"Unimportant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Take care of the stairs, they are none of the best; through this little wicket—there. As soon as your eyes become a little used to the mist of the place, and the glare of the chandeliers below you, you will see that some unimportant personage on the Ministerial side of the House (to your right hand) is speaking, amidst a hum of voices and confusion which would rival Babel, but for the circumstance of its being all ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... well framed for the hardy profession which he exercised. But his face had not the frankness of the jolly hunter; he was down-looked, embarrassed, and avoided the eyes of those who looked hard at him. After some unimportant observations on the success of the day, Brown gave him a trifling gratuity, and rode on with his landlord. They found the gudewife prepared for their reception—the fold and the poultry-yard furnished the entertainment, and the kind and hearty welcome made ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... supplicatingly, "do not abandon me, do not leave me to my fate at this critical juncture! I will yield you blind and implicit submission and obedience! For the future I will do nothing, take not even the slightest, most unimportant step without your direct authorization or ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... sombre eyes of Miramon Lluagor appraised them. He, who was lord of the nine sleeps and prince of the seven madnesses, now gave a little sigh; for he knew that these young people were enviable and, in the outcome, were unimportant. ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... may not be amiss to give some description of persons destined to play a not unimportant part in ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... different from the diarist as it is possible for two men to be. His contemporaries took him for a great Englishman, a man who did much for his country, and whose character was a mirror of all the national and patriotic ideals. His public work was by no means unimportant, even in a time so full of dangers and so critical for the destinies of England. Little did the people who loved and hated him in his day and afterwards dream of the contents of that small volume, so carefully written in such an unintelligible cipher, locked nightly with its ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... considerable interest, not only on account of his University reputation, but also because he was the son of such a father. He did not, however, begin public life by staking his fame on the results of one elaborate oration; on the contrary, he rose now and then on comparatively unimportant occasions; made a few brief modest remarks, stated a fact or two, explained a difficulty when he happened to understand the matter in hand better than others, and then sat down without taxing too severely the patience or good ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... Mr. Hardcastle, with whom I had a long conversation on his arrival, gave it as his opinion that it was not in the Grey Room we must look for an explanation. I believe he regarded his visit to the room itself as a comparatively unimportant part of the case. He was really more interested in the life of my son-in-law and his relations with other people. I think he regarded May's death as a matter which had been determined outside the Grey Room. But, if I may presume to advise you, this view of his is surely proved mistaken ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... legend and similar ceremonies, varied only as to time, and place, and unimportant details, were to be found in all the initiations of the ancient Mysteries. The dogma was the same,—future life,—and the method of inculcating it was the same. The coincidences between the design of these rites and that of Freemasonry, which must already ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... merely of them but of the collections of individual work which accompany them, as so astonishing, is the level which is occasionally reached. The work is often the work of persons quite unknown or unimportant in literature as persons. But we constantly see in it a flash, a symptom of the presence of the true poetical spirit which it is often impossible to find for years together in other periods of poetry. For instance, if ever ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... the unclean revelations of Zola. Leave the description of the drains and cesspools to the hygienic specialist, the painful facts of disease to the physician, the details of the laundry to the washerwoman. If we are to have realism in its tedious descriptions of unimportant particulars, let it be of particulars which do not excite disgust. Such is the description of the vegetables in Zola's "Ventre de Paris," where, if one wishes to see the apotheosis of turnips, beets, and cabbages, he can find them glorified as supremely ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... unimportant. Charlotte certainly was under no illusion; and we who revere her to-day as one of the greatest of Englishwomen need have no illusions. It is sufficient that, if not beautiful, Charlotte possessed a singular charm of manner, and, when interested, an exhilarating flow of conversation which carried ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... everything, and she had never done him harm. But—there might come the terrible moment when she had to face Richard with the confession. Yes, she had known him before. Yes, they had entered into a tacit compact. Yes, she had kept from Nina's father a secret that, while it might be unimportant, certainly should have ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... argue that the possibility that all may at last be happy in an endless heaven, makes it unimportant that there are inequalities now. The majority of the theologians do not admit that such a state awaits the whole of the human race, and the comparatively few who do believe it will hardly venture to assert that present justice can be determined by future happiness. Even if we positively knew ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... narratives which are very freely introduced to illustrate principles in this work, the writer ought to state, that though they are all substantially true, that is, all except those which are expressly introduced as mere suppositions, he has not hesitated to alter very freely, for obvious reasons, the unimportant circumstances connected with them. He has endeavored thus to destroy the personality of the narratives, without injuring or altering their ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... to Dover, and cross to Calais by the night boat. I couldn't, I felt, return to London. We walked over the crest and down to the little station of Martin Mill side by side, talking at first in broken fragments, for the most part of unimportant things. ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... same may be affirmed as true of various subordinate, but not on that account unimportant, achievements in this field. They do not lay claim to originality or artistic accomplishment; but the firmly-jointed stone slabs of the Roman streets, their indestructible highways, the broad hard ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... like the Spiritualist who proclaims his "proof palpable of immortality," is thinking of the mere temporal, self-regarding consciousness—its sensibilities, desires, gratifications, and affections—which are unimportant absolutely, that is to say, their importance is relative solely to the individual. There is, indeed, no more characteristic outbirth of materialism than that which makes a teleological centre of the individual. Ideas have become mere abstractions; the only reality ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... hungry, and her hunger was satisfied; she had been cold and tired, now she was warmed and refreshed; she talked vaguely of horrible things, but nothing approaching real fear had as yet entered her heart. Grown-ups made such a fuss about trifles. Probably it was something quite silly and unimportant after all. ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... killed. His stomach churned with disgust. He ignored the fading hoofbeats of the slave-animal from which he had knocked the thing that lay on the ground with a crushed skull. The slave-animal was unintelligent and unimportant. ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... "exile, small, starved specimens growing in very dry situations and often fruiting when only a few inches high." He also mentions Eaton's "angustum," and alludes to the "Remaining sixty-three varieties equally unimportant that have been described of ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... to the Oxford here described—the Oxford where Gibbon and Adam Smith wasted the best years of their lives, and many of their unremembered contemporaries followed in their steps with issues not less disastrous to themselves, however unimportant to others—to the Oxford where young men swore to observe laws which they never read, and renewed a solemn promise when they had discovered the impossibility of keeping it—that Wesley, about a score of years after his entrance to the University, poured forth from the pulpit of Saint Mary's such ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... unavoidable weakness of a regency, suited ill with that energy and resolution, which Sweden would be called upon to display in this trying conjuncture. The wide reaching mind of Gustavus Adolphus had raised this unimportant, and hitherto unknown kingdom, to a rank among the powers of Europe, which it could not retain without the fortune and genius of its author, and from which it could not recede, without a humiliating confession of weakness. Though the German war had been conducted chiefly on ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... matters outside his own sphere. But how few of mankind are ever willing to own themselves mistaken about any subject under the sun, unless it be bimetallism or some equally unfashionable and abstruse (though not unimportant) problem ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... felt by many readers of this Journal and the former Travels, it has been thought advisable to add a biographical Memoir of the Author. But as the events of Mr. Park's life, with the exception of those contained in the works just alluded to, are few and unimportant, the editor has been induced, in the course of this undertaking, to deviate occasionally into other topics, more or less connected with the principal subject; in the discussion of which he has inadvertently ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... if you let your little inkstand dry up. I long exceedingly for you and the children, and for quiet, comfortable domesticity at Schoenhausen or Reinfeld. As soon as I have finished my hitherto rather unimportant occupations, my empty lodgings, and the whole dreary world behind, face me, and I know not where to set my foot, for there is nothing which particularly attracts me. Day before yesterday I ate at Biberich, with the Duke ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... to omit unimportant matter and to be concise, this volume has swelled out far beyond what was originally intended. The more the subject of superstition is studied, the more interesting it becomes. One judges of a nation's strength ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... Dupont de Nemours named them, the physiocrats, formed a not unimportant wing of the philosophic phalanx, now in harmony with the Encyclopaedic party, now in hostility. The sense of the misery of France was present to many minds in the opening of the century, and with the death of Louis XIV. came illusive hopes ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... unlikely that Akiba's journeys, extending into Africa, and undertaken to bring about the restoration of the independence of Judaea, had as their subsidiary, unavowed purpose, the discovery of the ten lost tribes. The "Dark Continent" played no unimportant role in Talmudic writings, special interest attaching to their narratives of the African adventures of Alexander the Great.[66] On one occasion, it is said, the wise men of Africa appeared in a body before the king, ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... impaired," when applied to the hearing of a little child, must be given an entirely different interpretation than it would have if used with reference to an adult who had previously had normal hearing. A degree of impairment that would be unimportant in an adult is a very serious matter in the case of a child. This is because the ear is the natural teacher of speech and language. If the sounds of speech are not clearly heard the imitation of them will always be imperfect, and the ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright
... Ostrovsky is the pupil of Gogol, he created his own school, and attained an independent position from his very first piece. His plays have only one thing in common with Gogol's—he draws his scenes from commonplace, every-day life in Russia, his characters are unimportant, every-day people. Gogol's comedies were such in the strict meaning of the word, and their object was to cast ridicule on the acting personages, to bring into prominence the absurd sides of their characters; and this aim accomplished, the heroes leave the stage without having ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... person, calls himself, "the Wanderer," is not once named. Then again, amidst what seems to be a Metaphysico-theological Disquisition, "Detached Thoughts on the Steam-engine," or, "The continued Possibility of Prophecy," we shall meet with some quite private, not unimportant Biographical fact. On certain sheets stand Dreams, authentic or not, while the circumjacent waking Actions are omitted. Anecdotes, oftenest without date of place or time, fly loosely on separate slips, like Sibylline leaves. Interspersed also are long purely Autobiographical ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... of his father, but with more method and clearness. The bill was lost, but Burke finally succeeded in carrying his measures; and the offices of the master of the harriers, the master of the staghounds, the clerk of the green cloth, and some other unimportant sinecures, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... reflection, that though he had persevered in his original intention, he must have reached the eastern coast of New Holland, which, estimating it by what Dampier ascertained of the western coast, would have proved both unimportant and inhospitable. The judicious reader, however, will allow far greater weight to the circumstances of his deficiency for an uncertain navigation, than to such hypothetical reasoning. He had only bread for two months, and pulse for forty days; and his salt meat had become ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... in a metal womb, controlled potential building to titanic birth. A thread of wire melted under a breath of energy and a tiny, glowing light winked out. A rodentlike maintenance robot, scurrying to an unimportant repair task, saw no warning signal and crossed a control panel from behind at the moment that a relay closed automatically. Obliterated, the robot only briefly interfered with the proper functioning of the machine, but the damage had been done. For a split second at a critical moment, ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... temperament by Madame Odintsov is shown in the most subtle manner. To Bazarov, women were all alike, and valuable for only one thing; he had told this very woman that people were like trees in a forest; no botanist would think of studying an individual birch tree. Why, then, should this entirely unimportant individual woman change his whole nature, paralyse all his ambitions, ruin all the cheerful energy of his active mind? He fights against this obsession like a nervous patient struggling with a dreadful depression that comes over him like a flood. He fights ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... accurately that the variations of such things as would correspond to the crossing of a t, or the dotting of an i, in English, have been carefully enumerated; yet the result of the whole of this searching scrutiny has been merely the suggestion of a score of unimportant alterations in the received text of the seven thousand nine hundred and fifty-nine verses of the New Testament. This is a fact utterly unexampled in the history of manuscripts. There are but six manuscripts of the Comedies ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... be able to secure a discarded army-tent that has never been used, is in good condition, and has been condemned merely for some unimportant blemish. Such tents are very serviceable and can be purchased at Government auctions, or from dealers who themselves have bought them from ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... Buntingford Station, G.E.R.) may be reached from the Old North Road by turning to the left before entering Buntingford. It is a small, quiet, unimportant village; but much of it is picturesque and interesting. Readers will remember that Macaulay was at school here, and that it was the birthplace of Seth Ward, mathematician and bishop, a contemporary and antagonist of Thomas Hobbes. The church is a flint structure,—a ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... the apparently unimportant details which often contribute so much to the ease and pleasure of working. First, the use of square pieces of felt, such as are used under beer glasses in saloons, for setting hot beakers and flasks on to prevent chilling and consequent cracking. Second, in crystallizing ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... drifted on a December afternoon a girl in search of work at stenography and typewriting. The firm was about the most important and most famous—radical orators often said infamous—in New York. The girl seemed, at a glance, about as unimportant and obscure an atom as the city hid in its vast ferment. She was blonde—tawny hair, fair skin, blue eyes. Aside from this hardly conclusive mark of identity there was nothing positive, nothing definite, about her. She was neither tall nor short, neither fat nor thin, neither grave nor gay. She gave ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... "I were to say that you did not see the great truths of science exhibited by that tree, though they stared any man of intellect in the face, what would you think or say? You would merely regard me as a pedant with some unimportant theory about vegetable cells. If I were to say that you did not see in that tree the vile mismanagement of local politics, you would dismiss me as a Socialist crank with some particular fad about public parks. If I were to say that you were guilty ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... small sums of money, the Poles furnished an auxiliary force, while numerous volunteers from the rest of Europe flocked to serve under his banner. Although the assistance thus furnished was comparatively unimportant, it nevertheless served to increase his zeal for the daring undertaking. He and his heroic companions were not only proud of defending their own native country, but felt that they were the champions of all Christendom against Ottoman aggression, and their ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... right shoulder robbed Esher of his senses for a moment, but he soon came to again and remembered his orders to Lawrence's brigade. Thank God he had no written message on his person. As it was, the enemy had succeeded in capturing only a broken motor-cycle and a wounded, unimportant officer. The division staff would soon discover by telephoning that General Lawrence had not received his orders ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... that they did not fit Mathilda, she began to revise them; but to keep her MS neat, she cut out these pages and wrote the fair copy. There is no break in Mathilda in story or in pagination. This fair copy also shows signs of haste: slips of the pen, repetition of words, a number of unimportant revisions. ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... me now venture to step a little outside of my own province, my small plot—a poor pedestrian's unimportant impressions of places and faces; all these p's come by accident; and this I put in parenthetically just because an editor solemnly told me a while ago that he couldn't abide and wouldn't have alliteration's artful aid in his periodical. ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... whom it immediately concerns, matters but little to the mass of society, who for the most part good- naturedly sympathised with the sufferers; but the object, so precious to the narrow circle of her own family, was too unimportant to the world at large to be entitled to anything more than a passing expression of regret. I went down to the funeral, and was unutterably disgusted with the ceremony, with the bustling business of the ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... be hospitably received, as though your presence had been desired; and after having had many questions put to you, and having been forced to tell a number of lies, you will wonder, since the man had never seen you before, that one of high rank should pay such attention to you who are but an unimportant individual; so that by reason of this as a principal source of happiness, you begin to repent of not having come to Rome ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... supposed that the attempted abduction of the Princess Berengaria was unimportant in its results ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... Bauer and Casals, Kreisler and Hofmann all playing at the same recital. What a variety, what a wealth of contrasting artistic enjoyment such a concert would afford. There is nothing that is so enjoyable for the true artist as ensemble playing with his peers. Solo playing seems quite unimportant ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... forward in this volume are causing some stir in the Parisian journals. They are being used to stimulate an active interest in the Eastern Question; and this, I venture to think, may produce results not unimportant at the present crisis. ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... The dull debate, The dreary unimportant question, The pressure of affairs of State, A muddled brain, a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various
... in a spacious library or study, elegantly, if not luxuriously furnished. Footmen, stationed as repeaters, as if at some fashionable rout, gave a momentary importance to my unimportant self, by the thundering tone of their annunciations. All the machinery of aristocratic life seemed indeed to intrench this great Don's approaches; and I was really surprised that so very great a man should condescend to rise on my entrance. But I soon found that, if the Dean's ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... and qualities which make them foremost figures. He saw unerringly where emphasis should be put, what should be salient, what subordinate. Too many writers, German especially, perhaps, have the fault of "writing a subject to its dregs," giving to the unimportant undue place. In Fiske's estimation of facts there is no failure of proper proportion, the great thing is always in the foreground, the trifle in shadow or quite unnoticed. To do this accurately is a fine power. ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... time, but not from the heat. She was so surprised that Mrs. Bisbee should have taken such an interest in her affairs, or in any of the unimportant doings of their set, as to remember them longer than the passing moment. Mrs. Bisbee was associated in Lloyd's mind with solemn churchly things, like the Gothic-backed pulpit chairs or the sombre brown pews. Lloyd had never seen her before, ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... 30th of May the Meerut force under Brigadier-General Wilson came in contact with the enemy at Ghazee-ud-deen- Nugghur, a village fifteen miles from Delhi, where there was a suspension bridge across the Hindur. This fight, although unimportant in itself, is memorable as being the first occasion upon which the mutineers and the British troops met. Hitherto the Sepoys had had it entirely their own way. Mutiny, havoc, murder, had gone on unchecked; but now the tide was to turn, never to ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... not much fighting. The French seized Formosa; and both parties were preparing for a trial of strength, when a seemingly unimportant occurrence led them to come to an understanding. A small steamer belonging to the customs service, employed in supplying the wants of lighthouses, having been taken by the French, Sir Robert Hart applied to the French ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... worship, and took the initial steps for the establishment of an institution of learning. It is not too much to say that the hour that witnessed these enactments witnessed the triumph of the popular over the court party; in no unimportant sense, the first triumph of the American colonists over kingly prerogative. Looking through the mists of the mighty past, Mr. Speaker, to the House of Burgesses, over which your first predecessor presided, would it be out of place to ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... told that your answers were correct, would it be a disappointment to be told that they were not all correct? Is the interest in a story best kept up by first telling the important points and then the unimportant particulars? What then do you think of placing this ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... help it. When Jack and he had met during the last year at Oxford, as they had often, they were so astonishingly polite to each other that had I not known the reason I should have been very amused, but as it was, I thought they were making a great fuss about something quite unimportant. ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... this series I have treated of trees in a relationship of family, or according to some noted similarity. There are, however, some trees of my acquaintance of which the family connections are remote or unimportant, and there are some other trees of individual merit with the families of which I am not sufficiently well acquainted to speak familiarly as a whole. Yet many of these trees, looked at by themselves, are as beautiful, interesting, and altogether ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... connected with the object of our choice, to clear the ground for a juster estimate of what was either good or erroneous in our further conduct. Not that personal accomplishments of mind or of body were unimportant in a ruler of simple half-barbarous men; nor again is it to be denied that Dost Mahommed, from advantages of age, (forty-five years against the seventy of the Shah,) and from experience more direct and personal, would, under equal circumstances, have been the better man. But the circumstances ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... begin with the paintings and then to go on to the Classical and Renaissance Sculpture. The last-named, at least, he should only examine in connection with the rest of Renaissance Paris. Also, while it is unimportant whether he takes first Painting or Sculpture, it is very doubtful that he should take each separately in ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... no means unimportant consideration was whether to remain and meet results with the command, or for each man to shift for himself. Setting out from Richmond on the preceding Sunday, with no accumulation of vigor to draw on, we ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... Ritters in the old German romance waters. Neptune in a triumphal progress, with his Naiads tumbling about him, was no better off than Whitey and Pypey. They had, to be sure, no car, nor conch shells, nor dolphins; but, as Thompson remarked, these were unimportant accessories, that added but little to Neptune's comfort. The nymphs were the essential. The spectacle was a saddening one for us, I confess; the more so, because our forlorn condition evidently gave a new zest to the enjoyment of our friends, and stimulated them to increased vigor in their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... drawing-room, where the Countess, who was an admirable hostess, knew how to attract learned men, writers, artists, and celebrities of all kinds, as well as young and pretty women. As the season was late, the gathering this evening was not large. However, neglecting the unimportant gentlemen whose ancestors had perhaps been fabricated by Pere Issacar, Papillon pointed out to his friend a few celebrities. One, with the badge of the Legion of Honor upon his coat, which looked as ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... to the text I have deemed expedient. The few errors—they were very few and unimportant—discovered in the first edition I have corrected in the present publication; certain redundancies I have suppressed; here and there I have ventured upon condensation, and generally I have endeavoured to bring ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... painstaking care. One feels that the author had no definite goal in sight; he wrote them simply to amuse and entertain his readers. One would search in vain for any sort of philosophy. On the contrary, one finds there a rather significant spirit, a gaiety, care-free, loquacious and, at times, ironical. Unimportant people tell pleasant things about themselves or others. All these men are a trifle debauched, talky, futile, and their companions are flighty, intriguing little women who chatter incessantly. Everything begins and ends with a laugh. This recalls ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... English literature. It is nearly sixty years since I became possessed of my first really valuable old book of this kind—Wilson's "Art of Logic," printed by Richard Grafton 1551—from which I ascertained the not unimportant facts that "Ralph Roister Doister" was an older play than "Gammer Gurton's Needle," and that it had been written by Nicholas Udall, Master of Eton School: I thus learned who was the author of the earliest comedy, properly so called, in our language. This was my first literary discovery, made several ...
— Roister Doister - Written, probably also represented, before 1553. Carefully - edited from the unique copy, now at Eton College • Nicholas Udall
... and muster-grounds, and dancing attendance as a silent voter at the halls of the state legislature, to the membership of which his constituents had returned him, he saw but little of his family, and they almost as little of him. His influence grew unimportant with his wards, in proportion as it obtained vigor with his faction—was seldom referred to by them, and, perhaps, if it had been, such was the rapid growth of their affections, would have been but little regarded. He appeared to take it for granted, that, having provided ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... the young plant, not to be a parasite upon it. The charitable and the humane, blessed with wealth, were very early penetrated by the misery of the poor student. And the wise saw that intellectual ability is not so common or so unimportant a gift that it should be allowed to run to waste upon mere handicrafts and chares. The man who was a blessing to his contemporaries, but who so often has been converted into a curse, by the blind adherence of his posterity to the letter, rather ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... By no means unimportant is the influence that wide diffusion of the knowledge of how to prevent conception would have in causing more irregular unions and greater promiscuity in sex relations. The effect of this would not only loosen, rather than strengthen, the marriage tie, but would inevitably lead to an extension ...
— Conception Control and Its Effects on the Individual and the Nation • Florence E. Barrett
... centuries. And, embedded in these strata, there are numerous remains of forms of thought which once lived, and which, though often unfortunately mere fragments, are of priceless value to the anthropologist. Our task is to rescue these from their relatively unimportant surroundings, and by careful comparison with existing forms of theology to make the dead world which they record live again. In other words, our problem is palaeontological, and the method pursued must be the same as that employed in ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... of "that foolish woman, Madeleine Winterbourne," nor as she had seen her first, on the terrace with Harry Wharton. It did not please Lady Selina to feel herself in any way eclipsed or even rivalled by such an unimportant person as this strange and ridiculous girl. Yet it crossed her mind with a stab, as she lay resting on the sofa in her little sitting-room before dinner, that never in all her thirty-five years had any human being looked into her face with ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... statements, what a responsibility rests upon the parents! No step in the process of parentage is unimportant. From the lovers first thought of marriage to the birth of the child, every step of the way should be paved with the snow-white blossoms of pure thought. Kindly words and deeds should bind the prospective parents more closely together. Not mine and thine, but ours, should be the bond of sympathy. ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... make up for it with trivial things of frequent encounter, a condition favourable to consecutive study. What is common is not necessarily unimportant. Give it our sustained attention and we shall discover in it merits which our former ignorance prevented us from seeing. When patiently entreated, the least of creatures adds its note ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... are not unimportant. Forty-five years afterward Madison wrote that "his main object, in returning to Congress at this time, was to bring about, if possible, the canceling of Mr. Jay's project for shutting the Mississippi." Probably it had occurred ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... action, at the Bridge of El Burgo, in which Norreys decisively defeated a relieving force of greatly superior numbers, prodigies of valour being performed during the battle. But the capture of the citadel was unimportant; and the wind improving, the expedition proceeded—with many prizes and much spoil—to operate against Lisbon. On the way, for some not very intelligible reason, Peniche, some fifty miles from Lisbon, was stormed by the soldiers—as it would seem, against Drake's will. The whole army ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... be hung upon pegs provided for the purpose.' In front of every seat hung a little cushion, and these cushions were called 'kneelers.' Presently the joke ran through the community, where there were many artists, who considered religion at best an unimportant accessory to good architecture and who disliked ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... that romantic spirit which youth and enthusiasm produce in a fearless mind. No small addition to the regrets occasioned by his loss was derived from the reflection that he fell unnecessarily, in an unimportant skirmish, in the last moments of the war, when his rash exposure to the danger which proved fatal to him could no longer be useful to ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... It is this: if all your preparation and confidence fails you at the crucial moment, and memory plays the part of traitor in some particular,—if, in short, you blunder on a detail of the story, never admit it. If it was an unimportant detail which you misstated, pass right on, accepting whatever you said, and continuing with it; if you have been so unfortunate as to omit a fact which was a necessary link in the chain, put it in, later, as skilfully as you can, and with as deceptive an appearance of its ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... Kirby, groom to the late baronet and to the present earl. After a few unimportant questions, I asked him if he had ever seen that gentleman before, pointing to Mr. Ferret, who stood up for the more facile recognition of his ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... after they picked up a low island and managed to get some turtle, and also a rather unsatisfactory observation of an eclipse of the sun, the clouds interfering with the view of the commencement. Their position had been settled by other observations, so the ill-luck was unimportant. About three hundred turtle were obtained, averaging from 90 to 100 pounds each, and as much fish as they could consume during their stay was caught. Coconuts, yams, and melons were planted, and the island received ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... unimportant alliances, two others of a more serious nature were also mooted at this period, namely, those of Monsieur (the King's brother) with Mademoiselle de Montpensier, the daughter of the Duchesse de Guise; and ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... are most generally found on canvas-bound books; the Symbolical figures, and Portraits, on satin, rarely on velvet. The Floral and Arabesque designs are most common on small and unimportant works bound in satin, but they occur now and then on both canvas and velvet books. The true arabesques have no animal or insect forms among them, the prophet Mohammed having forbidden his followers to ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... of as different antecedents, ancestry, and surroundings as Billy O'Neill and I would have had far more difficulty in coming together. I came from the biggest city in America and from the wealthiest ward of that city, and he from a backwoods county where he kept a store at a crossroads. In all the unimportant things we seemed far apart. But in all the important things we were close together. We looked at all questions from substantially the same view-point, and we stood shoulder to shoulder in every legislative ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... in a less noble and artistic way than is done in the Egyptian representation of the Sphinx. There are also small figures of animals in terra-cotta, principally dogs and ducks. But the large and small statues of the Assyrians are their most unimportant works in sculpture. It is in their bas-reliefs that their greatest excellence is seen, and in them alone their progress in art can be traced. This sort of sculpture seems to have been used by the Assyrians just as painting was used in Italy after the Renaissance. ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... duties; and he must have believed in his own oracular sign, of which he seemed to have an internal witness. But the existence of Apollo or Zeus, or the other gods whom the State approves, would have appeared to him both uncertain and unimportant in comparison of the duty of self-examination, and of those principles of truth and right which he deemed to be the foundation of religion. (Compare ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... methods by which this end may be brought about; and, at all events, we need not be deterred from self-denial, nor shrink before minor obstacles. If with foresight we participate in the encouragement of slave labor, we must hold ourselves guilty, in no unimportant sense, of sustaining the system of slavery. I will illustrate my argument by a very simple method. Suppose two ships arrive laden with silks of the same quality, but one a pirate ship, in which the goods have been obtained by robbery, and ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... against the prisoner was, that he had no money previously, that he had slept at the Empire a night or two before, and that he knew where Mr. B. was in the habit of keeping his gold-dust, with a few other circumstances equally unimportant. His only defense was, of course, to account for the money, which he tried to do ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... honeymoon his wishes should give way to hers. She was inclined to measure the extent of his devotion by that test. Scarby, she said, was not full of people who knew her. Anne had been insistent and Majendie passive, as he was in most unimportant matters, reserving his energies ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... tediously drawn out vexation, but in propitious weather a pleasure. A greater change has taken place in our land travel, but it is much more recent. The railroad has rooted out the stage, except to unimportant places, and you can now take a Pullman at Toronto at 7 p.m., go to bed at the proper time, and get up in Montreal at 10.30 a.m. the next day. The first railroad on which a locomotive was run was the Northern, opened in 1853, to Bradford. Since ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... Smith's definition is not just. It seems in many respects improper to exclude the clothing and lodging of a whole people from any part of their revenue. Much of it may, indeed, be of very trivial and unimportant value in comparison with the food of the country, yet still it may be fairly considered as a part of its revenue; and, therefore, the only point in which I should differ from Dr Adam Smith is where he seems to consider every increase of the revenue or stock of a society as ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... Alfonso, his force would have been completely annihilated. This made it evident that Jacopo's movement had been made by order of Alfonso, and the latter, as if palpably detected, to conciliate his allies, after having almost alienated them with this unimportant war, ordered Jacopo to restore to the Siennese the places he had taken, and they gave him twenty thousand florins by way of ransom, after which he and his forces were received ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... for all his wings, had not come out of the affair without some damage; for one of its black wings was not held up so snugly as the other. He hoped it was not broken. As he mused vaguely upon this unimportant question, his pain so exhausted him that he sank back and lay once more staring up at the eagles, who were still wheeling excitedly over the nest. In an exhaustion that was partly sleep and partly coma, his eyes closed. When he opened them again, the sun was hours ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... which the numeration is carried, is a matter of more importance. Possibly a numeration limited to the first three, four, or five numbers is the effect of intellectual inferiority. It is certainly a cause that continues it. As a measure of ethnological affinity it is unimportant. In America we have, within a limited range of languages, vigesimal systems like the Mexican, and systems limited to the three first units like the Caribb. The difference between a vigesimal and decimal system arises simply from the practice of counting by the fingers ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... peak indicated in the illustration is enormously extensible and can be shifted into infinite varieties of position. However unimportant its raising and lowering may appear, they are nevertheless of great importance for the tone and the singer. The focal point of the breath, that forms simultaneously the attack and the body of the tone, by the operation of the abdominal breath pressure against the chest, is always firmly ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... with paper between, so that they may be easily separated when the cutting is done. Another piece of paper is glued outside, upon which the pattern is indicated. A fine watch spring saw is then introduced through a hole in an unimportant part of the design, and the patterns sawn out as in ordinary fretwork. The slices are then separated, and that cut out of one slice is fitted into the others so that one cutting produces several repetitions ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... encampment this evening, because of the fearful consequences that followed, and to shew the very slight circumstances upon which the destinies of life sometimes hinge. Trifling as the arrangement of the watches might seem, and unimportant as I thought it at the time, whether I undertook the first or the second, yet was my choice, in this respect, the means under God's providence of my life being saved, and the cause of the loss ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... the field, and Russell on the scaffold, and many of their own citizens in bed! There must be no Coercion. Everyone who liked must be allowed to have smallpox as much as he pleased. All other issues were unimportant ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... read that the Government has wonderful means of locating any 'squeak-box', as they call it, that is not registered and which litters up the airways with either unimportant or absolutely evil communications. These methods of tracing unregistered sending stations were discovered during the war and were proved thoroughly before the Government allowed any small ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... he soon left Hof forever, though still for a time maintaining diligent correspondence with the "erotic academy" as well as with new and more aristocratic "daughters of the Storm and Stress." The writings of this period are unimportant, some of them unworthy. Jean Paul was for a time in Leipzig and in Dresden. In October, 1798, he was again in Weimar, which, in the sunshine of Herder's praise, seemed at first his "Canaan," though he soon felt himself out of tune with Duchess Amalia's literary ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... unimportant element in the masonry of the earth's crust, and it impresses a peculiar stamp, varying with the conditions to which it is exposed, on the scenery of the districts in which it occurs. The undulating downs and rounded coombs, covered with sweet-grassed turf, of our inland chalk country, ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... there was a Cabinet on a proposal by Italy for the free navigation of the Canal. This was most unnecessary, as a virtual neutralization in practice existed, but the Italians wanted to do something, and after an enormous deal of discussion they ultimately got their way upon this unimportant point. ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... the lights, and as he crossed the house, pressed off the hall lights as he went, while the many unimportant little nothings, almost of themselves, ranged themselves into an ordered text of doubt and conjecture that he ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... cross-hatching, is first that there be no more crossing than necessary; secondly, that all the interstices be various, and rough. You may look through the entire series of the Dance of Death without finding any cross-hatching whatever, except in a few unimportant bits of background, so rude as to need scarcely more than one touch to each interstice. Albert Duerer crosses more definitely; but yet, in any fold of his drapery, every white spot differs in size from every other, and the arrangement of the whole is delightful, ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... important place and influence. Dahl had published Norway's Dawn, by Welhaven, and in the time of the Wergeland-Welhaven conflict (see Note 36, and as to Wergeland, Note 78) a violent personal quarrel developed between Wergeland and Dahl about an entirely unimportant matter. Dahl had provided his porter with a green livery having red borders. Wergeland, who regarded Dahl as the leading representative of the "Copenhagenism" (Danish, anti-Norwegian tendencies) he was contending against, ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... the catamaran drew up alongside the stranded vessel, he noticed that they regarded her with a considerable degree of curiosity and interest, these were hardly sufficiently marked to lead him to the conclusion that they had never seen such a craft before. This, however, was a comparatively unimportant matter. What concerned him most intimately was the fact that, after their night's rest, they seemed to exhibit a good deal more docility and intelligence than they had displayed on the night before. They worked well and—apparently—quite willingly, but did not appear to possess ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... society in which individual rights are respected, and force no longer dominates. So that as civilization advances the occasions on which women require the aid of masculine force become ever fewer and more unimportant. The conventionalized chivalry of men then tends to become an offer of services which it would be better for women to do for themselves and a bestowal of privileges to which they are nowise entitled.[83] Moreover, this same chivalry is, under ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... thinking. "Curious! She knows I have things to say to her. They are unimportant but I can say them to no one else. She knows I avoid looking at her. There must be something—an attraction. She's a fool. I don't know. I should have put an end to our walks ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... Dreamsinter mean by his 'Not you, but Nightspore'? Am I a secondary character—is he regarded as important; and I as unimportant? Where is Nightspore, and what is he doing? Am I to wait for his time and ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... specification in which one tamper is required for each two men shoveling the back-fill into the trench; and some such specific requirement should be made in a concrete specification if close estimates from reliable contractors are desired. Surely no engineer will claim that this is too unimportant a matter for consideration when it is known that ramming can easily be made to cost as high as 40 cts. per cu. yd., depending largely upon ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... the only aim of my existence. I have been entrusted by the Emperor himself with missions which would have tested the courage of any man, and I have not failed. That is my pride—the glory of my manhood, for the means of accomplishment no matter how unworthy, are unimportant compared with the great mission of the Germanic race ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... down. Now that his eyes were hidden by their drooping lids, and that he was no longer speaking, the sadness of his aspect seemed more profound. It dignified his rather insignificant features. It even seemed, in some mysterious way, to infuse power into his slight and unimportant figure. After sitting thus for perhaps three minutes he raised his head and ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... we'll move on," said Davidge. As conversation, it was as unimportant as possible, but it had a negative historical value, since it left Marie Louise unconvinced of her inability to ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... "I envy Gerty that power she has of dressing up with romance all our ugly and prosaic arrangements! I have never recovered my self-respect since you showed me how poor and unimportant my ambitions were." ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... edition of "Erewhon" sold in about three weeks; I had not taken moulds, and as the demand was strong, it was set up again immediately. I made a few unimportant alterations and additions, and added a Preface, of which I cannot say that I am particularly proud, but an inexperienced writer with a head somewhat turned by unexpected success is not to be trusted with a preface. ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... eyes; a flood of understanding had suddenly poured its miraculous waters over her. Incidents unimportant in themselves, utterances which seemed to have no veiled intent at the time, rushed in upon her with overwhelming conviction. Christobal suspected her of flirting with Courtenay, and disapproved of it as strongly as she herself had condemned Isobel's admitted efforts in the same ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... that a deliberate search for personality and "style" is not only impossible, but comparatively unimportant. The close relationship of art throughout the ages, is not a relationship in outward form but in inner meaning. And therefore the talk of schools, of lines of "development," of "principles of art," etc., is based on misunderstanding and can only ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... affairs are considered so comparatively unimportant, I suppose," she submitted presently. "Men ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... down to us from old Europe between its waking and the age of Pericles? Some poetry, legends, and unimportant history from Greece; some legends from Rome; the spirit or substance of the Norse sagas; the spirit or substance of the Welsh Mabinogi and the Arthurian atmosphere; and of the Irish tales of the Red Branch and Fenian cycles. The actual tales as we get them were no doubt retold in much later ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... messenger rings at the bell; the children drum on the door; the servants run up from time to time to say the messenger is getting bored; and the pencil staggers along, making the world a present of fifteen hundred unimportant words, and making Shakespeare a present of a portion of Gray's Elegy; putting "fantastic roots wreathed high" instead of "antique roots peep out." Then the journalist sends off his copy and turns his attention to the enigma of whether a brother should ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... would I do that?" he asked. "All at once it seemed unimportant to start a fire, or even try. What's happened here? What's been ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... clustered extensively within the pueblo of Tenuchtitlan. The settlements at Iztapalapan, Huntzilopocheo, and Mexicaltzinco were but military stations— outworks, guarding the issues of the causeways to the South. Tepeyacac (Guadalupe Hidalgo) was a similar position—unimportant as to population—in the north. Chapultepec was a sacred spot, not inhabited by any number of people and only held by the Mexicans for burial purposes, and on account of the springs furnishing fresh water ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... the best qualified to undertake such a task, not only from his access to the various sources of information, and his singular power and skill in narrating events and delineating characters, but also from the circumstance that he himself had a personal and no unimportant share in most of the transactions of those times, which have left the character of his own mind so indelibly impressed on his country and its institutions. It is scarcely necessary to subjoin ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... of Adot had been an important institution in an unimportant community. It employed three people and enlarged its chartered rights to perform many services in the little community. In the prosperous days following the World War it added to its surplus and paid fair dividends to scattered owners of limited shares. Its service was appreciated ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... de Choiseul was thus writing to M. Durand, the English government had already justified the fears of its wisest and most sagacious friends. On the 7th of March, 1765, after a short and unimportant debate, Parliament, on the motion of Mr. George Grenville, then first lord of the treasury, had extended to the American colonies the stamp-tax everywhere in force in England. The proposal had been brought forward in the preceding year, but the protests ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... "Unimportant men always do that," answered the other. "They would make great men small, and think by placing themselves on high pedestals they become great. The clown striding through the crowd on his stilts may even look over an emperor. But fortunately there comes a time when the dear clown must come down ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... resume our journey southward on the main line of the Mexican Central Railroad, crossing the State of Guanajuato through a fertile and well-cultivated region, in strong contrast to much of the country left behind. At Irapuato, an unimportant, dingy, dilapidated little town, nineteen miles from Silao, is the junction of the trunk line and a branch road to Guadalajara, which city we shall visit on our return trip northward. Irapuato is pleasantly remembered by all travelers in Mexico, being noted for the fact that fresh ripe ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... girls immediately owned to a sense of inferiority in her presence. But Irene was so endowed with nature's grace that she could not do an awkward thing; and then the child who accompanied her, the small unimportant child, was as beautiful in her way as Irene was in hers. So charming a pair did they make, those two, each of them dressed in the purest white, that Rosamund, who was considered quite the handsomest girl in the school, ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... horse are relatively unimportant and not very common. There are three species, the smallest about two inches long and the largest about eight inches long. These two occur in the small intestine; a form intermediate in size may also be found in the cecum and colon. These are flat, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... Antonio Stradivari. The Gagliano family played no unimportant part in the art of Italian Violin-making. It commences with Alessandro, who imitated his master as regards the form which he gave to his instruments. Alessandro Gagliano, upon leaving the workshop ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... has no smell and seems a common, unimportant thing, a bunch of several hundred holds all the perfume of the spring. No flowers lie closer to the soil or bring the smell of earth more sweetly to the mind; upon the lips and cheeks they are as soft as a kitten's fur, and ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... burthen. She had been hitherto known as the Havannah, and had plied as a packet-ship between the port of that name and New Orleans. She was now to be extemporized into a man-of-war, and in her new guise was to achieve a world-wide celebrity, and to play no unimportant part in the great struggle between North ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... you do not emphasize each syllable alike, but hit the accented syllable with force and hurry over the unimportant ones. Now why do you not apply this principle in speaking a sentence? To some extent you do, in ordinary speech; but do you in public discourse? It is there that monotony caused by lack of emphasis is ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... minutes' attention to any other English preaching: so cold and commonplace are the homilies that pass for such, under the aged roofs of churches. And as for cathedrals, the sermon is an exceedingly diminutive and unimportant part of the religious services,—if, indeed, it be considered a part,— among the pompous ceremonies, the intonations, and the resounding and lofty-voiced strains of the choristers. The magnificence of ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... other side. He has got it on the brain!" said Verena, with a laugh which seemed to relegate the whole matter to the category of the unimportant. ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... the two armies now remained in view of each other, equally defended by inaccessible entrenchments, without attempting anything more than slight attacks and unimportant skirmishes. On both sides, infectious diseases, the natural consequence of bad food, and a crowded population, had occasioned a greater loss than the sword. And this evil daily increased. But at length, the long expected succours arrived in the Swedish camp; ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... remonstrances he would turn a gentle, deprecating face. He had promised Ume-ko never again to speak rudely to their father. Besides, why should he? The outer world was all so beautiful and sad and unimportant. A sunset cloud, or a bird swinging from a hagi spray could bring sharp, swift tears to his eyes. Beauty could move him, but not old Kano's genuine sufferings. Yet, the old man, bleating from the arid rocks of age, was doubtless ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... turned sentence, a phrase of impromptu elaboration. Perhaps it is only a stupid book that some one has mentioned, or a stupid woman; as he speaks, the book looms up before one, becomes monstrous in its dulness, a masterpiece and miracle of imbecility; the unimportant little woman grows into a slow horror before your eyes. It is always the unpleasant aspect of things that he seizes, but the intensity of his revolt from that unpleasantness brings a touch of the sublime into the very expression of his disgust. Every sentence is an epigram, and ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... the several breeds are descended from the common wild duck (Anas boschas); most fanciers, on the other hand, take as usual a very different view.[440] Unless we deny that domestication, prolonged during centuries, can affect even such unimportant characters as colour, size, and in a slight degree proportional dimensions and mental disposition, there is no reason whatever to doubt that the domestic duck is descended from the common wild species, for the one differs from the other in no important character. ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... whether you are impressed with a proper sense of their superiority and value; for early prejudices are not easily rooted out, and those who have lived chiefly with monied people, regard even birth itself as unimportant ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... M.D.'s and D.D.'s make a specialty of both gynecology and gyneolatry, neither seem to understand the spirit in which these sins against hygienics are committed. Doubtless a few fashionable butterflies avoid motherhood for selfish reasons; but these are unimportant exceptions to the rule. If a woman does not love her husband she may not care to bear him children; but maternal instinct usually dominates this desire. If she does love him, and his financial resources be limited, she hesitates to increase his responsibilities. ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... questions of transient passions and objurgatory provocation are trivial and unimportant. They do not touch the real causes of the difficulty; they are but the froth on the surface of the deep and mighty current of events, which was rushing on to the gulf of rebellion. The time had come, in the history of our country, when, by the necessary ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a proper and sufficient basis for cerebral science. In the hands of Gall and Spurzheim, it had already very nearly attained its limits as regards the subdivision of organs, and the progress of their followers in discovery has been unimportant ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... earth had made, for all practical purposes, a sort of contract with the human race, and when it acted like this—cooled itself off all of a sudden, in the middle of a hot summer, and all to show off a comparatively unknown and unimportant mountain hid on an island far out at sea—I could not conceal from myself (in my present and usual capacity as a kind of agent or sponsor for humanity) that there was something distinctly jarring about it and disrespectful. I felt ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... character was not made singly, as on the Assyrian bricks, and this is the distinction between them. Almost all the bricks brought from the ruins of Babylon bear the same inscription, with the exception of one or two unimportant words, and record the building of the city by Nebuchadnezzar, the son of Nabubaluchun. We owe the interpretation of these names to the late ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... American statesman, of course, was firmly in favor of the separation of church and state and of universal toleration. But he advises everyone to join the church, some church, any old church; not because one shares its beliefs—creeds are increasingly unimportant—but because the church is an instrument of social welfare, and a man can do more good in combination with his fellows than when he stands alone. There is much truth in this doctrine, though it has a certain naivete, when looked ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... Ordinary people accept the homely phases of coexistence as inevitable and therefore unimportant. They grow to enjoy the intimacy: they give and take informality as one of the comforts of a home. They see frowsy hair and unshaven cheeks and yawns as a homely, wholesome part of life and make a pleasant ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... my idea," replied he, "we have here only a scrap of unimportant paper; the name of the legatee is not indicated, and even were it indicated, the testament would still be without force, being neither ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the body it shows but a little more than 0.25 in. Its advantages are manifest. First, it brings the insects much nearer the eye when placed in the cabinet. Secondly, by its position the body is prevented from greasing the paper of the cabinet (a not unimportant item when the reader is told that the white velvet of a newly-lined cabinet drawer has been utterly ruined by the grease from the bodies of low-set insects). Thirdly, the almost total immunity from "mites" which ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... Banneker, even though Io was farther separated from him than before in the unimportant reckoning of geographical miles; for now she was on his errand. He held her by the continuous thought of a vital common interest. In place of the former bereavement of spirit was a new and consuming ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams |
