"Speciality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nature, constitution, character, type, quality, crasis^, diathesis^. habit; temper, temperament; spirit, humor, grain; disposition. endowment, capacity; capability &c (power) 157. moods, declensions, features, aspects; peculiarities &c (speciality) 79; idiosyncrasy, oddity; idiocrasy &c (tendency) 176; diagnostics. V. be in the blood, run in the blood; be born so; be intrinsic &c adj.. Adj. derived from within, subjective; intrinsic, intrinsical^; fundamental, normal; implanted, inherent, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and outward appearance, the peasant and agricultural population, generally, differ no little from their remote country-people, the Bretons. In this famous cheese-making country, the "Fromage de Brie" being the speciality of these rich dairy farms, there is no superstition, hardly a trace of poverty, and little that can be called poetic. The people are wealthy, laborious, and progressive. The farmers' wives, however hard they may work at home, wear the smartest of Parisian bonnets and gowns ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the Crown forest which outlined the horizon directly in front of the chateau. The prince knew well how to soothe the self-love of his old huntsmen by giving them the most arduous part of the work, and also that of the Englishman, whom he employed at his own speciality, affording him a chance to show the fleetness of his horses and dogs in the open. The two national systems were thus face to face and allowed to do their best ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... schools for the boys, the Moro people do not make a speciality of education. The young men are taught from the Koran by priests, who also teach the art of making characters in Arabic. Their music is for the most part religious, inharmonious, and unmelodious. The coluctang, their most important instrument, ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... characters quite attractive; in fact, though I fear she would not wish me to say so, I really liked the unsuccessful competitor better than the winner. Books made up of the little homely things which might happen to anybody and distinguished by their pleasant atmosphere have been Miss COLE's speciality in the past; this time she has, without abating a jot of her pleasantness, added a touch of the occult in the shape of an old black-letter volume which infects everyone who gets possession of it with a mildly insane determination to keep it. An honourable man steals it and a nice woman ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... the whole winter season would have been abominably dull. There was no mention even of balls and assemblies until he came back again. Some men have a peculiar talent, a special faculty, for arranging such things, and it was "our friend" Kecskerey's speciality. The whole world of fashion called Kecskerey "our friend," so it is only proper that we should give ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... explain the title of this opera, which signifies a man who goes about reciting biblical verse after the fashion of street singers. This means of earning a livelihood is unknown in Germany, but forms a speciality in Austria. ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... least seem to have had sloping or rounded sides to the basement-portion, as is indicated by an Assyrian bas-relief. Naturally small temples, with hardly more than the rooms on the ground floor, were to be found, but these temple-towers were a speciality of ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches
... speciality that distinguished the Tiptree Farm regime at the beginning, in which Mr. Mechi led, and in which he has been followed by the farmers of the country, although few have come up abreast of him ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... ago, my brave colleagues," continued Barbicane, "I asked myself if, whilst still remaining in our speciality, we could not undertake some grand experiment worthy of the nineteenth century, and if the progress of ballistics would not allow us to execute it with success. I have therefore sought, worked, calculated, ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... denies that the principle of the development of the sciences is the principle of decreasing generality; he asserts that there are as many examples of the advent of a science being determined by increasing generality as by increasing speciality. (2) He holds that any grouping of the sciences in a succession gives a radically wrong idea of their genesis and their interdependence; no true filiation exists; no science develops itself in isolation; no one is independent, either logically or historically. M. Littre, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... And this strange earthly instinct of ours, coupled as it is, in our good men, with great simplicity and common sense, renders them shrewd and perfect observers and delineators of actual nature, low or high; but precludes them from that speciality of art which is properly called sublime. If ever we try anything in the manner of Michael Angelo or of Dante, we catch a fall, even in literature, as Milton in the battle of the angels, spoiled from Hesiod:[174] while in art, every attempt in this ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... profess to give descriptions of the attitudes of animals, I cannot do so for the simple reason that I consider the acquirement a speciality and purely a matter of experience. Nature must be closely studied; failing this, reference must be made to illustrated works on natural history. All of Gould's works are grand guides to attitudes of specimens and ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... Shot. Wonderful in the boot, stocking, and gaiter department. Very tasteful, too, in the matter of caps and ties. May be flattered by an inquiry as to where he got his gaiters, and if they are an idea of his own. Sometimes bursts out into a belt covered with silver clasps. Fancy waistcoats a speciality. His smoking-suit, in the evening, is a dream of gorgeous rainbows. Is sometimes a very fair shot. Generally wears gloves, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 5, 1892 • Various
... tests of probability, analogy, and common sense. They must disbelieve all rational explanations of thoroughly proved experiences (only) which appear supernatural, derived from the average experience and study of the visible world. They must disbelieve the speciality of the Master and the Disciples, and that it is a monstrosity to test the wonders of show-folk by the same touchstone. Lastly, they must disbelieve that one of the best accredited chapters in the history ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... pearmain apples from Kent. Exeter was famous for metal and corn; Worcester and London for wheat; Winchester for wine—there were vineyards in England then; Hertford for cattle, and Salisbury for game; York for wood; while the speciality of Oxford ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... Advertising. He has a bee in his bonnet about booming the piece. Sits up at nights, when he ought to be sleeping or studying his part, thinking out new schemes for advertising the show. And the comedian. His speciality is drawing me aside and asking me to write in new scenes for him. I couldn't stand it any longer. I just came away and left them to ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... he wrote. "There are too many men out here now. I want somebody who will give home comforts which I want to make a speciality of, in place ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... wardrobe. The dandy absently drew forth the Telegraph, and the first thing that caught his eye was this: "A beautiful private hotel of the highest class. Luxuriously furnished. Visitor's comfort studied. Finest position in London. Cuisine a speciality. Quiet. Suitable for persons of superior rank. Bathroom. Electric light. Separate tables. No irritating extras. Single rooms from 2-1/2 guineas, double from 4 guineas weekly. 250 Queen's Gate." And below this he saw another piece of news: "Not a boarding-house. A magnificent mansion. Forty bedrooms ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... of the loaves has in most cases continued unchanged to the present day. And one curious coincidence is certainly worth mentioning, in that a peculiar method of preparing figs with caraway seeds, which was long supposed to be a local speciality of a remote town in Central Italy, has now been recognized as a common method of dressing this fruit for the table at Pompeii, for large quantities of figs so treated have been unearthed in shops and kitchens. Such grains ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... sole companion at the breakfast table, and she eyed me with a peculiar look as I hungrily put away a lot of devilled kidneys, as well as two raw eggs beat up and mixed in my coffee, to which she slyly added a little fine old Cognac, a speciality of my father as a pick-me-up ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... overthrowing the Soviet bureaucracy. It's millions of average Russians in every walk of life and every strata, from top to bottom. What does the scientist think when some bureaucrat knowing nothing of his speciality comes into the laboratory and directs his work? What does the engineer in an automobile plant think when some silly politician decides that since cars in capitalist countries have four wheels, that Russia should ...
— Revolution • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... trot, moved a lock of his hair and replaced it, and said, 'Yes, Maister Derriman.' He was old Mr. Derriman's odd hand in the yard and garden, and like his employer had no great pretensions to manly beauty, owing to a limpness of backbone and speciality of mouth, which opened on one side only, giving ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... be replaced by hallucinations unrelated to them. As soon as a few individuals are gathered together they constitute a crowd, and, though they should be distinguished men of learning, they assume all the characteristics of crowds with regard to matters outside their speciality. The faculty of observation and the critical spirit possessed by each of them individually at once disappears. An ingenious psychologist, Mr. Davey, supplies us with a very curious example in point, recently cited in ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... becomes the channel of executive power. Bourcet described the head of such a department as "the soul of an army." The British navy is without such a department. The army has borrowed the name, but has not maintained the speciality of function which is essential. In armies other than the British, the Chief of the General Staff is occupied solely with tactics and strategy, with the work of intellectual research by which Nelson and Napoleon prepared their great achievements. His business ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... take a broad enough view to see that a man is a hero because he is a man, because he overleaps the level of his life, and is greater than his race, being one of them? If he were of the heroic race, what virtue in being heroic? it is the assertion of his trivial life that makes his speciality evident,—the shadow that throws out the bas-relief. We chatter endlessly about the immense good of Washington's example: I believe its good would be more than doubled, could we be made, nationally, to see him as a human being, living on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... at these formidable guests, they all split into fragments which went whirling, dancing in divisions, subdivisions, re-subdivisions of scientific nonsense! History split into philology, ethnology, anthropology, and mythology, and these again split finer than the splitting of hairs. Each speciality hugged its bit of knowledge and waltzed it round and round. The rest of the company began to nod, and I felt drowsy myself. To put an end to the solemn gyrations, a troop of fairies mercifully waved poppies over us all, the masque faded, ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... Whartons, father and daughter, to dine with them round the corner. It was quite a special invitation, because it came in the form of a card,—which was unusual between the two families. But the dinner was too, in some degree, a special dinner,—as Emily was enabled to explain to her father, the whole speciality having been fully detailed to herself by her aunt. Mr. Roby, whose belongings were not generally aristocratic, had one great connexion with whom, after many years of quarrelling, he had lately come into amity. This was his half-brother, considerably older than himself, and ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... turn from Clayhanger to the story of Hilda Lessways. This story has not quite the distinctive note which Mr. Bennett struck in the two preceding novels. What we miss is, first of all, the "local colour" which is the author's speciality, most of the scenes being laid in Brighton or London; and second, that detached manner which enabled Mr. Bennett to present his persons as if he were himself indifferent to their fate, with the result that they stand or fall entirely on their own merits. Here ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... first imitated the Moorish Sicilian type; and introduced as their speciality, white figures, such as angels in white garments, and exchanged the Oriental intricate patterns for a bolder ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... case the activity and the noise would become deafening. Given groups might be trading in different things; but the large majority of them would abandon what they were doing in order to take advantage of a speciality. The eagerness of certain young brokers or clerks to discover all that was going on, and to take advantage of any given rise or fall, made for quick physical action, darting to and fro, the excited elevation of explanatory fingers. Distorted faces were shoved over shoulders ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... notable derogation unto the holy sacrament of baptism, not alone in that it presumeth the sealing of that which was sealed sufficiently by it; but also in that, both by asseveration of words, and by speciality of the minister that giveth it, it is even preferred ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... peculiar white markings; and they are besides characterised by horns so remarkably different in each species and so conspicuous, that it seems probable that the peculiarities in length, twist, and curvature have been differentiated for the purpose of recognition, rather than for any speciality of defence in species whose general ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... francs in decorating it with silver and gold, and fitting it with a silken leash to hang about his shoulder. The hounds have been on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Mesmer, or Saint Hubert in the Ardennes, or some other holy intercessor who has made a speciality of the health of hunting-dogs. In the grey dawn the game was turned and the branch broken by our best piqueur. A rare day's hunting lies before us. Wind a jolly flourish, sound the bien-aller with all your lungs. Jacques must stand ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the truth. But when our reason offers arguments on both sides of the question, so that we can arrive at no certain conclusion, then we act prudently by invoking the authority of wiser minds who make moral questions a speciality, and we are perfectly safe if we ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... the flattering opinions earned by the newcomer to the town; and these opinions he retained until the time when a certain speciality of his, a certain scheme of his (the reader will learn presently what it was), plunged the majority of the townsfolk into a sea ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... And I shall say, 'Come at once. Urgent. Noel.' That'll fetch him," said Noel with a twinkle. "He's making a speciality of me just now. He ought ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... answers to the lively definition of an animal as "a stomach provided with organs." It lives to feed. It does not know much, but in its speciality it is unrivalled. The way in which it helps itself from the sources of life is a masterpiece of hydraulic skill. Once let it lose the Heaven-imparted art of haustion, and all the arts and academies of the world ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... had to work hard to keep up his position in his own particular speciality, which was that of slogging batsman, for he was a bad bowler, too cowardly to keep a wicket, and too big, heavy, and lazy ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... There was not the speciality in his labour which distinguishes the handicraftsmen of towns. Though only a mason, strictly speaking, he was not above handling a brick, if bricks were the order of the day; or a slate or tile, if a roof had to be covered before the wet weather set in, and nobody was near who could do it ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... the old stagers can still find some of their number who are as richly comical as Mr. Vincent Crummies himself. They are like the dyer's hand, subdued to what they work in. I was thrown a great deal into the society of one elderly young gentleman whose speciality had for years been that sort of high-flying rattling comedy of which Charles Mathews was the chief exponent in my youth. He had the most suasive, genial, and gentlemanly comedy manner conceivable, and was never for a minute away from the footlights. At breakfast, ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... who have made a speciality of them. For one who has preferred to amass general knowledge rather than to specialize it is considered enough to know that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... in America commends itself to the time-saving habits of a busy race; but the love of speciality in France modifies this advantage: in our inns a stated price covers all demands except for wine; here each separate necessity is a specific charge—the sheet of writing paper, the cake of soap, and the candle figure ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Bd. Poissoniere, and Noel Peters in the Passage des Princes, both have claims to celebrity for their cooking, and the fish dishes at the latter, the Filet de Sole Noel for instance, are a speciality. The Boeuf a la Mode, Rue de Valois, near the Palais Royale, is a place ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... been stone deaf in this office for two years? It stands to reason that a man who's responsible for all the largest new eyesores in London would impress any corporation. Clever chap, Corver! Instead of wasting his time in travel and study, he made a speciality of learning how to talk to committees. And he was always full of ideas like the piebald pony, ever ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... combinations increases with great rapidity. However, if too many intermediate links have not been lost, criticism succeeds in disentangling the relationships by persistent and ingenious applications of the method of repeated comparisons. Modern scholars (Krusch, for example, who has made a speciality of Merovingian hagiography) have recently constructed, by the use of this method, precise genealogies of the utmost solidity.[87] The results of the critical investigation of authorship, as applied to the filiation of documents, are of two kinds. Firstly, lost documents ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... Saturday most enjoyably in the old book-shops. He simply rioted in haggling over a threepenny piece. Even old Henderson feared him. This Henderson was a thirsty old bookseller who kept a shop at the corner of Cowcaddens and Ingram Street, and whose leading speciality was second-hand family Bibles, with the former genealogical leaf riven out and replaced by a clean sheet pasted in for the family of the next purchaser. To him, sitting enthroned on a pile of Bibles, Forbes, entering, spake: "Have you a copy of the Lives of the Twelve Caesars?" "Aye, aye," said ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... an old lawyer who made a speciality of ecclesiastical cases, and had acquired a fortune by serving the Jesuits. He had retired with a comfortable sum, and led an existence slightly mysterious; received everywhere, saluted very low, even a little ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... a street, where she sold all sorts of things—ribbons, flowers in summer, and principally pretty little shoe-buckles, and many other gewgaws, in which, owing to the favor of a manufacturer, she enjoyed a speciality. She was well-known in Asnieres as "La Bluette." This name was given to her because she often dressed in blue. And she made money, as she was very skillful in everything she did. His impression was that she was not very well at the present moment; he believed she ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... pained at the mistake, for I knew how keenly Holmes would feel any slip of the kind. It was his speciality to be accurate as to fact, but his recent illness had shaken him, and this one little incident was enough to show me that he was still far from being himself. He was obviously embarrassed for an instant, while the Inspector raised his eyebrows and Alec ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... perhaps, there was less scope for the distinctive line—and already they had Garvin. Quite a number of Benham's friends pointed out to him the value of working out some special aspect of our national political interests. A very useful speciality was the Balkans. Mr. Pope, the well-known publicist, whose very sound and considerable reputation was based on the East Purblow Labour Experiment, met Benham at lunch and proposed to go with him in ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... was, like the captain, fond of inventing and designing things, but his speciality took the form of logs for determining the speed of craft through the water; and in the course of his experiments he had provided each of the frigate's boats with an ingenious spring arrangement which, attached to an ordinary fishing-line ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood |
