"Perchance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eagle, On gray Beth-peor's height, Out of his lonely eyrie Looked on the wondrous sight; Perchance the lion stalking, Still shuns that hallowed spot, For beast and bird have seen and heard That which man ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... suffices," I answer; "and should you perchance be talking seriously I will assure you seriously that I do not want to see ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... compositions may to one extent become a model and a by-word to those who in turn visit his own land of Fragrant Purity; for with exacting care he has set down no detail that has not come under his direct observation (although it is not to be denied that here or there he may, perchance, have misunderstood an involved allusion or failed to grasp the inner significance of an act), so that Impartiality necessarily sways his brush, and Truth lurks within ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... and leaving Grumps to patter after him as fast as his four-inch legs would carry him. Poor Grumps usually arrived at the village, to find both dog and master gone, and would betake himself to his own dwelling, there to lie down and sleep, and dream, perchance, of rambles and ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... dipped by Morpheus" slacks This Pilot's sight, or vanquishes his force. The ship he leaves may steer on other tacks; Will the new Palinurus hold her course With hand as firm and skill of such resource? He who, AEneas-like, Now takes the helm himself, perchance may strike On sunken shoals, or wish, on the wild main, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 29, 1890 • Various
... compared with the significance of Palmer Billy's admission? A night's sound sleep, a few hours' sunshine, a couple of good meals, and their discomforts were at an end; while there in the boulder they had tapped, and probably in others that they saw around them, and perchance in the hill up which they had clambered so tediously, there was gold, and gold which was theirs by right of discovery, by the right of the mining laws, written and unwritten, and the right of their future toil. The ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... the coral reefs and the dark-skinned natives who dwelt there in savage freedom. And, as he related these tales of the dark and cruel sea, which, like death, unites man to his fellows and yet holds them far asunder, the maiden held her breath and clung to her lover, dreading the days when perchance they too might be divided by the pitiless ocean. The three sat for a while in thoughtful silence as the darkness deepened around them, broken only from time to time by the fitful gleam of ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... know, for instance, that his cheroot-smoking subaltern—a youth as guileless as he was indiscreet, for the two usually go together—possessed a memory like a dry-plate. He did not foresee that a passing conversation in an Indian bungalow might perchance photograph itself on the somewhat sparsely covered tablets of a man's mind, to be reproduced at the wrong moment with a result lying twenty-six years ahead in ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... treated, of his mother's subjects. He dreaded to think of returning with his young bride to his home, and of the life which she would be destined to lead there. Better freedom and poverty in England, with congenial society, and a hope perchance of future distinction, than the wearisome routine of home life, the tedious subordination, the frequent bickerings, the certain jealousies and differences of opinion, to which he must subject his wife so soon as ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... homeward, thinking of the two dark figures he had passed on Clay street where the killing had taken place. Perchance if he had stopped as he was minded, the tragedy might have been averted. Nobody seemed to know just how it came about. The thing was most unfortunate politically. King would stir up a hornet's nest of public opinion. Broderick ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... situation can be imagined. Yet many such cases exist; and the two Selves alternately usurp and manipulate a common body; the Real Self and the Stranger. Who and what is this Stranger? Apparently it is an alien spirit—another soul, perchance, entangled miserably in the body of some equally unhappy mortal! Yet modern psychology contends that such cases represent, for the most part, mere splits or dislocations or dissociations of the normal personality; and that the two ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... by her loose and sluttish Dress, She rather seemed a Bedlam-Bess: Curious to know from whence she came, I prest her to declare her Name. She Blushing, seem'd to hide her Eyes, And thus in Civil Terms replies; In better Times, e'er to this Land, I was unhappily Trapann'd; Perchance as well I did appear, As any Lord or Lady here, Not then a Slave for twice two (m) Year. My Cloaths were fashionably new, Nor were my Shifts of Linnen Blue; But things are changed, now at the Hoe, I daily work, and Bare-foot go, In weeding Corn or feeding Swine, I spend my melancholy ...
— The Sot-weed Factor: or, A Voyage to Maryland • Ebenezer Cook
... play among strangers of him that seemes simple or drunken, for vnder their habit the most speciall cosoners are presented, and while you thinke by their simplicitie and imperfections to beguile them, (and thereof perchance are perswaded by their confederates) your very friends as you thinke, you your selfe will ...
— The Art of Iugling or Legerdemaine • Samuel Rid
... on his hands the commonly accepted statement that the animals are deaf, without being able to find any structural basis for this defect. To avoid the difficulty he questions the existence of deafness! If perchance they are deaf, he thinks that it is possibly because of the defect in the stria vasculosa. This suggestion Kishi makes despite the fact that our ignorance of the function of the stria renders it impossible for us to do otherwise ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... candid and honest desire to make one another happy; when each of them had been so well adapted to the other that their brilliant, good, and beautiful qualities were so prominent that their eyes were blinded to the possibility of imperfections and vices which perchance remained in the obscure background of their virtue ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... surcoat, starting up like a warrior suddenly aroused. Such tombs send a strange thrill through one, a thrill of wonder and pity and awe. What of them now? Sleepest thou, son of Atreus? Dost thou sleep, and dream perchance of love and war, of the little life that seemed so long, and over which the slow waves of time have flowed? Little by little, in the holy walls, so charged with faith and tenderness and wistful love, the pathetic vision of mortality creeps across the mind, and one loses ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... they were lost as soon as given— Slid from my hands, when I was leaning out Above the river—that unhappy child Past in her barge: but rosier luck will go With these rich jewels, seeing that they came Not from the skeleton of a brother-slayer, But the sweet body of a maiden babe. Perchance—who knows?—the purest of thy knights May win them for the purest ...
— The Last Tournament • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... The hope of coming liberty strengthened their limbs, and they bent all their energy to the task of moving forward; walking, running, creeping, until the dawn of day approached, when weary and footsore they sought some secure spot and lay down and slept—perchance to dream of "Home, sweet Home"—perchance of "Camp Sorghum," and its "chivalric" guards—perchance of the dreadful blood-hounds whose fatal scent might even then be ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... Old Campaigning Hand; For you have seen good fighting, and you know Game foemen when you see them. Conquest's glow Mantles that pallid cheek. After long strain, Victory at last is yours, nor all in vain, Perchance, although its fruits precarious be. What you will do with it, we wait to see. Meanwhile you'll own the foes you've put to rout. With all war's honours unashamed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 13, 1892 • Various
... far between. No beast is seen in the forest, no bird in the air, except from time to time a flight of water-fowl. At times the eye is gratified by a convocation of wild swans, geese, and ducks, assembled in conclave upon the edge of some bank; or, if perchance at sunrise or sunset you happen to come to some broad bend of the river, the gorgeous rays light up its surface till it appears a lake of liquid fire, rendered brighter by the surrounding darkness of the dense and leafless forest. Occasionally the trumpet-toned ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... midnight ramble that the facts of the following lines were related to me, ending not, as such tales generally do, in death, but in what perchance was ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... Gomez Arias, sarcastically, "not such precipitation, or you may perchance fall before ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... Perchance thou may'st ask what avails all their toil? What avails it on mountain-tops water to boil? What avails it to leave their snug beds in the dark? Do they go for a view? do they go ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... till presently King Arthur rose and gave thanks to God for the grace given to him and to his court. Then up sprang Sir Gawain and made his avow to follow for a year and a day the Quest of the Holy Grail, if perchance he might be granted the vision of it. Immediately other of the knights followed his example, binding themselves to the Quest of the Holy Grail until, in all, one hundred and fifty had vowed ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... hadst but reason, Word for word in turns thou'dst carry, E'en though some perchance might perish 'Tween two lovers ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... noble sir, that you were worth any ten common men; but as every one has not like you the luck of so lovely a lady by your side, I thought that perchance you might hand over some of your lesser quarrels to one like me, who has not yet seen so much good fighting as yourself, and enjoy yourself in pleasant company at home, as I should surely ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... tranquil bosom was the image of a quiet and secluded life, and stretched its parental arms over a rustic bench, that had been constructed beneath it for the accommodation of the foot-traveler, or, perchance, some idle dreamer like myself. It seemed to look round with a lordly air upon its old hereditary domain, whose stillness was no longer broken by the tap of the martial drum, nor the discordant clang of arms; and, as the breeze whispered among ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... he perchance should come, With his cocked hat and his long gun, Then you must fly and I must run. ...
— The Baby's Bouquet - A Fresh Bunch of Rhymes and Tunes • Walter Crane
... bidding and will; For today have mine eyes beheld him: nay, he needed not to speak: Forsooth I knew of his message and the thing he came to seek. And now do I live but to tell thee of the days that are yet to come: And perchance to solace thy sorrow; and then will I get me home To my kin that are gone before me. Lo, yonder where I stood The shards of a glaive of battle that was once the best of the good: Take them and keep them surely. I have lived no empty days; The Norns were my nursing mothers; ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... only at table but for medicinal purposes; cloves, not only for its more obvious purposes, but to stick in an onion for a stew, and perchance for a toothache. ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... any "heretics" among their friends were permitted to die in their beds, and to whisper in hushed accents that when the Prince of Wales should be King, whose nature was more merciful than his father's, matters might perchance mend. They little knew what the future was to bring. The worst was not yet over,—was not even to come during the reign of ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... time, Christie, hath that come back to me, when I have been called to do that which was unpleasing to me, that which perchance seemed lesser work for God than the thing which I was doing. And I have oft found that what I would have done instead thereof was not the work God set me, but the work I ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... several Americans, among them being Whistler; nevertheless Americans as a class were voted objectionable, unless they were artists, or perchance would-bes who supplied unconscious entertainment by an excess of boasting. Women, unless accompanied by a certified male escort, were not desired under any circumstances. And so matters stood when the "two Stensons" (the average Frenchman ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... and burned by hundreds, and hitherto he had gained nothing but the hatred of the nation which he preferred to all others. His bodily health was destroyed, his mind had lost its buoyancy, and he was now fifty years old. What lay before him was a brief pilgrimage—perchance numbering only a few years—here on earth, and the limitless eternity which would never end. How small and trivial was the former in comparison with the latter, which had no termination! And would he desire to rear for the space of time that separates the grave from ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... mind, But formed to combat with his kind; Strong in his frame, and of a mood Which 'gainst the world in war had stood, And perished in the foremost rank With joy:—but not in chains to pine: His spirit withered with their clank, I saw it silently decline— And so perchance in sooth did mine: 100 But yet I forced it on to cheer Those relics of a home so dear. He was a hunter of the hills, Had followed there the deer and wolf; To him this dungeon was a gulf, And fettered feet ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... of every class in the terrible conflict of war, of rival passions, hatred, and traditions. This man with the large nose, the large and disfigured face, is Mr. Hussey, and those scars that you see, and the distortion of the features, are perchance marks left by some desperate and homicidal tenant avenging ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... gentle lady—rest her soul!— Shrunk to an epitaph beside her lord's, And six lines shorter, which was all a shame; Gaunt Richard heir; that other at earth's end, (The younger son that was her sweetheart once,) Fighting the Spaniards, getting slain perchance; And all dear old-time uses quite forgot. Slowly, unnoted, like the creeping rust That spreads insidious, had estrangement come, Until at last, one knew not how it fell, And little cared, if sober truth were said, She and the father no more climbed the hill To Twelfth ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... election of some democratic officer, can only be rewarded under these terms; being unqualified to fill even the most inferior office of their party, in a majority of cases, not even one of these is acquainted with even the lowest element of learning, and if, perchance, one can be found, he is made foreman. The Negro is never thought of, but if, perchance, one should be selected, and in such a manner is he prominent, even his color makes him conspicuous, he also is on a par with his companions; men of influence are never selected. Before I conclude with the ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... Perchance in slow procession to meet, Wearily, wearily, In an antique, narrow, high-gabled street, Wearily, wearily; Thy dark eyes lifted to mine, and then Heavily sinking to ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... may be dimly made out. In the center, the soft red glow of the candles, the gleaming silver, the shining cloth, the Church on one side—and what on the other? No name given it now, no royal name, but still Power. The two are still in apposition, not yet in opposition, but the discerning may perchance read a prophecy in the salient ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the last laggard drops ran off the eaves, He dressed, but took some customary garb On his arm; stole swiftly to the sands; and there Cast clown his garments by the ancient heap Of stones. At first brief pause he made, and thought: "And thus I play, to win perchance a tear From her whom, first, to save the smallest care, I thought I could have died!" But then at once Within the sweep of swirling water-planes That from the great waves circled up and slid Instantly back, passing far down the shore, Southward he made his way. ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... energies, even though she knows those energies have been wasted—that life has been thrown away—on an object in which there is no gain to humanity, no advancement of human well-being, no profit even to himself, save, perchance, a barren and useless notoriety at last; an object that has been already far more fully and ably achieved. On the other stands her clear undoubting conscience of her own truest and highest course,—the course to which every prompting of the Divine within impels her,—that ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... DAV. That if perchance I should have to swear to my master that I did not place it there, I may be enabled to do so with a ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... them hear a tragedy through, or even some parts of a comedy, and let them then give their verdict as on oath, whether what they heard, resembled anything they had ever heard before out of a playhouse, or perchance a madhouse, and they must answer in ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... even smile And speak and fairly dance, And play at anger, hate, and love, And mischief, too, perchance. ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... on parole. But I think that not at all unlikely. May not metempsychosis be a scourge of two worlds? If the soul of my grandam might fitly inhabit a bird, might not a Fairy ruefully inhabit the person of my grandam? If Fairy Godmothers, perchance, were Fairy Grandmothers! I have some evidence to place before the reader which may induce him to consider this hypothesis. Who can doubt, at least, that Shelley's was not a case where the not-human was a prisoner in the human? Who can doubt that of Blake's? And what ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... good to be true. Were we to follow after it and put the loyal Protestant minority into the power of the anti-imperial Catholic majority in the hope of seeking peace and ensuing it, we might perchance be like the dog who let fall that piece of meat from between his teeth—losing the substance for shadow. We do better, all things considered, with our present arrangements—trusting to the imperfect operations of human law rather than shooting Niagara for the chance of ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... remembered, while to his wife was given an ivory box, containing Cora's diamonds—necklace, bracelets, pin and ear-rings—all were there; and Walter, as he looked upon them, drew nearer to him his fair girl-wife, who but for these, might not, perchance, have been to him what ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... this a hard law; but it is not so hard as it would be if it allowed you to hire ignorant, wilful, and incompetent servants to go upon the road and injure the lives and property of innocent people without redress save against the servants, who perchance might be financially irresponsible. It should however be stated in this connection that if your team should get away from you or your servant, without any fault on your or his part, and should run away and do great damage, by colliding with other teams, or by running over people on foot, ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... I'll slay no more;—by Hercules I swear! So I a Christian crown perchance may wear; I will ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... same sheepfold at night. While the sheep are sleeping, and the shepherds near by are taking their needed rest, the door of the fold is carefully locked, and another shepherd or porter is left on guard, lest perchance a hungry bear or wolf might scale the wall and destroy some member or members of the sleeping herds. Early in the morning the shepherds come in turn and rap at the door, and to each the porter opens. ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... philosophy must be a freeman in mind.' Copernicus knew very well that there were many prepared to challenge his conclusions, and perhaps to bring theological objections to the principles of science which he had been constrained to adopt. "If, perchance," it is said in the preface to his book on astronomy, "there be vain babblers who, knowing nothing of mathematics, yet assume the right of judging, on account of some place of Scripture, perversely wrested to their purpose, and who blame and attack my undertaking, I heed ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... gaining on the Cape everywhere: for one man told me of a vessel wrecked long ago on the north of Provincetown whose "bones" (this was his word) are still visible many rods within the present line of the beach, half buried in sand. Perchance they lie along-side the timbers of a whale. The general statement of the inhabitants is, that the Cape is wasting on both sides, but extending itself on particular points on the south and west, as at Chatham and Monomoy Beaches, and at Billingsgate, Long, and Race Points. James Freeman stated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... appearance, as the thought occurred to him that by this means, without disclosing the full measure of his ignorance, the person in question might be encouraged to speak unrestrainedly of the nature of his exploits, and perchance thereby explain the use of the appliances employed and the meaning of the various words of order, in all of which details the Commander was as yet most disagreeably imperfect. In this, however, he was disappointed, for the Chief of Bowmen, greatly to Ling's surprise, ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... we going?" inquired Aramis; "are we going to fight, perchance? I carry no sword this morning and cannot return home ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... soil in which he has inserted a packet of guaranteed seeds, and you will have some faint conception how Elizabeth felt as those golden words proceeded from that editor's lips. For the moment Ambition was sated. The years, rolling by, might perchance open out other vistas; but for the moment ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... annals draw perchance unto their close; But at the least, whate'er the past, their end Shall be ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... hoped that the young king might, perchance, choose a wife from their family, the hetairae of Athens, of Samos, of Miletus and of Cyprus, the beautiful slaves from the banks of the Indus, the blond girls brought at a vast expense from the depths of the Cimmerian fogs, were heedful never to utter in the presence of Candaules, whether ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... Perchance I am doomed to fall in that battle. Does not the rune upon Wave-Flame, the sword of Thorgrimmer my ancestor, say of him ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... and perchance an occasional suicide, may be prevented by the experienced physician, who can generally give correct information, comfort, and consolation, when consulted ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... Henry's reign, held the benefice of West Kington, in Wiltshire. A citation for heresy being issued against Latimer, he wrote with his peculiar medley of humour and pathos: "I intend to make merry with my parishioners this Christmas, for all the sorrow, lest perchance I may ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... And if, perchance, a good wine, like a strange guest, finds its way to the table, we are at loss how to receive it, how to address it, how to entertain it. We offend it in the decanting and distress it in the serving. We buy our wines in the morning and serve them in the evening ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... deems that they, who swim In trains of cloud the middle air, Perchance had kindly thoughts of him And dropped the bow ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... simultaneously thousands of miles apart—Glasgow to London, 1755, twelve days; 1905, eight hours. Thus under the genius Steam, tamed and harnessed by Watt, the world shrinks into a neighborhood, giving some countenance to the dreamers who may perchance be proclaiming a coming reality. We may continue, therefore, to indulge the hope of the coming "parliament of man, the federation of the world," or even the older and wider prophecy of Burns, that, "It's coming yet for a' that, when ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... of the formless night, at her furtive glance, Crouched at the end of her cold wet bench, there grew A bundle of fog, a bundle of rags that, perchance, ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... ne'er shall reach divan. My death I'll strive To calmly meet. Perchance my bleeding corse Will melt her heart ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... not descend. Some passing memory, perchance, or some soft voice breathing mercy, held it back. He drew back his foot, and ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... Kelticism or Germanism may have to do with these same characteristics is neither so well ascertained, nor yet so easy to discover. On the contrary, there is much upon these points which may be well un-learnt. Kelts, perchance, may not be so very Keltic, or Germans so very German as is believed; for it may be that a very slight preponderance of the Keltic elements over the German, or of the German over the Keltic may have determined the use of the terms. Such a point as this is surely ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... be permitted to subjoin a few stanzas? Old Izaak Walton hath put songs and sylvan poesy in plenty into the mouths of his anglers and rural dramatis personae, and shall I be blamed for following, in all humility, his illustrious example? Perchance—but hold! it is one of the fairest of summer mornings; the sun sheds a pure, a silvery light on the young, fresh, new-waked foliage and herbage; a faint mist veils the blue distance of the landscape; but the pearly shroud ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... remarked Rolla thoughtfully, "that each man tells of seeing a different sort of beast. Perchance ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... spread out in the form of a cross, he did not know what to do. And had not Black Roderick, in his joy and desire, sprung from his bed on hearing the voice of his mistress bidding him fear not, all perchance had gone well. ...
— The Story and Song of Black Roderick • Dora Sigerson
... seconds I thought him mad again, but presently he became calm. "The food is ready," he said; "we will eat of it. I got it from a cottage yonder. After we have eaten you may like to tell me all about yourself. Perchance I could help you; perchance, too, I ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... you will but make it blush, And glow with shame of your proceedings, Hubert. Nay, it, perchance will sparkle in your eyes; And, like a dog that is compell'd to fight, Snatch at his master that doth tarre him on. All things that you should use to do me wrong, Deny their office: only you do lack That mercy which fierce fire and ...
— King John • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... call great: he for the common weal, The fading politics of mortal Rome, As I might slay this child, if good need were, Slew both his sons: and I, shall I, on whom The secular emancipation turns Of half this world, be swerved from right to save A prince, a brother? a little will I yield. Best so, perchance, for us, and well for you. O hard, when love and duty clash! I fear My conscience will not count me fleckless; yet— Hear my conditions: promise (otherwise You perish) as you came, to slip away Today, tomorrow, soon: it shall be said, These women were too barbarous, ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... Today, perchance, if you should see a busy little spider, it might be one of Arachne's children, or perhaps Arachne herself. No one knows—neither you ...
— A Child's Story Garden • Compiled by Elizabeth Heber
... the peculiarly French aspect of the lower town struck them immediately. The old-fashioned dwellings, with steep lofty roofs, accumulated in narrow alleys, seemed to date back to an age long anterior to Montcalm's final struggle with Wolfe on the heights; even back, perchance, to the brave enthusiast Champlain's first settlement under the superb headland, replacing the Indian village of Stadacona. To perpetuate his fame, a street alongside the river is called after him; and though ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... Shakespeare could fill the Elizabethan pit with the rough London apprentices and the Elizabethan boxes with superfine gallants and courtiers; why he has been a delight equally to the worldling, to whom always "the play's the thing," and to the sedate scholar, who has perchance never set foot in a theatre, and to whom a play is a dramatic poem printed in a book. Yet the reason is simple. It is because Shakespeare's gifts are numerous and varied enough to appeal to populace and gallant, to worldling and student; ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... be our sepulchre. If Fate, If tempests wreak their wrath on us, serene We watch the bolt of Heaven, and scorn the hate Of angry gods that smite us in their spleen. Perchance the jealous mists are but the screen That veils the fairy coast we would explore. Come, though the sea be vexed, and breakers roar, Come, for the breath of this old world is vile, Haste we, and toil, and faint not at the oar; 'It may be we shall ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... I cried. "I take shame at the memory of it. Almost as much shame as I take at the memory of that other bargain which first brought me to Lavedan. The shame of the former one I have wiped out—although, perchance, you think it not. I am wiping out the shame of the latter one. It was unworthy in me, mademoiselle, but I loved you so dearly that it seemed to me that no matter how I came by you, I should rest content if I but won you. I have since seen the error ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... But the utilized arm speedily grows weary, and the chances are that you drop the volume and go off to sleep, leaving gas, lamp, or candle alight—which is not very safe and not very healthy—nay, is positively unhealthy and unsafe. Perchance you try the effect of reclining on one side, leaning on one arm, and holding the book by means of the other. That, also, is charming for the moment, but has a similar tendency to tire very readily. Your elbow—the one on which your weight is thrown—soon gives signs of boredom. ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... miserable; the circulation through his lungs has been suppressed, and he is not duly oxidizing; he returns to a warm place, he rushes to the fire, breathes eagerly and long the heated air, and adds to the warmth by taking perchance a cup of stimulant; then he goes to bed and wakes in a few hours with what is called pneumonia, or with bronchitis, or with both diseases. What has happened? The simple physical fact of reaction under too sudden an exposure ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... alphabet, I made them spell short and familiar words. I would spell the words to Pippity, and he would repeat them in a loud, clear voice to Grilly, whose province of course it was to write them in a bold, legible hand, whilst the parrot kept his eye sharply on the writing; and if, perchance, the monkey should make a mistake, it was expected of him to call ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... public know is that the actor is there, on the stage, to pronounce his kingly speech; but, before he has got there, Mr. Irving, perhaps, has had the sleepless nights which are required in thinking out the smallest details of his business; perchance, the second before he looks down on that wild pit, and up at that huge gallery, which are ready either to acclaim or devour him, he has been in the midst of a furious dispute about the price of tallow candles, or the delinquencies ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... altogether. Had I been a philosopher and bent to the storm, I might perchance have gone my solitary way a broken and embittered man, but philosophy and bending to storms is not in me, unhappily, for chancing to encounter my faithless friend, I twisted his nose to such a tune that he ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... perchance, Blooms as his cognizance: The snowdrop chill, The violet unbeholden, For some: for ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... evening revels in this spot; and the high cliffs, circling either side in the form of a bay, tolerably well concealed our meetings from the gaze of the vulgar. It is true (for these cliffs were perforated with numerous excavations) that some roving peasant, mariner, or perchance smuggler, would now and then, at low water, intrude upon us. But our London Nereids and courtly Tritons were always well pleased with the interest of what they graciously termed "an adventure;" and our assemblies were too numerous to ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... women enemies, Giangrazio, who was the eldest and had more sense than the others, and saw matters going badly, said to the ogre, "We know nothing of this affair, and it may be that this wicked woman has perchance come into the room whilst we were at the chase; but as she has fortified herself inside, come with me and I will take you to a place where we can seize her without her being able ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... deck, then chained there. Civilization, tricked fool, they say has need of such. You serve as the dogs of Eastern towns. But at least, it seems to me, we need not spit on you. Home to your kennel! Perchance, if the Gods be kind, they may send you dreams of a cleanly hearth, where you lie with a silver ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... Old Bughtrig found him with his wife; And John, an enemy to strife, Sans frock and hood, fled for his life. The jealous churl hath deeply swore That if again he venture o'er, He shall shrive penitent no more. Little he loves such risks, I know; Yet in your guard, perchance, will go." ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... shouldn't wonder if they tried. Don't you think, ARTHUR, (valiantly) it would be better, more manly, and more politic, perchance, to plunge in than to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 26, 1892 • Various
... rolled up her knitting in a napkin, picked a few stray bits of yarn from her black dress, and stepped to the window. She looked out across the valley toward the Cleft to see if perchance the clouds would open enough to permit her a view of the Peak. Not once, but many times that day had she arisen from her work to search for a glimpse of the mountain, but every time ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... a little yacht lay beside the pier at the castle's foot, and lazily flapped its sail, while the sea beat inward with as languid a pulse. That was some years ago, before Mexico was dreamed of at Miramare: now, perchance, she who is one of the most unhappy among women looks down distraught from those high windows, and finds in the helpless sail and impassive wave the images of her baffled hope, and that immeasurable sea which gives back its mariners neither to love nor sorrow. I think though she ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... than be the most successful soprano that ever trilled on the high A till the house yelled with delight, and the royalties held up their stalking-glasses to watch the fluttering of her throat, if perchance they might see how the pretty ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... wild and winding river! Both wandering onward to the boundless West— But thou art given by the good All-giver, Blessing a land to be in turn most blest:[2] While, like a leaf-borne insect, floating by, Chanceful and changeful is my destiny; I needs must follow where thy currents lave— Perchance to find a home, or else, ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
... Then perchance it passes a city or two that is lying in dock for trade purposes. The next stop will be at one of the several tropical stations where a fresh supply of fruits is purchased and a number of vehicles sold ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... Sacerdotalism on the other; in regard to which last, the Historical Roman Church—the only Christian body which presents a solid phalanx—one must not be too iconoclastic, remembering that, in the monastic houses and great ecclesiastical libraries we have had conserved for us, although, perchance by accident, the records of all the philosophy, all the jurisprudence, all the polity, all the literature, and all the civilization of ancient Greece and Rome, that remained from the Alexandrian library and pre-Christian times—the mediaeval clerics were the great ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... to consider what particular joy that they have known under the shelter of the old Penates has been the dearest, so it would beseem them to reflect, at this supreme moment, what had been the highest good of their life in this world. They were on the eve, perhaps, of a splendid victory; but, perchance, on the other hand, their foot was already on the plank that led from the shore ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... advantage that retirement affords, however, besides plenty of books, I know not; and those persons you have found there as fit associates in your studies I should suppose to be such rather from their own natural constitution than from the discipline of the place,—unless perchance, from missing you here, I do less justice to the place for keeping you away. Meanwhile you yourself rightly remark that there are too many there whose occupation it is to spoil divine and human things alike by their frivolous ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... resumed Madame Desvarennes, after having reflected a moment. "Perchance you may have ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... thus uninfluenced by misery or happiness and possessing extraordinary resolution. Then the thought arose in Sakra's mind,—How could this bird come to possess humane and generous feelings which are impossible in one belonging to the world of lower animals? Perchance, there is nothing wonderful in the matter, for all creatures are seen to evince kindly and generous feelings towards others.—Assuming then the shape of a Brahmana, Sakra descended on the Earth and addressing the bird, said,—O Suka, O best of birds, the grand-daughter (Suki) of Daksha ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... rocky crust is one gigantic mausoleum. Here and there a dilettante had filled his cabinets with relics from this monster crypt; here and there a philosopher had pondered over them—questioning whether perchance they had once been alive, or whether they were not mere abortive souvenirs of that time when the fertile matrix of the earth ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... been set wide to welcome Aldebaran, the royal son of kings, fittest to bear the Sword of Conquest. And now Aldebaran was but the crippled makeshift of a man, who could not even draw that Sword from out its scabbard; at whose wry features all must turn away in loathing, and some perchance might even set the dogs to snarling at his heels, in ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Is this some Spirit, O child of man? Doth Hecat hold thee perchance, or Pan? Doth she of the Mountains work her ban, Or the ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... cruel, stranger Than aught in fiction ere befell, What weary years of war and danger That village knew, the Oak might tell. Perchance, brave Dollard sat of yore Beneath its very shade, and planned A deed should make for evermore His name a trumpet ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir
... meaning changed naturally from its original one of being the simple expression of fear to that of welcoming a chieftain; and, if one wishes to push the theory to excess, we may still see a shadowy reminiscence of it in the manner in which the violinists of an orchestra applaud an honoured guest—perchance some famous virtuoso—at one of our symphony concerts by striking the backs of ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... incenses and myrrhs, To thy desired epiphany, from the spiced Regions and odorous of Song's traded East. Thou, for the life of all that live The victim daily born and sacrificed; To whom the pinion of this longing verse Beats but with fire which first thyself did give, To thee, O Sun—or is't perchance, ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... a picture worth so high a sum needs not the assistance which the lottery affords; and although it may be urged, that some one possessing sufficient taste, but insufficient means to indulge that taste, might, perchance, obtain the high prize, it is evident that such bald reasoning is adduced only to support individual interest. The principle is, consequently, inimical to those upon which the Art-Union of London was founded; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... round the door, or occasionally peering through the windows of the tap-room, with pipes in their mouths and perchance a tankard in their hands, were seen the elders of the village, boatmen, and habitans, making use, or good excuse, of a rainy day for a social gathering in the dry, snug chimney-corner of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... children? And if there are business men preserved from unrighteousness by the fear of future punishment, they are far more numerous who are deterred by the threat of human law. Most of them would take their chances with heaven a hundred times before they would once with society, or perchance with the imperative voice of humanity heard in ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... must be patient till the Heavens look With an aspect more favourable * * * * * * I am not prone to weeping, as our sex Commonly are; the want of which vain dew Perchance, shall dry your pities, but I have That honourable grief lodged here, which bums ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... in a sad state when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets that perchance belong to a deeper one. Aylmer now remembered his dream. He had fancied himself with his servant Aminadab attempting an operation for the removal of the birthmark; but the deeper went the knife, the deeper sank the hand, until at length its tiny grasp appeared to have caught ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... I may agree that I want more the better feeling an hour from now. Perhaps her humorous picture of the effects of too early freedom on my condition, or of my body's urgent demand for rest, regardless of my mind's wish; perhaps only a joke which diverts me; perchance the "take-for-granted you want to help us out" air; mayhap the story to be read or told; or simply the poise and quiet assurance of the nurse who never questions my reasonableness and acquiescence; perhaps her confidence that this will serve as a means to the ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... that works his fierce desire,— Untamed, unscared, unconquered Punch My ear a pleasing torture finds In tones the withered sibyl grinds,— The dame sans merci's broken strain, Whom I erewhile, perchance, have known, When Orleans filled the Bourbon throne, A ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... much as the majority of his sex, and though as a lover he felt a certain amount of self-abnegation to be becoming in him, it was difficult to drive away the thoughts of his pleasant club, where he could be reading and smoking, with, perchance, something cooling ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... giue it welcome. There are more things in Heauen and Earth, Horatio, Then are dream't of in our Philosophy But come, [Sidenote: in your] Here as before, neuer so helpe you mercy, How strange or odde so ere I beare my selfe; [Sidenote: How | so mere] (As I perchance heereafter shall thinke meet [Sidenote: As] [Sidenote: 136, 156, 178] To put an Anticke disposition on:)[8] [Sidenote: on] That you at such time seeing me, neuer shall [Sidenote: times] With Armes encombred thus, or thus, head shake; ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... see the stately drake Lead forth his fleet upon the lake, While her vexed spaniel from the beach Bayed at the prize beyond his reach? Yet tell me, then, the maid who knows, Why deepened on her cheek the rose?— Forgive, forgive, Fidelity! Perchance the maiden smiled to see Yon parting lingerer wave adieu, And stop and turn to wave anew; And, lovely ladies, ere your ire Condemn the heroine of my lyre, Show me the fair would scorn to spy And prize such conquest ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... some wandering Italian frottola which readily fitted itself to the sonorous Sapphics. The accompaniment on the mellow lyra di braccio, one of the tender sisters of the viola, was a simplified version of the subordinate voice parts of the frottola. And perchance there were even other instruments, an embryonic orchestra. Here, indeed, we must pause lest reconstructive ardor carry us too far. We must content ourselves with the conclusion that the vocal music of the entire drama was simple in melodic structure, for such was the character of the part ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... leeward of us was the barren, forbidding coast; to the windward lay rocky islands. "Dear compass," I whispered, "we trust in thee; lead us right; the night is very dark, and our eyes cannot see rocks ahead, except, perchance, when it ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... point of the history of South Africa, on the eve of the conflict which threatens to exterminate our people, it behoves us to speak the truth in what may be, perchance, our last ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... treatment and the care of her special nurse, in whom she found another "bosom friend," to whom she confided all. Her devotion for the new doctor grew by leaps. Mistaking his kindness and thinking perchance she might extract more beneficent sympathy by physical methods, she impulsively threw herself into where-his-arms-would-have- been had he not side-stepped. Her position physically and sentimentally was awkward; ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... advice," "breach of veracity" for "reach of their ascidity," who is so untrained that he really cannot hear what is said, or see what is done,—of what use is it to such a boy, merely because he has gone through a prescribed routine of books and classes, or perchance because he has attained a certain amount of years and of pounds avoirdupois, to be pushed forward into a higher department to attend lectures on chemistry, or anatomy, or morals, or history, or literature? It is preposterous. It is an insult to the Professor, and an injury ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... paintings in stone which time itself cannot destroy; those whose eyes have gazed with delight on the glorious view as they approached it, and whose ears are familiar with the sound of the mendicant's voice, to whom the remembrance of Francesca's story may have won, perchance, an additional dole,—can form to themselves with ease a picture of the scene; and when they visit it again in reality, may be tempted to look out for some saintly face, for some sweet, angel-like countenance, amongst the sordid and suffering groups before them, and wonder ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... be a smile on his lips as he faced the angry gale and gazed steadily out upon the wild ocean. He seemed to be enjoying the sight of the grand elemental strife that was going on around him. Perchance he was thinking of someone not very far away—with ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne |
