! A scoundrel to play a poor wife such tricks. Nothing has prospered in Weatherbury since he came here. And now I've no heart to go in. Let's look into Warren's for a few minutes first, shall ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... new things are daily invented, to the public good; so kingdoms, men, and knowledge ebb and flow, are hid and revealed, and when you have all done, as the Preacher concluded, Nihil est sub sole novum (nothing new under the sun.) But my melancholy spaniel's quest, my game is sprung, and I must suddenly come ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... when a well marked beginning was being made in counterpoint by the old French school at Paris, and when the English, Welsh and Scandinavian musicians were in possession of an art of expressive melody resting upon a simple harmonic foundation, these writers can find nothing to say but to repeat over and over again their tedious calculations concerning the intonations of nete hypate and the other Aristoxinean notes in the enharmonic and chromatic genera, which had been dead names in the art of music for more than ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... and beating and knocking on the door panels seemed nothing but muffled sounds in ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... of design in such a manner that through their half-transparent folds a halo of the unseen glory should excite the hopes and attract the steps of every generation. The promise given at the gate of Paradise contained the treasure, but contained it wrapped up in allegoric prophecy which nothing but subsequent fulfilment could completely unfold. Down through the patriarchal and prophetic ages it continued a hidden treasure, although the new life of the faithful was secretly sustained by it all the while. Even when Christ through these parables taught his ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... guess nothing's happened to him—nothing like that, anyway. He may have had a fall from his horse. Or maybe it broke away from him ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... There is nothing very remarkable about all this, but one thing the traveler can certainly admire without stint, and that is the site of the city, which is encircled by mountains so varied in shape and aspect as to form a most superb ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... mismanaged the affair, and betrayed his intention. He was arrested at Breda, conducted to The Hague, and there tried and executed on the 3d of June, 1594. This miserable wretch accused the archduke Ernest of having countenanced his attempt; but nothing whatever tends to criminate, while every probability acquits, that prince ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... tearing it right across. It was most unfortunate, and just when she was most in a hurry. She held up the torn skirt. It was a poor, frayed, worn-out rag that would hardly bear mending again. Her mistress was calling her; there was nothing for it but to run down and tell her ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... whiskers, in thy walk and carriage, in the company thou keepest, seeing that thou go with none but powers or men of wealth or men of title, and caring not so much for men of parts, since these commonly deal less in the exterior and are not fit associates, for thou canst have nothing in common with them. When thou goest to thy dinner let a time elapse, so that thine entry may cause a noise and a disturbance, and when after much bustling thou hast taken thy seat, say not: "Waiter, will you order me green peas and a glass of ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... pitiful plight. There was literally nothing in the tower but my shadow and me. The walls rose right up to the roof; in which, as I had seen from without, there was one little square opening. This I now knew to be the only window the tower possessed. I sat down on the floor, in listless wretchedness. I think I must have fallen ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... He made the earth never intended that it should be made merchandise, but His will is that all His creatures should enjoy it equally. Your chiefs have violated and betrayed their trust by selling lands. Nothing is now left of our once large pobsessions save a few small reservations. Chiefs and aged men, you, as men, have no lands to sell. You occupy and possess tract in trust for your children. You should hold that trust sacred, lest your children are driven from their homes by your unsafe ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... was ambitious for his son. He had always thought of himself as a successful man, although nothing he had ever done had turned out successfully. However, when he was out of sight of the New Willard House and had no fear of coming upon his wife, he swaggered and began to dramatize himself as one of the chief men of the town. He wanted his son to succeed. ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... easterly extremity, but the wind blew too fresh to allow it, and obliged us to land more to leeward, on a sandy flat, where we caught one turtle, the only one that we saw in the lagoon. We walked, or rather waded, through the water to an island, where finding nothing but a few birds, I left it, and proceeded to the land that bounds the sea to the N.W., leaving Mr King to observe the sun's meridian altitude. I found this land to be even more barren than the island I had been upon; but walking over to the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... possibility of blockading Austria-Hungary and Germany from imports across the ocean was due not to their central but to their continental position; to the fact that they were more remote from the ocean than France and Great Britain. It had nothing to do with their central position between the two groups of ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... constitutionally prohibited third term, and Brazil's devaluation. The government of Fernando DE LA RUA, elected President in late 1999, tried several measures to cut the fiscal deficit and instill confidence and received large IMF credit facilities, but nothing worked to revive the economy. Depositors began withdrawing money from the banks in late 2001, and the government responded with strict limits on withdrawals. When street protests turned deadly, DE LA RUA was forced to resign ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... of warfare a later chapter shall treat, and here it will suffice to point out that at present science stands proffering the soldier vague, vast possibilities of mechanism, and, so far, he has accepted practically nothing but rifles which he cannot sight and guns that he does not learn to move about. It is quite possible the sailor would be in the like case, but for the exceptional conditions that begot ironclads in the American Civil War. Science offers the ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... "Nothing, just kicking myself and brooding away in the city." The lad's bright, clear eyes looked frankly into the captain's as he continued. "I have been making a fool of myself, Captain. Got into some mischief with ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... language of the Czekhes as it existed when they first settled in Bohemia, nothing is left, except the names they gave to the rivers, mountains, and towns, and those of their first chiefs. All these names entitle us to conclude, that their language was then essentially the same as at the present time, ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... estimates men not by their numbers, but by their intrinsic worth. It is no credit to us to belong to the body of the Church Catholic if we are not united to the soul of the Church by a life of faith, hope and charity. It will avail us nothing to be citizens of that Kingdom of Christ which encircles the globe, unless the Kingdom of God is within us by the reign of the Holy Spirit ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... sending its broad sheet of light into the driving snow. For a moment he could see nothing but the dazzling white floor, but next instant perceived the fireman, whose head rested against the horizontal ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... but does not note that she repays him in kind. Not flattering him, but in sincere love, she gives him her eyes, and takes back his. This exchange seems good to her, and would have seemed to her better still had she known something of who he was. But she knows nothing except that he is fair, and that, if she is ever to love any one for beauty's sake, she need not seek elsewhere to bestow her heart. She handed over to him the possession of her eyes and heart, and he pledged his in turn to her. Pledged? Rather ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... photograph an open crevasse near by. Returning, we diverged on reaching the back of the tent, he passing round on one side and I on the other. The next instant I heard a bang on the ice and, swinging round, could see nothing of my companion but his head and arms. He had broken through the lid of a crevasse fifteen feet wide and was hanging on to its edge close to where the camera lay damaged on the ice. He was soon dragged into ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... law, and this its policy. The jury are not to decide on the competency of witnesses, or of any other kind of evidence, in any way whatsoever. Nothing of that kind can come before them. But the Lords in the High Court of Parliament are not, either actually or virtually, a jury. No legal power is interposed between them and evidence; they are themselves by law fully and exclusively equal to it. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... music, or by the combination of the two, is such, that the cultivation of psalmody has ever been earnestly recommended by those who are anxious to excite true piety. Tradition, history, revelation, and experience, bear witness to the truth, that there is nothing to which the natural feelings of man respond more readily. Every nation, whose literary remains have come down to us, appears to have consecrated the first efforts of its muse to religion, or rather all the first compositions in verse seem to have grown out ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... Letter of the statute is the Idol of the Judicial Den, whereunto the worshipper offers sacrifices of human blood. The late Chief Justice Parker, one of the most humane and estimable men, told the Jury they had nothing to do with the harshness of the statute! but must execute a law, however cruel and unjust, because somebody had made it a law! How often Juries refuse to obey the statute and by its means to do a manifest ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... those I had before shed, burst into my eyes. I was to see her again. An anxious, longing desire hurried my steps down the straightest path. A crowd of peasants I passed unseen going from town; they were talking of me and of Rascal, and of the forester. I would listen to nothing; ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... We got to hate the sight of each other, so much so that we began to pay our rents behind each other's backs, at first the reduced rents, then, gale day by gale day, we got back to the original rent, and kept on paying it. Our good landlord took his rents and said nothing. Gobstown became the most accursed place in all Ireland. Brother could not trust brother. And there were our neighbours going from one sensation to another. They were as lively as trout, as enterprising as goats, ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... trigger of his Winchester, he started abruptly in the direction of the stranger. The latter was quick to perceive him and whisked away. The lad followed, breaking into a trot despite the intervening trees. The beast continued fleeing, for nothing so disconcerts an animal as the threatening ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... sailor had a bad effect on the rest of the crew, and it became evident that they had abandoned all hope. They hung about so listlessly that even the captain could not rouse them, and indeed there was nothing they could do. ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... myself; but to be suffered to do this in peace, is too much to be endured by some. To misrepresent my motives; to reprobate my politics; and to weaken the confidence which has been reposed in my administration;—are objects which can not be relinquished by those who will be satisfied with nothing short of a change in our political system. The consolation, however, which results from conscious rectitude, and the approving voice of my country unequivocally expressed by its representatives—deprives ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... have perceived as blue is really so. So this so-called self-validity of knowledge cannot be testified or justified by any perception. We can only be certain that knowledge has been produced by the perceptual act, but there is nothing in this knowledge or its revelation of its object from which we can infer that the perception is also objectively valid or true. If the production of any knowledge should certify its validity then there would be no ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... afternoon the skipper stood on the lofty poop of his vessel and looked out to seaward. Nothing was changed around the vessel, and the wall of ice towered ...
— The Treasure • Selma Lagerlof
... cataracts of the Orinoco, in the Rio Atabapo. Did they penetrate into the centre of equinoctial America from the mouth of the Amazon, by the communication of that river with the Rio Negro, the Cassiquiare, and the Orinoco? They are found here at all seasons, and nothing seems to denote that they make periodical migrations ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... the Twins. "Here we have the brave Giovanni! And he cares nothing for his godmother! He loves only the little black monkey! See, Giovanni! I have brought two playmates for you. They were lost, and I have protected them out of charity. ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... vessels in those days cost many lives. They were often becalmed and took months to cross the ocean. My grandmother coming in the thirties was ninety-three days in crossing, landing at Quebec after seven weeks on half rations, part of the time living on nothing but oatmeal and water. Ship fever, the dreaded typhus, broke out on her vessel as on so many others, and more than half the passengers perished. Many, many thousands of the Irish emigrants thus died on ship-board or shortly ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... attack, which does so much honour to the scientific army and has won it so many useful victories, is another proof that science is nothing but common knowledge extended. It is willing to reckon in any terms and to study any subject-matter; where it cannot see necessity it will notice law; where laws cannot be stated it will describe habits; where habits fail it will classify types; and where types even are ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... like me I fear, have not attained it, may yet presume it. First, because reason itself, or rather mere human nature, in any dispassionate moment, feels the necessity of religion, but if this be not true there is no religion, no religation, or binding over again; nothing added to reason, and therefore Socinianism (misnamed Unitarianism) is not only not Christianity, it is not even 'religion', it does not religate; does not bind anew. The first outward and sensible ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... attain acrobatic efficiency, and may aim at nothing higher than inspired legs. Mrs. Peck climbed to establish the equality of the sexes. Mr. and Mrs. Bullock Workman climbed in the Himalayas with strong determination to name a mountain Mount Bullock Workman. They did, and ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... this smoke appeared, to vanish almost immediately, when all the innumerable crowd, knowing well that there was nothing else to wait for, and that all was said and done until ten o'clock the next morning, the time when the cardinals had their first voting, went off in a tumult of noisy joking, just as they would after the last rocket of a firework display; so that at the end of one minute nobody ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... course also Mr. Speranza must realize that the thing could not go on any further. Jane was his daughter and her people were nice people, and naturally, that being the case, her mother and he would be pretty particular as to who she kept company with, to say nothing of marrying, which event was not to be thought of for ten years, anyway. Now he didn't want to be—er—personal or anything like that, and of course he wouldn't think of saying that Mr. Speranza wasn't a nice enough man ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... sense I do, sir; in another, nothing can be farther from me. I boldly assert everywhere, that men and women should not live together in daily inharmony, and give birth to children to inherit and perpetuate their angularities and discordances. You, yourself, if you spoke without prejudice and fear of ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... "Why, that's nothing!" he went on. "Ed Brown says lots of boys do it. Some take the change out of their father's pockets even, if they get a chance. His father don't mind a bit. He always has ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... a cause this person is prepared to immerse himself to any depth," declared Tian readily. "Nothing but the absence of precise ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... make out by experience with complete certainty a single case in which the maxim of an action, however right in itself, rested simply on moral grounds and on the conception of duty. Sometimes it happens that with the sharpest self-examination we can find nothing beside the moral principle of duty which could have been powerful enough to move us to this or that action and to so great a sacrifice; yet we cannot from this infer with certainty that it was not really some secret impulse of self-love, under the false appearance of duty, that was the actual ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... be imagined that all these unusual incidents were not allowed to pass without malicious comment. Over the whole countryside and as far away as the English border there was nothing but gossip about the new tenants of Cloomber Hall and the reasons which had led ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Dennis, "as to that, I can only say that, in my opinion, it is nothing but our weakness that leads us to take such a view. When I am really at my best, when my intellect and imagination are working freely, and the humours and passions of the flesh are laid to rest, I seem to see, with a kind of direct intuition, that the world, just as it ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... to the carpet, but saw nothing of the lost pocketbook. He did find, however, a small book in a brown cover, which Stuyvesant had probably dropped. Picking it up, he discovered that it was a bank book on the Sixpenny Savings Bank of Albany, standing in the name of ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... There was nothing Kate could say or do. She already had made up her mind to submit in silence to what Laramie might suggest or impose. One thing only she was resolved on; that whatever happened there should be ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... where it seemed that they alone represented humanity. Of course Alexander, herself, might be traveling as uneventfully as themselves, but they could feel no great confidence in that hope and now there was nothing to do but to push on to Viper, perhaps passing by spots where they were sorely needed, as they went, and to try to find Halloway, whose silence left them groping in ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... of course, nothing unusual had been found; in mummy cases there are often discovered numbers of these small trifles, and every curiosity shop is full of similar blue enamelled-ware figures; but we now came upon an unexpected ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... were all over and Bruce had nothing to do but to loaf about the Stopping Place, drinking old Latour's bad whisky and making himself a nuisance. In vain The Pilot tried to win him with loans of books and magazines and other kindly courtesies. He would be decent for a day and ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... offer filled Polycrates with joy. He knew nothing of the hatred of Oroetes, and at once sent his secretary to Magnesia to see the Persian and report upon the offer. What he principally wished to know was in regard to the money offered, and Oroetes prepared to ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... you go, you vile American dog, you cowardly mean-spirited cur; take my parting curses with you; may you meet with nothing but ill-luck and perplexity; may misfortune follow you; may the very wind and the sea war against you; may the treachery which I have planned prevail over you; and may you die at last with the jeers of your enemies ringing in your ears. Good-bye! good-bye!" ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... that yourself, old man,' I answered, 'you will gain nothing by trying to put me off. It is because I have been kept so long in this island, and see no sign of my being able to get away. I am losing all heart; tell me, then, for you gods know everything, which of the immortals it is that is hindering ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... remarkable statement that where there is no sense of sin conscience has no function, and he draws the inference that where there is complete normality and perfect moral health conscience will be in abeyance. Satan, inasmuch as he lacks all moral instinct, can know nothing of conscience; and, because of His sinlessness, Jesus must also be pronounced conscienceless. Hence the paradox attributed to Machiavelli: 'He who is without conscience is either a Christ or a devil.' But though it is true that the Son of Man ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... wife of the said Senor Grimaldos, came out in our defense—proving not only by the confessors who assisted him, but by the testimony of other witnesses, that he had died with all the sacraments and with great contrition—nothing of this was sufficient to prevent the archbishop from pronouncing notices that he had died impenitent and excommunicate. He therefore commanded that the bones should be exhumed, for which purpose the provisor, Juan Gonzalez, went one afternoon, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... were all sleeping in the storey above. It was Dorothy who first woke, and, after waking her sisters, ran into the nurse's room, which was next door, and roused her. The silly woman was so frightened that she could do nothing but stand at the window and scream until the girls almost dragged her away, and forced her to come downstairs. The smoke, however, was so thick that they could get no farther than the next floor; then, guided by the screams of the other servants, they opened a door and ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... tramped the bush most of the day before looking for a dead man, had found him—a sight no girl should have looked on; had run for more than her life with me, and been through God knew what since; and she walked down that unknown, dark passage with Collins and me as if nothing had ever happened to her. She greeted Dunn, too; and then, as he and Collins disappeared to fetch down our snowshoes and rifle, went straight to pieces where she and I stood safe by their fire. "Oh, oh, oh, I thought you were dead! I saw them get you. ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... approve of nothing clandestine in matters that require open and fair dealing, Mr. Thomas Wychecombe. But I ought to apologize for thus dwelling on your family affairs, which concern me only as I feel an interest in the wishes and happiness of my new ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Tea is much admired as a fashionable BREAKFAST; being pleasant to the taste and smell, gently astringing the fibres of the stomach, and giving them that proper tensity, which is requisite to a good digestion; and nothing can be better adapted to help and nourish the Constitution after late hours, or ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... qualifications of electors, did not violate the Act of Congress, June 25, 1868, and, therefore, did not present to the Supreme Court of the United States a question of a denial of Federal right where there is nothing in the record to show that the grand jury as actually impaneled contained any person who was not qualified as an elector under the earlier State constitution, which was, according to the allegation, so made up as to exclude Negroes on account ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... stranger for some time, and then, without warning or explanation, would give him a name. And the name stuck. No regimental penalties could break Wee Willie Winkie of this habit. He lost his good-conduct badge for christening the Commissioner's wife "Pobs"; but nothing that the Colonel could do made the Station forego the nickname, and Mrs. Collen remained Mrs. "Pobs" till the end of her stay. So Brandis was christened "Coppy," and rose, therefore, in the estimation ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... Now nothing can so strongly evince that this quick small pulse is owing to defect of irritability, than that an additional stimulus, above what is natural, makes it become slower and larger immediately: for what is meant by a defect of irritability, but ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... other. How long has it been since O'Seki left the house—in a box; and Toemon had to make answer at the office." Then catching herself up in the presence of strangers—"Danna Sama, this is no time for a quarrel. Those of the house will say nothing; in their own interest. As for this worthy gentleman, the Lady O'Iwa was wife and heir neither of himself nor his master. Toemon San is grossly neglectful of courtesy due to guests. Leave Mobei San to this Matsu." She whispered in ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... much. The silence and repose have been heavenly things to me, and the country is very pretty, though no more than pretty—nothing marked or romantic, no mountains (did you fancy us on the mountains?) except so far off as to be like a cloud only, on clear days, and no water. Pretty, dimpled ground, covered with low vineyards; purple hills, not high, with the sunsets clothing ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... a roll from the basket of a passing "worker" and put it in the child's hand. Nothing loth, Martha began to eat and drink, mingling a warm tear or two with the hot soup, and venting a sob now ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... then, at what Orthodoxy says of the extent of human depravity. In all the principal creeds, this is stated to be unlimited. Man's sin is total and entire. There is nothing good in him. The Westminster Confession and the Confession of the New England Congregational churches describe him as "dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body." ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... upon any other Buildings; and besides many a Man, yea many a Ship, yea, many a Town has miscarried, when the Devil has been permitted from above to make an horrible Tempest. However that the Devil has raised many Metaphorical Storms upon the Church, is a thing, than which there is nothing more notorious. It was said unto Believers in Rev. 2.10. The Devil shall cast some of you into Prison. The Devil was he that at first set Cain upon Abel to butcher him, as the Apostle seems to suggest, for his Faith in God, as a Rewarder. And in how many Persecutions, as ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... and picturesqueness by demanding in their arrogance that the halberdier of the castle wait upon their table! I have faithfuly and conscientiously,' says he, 'performed my duties as a halberdier. I know nothing of a waiter's duties. It was the insolent whim of these transient, pampered aristocrats that I should be detailed to serve them food. Must I be blamed—must I be deprived of the means of a livelihood,' he goes on, 'on account of an accident that was the result of their own presumption ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... die out before parental love. It ought not so to be. Husband and wife should each stand first in the other's estimation. They have no right to forget each other's comfort, convenience, sensitiveness, tastes, or happiness, in those of their children. Nothing can discharge them from the obligations which they are under to each other. But if a woman lets herself become shabby, drudgy, and commonplace as a wife, in her efforts to be perfect as a mother, can she expect to retain ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... length of the period before the time of Mena, there is, of course, nothing exact. Manetho gives lists of great personages before that first dynasty, and these extend over twenty-four thousand years. Bunsen, one of the most learned of Christian scholars, declares that not less ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... his second sock. He waited for nothing more. Shirt flapping about his short legs, he ran into the night, shouting at ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... is deliberate. To knock a fellow human being downstairs in a quarrel, so that he dies—that may be impulse and accident, and is not so vile. Even to say nothing afterwards—even ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... warned of danger, wouldn't you? But they simply laughed. You must remember that a good portion of the place was flooded long before the dam broke. The rise of the two rivers did that. The water ran from two to five or six feet high in some of the houses. But, bless you, that was nothing. The place had been flooded so many times and escaped that everybody actually howled down all suggestions of danger. Telegrams had been coming into town all the afternoon and they were received by Miss Ogle, the brave lady operator, who stuck to her post to the last, but they might ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... perfectly at her ease that no one would ever have dreamed of the curdy cheeses she had made, or the pounds of butter she had churned. But Mark thought of it as he secretly admired the neck and arms seen once before on that memorable day when he assisted Helen in the labors of the dairy. If nothing else had done so, the lily in her hair would have brought that morning to his mind, and once as they walked up and down the hall he spoke of the ornament she had chosen, and how ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... course of those five years, the war destroyed the capitalist system of continental Europe. Patches and shreds of it remained, but they were like the topless, shattered trees on the scarred battle-fields. They were remnants—nothing more. In the first place, the war destroyed the confidence of the people in the capitalist system; in the second place, it smashed up the political machinery of capitalism; in the third place, it weakened or destroyed ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... shown upstairs. Mother and daughter were alone, talking over the fire in the drawing-room. Nothing could be more propitious, but his fears returned to him, and when he strove to explain the lateness of his visit his face had again grown suddenly haggard and worn. Violet exchanged glances, and said in looks, ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... assuredly nothing of the dandy; he himself ridicules his youthful fondness for dress, while those who visited him during his last years speak of him ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... herself at the dauphin's court. The education of this poor girl was mean according to the present standard: was ineffably grand, according to a purer philosophic standard: and only not good for our age because for us it would be unattainable. She read nothing, for she could not read; but she had heard others read parts of the Roman martyrology. She wept in sympathy with the sad "Misereres" of the Romish Church; she rose to heaven with the glad triumphant "Te ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... be,—crammed and very funny. Every part of it pleased me, till you came to Paris, and your philosophical indolence or indifference stung me. You cannot stir from your rooms till you know the language! What the devil! are men nothing but word-trumpets? Are men all tongue and ear? Have these creatures, that you and I profess to know something about, no faces, gestures, gabble; no folly, no absurdity, no induction of French education upon the abstract idea ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... nothing, Mr Owen." Again she smiled as she spoke to him. "It is enough for me to say that it cannot be so. If I ask you not to press me further, I am sure that you ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... pronounced, that none of these systems, in a pure and absolute sense, were exempt from heresy and error. I. According to the first hypothesis, which was maintained by Arius and his disciples, the Logos was a dependent and spontaneous production, created from nothing by the will of the father. The Son, by whom all things were made, had been begotten before all worlds, and the longest of the astronomical periods could be compared only as a fleeting moment to the extent of his duration; yet ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... the turmoil was completely at an end, the torrent had diminished, the stream had shrunk to its ordinary limits, and nothing. remained to tell of the ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... that they are unreasonably disproportioned and that many of them have shortcomings and so to speak an embarrassment of characterization that nothing can justify. The captain is too big and the lieutenant too small, not only by the side of Captain Kock, whose stature crushes him, but also beside accessory figures whose height or breadth gives this somewhat plain young man the air of a youth who has grown a moustache ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... over the scene; the crops ripen and are gathered in; "the grass withereth, the flower fadeth;" the delicate herbage of the plains shrinks back and disappears; all around turns to a uniform dull straw-color; nothing continues to live but what is coarse, dry, and sapless; and so the land, which was lately an ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... sculptures , with the second edition of the play." In this Settle was described as "an animal of a most deplored intellect, without reading and understanding;" whilst his play was characterized as "a tale told by an idiot, full of noise and fury signifying nothing." To these remarks and others of like quality, Settle replied in the same strain, so that the quarrel diverted the town and even disturbed the quiet of the universities. Time did ample justice to both men; lowering Settle to play the part of a dragon ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... so. The bare title of the book is enough to have it universally cried down, and to give the world an ill opinion of its author; for people will not be backward to say, that he who writes the Praise of Drunkenness, must be a drunkard by profession; and who, by discoursing on such a subject, did nothing but what was in his own trade, and resolved not to move out of his own sphere, not unlike Baldwin, a shoe-maker's son, (and a shoe-maker), in the days of yore, who published a treatise on the shoes of the ancients, having a firm resolution strictly to observe ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... had not caught little trout in the Pennsylvania hills for nothing. "They eat, don't they? That fish I saw was a whale, and he broke water for a bug. Get me a pole and ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... "Nothing very mysterious about it," Jimmy Kelly answered. "We steamed up to the island and sent a boat ashore, with Professor Zircon. Dr. Briotti had seen us approach, and he met the boat. He told us you were diving. Zircon had assumed as much since ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... There was nothing to be done that night, of course, for mackerel must be delicately worked; but long before the sun arose, all Flamborough, able to put leg in front of leg, and some who could not yet do that, gathered together where the land-hold was, above the incline for the launching of the boats. Here was a ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... interval, the man escaped. By discipline, the keeper afterward got the management of him; but frequently, more especially in the middle of the night, fits of phrensy came on, and while these lasted, nothing could control his rage. He ran, with great swiftness, round his den, playing all kinds of antics, making hideous noises, breaking every thing to pieces, and disturbing the whole neighborhood. While this fit was on, the keeper never dared ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth |
