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More "Disproportionate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all the theatres in London," he was saying; "and pacing the principal entrances, I have ascertained them to be ridiculously disproportionate to the requirements of their audiences. The doors opened the wrong way—I forget at this moment which it is, but have a note of it at home; they were frequently locked during the performance, and when the auditorium was literally thronged with English people. You have probably not had my opportunities ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had excited was out of all proportion to its merits, Johnson's unqualified condemnation was more than equally disproportionate ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... the poor child, Monstrously disproportionate, and dumb In the poor beast, and wild In the old ...
— A Father of Women - and other poems • Alice Meynell
... confiscate her fleet. They will remove the treasures of her galleries and museums, and take toll of her libraries, to make compensation for her pillage and incendiarism in Belgium. The measure of punishment is always a matter of difficulty. But surely anything less than this would be wholly disproportionate to the rank offences of Germany. The reckoning, the retribution, the retaliation to be just must be most stern. The victorious Allies, who will be her judges, will not be moved by "mealymouthed philanthropies." "Justice ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... administrative abilities of the native-born Spaniards themselves were gradually being paralyzed and reduced to impotence under the crushing obligation of preserving and defending so unwieldy an empire and of managing such disproportionate riches, a task for which they had neither the aptitude nor the means.[40] Privateering in the West Indies may indeed be regarded as a challenge to the Spaniards of America, sunk in lethargy and living upon the credit of past glory and achievement, a challenge to prove their ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... spare yourself that shame, And call your passion by some other name. Call this assault, your malice, or your hate; Love owns no acts so disproportionate. Love never taught this insolence you shew, To treat your mistress like a conquered foe. Is this the obedience which my heart should move! This usage looks more like a rape ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... an animated chase, and the description of the hunt details the amount of slaughter, but cannot possibly explain the peculiar excitement which attends elephant-shooting beyond all other sports. The size of the animal is so disproportionate to that of the hunter that the effect of a large herd of these monsters flying before a single man would be almost ridiculous could the chase be witnessed by some casual observer who was proof against ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... completely imposed on Catherine; but her daughter was more suspicious, and that suspicion was strengthened by the disproportionate anger and disappointment Dierich showed the moment he learned Gerard was not at home, had not been ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the scenes he describes. He has endeavored to combine healthy moral lessons with a sufficient amount of exciting interest to render the story attractive to the young; and he hopes he has not mingled these elements of a good juvenile book in disproportionate quantities. ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... the two fleets, so vastly disproportionate in number, size, equipment, and military force—eighteen galleons and galleys, with four or five thousand fighting men, against eleven small vessels and twelve or fourteen hundred sailors—met in that narrow sea. The action lasted all day. It was neither spirited nor sanguinary. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... is, for instance, constitutionally timid. Violent action of any kind will stampede it in a panic, and, like the Countess in Evan Harrington, it "does not ruffle well." It betrays (I think) ill-breeding in its disproportionate terror whenever an anarchist bomb explodes, and in the ferocity of its terror it can be crueller than the assailant. "My good people," it provokes one to say, "by all means stamp out these dangers, but composedly, as becomes men conscious of their strength. Even allowing ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... height is known by some parts yet standing. The arch of one of the gates is entire, and of another only so far dilapidated as to diversify the appearance. A square apartment of great loftiness is yet standing; its use I could not conjecture, as its elevation was very disproportionate to its area. Two corner towers, particularly attracted our attention. Mr. Boswell, whose inquisitiveness is seconded by great activity, scrambled in at a high window, but found the stairs within broken, and could not reach the top. Of the other tower we were told that ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... of a National Army by draft from men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty years inclusive. The determination to raise a draft army was based upon the belief that in this way successive and adequate supplies of men could be found without disproportionate calls on any section of the country and without undue disturbance of the industrial life of the nation. Although the plan ran counter to American practice during most of our history, the draft army became deservedly ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... action, in the proportion of the excess of colored population it would be necessary to throw off, by the process of voluntary manumission or sale. This effect must result inevitably from the depreciating value of the slaves, ensuing their disproportionate multiplication. The depreciation would be relieved and retarded at the same time by the process. The two operations would aid reciprocally, and sustain each other, and both be in the highest degree beneficial. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... R is Rebecca, who took such a header. S is the Speaker, which gets quite excited, T is the Temper, it shows uninvited. U the Unquestioning Faith of the some, V is the Vaudeville, where they all come. W stands for the Worshipping Few, X their Xtreme disproportionate view. Y ends Ibsenity, and, as everyone knows, Z brings an alphabet rhyme to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... our statesmen said, "The curse of this country is eloquent men." And one cannot wonder at the uneasiness sometimes manifested by trained statesmen, with large experience of public affairs, when they observe the disproportionate advantage suddenly given to oratory over the most solid and accumulated public service. In a Senate or other business committee, the solid result depends on a few men with working talent. They know how to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... the foliage becomes a mere mask under which the flowers are concealed. There is not one of the Tom Thumb class that may not be treated as a hardy annual, and all afford opportunity of making a gorgeous show of colour at a cost ridiculously disproportionate to the effect obtained. They are also admirably adapted for pot culture, making shapely plants covered with bloom ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... furniture described above. Education has improved and is improving still more, far as it yet is from being up even to the English standard. More leisure has also produced novel reading with its consequent affectation of aristocratic ideas and prejudices and disproportionate ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... thick neck, broad chest, and high shoulders; his thighs and legs were long and thin; and as his face also was ugly—and was only redeemed by the dignity and force of his glance—and all his limbs were disproportionate with one another, he had rather the appearance of a monster than a man. Such was he whom Fortune was destined to make a conqueror, for whom Heaven was reserving more glory than ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... shore within pistol shot of a public road; at first I thought they were domesticated, and refrained from firing. The loggerhead is a large and heavy bird for a duck: one which I shot weighed eighteen pounds, and it has been recorded as sometimes weighing as much as twenty-nine pounds. From the disproportionate smallness of its wings it is incapable of flight, but employs these members as paddles in hurrying along the surface of the water when alarmed, using its feet at the same time with much splashing and apparent awkwardness, leaving a broad wake behind ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... direction indicated, and saw a long low-hulled craft, cutter-rigged, with what struck me as a set of spars altogether disproportionate to ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... cruelty. There is nothing more utterly confusing to the childish mind than to have trifling faults treated with wrath and indignation. It is true that, in the world of nature, punishment seems often wholly disproportionate to offences. Nature will penalise carelessness in a disastrous fashion, and spare the cautious and prudent sinner. But there is no excuse for us, if we have any sense of justice and patience at all, for not setting a better example. We ought to show children that ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... not realise the great deterioration of our stock, the squashed-in, stunted, disproportionate, commonised look of the bulk of our people, because, as we take our walks abroad, we note only faces and figures which strike us as good-looking; the rest pass unremarked. Ugliness has become a matter of course. There is no reason, save town life, ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... almost with favour the exploits of a hunter like Major ROGERS, who is said to have applied the value of the ivory obtained from his encounters towards the purchase of his successive regimental commissions, and had, therefore, an object, however disproportionate, in his ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... proportions of boys now attending the public schools who are likely to enter the occupations named, because they do not take into account the fact that a considerable number of the workers in Cleveland came to this country after they reached adult manhood and that a disproportionate number of these foreign born workers enter the industrial occupations. For this reason the total adult working population is not strictly comparable with the school enrollment, which is approximately nine-tenths native born. When the boys in the public ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... adapted for the profession which he proposed to exercise. His stature was not of the tallest, but his person was uncommonly strong and compact. The greatest peculiarities of his frame were the breadth of his shoulders, and the great and almost disproportionate length of his arms; so remarkable, indeed, that it was said he could, without stooping, tie the garters of his Highland hose, which are placed two inches below the knee. His countenance was open, manly, stern at ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... not give any decided hope that even the last day's agony of repentance would be the turning over of a new leaf, when convalescence should bring the same surroundings and temptations, and perhaps the like disproportionate indignation and impatience in dealing with errors and constitutional weakness. "And the example of my brother's poor son is not encouraging," he added. "He who seems to have owed everything to ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the sunlight took its deepest gold the tea-tray was brought in. Hester had left the room a short time before the footman appeared with it, carrying it with the air of disproportionate solemnity with which certain male domestics are able to surround the smallest service. The tea had been frequently served in Hester's boudoir of late. During the last week, however, Lady Walderhurst's share of the meal had been a glass of milk. She had chosen ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... many local post-offices as to the amount of pensions given weekly in those little grey villages. I found that often the old-age pensioners would number between 100 and 200 in small villages of less than 2,000 people. The emigration of the youth has left a disproportionate number of the old, and it is not necessary to bring any railing accusation against the honesty of the Irish race in order to understand why it is that Old-age Pensions have done so much for Ireland. But the fact remains, and it carries ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... himself sometimes gave to that manuscript, conveys the idea of a complete and regular piece of biography, it was to this particular portion of his life that the work was principally devoted; while the anecdotes, having reference to other parts of his career, not only occupied a very disproportionate space in its pages, but were most of them such as are found repeated in the various Journals and other MSS. he left behind. The chief charm, indeed, of that narrative, was the melancholy playfulness—melancholy, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the preface to his seventh volume, "not from an unwillingness to subject every statement of fact, even in its minutest details, to the severest scrutiny; but from the variety and the multitude of the papers which have been used and which could not be intelligently cited without a disproportionate commentary." Again, Blaine's "Twenty Years of Congress," a work which, properly weighed, is not without historical value, is only to be read with great care on account of his hasty and inaccurate generalizations. There are evidences of good, ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... used by an unscrupulous Administration to debauch political conventions and fraudulently overcome public sentiment, especially in the "rotten borough" districts—those where the party is not strong, and where the office-holders in consequence have a disproportionate influence. This was done by the Republican Administration in 1912, to the ruin of the Republican party. Moreover, there are numbers of States and municipalities where very little has as yet been done to do away with ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... what sense laughter is a "correction." Whether one considers the jests uttered, the feelings of the jester, or of him at whom one jests, laughter appears from the point of view of morality as a correction most often undeserved, unjust—or at least disproportionate to the fault—pitiless, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... amount of rummaging altogether disproportionate to the nature of his quest, Raikes succeeded in finding a lucifer, which flared with a reluctance characteristic ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... be allowed that the light of the moon, sufficient though it is for the pensive walker, and not disproportionate to the inner light we have, is very inferior in quality and intensity to that of the sun. But the moon is not to be judged alone by the quantity of light she sends to us, but also by her influence on the earth and its inhabitants. "The moon gravitates toward the earth, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... and of the forest; inferior, in short, in everything that constitutes the wealth, the honor, the dignity, the stability, the happiness, the true greatness of a nation,—it is wrong, it is unjust, it is absurd, that they should have an influence in all the departments of government so entirely disproportionate to our own. We would arouse you to your own true interests. We would have you, like men, firmly resolved to maintain your own rights. We would have you say to the South,—if you choose to hug to your bosom that system which is continually injuring and impoverishing ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... with a wicked and unnatural brother. She conceived a disproportionate affection for this brother, and erroneously imagined that her fate was blended with his, that their lives would necessarily terminate at the same period, and that, therefore, whoever was the contriver of his death was likewise, ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... different when the same conservative—even retrograde—tendency showed itself on subjects on which party-feeling ran high. A great part of the meditative energy of Wordsworth's later years was absorbed by questions towards whose solution he contributed no new element, and which filled him with disproportionate fears. And some injustice has been done to his memory by those who have not fully realized the predisposing causes which were at work,—the timidity of age, and the deep-rooted attachment to the England ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... every man separately whether he thinks it laudable and worthy of a man of this age to hold a position from which he receives a salary disproportionate to his work; to take from the people—often in poverty—taxes to be spent on constructing cannon, torpedoes, and other instruments of butchery, so as to make war on people with whom we wish to be at peace, and who feel the same wish in regard to us; or to receive a ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... flung open. In rushed Dickey Bulmer with a speed strangely disproportionate to his years. In his hands he held a ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... the forms of great engines and incomprehensible bulks were scattered in vague disorder. The Giants appeared and vanished among these masses and in the uncertain light; great shapes they were, not disproportionate to the things amidst which they moved. Some were actively employed, some sitting and lying as if they courted sleep, and one near at hand, whose body was bandaged, lay on a rough litter of pine boughs and was certainly asleep. Redwood peered at these ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... said, "and I feel that it would be not only ungrateful but wrong for me to refuse this noble gift. But you will admit that it is natural that I should for a time be overwhelmed by it. I am not so ungracious as to refuse so magnificent a present, although I feel that it is altogether disproportionate, not to the service I was fortunate enough to render, but to my action in rendering it. Well, Mr. Linton, I can only thank you for the part you have taken in the matter. Of course, I shall write at once to the count ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... perceived to be a small home with a large mangle in it, at the handle of which machine stood a very long boy, with a very little head, and an open mouth of disproportionate capacity that seemed to assist his eyes in staring at the visitors. In a corner below the mangle, on a couple of stools, sat two very little children: a boy and a girl; and when the very long boy, in an interval of staring, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... student mental tools with which to think straight on societal problems (what Comte called the "social point of view"), and since usually only a comparatively small number find it possible to specialize in advanced courses, the introductory course assumes what at first sight might seem a disproportionate importance. Only one or two teachers of sociology, so far as I know, discount the value of an elementary course. The rest are persuaded of its fundamental importance, and many, therefore, consider it a breach of trust to turn over this course to green, ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... the edifices were new or raw, or wholly unlovely in design or fabric. In Washington nothing of this could be seen. Staring brick walls, buildings of unequal height and fatiguingly ugly designs, uprose here and there in morasses of mud that were meant for streets. Disproportionate outline, sharp conjunctures of affluence and squalor, accented the ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... actions, there is always considerable danger of the social sanction becoming too strong. Society is apt to insist on all men being cast in one mould, without much caring to examine the character of the mould which it has adopted. And it frequently happens that a wholly disproportionate value thus comes to be attached to the observance of mere rules of etiquette and good-breeding as compared with acts and feelings which really concern the moral and social welfare of mankind. There is many a man, moving in good society, who ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... horses." This nature had flown in pieces, liked a cracked wheel, in the swift revolution of life. To her husband it was only one of the messes recorded in the newspapers. But her mind was full of wonder and fear. As little as she had known the man, she had felt an interest in him altogether disproportionate to what he said or did. He was a man of possibilities, of streaks, of moods, one that could have been powerful, lived a rich life. And at thirty-three he had come to the end, where his passions and his ideals in perpetual warfare had ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... the intention of the above authors to claim an entire absence of the grotesque method of treatment in specimens of the Mound-Builder's art, since elsewhere they call attention to what appears to be a caricature of the human face, as well as to the disproportionate size of the heads of many of the animal carvings. Not only are the heads of many of the carvings of disproportionate size, which, in instances has the effect of actual distortion, but in not a few of the sculptures nature, instead of being copied, has been trifled with and birds and animals ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... with spiteful and merciless jibes because I was not like any of them. But I could not endure their taunts; I could not give in to them with the ignoble readiness with which they gave in to one another. I hated them from the first, and shut myself away from everyone in timid, wounded and disproportionate pride. Their coarseness revolted me. They laughed cynically at my face, at my clumsy figure; and yet what stupid faces they had themselves. In our school the boys' faces seemed in a special way to degenerate ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... six, the 'watch below'—(I give you the result of the day's observation)—the rest, some eight or ten, had been washed overboard at first. One or two were Algerines, the rest Spaniards. The vessel was a smuggler bound for Gibraltar; there were two stupidly disproportionate guns, taking up the whole deck, which was convex and—nay, look you! (a rough pen-and-ink sketch of the different parts of the wreck is here introduced) these are the gun-rings, and the black square the place where the bodies lay. (All the 'bulwarks' ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... matter we are now considering, in discussing the origin of a proverb, "which, differently worded, is to be found in all the languages of Europe," viz., "Fortune favors fools." He ascribes it partly to the "tendency to exaggerate all effects that seem disproportionate to their visible cause, and all circumstances that are in any way strongly contrasted with our notions of the persons under them." Omitting some explanations which would refer the error to mal-observation, or to the other species of non-observation (that of circumstances), I take ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... legislative power, called the Provisional Council of the Russian Republic. In the new Ministry the propertied classes practically controlled, and in the Council of the Russian Republic they occupied a disproportionate number ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... stairways surrounding the court, reached the dirty paving. Bristol directed the light of a pocket-lamp upon the hunched-up figure which lay in the dust, and I saw it to be that of a dwarfish creature, yellow skinned and wearing only a dark loin cloth. He had a malformed and disproportionate head, a head that had been too large even for a big man. I knew after first glance that this was one of the horrible dwarfs employed by the Hashishin in their murderous business. It might even be the one who ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... result is even more striking. Of the thirty-eight delegates assigned to the non-Christian provinces, one only, good old Lino Abaya of Tiagan, was a non-Christian. Many of the non-Christian comandancias were given a number of delegates wholly disproportionate to their population, and in this way the congress was stuffed ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... the disappointment may be attributed, it was certainly not due to any lack of pains on the part of Don Jorge. The labour which he bestowed upon his Life was immense, quite disproportionate to his previous efforts. "The Gypsies in Spain," for instance, was built up upon already existing jottings, extracts, and notes, very loosely thrown together; while "The Bible in Spain" itself was, in regard to its composition, nothing more than an olla podrida of journalized letters. But ...
— George Borrow - Times Literary Supplement, 10th July 1903 • Thomas Seccombe
... be intended for the mass of the people, and which are supplied at the public cost, have made next to no provision for the practiced training of boys and girls to become self-supporting men and women—wealth-producing citizens; while the whole curriculum of the school-system tends to a disproportionate intellectuality, and to an alienation from all manual labor. * ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... in order to its reception. Such dependence upon one's brethren is not inconsistent with a primal dependence on Christ alone, and is a safeguard against the cultivating of one's own idiosyncrasies till they become diseased and disproportionate. The most slenderly endowed Christian soul has the double charge of giving to, and receiving from, its brethren. We have all something which we can contribute to the general stock. We have all need ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... Louis XV.); and of this number six thousand were distributed in Paris, and in a circle of four leagues around it, including Versailles. You will undoubtedly ask me, even allowing for our extension of territory, what can be the cause of this disproportionate increase of distrust and depravity? I will explain it as far as my abilities admit, according to the opinions of others compared ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... her wings against its bars, and she would have done the same if those bars had been of gold, and if the fruits of paradise had been pushed to her between them. This, I think, is why the expression of her anger seems too often disproportionate, and why her irony is so apt to be preposterous. She was born to resist being caged in any form. Her defiance was universal, and ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... be seen by the lottery combinations we present, how infinitely disproportionate are the chances in this species of gambling—how vastly the odds bear against the purchaser of tickets, and what mischievous results must of necessity spring from a vile system of frauds, perpetrated, as it is, by the sanction of law, and the tolerance ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... the result may be very different according as these masses are animated with a spirit which will infuse vigour into the action or otherwise. It is quite possible for such a state of feeling to exist between two States that a very trifling political motive for War may produce an effect quite disproportionate—in fact, ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... one that bears not its part in the total effect, there is yet about the lyrics of Jonson a certain stiffness and formality, a suspicion that they were not quite spontaneous and unbidden, but that they were carved, so to speak, with disproportionate labour by a potent man of letters whose habitual thought is on greater things. It is for these reasons that Jonson is even better in the epigram and in occasional verse where rhetorical finish and pointed wit less interfere with the spontaneity and emotion which ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... street. On the walls, covered with a green paper with pink patterns on it, hung three immense oil paintings. One depicted a setter-dog with a blue collar, bearing the inscription: 'This is my consolation'; at the dog's feet flowed a river; on the opposite bank of the river a hare of quite disproportionate size with ears cocked up was sitting under a pine tree. In another picture two old men were eating a melon; behind the melon was visible in the distance a Greek temple with the inscription: 'The Temple of Satisfaction.' The ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... The second, veneration for that which is below us. The hands folded on the back as if tied together, the lowered, smiling glance, bespeak that we have to regard the earth well and cheerfully; it gives us an opportunity to maintain ourselves; it affords unspeakable joys; but it brings disproportionate sufferings. If one hurts oneself bodily, whether faultily or innocently; if others hurt one, intentionally or accidentally; if earthly chance does one any harm—let these be well thought of, for such danger accompanies us all our life long. But from this condition we deliver ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... them, and, especially in the later work where he is more or less free from reminiscences of Remizov, they produce the impression of mosaic laboriously set together. They are overloaded with pointedly suggestive metaphor and symbolically expressive detail, and in their laborious and disproportionate elaborateness they remind you of the deliberate ugliness of a painting by some German "Expressionist." [Footnote: Zamyatin was during the war a shipbuilding Engineer in the Russian service at Newcastle. He has written several stories of English life which are entirely in his later "expressionist" ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... 1 curate; 1 Protestant minister; and 10 others of sundry occupations. The difference in composition between this republican Assembly and our own Congresses is in some respects remarkable; for, independently of the very large and indeed altogether disproportionate representation of the nobility or titled classes, we observe a very great preponderance of rich land-owners, representing in their own persons the agricultural and vine-growing interests. Very singular, also, is the small proportion of lawyers, only 155 being ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... Sin. From the attache case she took out a lacquered box, silken-lined like a jewel-casket. It contained four singular-looking pipes, the parts of which she began to fit together. The first and largest of these had a thick bamboo stem, an amber mouthpiece, and a tiny, disproportionate bowl of brass. The second was much smaller and was of some dark, highly-polished wood, mounted with silver conceived in an ornate Chinese design representing a long-tailed lizard. The mouthpiece was of jade. The third and fourth pipes were yet smaller, ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... to capture the tribe and their cattle. But this was a course of action which was repugnant to the Directors' sense of justice. It aroused, besides, a vision of reinforcements ordered from Batavia, and of disbursements quite disproportionate to the practical utility of the Cape station as an item in the system of the Company. In vain Van Riebeck urged that a large body of slaves and ten or twelve hundred head of cattle would be a great addition to the resources of the settlement. The Chamber of Seventeen ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... massive illustrated volume on the Holy Land, a few landscapes in cold, bluish milk and water colors, and rigid heads in crayons—the work of pupils—were presumably ornamental. An imposing mahogany sofa and what seemed to be a disproportionate excess of chairs somewhat coldly furnished the room. Jack had reluctantly made up his mind that, if Sophy was accompanied by any one, he would be obliged to kiss her to keep up his assumed relationship. As she entered the room with Miss Mix, Jack advanced and soberly saluted ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... passing man split the air with the wolfish war-yell of the Chis-chis-chash. As though he had been a spiral spring released from pressure, the Fire Eater regained his height. The little boy sat briskly down in the ashes, adding his voice to the confusion, which now reigned in the great camp in a most disproportionate way. The old chief sprang to his doorway in time to see a mounted rider cut by, shrieking, "The pony-soldiers are coming over the hills!" and ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... or breast-bone is narrow and long, and collar-bones are to be found in most of the genera; the pelvis is long and narrow. In most cases the hind limbs are longer and more powerful than the fore-limbs; in some, as in the jerboas (Dipus) and the Cape jumping hare (Pedetes caffer), attaining as disproportionate a length as in the kangaroos, their mode of progression being the same; the tibia and fibula are anchylosed; the forelimbs in the majority of this order are short, and are used as hands in holding the food to the mouth, the radius and ulna being distinct, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... was ancient and compact: a domino of tiled houses and walled gardens, dwarfed by the disproportionate bigness of the church. From the midst of the thoroughfare which divided it in half, fields and trees were visible at either end; and through the sally-port of every street, there flowed in from the country a silent invasion of green grass. Bees and birds appeared ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... violation of the commerce clause of the Constitution.[753] A law exhibiting the intent to impose a compensatory fee for such a legitimate purpose is prima facie reasonable.[754] If the exaction be so unreasonable and disproportionate to the service as to impugn the good faith of the law[755] it cannot stand either under the commerce clause or the Fourteenth Amendment.[756] The State is not bound to adjust the charge after the fact, but may, in anticipation, ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... Admiral's Arms—England, within a bordure of France,—the same arms that were borne by Prince JOHN OF ELTHAM, No. 24. In this example the crew are not represented: but in other Seals of early shipping figures are commonly introduced, and almost always they are drawn of ludicrously disproportionate size. This ship does not display any Banner from a banner-staff, but has a nautical Pennon of ample size flying at the mast-head: when Banners are displayed on board ships upon early Seals, they are generally narrow in proportion to their height, aform of Banner adopted on ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... of sand, and fragments of rock, must have travelled in the bed of that river, or bottom of that valley which receives the torrents coming from the mountains! The excavation of this great valley, therefore, will not be found any way disproportionate to that which is more evident in the branches; and, though the experience of man goes for nothing in this progress of things, yet, having principles in matter of fact from whence he may reason back into ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... convert as well as a great crusader. It is the real power of re-forming an opinion, which is the very opposite of that mere formlessness which we call fickleness. Nor is the comparison to such an example as St. Paul altogether historically disproportionate; for the point upon which this very typical Englishman changed his mind was a point which is now the pivot of the whole future and perhaps of the very existence of Christendom. For many such Englishmen it might almost be called the discovery of Christendom. It can be called with greater ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton
... the present dilemma, still more irritated, also, by this proof of what was always exceedingly displeasing to him,—his son's having adopted American standards and opinions,—broke out furiously with a wrath wholly disproportionate to the occasion,— ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... performance of services congenial to their natural habits, however dissimilar to Terrestrial species, had not the same air of singularity, or rather of monstrosity. But in the creatures bred to furnish wool, feathers, or the like, some single feature was always exaggerated into disproportionate dimensions. Thus the elnerve is loaded with long plumes, sometimes twice the length of the body, and curled upward at the extremity, so that it can neither fly nor run; and though its plumage is exquisitely ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... Highness, this House will take into their early consideration the propriety of abolishing sinecures and unmerited pensions and grants, the reduction of the civil list, and of all salaries which are now disproportionate to the services, and especially, that they will take into their consideration the Reform of this House, agreeably to the laws and constitution of the land, this House being decidedly of opinion that justice and ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... infinity of contrast rested in the touch. He looked at it with anxiety so obviously deep and troubled, that Hilda silently smiled. She who had been battered, as she said, twice round the world, found it disproportionate. ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... of water it ordinarily discharges into the Mississippi is vastly disproportionate to its length, or the number and size of its tributaries. I have seen less than six feet depth of water at St. Charles at a low stage, and it was once forded by a soldier, at Bellefontaine, four miles above ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... something of the former? The luxurious mist in which he had been living, dispersed before his sister's bitter words, and, as she designed he should, he felt himself her accomplice. But, again, reason struggled to enlighten him; for surely he would never have done a thing so disproportionate to the end to be gamed! It was the unconnected action of his brain that thus advised him. No thoroughly-fashioned, clear-spirited man conceives wickedness impossible to him: but wickedness so largely mixed with folly, the best of us may reject as not among our temptations. Evan, since ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Colonel Harvey's proposal was accepted, although not without much doubt and indecision on the subject, and during the night of the 5th June the small band of heroes, destined to achieve so glorious a result, were silently get under arms for the disproportionate encounter. At the head of seven hundred and twenty bayonets Colonel Harvey dashed in upon his slumbering and unsuspecting enemy, amounting to more than quadruple his own force, and well provided with field artillery. So bold and unexpected was the attack, that the enemy ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... narrower view than we have here formulated; it presents each man not only as isolated from and antagonized with the world about him, but as cut off sharply and definitely from the past before he lived and the future after he is dead; it puts what is, in relation to the view we have taken, a disproportionate amount of stress upon his egotism, upon the pursuit of his self-interest and his personal virtue and his personal fancies, and it ignores the fact, the familiar rediscovery which the nineteenth century has achieved, that he is after all only the transitory custodian of an undying gift of life, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... accurate calculation, the prodigious force, which in birds must be exerted and maintained by the pectoral muscles, with which the all-wise Creator has supplied them, and, by applying the same principles to the structure of the human frame, he proved how extremely disproportionate was the strength of the corresponding muscles in man. In fact, the man who should attempt to fly like a bird would be guilty of greater folly and ignorant presumption than the little infant who should endeavour to perform the feats of a gladiator! ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... this makes his treatment of speculative Mysticism less satisfactory than the more popular parts of the book. It is also a pity that he has neglected the English representatives of Mysticism; they are quite as interesting in their way as Madame Guyon, whose story he tells at disproportionate length. At the same time, I wish to acknowledge considerable obligations to Vaughan, whose early death probably deprived us of even better work than the ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... disproportionate thoughts to the matter in hand, which was the simplest sort of a Continental holiday. And I am certain that my companions, near as they are to me, felt no other trouble but the suppressed excitement ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... and good condition of body, being also pleasant, these he will grasp at in moderation and as he ought to do, and also such other pleasant things as do not hinder these objects, and are not unseemly or disproportionate to his means; because he that should grasp at such would be liking such pleasures more than is proper; but the man of Perfected Self-Mastery is not of this character, but regulates his desires by the dictates of ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... Robert Schumann complained that the musical critics had so much to say about singers and players, while the composer was almost entirely ignored. To-day this reproach could hardly be made, for although vocalists still receive perhaps a disproportionate share of attention, compositions, new and old, are also discussed at great length in the press. Nevertheless, I believe that the vast majority of those who attend an operatic performance in New York, and are delighted with "Siegfried" or "Faust," have but vague and shadowy notions as ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... an anecdote, which pleased me for several reasons; that once, when the queen visited the school, she put to him the inquiry, "whether the educational system of England did not give a disproportionate attention to the study of the ancient classics." His reply was, "that her majesty could best satisfy her mind on that point by observing what men the public schools of England had hitherto produced;" certainly a very adroit reply, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... people who will gladly find the little space into which they may slip a slender volume called A General's Letters to His Son on Obtaining His Commission (CASSELL). So slender indeed is the book that by the time you have read the disproportionate title you seem to be about halfway through it. But here is certainly a case of infinite riches in a little room. The anonymous writer is deserving of every praise for the mingled restraint and force of his method; you feel ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... town of Thorndyke; and the notorious repute of that town, coupled with this presumption, made it probable that Lenny now saw before him one of the midnight desecrators of the stocks. As if to confirm the suspicion, which passed through Lenny's mind with a rapidity wholly disproportionate to the number of lines it costs me to convey it, the boy, now standing right before the stocks, bent down and read that pithy anathema with which it was defaced. And having read it, he repeated it aloud, and Lenny actually saw him smile—such a smile!—so disagreeable ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... remarkable; but Alfred saw only the radiant young creature in flowing muslin, with the narrowest sash in the room, and no ornament but a necklace of large pearls and her own vivid beauty. She had altered her mind about coming, with apologies for her vacillating disposition so penitent and disproportionate that her indulgent and unsuspecting mother was really quite amused. Alfred was not so happy as to know that she had changed her mind with his note. Perhaps even this knowledge could have added little to that exquisite moment, when, unhoped for, she passed close to him, and the ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... keeping up the forms of administration, till the States can have time to agree upon a more substantial substitute for the present shadow of a federal government. Things did not come to this desperate extremity at once. The causes which have been specified produced at first only unequal and disproportionate degrees of compliance with the requisitions of the Union. The greater deficiencies of some States furnished the pretext of example and the temptation of interest to the complying, or to the least delinquent States. ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... false premises, as well as his attitude to those two little words, was the consciousness that many would consider that he had not treated his wife as a husband should do. This possibility had never occurred to him before, so that it came with disproportionate emphasis. ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... in and near these States were either besieged or menaced by warlike preparations, and especially Fort Sumter was nearly surrounded by well-protected hostile batteries, with guns equal in quality to the best of its own, and outnumbering the latter as perhaps ten to one. A disproportionate share of the Federal muskets and rifles had somehow found their way into these States, and had been seized to be used against the government. Accumulations of the public revenue lying within them had been seized for the same object. The navy was scattered in distant seas, leaving but a very small ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... time? Should I act on Davies's 'querry' and go to Bremen after Bhme? I soon dismissed that idea. It was one to act upon if others failed; for the present it meant another scramble. Bremen is six hours from Norden by rail. I should spend a disproportionate amount of my limited time in trains, and I should want a different disguise. Besides, I had already learnt something fresh about Bhme; for the seed dropped at Emden Station yesterday had come to life. A submarine engineer I knew him to ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... expenditure of military resources. The characteristics of the theater, alone, will exact their due toll, even if no enemy be present. In the presence of the enemy, such expenditures may increase with great rapidity. The fundamental consideration here is whether the resultant losses are disproportionate to the gains. ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... question of how far our experiences really affect our characters. I remembered having once classed certain temperaments as the stuff of tragedy, and others as the stuff of comedy, and of having found a greater cruelty in the sorrows which light natures undergo, as unfit and disproportionate for them. Disaster, I tacitly decided, was the fit lot of serious natures; when it befell the frivolous it was more than they ought to have been made to bear; it was not of their quality. Then by the mental zigzagging which ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... but though great policy was used on both sides, they broke off without coming to any terms. This was done by the nabob to my great mortification, for he and all the country despaired of my being able to resist such disproportionate force, and he was therefore willing before hand to conciliate the viceroy by presents; considering, if I were once overthrown, his own turn would come next, either to endure a severe assault, or to make such a peace as the enemy chose to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... of Texas was warmly favored by the party of the slave-holders. Burr had been Vice-President of the United States, and was a brilliant and able man, of imposing personality, whose intrigues in the West attracted an attention altogether disproportionate to their real weight. In consequence each event is often treated as if it were isolated and stood apart from the general current of western history; whereas in truth each was but the most striking or important among a host or others. The feats performed by Austin and Houston ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... I contrived, by means which I must omit for want of room, to transfer myself to London. And now began the latter and fiercer stage of my long sufferings; without using a disproportionate expression I might say, of my agony. For I now suffered, for upwards of sixteen weeks, the physical anguish of hunger in. I various degrees of intensity, but as bitter perhaps as ever any human being can have suffered who ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... circulation, though the least flattering to an author's self-love, had been published in books, they would have filled a respectable number of volumes, though every passage of merely temporary interest were omitted. My prose writings have been charged with a disproportionate demand on the attention; with an excess of refinement in the mode of arriving at truths; with beating the ground for that which might have been run down by the eye; with the length and laborious construction of my periods; in short with obscurity and the love of paradox. But my severest ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... very small: only about fifteen lines, by about one inch and three quarters wide. Upon seeing the margins, M. Scherer, the head-librarian, exclaimed, "I hope that satisfies you!" But they are by no means disproportionate—and the extraordinary colour and quality of the vellum render them enchanting. We come now to the ornaments. These are clusters of small flowers, strung in a pearl-like manner, and formed or grouped into the most pleasing and tasteful shapes. The figures are small, with a well indicated outline. ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... style is to possess a full, rich, complex matter to grapple with". Instruction in writing, it is to be feared, too often neglects this sound doctrine and places an emphasis upon formal matters that seems disproportionate, especially when form is made to appear as a thing apart. Form and content go together and one must not suffer at the expense of the other. But a sustained interest in the ways and means of correct expression is aroused only when the student feels that he has something to express. Instructors often ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... casuistry as a field of speculation, false and baseless per se; nay, we regard it not so much in the light of a visionary and idle speculation, as one positively erroneous in its principles, and mischievous for its practical results. This is due in part to the disproportionate importance which the Church of Rome has always attached to casuistry; making, in fact, this supplementary section of ethics take precedency of its elementary doctrines in their catholic simplicity: as though the plain and broad ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... of course can have their pick, rarely marry good-looking men, but generally give preference to those who are homely; because that {173} exquisiteness in which beauty originates naturally blends with that power which accompanies huge noses and disproportionate features. ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... at that picture in just that way. He had known longing before it, and he had known bitterness quite as misplaced and quite as disproportionate. ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... sun, he beholds beings whose appearance seems such a caricature upon humanity, that he is at a loss to know whether to assign them a place among the human or the brute creation. Unable to walk,—usually deaf and dumb,—with bleared eyes, and head of disproportionate size,—brown, flabby, and leprous skin,—a huge goitre descending from the throat and resting upon the breast,—an abdomen enormously distended,—the lower limbs crooked, weak, and ill-shaped,—without the power of utterance, or thoughts to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... diminution in Tasmania have been already stated; but some of these continued their operation even after the capture: their natural consequences followed. Towards the last days of their savage life, the sexes were disproportionate, although the balance was partly restored by associating the women who had been longer in captivity, with the men whose wives had died; but many of these women had become licentious, and by an extraordinary oversight the government permitted unmarried convicts and ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... moment, but then met the light question with a disproportionate gravity. "No, Mr. Osmond; I don't think I should ever dare to provoke you. Lord Warburton, at any rate," she more easily added, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... will not do that; no, you will not leave the birth of your child in the shade. The countess is of a noble and ancient house; for you, doubtless, this alliance is disproportionate, but it is honorable. By this marriage, your daughter will not be legitimatized, but legitimate; and thus, whatever may happen to her, she can be proud of her father, ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... that sort of really disproportionate being whom we know, that miracle incapable of explanation so long as the truth remains in the shadow. Infinite though the resources of his genius be, they cannot suffice for the mad struggle which he maintains against society. He needs other, more material resources. He needs ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... water it ordinarily discharges into the Mississippi is vastly disproportionate to its length, or the number and size of its tributaries. I have seen less than six feet depth of water at St. Charles at a low stage, and it was once forded by a soldier, at Bellefontaine, four miles above ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... on the due proportion of the different branches of productiveness to one another. Thus, Spain, for instance, has remained poor under the most advantageous circumstances in the world,(337) because it allowed a disproportionate preponderance of personal services. The character of the Spanish people has always given them a leaning towards aristocratic pride and economic idleness. Tradesmen, in that country, sought, as a rule, to amass merely enough to enable them to live on ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... national Church, with its disproportionate wealth and its selfish, incompetent, and often degraded officials, could not but be a growing offence to the developing intelligence of the nation; and to quicken this feeling there were minor grievances which were an ancient ground ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... sin which may be done by a child up to the twelfth year of his age from birth. The scriptures shall not recognise it as sinful. The punishment thou hast inflicted on me for such a venial offence hath been disproportionate in severity. The killing of a Brahmana involves a sin that is heavier than the killing of any other living being. Thou shall, therefore, O god of justice, have to be born among men even in the Sudra order. And from this day I establish this limit in respect of the consequence ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... mentioned have aroused, and which is likely to be sustained for a good while to come, leads me to believe that the impressions of a traveller who has visited other new countries may be useful to those who desire to know what South Africa is really like, and why it makes a noise and stir in the world disproportionate to its small population. ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... and unexpected passion of the speaker, the incomprehensible change in his voice, and the utterly disproportionate exaggeration of his attitude towards his daughters, enforced an instantaneous silence. The rain began to drip audibly at the window, the rush of the river sounded distinctly from without, even the shaking of the front part of the dwelling by the distant gale ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... memory of the darling minister, has been placed at the south side of Hanover Square. It is of bronze, and stands on a granite pedestal, of size disproportionate to the height and bulk of the figure. The artist is Mr. Chantrey: the work being at the cost of the nobility of the land, and a few ardent admirers of "the system" introduced by Mr. Pitt into the government ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... tell us if some such case of ischial approximation by natural mechanical causes has not caused the probable extinction of whole genera of vertebrates. "If we are to believe that for our original sin the pangs and labor of childbirth were increased, and if we also believe in the disproportionate contraction of the pelvic space being an efficient cause of the same difficulties of parturition, the logical inference is that man's original sin consisted in his getting ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... remained staring wildly at the bed. The poor little fellow, with his disproportionate head—the head of the progeny of genius, exaggerated as to verge upon cretinism—did not appear to have stirred since the previous night; but no breath came from his mouth, which had widened and become discoloured, and his glassy eyes were open. His father laid his hands upon ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... there were little horses and big horses, fat horses and thin horses. They looked the result of a wild conscription. Coleman noted the faces of the troopers, and they were calm enough save when a man betrayed himself by perhaps a disproportionate angry jerk at the bridle of his ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... passed, the years of Charlotte's continuous celebrity, and of those literary letters that take so disproportionate a part in her correspondence that she seems at last to have forgotten; she seems to belong to the world rather than to Haworth. And the world seems full of Charlotte; the world that had no place for Emily. And yet Wuthering Heights had followed ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... fear of being overcome by temptation, than from a reluctance to undergo derision or persecution. The peculiarity of this description of Christians must be traced back to constitution, habit, first impressions, disproportionate and partial views of truth, and improper instructions; these, concurring with weakness of faith, and the common infirmities of human nature, give a cast to their experience and character, which renders them uncomfortable ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... poor English writer, whose works are all forgotten, and recognized as the most insignificant of the insignificant, writes a treatise on population, in which he devises a fictitious law concerning the increase of population disproportionate to the means of subsistence. This fictitious law, this writer encompasses with mathematical formulae founded on nothing whatever; and then he launches it on the world. From the frivolity and the stupidity of ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... and emotionally and volitionally well-balanced. They will take wrong steps in life, they may be unsuccessful, their stupidity may lead them to the poorhouse, their recklessness may lead them to the penitentiary. And yet we do not speak of them as patients because their disproportionate mental features may be sufficiently corrected by other mental states which ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... showing the bad qualities had still the power to appreciate social duty, we appealed to her, by that, to renounce motherhood. Some of the few worst types were, fortunately, unable to reproduce. But if the fault was in a disproportionate egotism—then the girl was sure she had the right to have children, even that hers would ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... a stage villain at all if you can help it. The life is too harassing and the remuneration altogether disproportionate ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... Red Death the imagery changes from moment to moment, each scene standing out clear in colour and sharp in outline; but from first to last the perspective of the whole is kept steadily in view. No part is disproportionate or inappropriate. The arresting overture describing the swift and sudden approach of the Red Death, the gay, thoughtless security of Prince Prospero and his guests within the barricaded abbey, the voluptuous masquerade held in a suite of seven rooms of seven hues, the disconcerting chime ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... about details of party management fill a disproportionate space among those letters of Lincoln's which have been preserved, but these reveal that, with all his business-like attention to the affairs of his very proper ambition, he was able throughout to illuminate dull matters of ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... ability is requisite to make you a good physician, but by no means that disproportionate development of some special faculty which goes by the name of genius. A just balance of the mental powers is a great deal more likely to be useful than any single talent, even were it the power of observation; in excess. ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... sheer Democracy. The practice of the old system had become throughly vicious, but the underlying principle was sound and safe. All classes, all interests, were represented; but accident had given, not to wealth or birth, but to a particular kind of wealth, a certain set of families, an enormously disproportionate representation. The landed interest was wronged in the utterly inadequate representation of the counties. Ireland was misrepresented; and the Scotch people could not be said to be represented at all. But every class, every great interest, ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... England country life a distinctive charm unlike anything else either in this or the mother-country. Even the Sunday is pleasant to look back upon to E.H. Arr; which is probably one instance of the fact that retrospective pleasure is sometimes totally disproportionate to present enjoyment. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... which you reprobated my hasty decision. The ties of love and honour are doubtless of sufficient strength to bind congenial souls—they are doubtless indissoluble, but by the brutish force of power; they are delicate and satisfactory. Yet the arguments of impracticability, and what is even worse, the disproportionate sacrifice which the female is called upon to make—these arguments, which you have urged in a manner immediately irresistible, I cannot withstand. Not that I suppose it to be likely that I shall directly be called upon to evince my attachment to either theory. I am become ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... should not find a speedy opportunity of returning to London, and be confined to so dull a place. JOHNSON. 'Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters[1384]. It would not be terrible, though I were to be detained some time here.' The practice of using words of disproportionate magnitude, is, no doubt, too frequent every where; but, I think, most remarkable among the French, of which, all who have travelled in France must have been struck ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... greedily listen to broad hints about abominations-the word is a very favourite one—which the author could disclose, but mercifully withholds in pity for the shuddering hearts of a too sensitive assembly. The consequence was that an altogether disproportionate amount of declamation was wasted up and down the country by gentlemen on the stump, in girding at monks and nuns, their vices and crimes, till some men's minds were not a little exercised, and some, horrified by what they were told, asked in ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... animals those whose psychic faculties bring them nearest to him. Sociable like him, they have undergone an evolution parallel to his which has placed them at the head of Insects in the same way as he has become superior to all other Mammals. The brain in Ants as in Man has undergone a disproportionate development. Like Man, they possess a language which enables them to combine their efforts, and there is no human industry in which these insects have not arrived at a high degree of perfection. If in certain parts of the earth human societies are superior ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... of a commercial nature worth the consideration of an enlightened government, such as the disproportionate protective duties in favour of their national shipping and the produce of Spain; and some degree of toleration to the religious opinions of foreigners residing at Manilla might also be obtained; so far, at least, as to permit their having a piece of consecrated ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... are to be printed in small type. In fact, I am thinking of casting the whole of this sirocco—material into an appendix. Too much, you think? Surely the number of words is not disproportionate to the subject? The south wind is a good slice of Nepenthe, is it not? . . . Look! That cloud has made up its mind to come our way after all. There will be another shower of ashes. Sirocco, you observe. . ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... pain in the poor child, Monstrously disproportionate, and dumb In the poor beast, and wild In the ...
— A Father of Women - and other poems • Alice Meynell
... complained that the musical critics had so much to say about singers and players, while the composer was almost entirely ignored. To-day this reproach could hardly be made, for although vocalists still receive perhaps a disproportionate share of attention, compositions, new and old, are also discussed at great length in the press. Nevertheless, I believe that the vast majority of those who attend an operatic performance in New York, and are delighted with "Siegfried" or "Faust," have but ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... although the whole of the Russian army, moving on a parallel road, were in full observation of his march. Eugene, who followed him, was, however, intercepted on his way by Milarodowitch, and after sustaining the contest gallantly against very disproportionate numbers, and a terrible cannonade, was at length saved only by the fall of night. During the darkness, the Viceroy executed a long and hazardous detour, and joined the Emperor in Krasnoi, on the 17th. On this night-march they fell in with the videttes ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... certain definite and proportionate size to that of the penis, just as the length of the arm should naturally bear a certain proportion to the length of the body. In the case of some parts of the body, disproportionate development of the part may not give rise to anything further than unsightliness; but when we find the small size of the urethra retarding the free passage of the urine, then we may expect, if this ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... name of law, thus far recited, were still further aggravated in a majority of the rebellious States by the exaction of taxes from the colored man to an amount altogether disproportionate to their property. Indeed, of property they had none. Just emerging from a condition of slavery in which their labor had been constantly exacted without fee or reward of any kind, it was impossible that they could be the owners of any thing except their own bodies. Notwithstanding this fact, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... with the upper hook in the lower eye and the middle all askew, but the service is so graciously given, I would rather have my dress upside down than to grumble. Certainly I pay for it. I tip everything from the proprietor to the water-pitcher. But the sum is so disproportionate to the pleasure and the comfort returned that I smile to think of the triple price I have paid elsewhere and the high-nosed condescension I got in return for my money. Japanese courtesy may be on the surface, but the polish does not easily wear ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... Fool. Which they will make an obedient father] [This line I have restored from the quarto. STEEVENS] This note [Tyrwhitt's, quoted by Steevens] is written with confidence disproportionate to the conviction which it can bring. Lear might as well know by the marks and tokens arising from sovereignty, knowledge, and reason, that he had or had not daughters, as he could know by any thing else. But, ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... reserved for things like spitefulness and dishonesty and cruelty. There is nothing more utterly confusing to the childish mind than to have trifling faults treated with wrath and indignation. It is true that, in the world of nature, punishment seems often wholly disproportionate to offences. Nature will penalise carelessness in a disastrous fashion, and spare the cautious and prudent sinner. But there is no excuse for us, if we have any sense of justice and patience at all, ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... "shot-gun," alleged that the Seminary at Sacramento had declined to receive her, but the majority accepted her return with local pride as a practical compliment to the educational facilities of Indian Spring. The Tuolumne "Star," with a breadth and eloquence touchingly disproportionate to its actual size and quality of type and paper, referred to the possible "growth of a grove of Academus at Indian Spring, under whose cloistered boughs future sages and statesmen were now meditating," in a way that made the ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... acceptation, gives particular impressions and experiences of Colour, Sound, Touch, Taste, Odour, &c. The Intellectual functions of Discrimination and Agreement are necessary as a supplement to Sense, to recognize these impressions as differing and agreeing, as Equal or Unequal; Proportionate or Disproportionate; Harmonious or Discordant. And farther, every abstract or general notion,—colours in the abstract, sweetness, pungency, &c.—supposes these, powers of the understanding in addition to the recipiency of ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... of streets did not cut this block of houses into too disproportionate slices. The forty-two colleges were scattered about in a fairly equal manner, and there were some everywhere. The amusingly varied crests of these beautiful edifices were the product of the same art as the simple ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... on representation it might be pleaded, that by it no license was given to wrong; there was only a concession of disproportionate power to one section, fairly outweighed in the scale of the public good by the establishment of a great political order. But the action on the slave trade was the deliberate sanction for twenty years of man-stealing ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... general are so disproportionate to the child's stature, so far from his organs of prehension, so much above his horizontal line of vision, so much ampler than his immediate surroundings, that there is, between him and all these big things, a gap to be filled only by a microcosm of playthings which give him ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... the West Indies and to protect British commerce in that quarter against French privateers. For all these purposes speed was of more importance than strength, and the British force in the west contained a disproportionate number of smaller vessels as compared with line of battle ships. The actual numbers of British warships in North American waters at the beginning of 1812 were three ships of the line, twenty-one cruisers and frigates, and fifty-three small craft. The United States navy was ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... by about 1208. As to the order in which its parts were composed, it is likely that Absalon's original instruction was to write a history of Absalon's own doings. The fourteenth and succeeding books deal with these at disproportionate length, and Absalon, at the expense even of Waldemar, is the protagonist. Now Saxo states in his Preface that he "has taken care to follow the statements ("asserta") of Absalon, and with obedient mind and pen to include both his own doings and other men's doings ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... almost continued contributions will not be peculiarly crossing to our avaricious desires, if trifling sums are given, or those greatly disproportionate to property. In this case, selfishness, instead of being disturbed, may be rather cajoled into a species of benevolence; though a species as sickly and unsubstantial as the vine that grows amid the damps of a vault, never aspiring to heaven as the place ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... endeavored to combine healthy moral lessons with a sufficient amount of exciting interest to render the story attractive to the young; and he hopes he has not mingled these elements of a good juvenile book in disproportionate quantities. ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... wrought and daily bought and used by the king's lieges. And that they make certain purviews and examinations to wait daily upon the keeping thereof. And when any workman be's noted taking an exorbitant price for his stuff, above the price, and over far disproportionate of the stuff he buys, that he be punished by the said barons, provosts, and bailies, &c.' A little later, in 1540, an act was passed 'touching the exorbitant prices of wine, salt, and timmer.' The provisions that follow are somewhat ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... history, Jews gathered with nothing in common save blood—artists, lawyers, writers, doctors—men who in pre-emancipation times might have become Christians like Heine, but who now formed an effective protest against the popular conceptions of the Jew, and a valuable antidote to the disproportionate notoriety achieved by less creditable types. At the Asmonean Society, brilliant free-lances, each thinking himself a solitary exception to a race of bigots, met one another in mutual astonishment. Raphael alienated several readers by uncompromising ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... you like, the Cricket DID chime in! with a Chirrup, Chirrup, Chirrup of such magnitude, by way of chorus; with a voice so astoundingly disproportionate to its size, as compared with the kettle; (size! you couldn't see it!) that, if it had then and there burst itself like an overcharged gun, if it had fallen a victim on the spot, and chirruped its little body into fifty pieces, it would have seemed a natural ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... means of keeping up the forms of administration, till the States can have time to agree upon a more substantial substitute for the present shadow of a federal government. Things did not come to this desperate extremity at once. The causes which have been specified produced at first only unequal and disproportionate degrees of compliance with the requisitions of the Union. The greater deficiencies of some States furnished the pretext of example and the temptation of interest to the complying, or to the least delinquent States. Why should ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... said, and so will do, That to some infernal sprite I would offer with delight (And the pledge I now renew) Even my soul for her I woo. But my offer is in vain, Hell rejects it with disdain, For my soul, it may allege, Is a disproportionate pledge For the interest ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... matters, the race has to feel its way gradually to truth through innumerable errors. In writing to a friend about the Manning article he explains himself more fully. Such articles, he says, give a disproportionate importance to the negative side of his views. His positive opinions, if 'vague, are at least very deep.' He cannot believe that he is a machine; he believes that the soul must survive the body; that this implies the existence ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the turning of the wrong side of a piece of tapestry. We may object to the want of originality in the leading characters, to the occasional inflated style, and the conceits and plays upon words now and then introduced, to the apparently disproportionate influence of love upon the action of the poem, as Hallam has remarked, giving it an effeminate tone, and, above all, to the introduction of so much supernatural machinery in the form of magic and demons; for such supernaturalism ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... navigable rivers and in the harbors upon our Great Lakes as well as on the seaboard. Although I have expressed to Congress my apprehension that these expenditures have sometimes been extravagant and disproportionate to the advantages to be derived from them, I have not felt it to be my duty to refuse my assent to bills containing them, and have contented myself to follow in this respect in the footsteps of all my predecessors. Sensible, however, from experience and observation of the great ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... your Number 13 for?" said Anderson, conscious as he said the words of a curious anxiety quite disproportionate to the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... of relative humidity registered at 6000 to 8000 feet, arises from most of the observations having been made on the outer range, where the atmosphere is surcharged. The majority of those at 10,000 to 12,000 feet, which also give a disproportionate amount of humidity, were registered at the Zemu and Thlonok rivers, where the narrowness of the valleys, the proximity of great snowy peaks, and the rank luxuriance of the vegetation, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... himself this is the only one I found it possible to attempt at the time. The depth and the nature of the mood with which I approached it is best expressed perhaps in the dedication which strikes me now as a most disproportionate thing—as another instance of the overwhelming greatness of our ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... be guarded against in writing the beginning are: (1) the inclusion of diverse details not carefully coordinated to produce a single unified impression; (2) the development of the introduction to a disproportionate length; (3) failure to make the beginning a vital part of the article itself; (4) lack of close connection or of skillful transition between the introduction and ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... forest; inferior, in short, in everything that constitutes the wealth, the honor, the dignity, the stability, the happiness, the true greatness of a nation,—it is wrong, it is unjust, it is absurd, that they should have an influence in all the departments of government so entirely disproportionate to our own. We would arouse you to your own true interests. We would have you, like men, firmly resolved to maintain your own rights. We would have you say to the South,—if you choose to hug to your bosom that system which ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... which was long and dark, was twisted up at the back of the head; the front locks being plaited and drawn off the forehead. Their skins were of a light brown colour, smooth and glossy. They wore ear-rings of some mixed metal, of a size very disproportionate to their small figures, and very far from becoming. Their countenances, if not pretty, were highly good-humoured and pleasant. The younger women were diligently employed in pounding rice in mortars of large dimensions. There were groups of children ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... but she wondered why God had made woman's strength so disproportionate to man's, and looking up, she saw that it was George Halkett who held her. At the same moment he would have loosed her hand, but she clung to his because she ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... which were found by those philosophers to belong to bismuth and antimony, when moving, of affecting the suspended magnet, and which has been confirmed by Mr. Harris, seem at first disproportionate to their conducting powers; whether it be so or not must be decided by future experiment (73.)[A]. These metals are highly crystalline, and probably conduct electricity with different degrees of facility in different directions; and it is not unlikely that ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... the drawing-room of Man's large mansion. It is a very lofty, spacious, perfectly rectangular room. The floor is bright and smooth. There is a certain irregularity about the room due to the disproportionate size of the parts. Thus, the doors are very small in proportion to the windows. This produces a strange, irritating impression, as of something disharmonious, something lacking, and also of something superfluous and adventitious. The whole is pervaded ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... not expected to find such a pitiful remnant of men. Twenty-three soldiers and an officer! These were the precious creatures who had cost him so much, and whom their lady was so anxious to save! He smiled at the disproportionate preparations made by his hammers and saws, and glanced back to see if the timbers were being carried in. They were, at the rear of his force, but behind them intruded Father Vincent de Paris wrapped in a blanket which one of the soldiers had provided for him. The scantiness ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... next an idiot or a monster. The visible external conditions are therefore not direct determinants of this cycle; and the more we consider the matter, the more we are forced to believe that two children of the same parents are made to differ from each other by causes as disproportionate to their ultimate effects as is the famous pebble on the Rocky Mountain crest, which separates two rain-drops, to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Pacific Ocean toward which ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... Justice that the stronger race should strip the weaker of every civil, social, and moral right? The unrighteous partiality, extorted by the threats of Carolina and Georgia in 1788, which gives them a disproportionate representation because of their property in men, and the unity of interest which makes them always act in behalf of Slavery as one man, have made them thus omnipotent. The North, distracted by a thousand ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... obstacles to right government, and prepared to show that it was only by 'out-jockeying' the parties, he could hope to win in Ireland still, that Greek girl, and what he called her perfidy, would occupy a most disproportionate share of his thoughts, and a larger place in his heart also? The simple truth is, that though up to this Walpole found immense pleasure in his flirtation with Nina Kostalergi, yet his feeling for her now was nearer love than ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... with not a word too much or one that bears not its part in the total effect, there is yet about the lyrics of Jonson a certain stiffness and formality, a suspicion that they were not quite spontaneous and unbidden, but that they were carved, so to speak, with disproportionate labour by a potent man of letters whose habitual thought is on greater things. It is for these reasons that Jonson is even better in the epigram and in occasional verse where rhetorical finish and pointed wit less interfere ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... anchor dropped before Albuquerque declared his ultimatum. Although the forces under his orders were very disproportionate in numbers, the Capitam mor imperiously demanded that Ormuz should recognize the suzerainty of the King of Portugal and submit to his envoy, if it did not wish to share the same fate as Mascati. The King, Seif-Ed-din, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... of me was thrown violently open, and out strutted a tiny lady in a most disproportionate rage. She was beautiful neither in face nor figure; she was diminutive, and petulant of manner, but bore herself with an air of almost regal pride. It was she whom I came to know as Madame du Maine, a daughter of the proud and princely Condes. Following her, ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... disappointment seemed disproportionate to the occasion. He endeavored to disguise his feeling by saying, lightly: "You are breaking into exclusive circles. He lives in quite a ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... Eleanor Butler, and married to her by the bishop of Bath. Sir Thomas More, on the contrary (and here it is that I am unwillingly obliged to charge that great man with wilful falsehood) pretends that the duchess of York, his mother, endeavouring to dissuade him from so disproportionate an alliance, urged him with a pre-contract to one Elizabeth Lucy, who however, being pressed, confessed herself his concubine; but denied any marriage. Dr. Shaw too, the preacher, we are told by ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... Ryerson was entirely disproportionate to the cause of offence. Were it not that the moral effect of what he wrote—more than what he actually said—was feared, because addressed to a people who had always listened to his words with deep attention and great respect, it is likely that his words ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... had been selected for his trust on account of his pre-eminent goodness, which, as seems to be invariably the case, was associated with an absence of personal beauty trenching upon the scarecrow. Possibly an excess of strong and disproportionate carving in nose, mouth and chin, accompanied by weak eyes and unexpectedness of forehead, may tend to make the Evil One but languid in his desire for the capture of its human exemplar. This may help account for the otherwise rather curious coincidence of frightful physiognomy ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... the strictest attention. A few simple means only will be sufficient to detect such adulterations, and to prevent their fatal consequences. If new white wine, for example, be of a sweetish flavour, and leave a certain astringency on the tongue; if it has an unusually high colour, disproportionate to its nominal age and real strength; or if it has a strong pungent taste, resembling that of brandy or other ardent spirits, such liquor may be considered as adulterated. When old wine presents either a very pale or a very deep colour, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... comic sympathy with the thoughts which she supposed to be occupying my mind. But these glances ceased; and I was recalled by the gloomy sadness in her altered countenance to some sense of my own extravagant and disproportionate frenzy on this occasion: from the indulgent kindness with which she honored me, her countenance on this occasion became a mirror to my own. At night she assured me, when talking over the case, that she had never witnessed an expression of such settled misery, and also (so she fancied) ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... in birds must be exerted and maintained by the pectoral muscles, with which the all-wise Creator has supplied them, and, by applying the same principles to the structure of the human frame, he proved how extremely disproportionate was the strength of the corresponding muscles in man. In fact, the man who should attempt to fly like a bird would be guilty of greater folly and ignorant presumption than the little infant who should ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... them great contentment. Perhaps his serenity was due in part to the fact that the weakness of his eyes shut him out so completely from almost every other diversion that he welcomed any sort of companionship with disproportionate appreciation. He could not read, he could not write, he could go neither to the theater nor the movies. And while he thus halted and marked time, the world and everybody in it marched along without giving him a thought. What marvel, therefore, that he attached himself eagerly to any person ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... while Dent smiled at them and joked; but his efforts at levity made little impression on the irate pair. Red, true to his word, had turned up at the time set, in fact, he was half an hour ahead of time, for which miracle he endeavored to take great and disproportionate credit. Dent was secretly glad about the delay, for he found his place lonesome. He thoroughly enjoyed the company of the two gentlemen from the Bar-20, whose actions seemed to be governed by whims and who appeared to lack all regard for consequences; and they squabbled so refreshingly, ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... see the invalid. Fully grown up, big and tall, but ugly like her mother, with the same little eyes and disproportionate breadth of the lower part of the face, lying with her hair in disorder, muffled up to the chin, she made upon Korolyov at the first minute the impression of a poor, destitute creature, sheltered and cared for here out of charity, and he could hardly believe ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... thing. Thereupon work was increased, and, at the same time, the masters laid hands upon athletics and organised them. Side by side with this came a great increase of wealth and leisure in England, and there sprang up that astonishing and disproportionate interest in athletic matters, which is nowadays a real problem for all sensible men. But the result of it all has been that there has grown up a stereotyped code among the boys as to what is the right ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the money will not be forthcoming till Christmas, and meantime we cannot launch out. However, Ormersfield partridges are excellent fare for Isabel, and I could return thanks for the abundant supply that would almost seem disproportionate; but you can guess the value as substantial comforts. A box of uneatable grouse from Beauchastel, carriage twelve shillings, was a cruel subject of gratitude; but those good people mean more kindly than I deserve; and when Isabel is well ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... others are my stepbrothers and sisters. I love them dearly, and I love my stepmother, too. But not like my father—oh, not at all like my father. I would never have left him only he sent me away. Lady Agatha was very good to me. She paid me a disproportionate salary. And besides—after I had been away from them for a time they could really do very well without me. Cis and Minnie grew up so fast. To be sure, none of them make up to father for me. But he was ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... occasionally over Chu Chu's head, astride her neck and tail, or in the free air, but never in the saddle. His rigid legs, however, never lost the stirrups, but came down regularly, accentuating her springless hops. More than that, the disproportionate excess of rider, saddle, and accoutrements was so great that he had, at times, the appearance of lifting Chu Chu forcibly from the ground by superior strength, and of actually contributing to her exercise! As they came towards me, ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... subtility, fruits that are gross or subtile.[1514] Those acts, however, O thou of righteous soul, which are fraught with great injury, if done in ignorance, do without fail produce consequences and even consequences that lead to hell, with this difference that those consequences are disproportionate in point of gravity to the acts that produce them.[1515] As to those acts (of a doubtful or unrighteous nature) that may be done by the deities or ascetics of reputation, a righteous man should never do their like or, informed of them, should never censure ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... in the direction indicated, and saw a long low-hulled craft, cutter-rigged, with what struck me as a set of spars altogether disproportionate to ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... the Deluge, which has been merely mentioned above, not to interrupt the narrative by its disproportionate length, (the eleventh tablet being the best preserved of all), is too important not to ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... sharp and erect, of two inches and three-tenths in length, stand well asunder, and are in nowise disproportionate. The eyes are small, and rather sunken than prominent, but quick and lively. They are placed about two inches and five tenths asunder, a little below the centre of the imaginary triangle towards the nose. The nice co-adaptation of their ciliary processes, ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... and often created. Captiousness, sensitiveness, and a Martha-like care for the things of this world, are often the direct fruits of education. All these faults of the character, and they are amongst the greatest, may be summed up in a disproportionate care for little things. This is rather a growing evil. The painful neatness and exactness of modern life foster it. Long peace favours it. Trifles become more important, great evils being kept away. And ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... notions of justice that he should punish another for that which he has, in fact, done himself. Moreover, just punishment bears a proportion to the offence, while suffering which is infinite is ipso facto disproportionate to any ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... party consisted of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, Moore, and Rogers. Five poets of very unequal worth and most disproportionate popularity, whom the public probably would arrange in the very inverse order, except that it would place Moore above Rogers. During this afternoon, Coleridge alone displayed any of his peculiar talent. He talked much and well. I have ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... which these two little magazines hold in our literature seems most disproportionate to their short span of days. In the short space of four years in which Addison and Steele worked together the light essay was established as one of the most important forms of modern literature, and the literary magazine won its place as the expression ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... with a large head, a short thick neck, broad chest, and high shoulders; his thighs and legs were long and thin; and as his face also was ugly—and was only redeemed by the dignity and force of his glance—and all his limbs were disproportionate with one another, he had rather the appearance of a monster than a man. Such was he whom Fortune was destined to make a conqueror, for whom Heaven was reserving more glory than he ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... incident in his life is this reproductive process for each individual that he could if he devoted his life solely to reproduction stamp his characters upon a thousand times as many colts as could a female. Thus under artificial breeding conditions, the good males do have a tremendously disproportionate share in improving the whole breed of horses, though each single horse gets his qualities equally from his male ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... exploits of a hunter like Major ROGERS, who is said to have applied the value of the ivory obtained from his encounters towards the purchase of his successive regimental commissions, and had, therefore, an object, however disproportionate, in his slaughter ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... science, and the worship of power, go hand in hand: that knowledge is power has been esteemed the grandest incitement to study. Yet the antidote to the disproportionate cultivation of science, is simply power in its crude form—breaking out, that is, as brute force. When science, isolated and glorified, has produced a contempt, not only for vulgar errors, but for the truths which are incapable of scientific proof, then, as we see in the French Revolution, ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... son - Augustus George - in Mrs. Prodgit's hands, and on Mrs. Prodgit's knee, being dressed. He was at the moment, comparatively speaking, in a state of nature; having nothing on, but an extremely short shirt, remarkably disproportionate to the length of his usual outer garments. Trailing from Mrs. Prodgit's lap, on the floor, was a long narrow roller or bandage - I should say of several yards in extent. In this, I SAW Mrs. Prodgit tightly roll the body of my unoffending ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... modicum of success will give a disproportionate sense of confidence and power. The man to whom success has always come easily is not baffled by problems that would appall those who, in middle life, "lie among the failures at the foot of the hill." As ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... no fine society, but is plainly a little elated by "having considerable acquaintance with a tame brown owl." Most of us have known our share of owls, but few can boast of intimacy with a feathered one. The great events of Mr. White's life, too, have that disproportionate importance which is always humorous. To think of his hands having actually been though worthy (as neither Willoughby's nor Ray's were) to hold a stilted plover, the Charadrius himaniopus, with no back toe, and therefore "liable, in speculation, to perpetual ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... intervening time? Should I act on Davies's 'querry' and go to Bremen after Bhme? I soon dismissed that idea. It was one to act upon if others failed; for the present it meant another scramble. Bremen is six hours from Norden by rail. I should spend a disproportionate amount of my limited time in trains, and I should want a different disguise. Besides, I had already learnt something fresh about Bhme; for the seed dropped at Emden Station yesterday had come to life. A submarine engineer I knew him to be before; I now knew that canals were another branch of ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... may find out, on examination, that De Foe had discovered in 'Robinson Crusoe' precisely the field in which his talents could be most effectually applied; and that a very slight alteration in the subject-matter might change the merit of his work to a disproportionate extent. The more special the idiosyncrasy upon which a man's literary success is founded, the greater, of course, the probability that a small change will disconcert him. A man who can only perform upon the drum will have to wait for certain combinations of other instruments ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... artificial. A handful of people by the right of conquest take possession of an enormous country over which they are dotted at such intervals that it is their boast that one farmhouse cannot see the smoke of another, and yet, though their numbers are so disproportionate to the area which they cover, they refuse to admit any other people upon equal terms, but claim to be a privileged class who shall dominate the newcomers completely. They are outnumbered in their own land by immigrants who are far more highly educated ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... contracted, is successfully treated with indigenous herbs. Like their neighbours of Tahiti, from whom they have perhaps imbibed the error, they regard leprosy with comparative indifference, elephantiasis with disproportionate fear. But, unlike indeed to the Tahitian, their alarm puts on the guise of self-defence. Any one stricken with this painful and ugly malady is confined to the ends of villages, denied the use of paths and highways, and condemned to transport himself ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said, as I gave him to her, with an earnestness which seemed to me disproportionate to the deed, and carried him away with a deep blush over ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... sufficient to change them from civilians into soldiers. Yet for the work immediately visible the demand seemed adequate. Moreover, as the law stood, a much longer term could not have been named,[133] and an apparently disproportionate requisition in point of numbers might have been of injurious effect; for nearly every one was cheerfully saying that the war would be no such very great affair after all. In his own mind the President may or may not have forecast the ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... was in these words a flavor of that sentimental emotion at her own lofty feelings, and that new mystical fervor which had lately gained ground in Petersburg, and which seemed to Alexey Alexandrovitch disproportionate, still it was pleasant to ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... heinous? Oh, sometimes I am almost on the verge of declaring there is no God. That would bring chaos, I know," she added, with a deprecatory smile, as she saw her brother's brow contract; "but it really does seem as if the pros and cons are disproportionate, the cons far outnumbering the pros, as far as poor ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... of Motion is wasted; it always produces number; still, it can be neutralized by disproportionate resistance, as ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... plenty of brains of a sort, besides the attributes of good looks, health, and by much a disproportionate share of determination, and because, with all that she attained to, she died quite ostracized by the people with whom it had been her life's ambition to mix, and was thus in a sense a failure—it is because of these things that it is worth while going into details of her career, ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... upwards; which, I am sure, was the most desperate adventure of the two. Wonder not at the inferior condition of the agent; for, if King Cophetua wooed a Beggar Maid, a greater king need not scorn to confess the attractions of a fair Tailor's daughter. The more disproportionate the rank, the more signal is the glory of your sex. Like that of Hecate, a triple empire is now confessed your own. Nor Heaven, nor Earth, nor deepest tracts of Erebus, as Milton hath it, have power to resist your sway. I congratulate your last victory. You have fairly made an Honest Man of the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... found out that the power of the engines was quite disproportionate to the object in view. The Rhine now assumed a more desolate character. For miles and miles not a village nor even a solitary town to be seen; the Hartz mountains forming a blue opaque mass in the distance; the ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... The swoln cheek, choking his words in the birth, totally disqualifies him as orator; but his pencil, his head, his gross hot heart, with genius in a state of convulsion, will be there. A man bodily and mentally swoln-cheeked, disproportionate; flabby-large, instead of great; weak withal as in a state of convulsion, not strong in a state of composure: so let him play his part. Nor are naturalised Benefactors of the Species forgotten: Priestley, elected by the Orne Department, but declining: Paine the rebellious ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... music in Strauss' Salome, of which the score lay open before him. He was a good-looking young man of twenty-two, of whom any mother, not too exacting, might be proud. Very blond—with well-chiselled features and waving hair—not so tall as to make his excessive slimness seem disproportionate—there was something in the perfection with which he was "turned out" that gave him the air of a "creation." Mrs. Wappinger's joy in him was the more satisfying because of the fact that, relative ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... readers of these pages to accept my assurance, that whatever the number and extent of the passages which I publish that are necessarily in themselves of more interest to myself personally than to the public generally, they are altogether disproportionate to the number and extent of those I withhold. I cannot, however, resist the conclusion that such picture as they afford of a man beyond the period of middle life capable of bending to a new and young friend, and of thinking with and for him, is not without an exceptional literary ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... have also been talking to the people who know things and to those who ought to know them but don't. Just now the news is worse each day. In the midst of the roar and thunder of cataclysms to talk about a mere girl 'in trouble' appears disproportionate. But because our world seems crumbling to pieces about us she assumes proportions of her own. I was born of the old obstinate passions of belief in certain established things and in their way they have had their will of ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the old path, my belief, I said, is that we shall find the answer. And our answer will be that, even as they are, our guardians may very likely be the happiest of men; but that our aim in founding the State was not the disproportionate happiness of any one class, but the greatest happiness of the whole; we thought that in a State which is ordered with a view to the good of the whole we should be most likely to find justice, and in the ill-ordered State injustice: and, having found them, ...
— The Republic • Plato
... veto, and, through its powers of confirmation and appointment, it may measurably control the executive department and the judicial. Moreover, apart from these defects in the constitution, certain economic changes have resulted in a disproportionate representation in the House of Representatives. The Joint-Stock Act of 1837 gave birth to great corporations, and with railroads soon developed the formation of large manufacturing plants. As a result, there was a rush, at ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... different colours, but commonly either red, green, or yellow, extended a little below the calf of the leg, where they were drawn close, in order the better to display an ankle and a foot, which for singularity at least, may challenge the whole world. This distorted and disproportionate member consists of a foot that has been cramped in its growth, to the length of four or five inches, and an ankle that is generally swollen in the same proportion that the foot is diminished. The little shoe is as ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... attention to the analogy of the nature of living beings in this world, in the consideration of which reason is obliged to accept as a principle that no organ, no faculty, no appetite is useless, and that nothing is superfluous, nothing disproportionate to its use, nothing unsuited to its end; but that, on the contrary, everything is perfectly conformed to its destination in life—we shall find that man, who alone is the final end and aim of this order, is still the only animal that seems to be excepted from it. For his natural gifts—not ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... way of imposing on the uninquiring mind and passing themselves off at an inflated value. No process is more familiar than that by which words in the course of a long life lose all their original power, and yet they will sometimes continue to exercise a disproportionate authority. Then comes the original mind, which, looking straight at the thing instead of accepting the specious title, discovers the incongruity between the pretence and the reality, and in the first shock of the disclosure annoyingly overturns our settled ideas. This is the spirit in which ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... efforts to carry a fort openly by storm; moreover, these stockades were really very defensible against men unprovided with artillery, and there is no reason for supposing that any troops could have carried them by fair charging, without suffering altogether disproportionate loss. The red tribes acted in relation to the Cumberland settlements exactly as they had previously done towards those on the Kentucky and Watauga. They harassed the settlers from the outset; but ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... work where he is more or less free from reminiscences of Remizov, they produce the impression of mosaic laboriously set together. They are overloaded with pointedly suggestive metaphor and symbolically expressive detail, and in their laborious and disproportionate elaborateness they remind you of the deliberate ugliness of a painting by some German "Expressionist." [Footnote: Zamyatin was during the war a shipbuilding Engineer in the Russian service at Newcastle. He has ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... European war to determine the mastery of Europe is not satisfactorily established, although their whole course of conduct suggests this as a possibility. They made war almost inevitable by (a) issuing an ultimatum that was grossly unreasonable and disproportionate to any grievance that Austria had and (b) in giving to Servia, and Europe, insufficient time to consider the rights and obligations ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... National Guard; and for the selection of a National Army by draft from men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty years inclusive. The determination to raise a draft army was based upon the belief that in this way successive and adequate supplies of men could be found without disproportionate calls on any section of the country and without undue disturbance of the industrial life of the nation. Although the plan ran counter to American practice during most of our history, the draft army became deservedly popular as a democratic ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... their husbands were away remained to defend their homes. The hair of these savages was coarse and long—their eyes, surrounded with paint, giving them a hideous expression; while their limbs were bound with bands of cotton, causing them to swell out into disproportionate size where unconfined. When attacked by the Spaniards, the men refused to be taken alive, and the women defended themselves with the fiercest courage after the death ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... instruments. The tabor, of course, was a small drum, which was used as accompaniment to the pipe, a small whistle with three holes, but with a compass of 18 notes. (See Frontispiece.) In its curiously disproportionate compass, it may be compared to the modern 'Picco' pipe of the music shops. Mersennus (middle of 17th century) mentions an Englishman, John Price, who was an accomplished player. It is played on by Ariel, see a subsequent quotation from ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... and may there test its value as he pleases. But the omission, in a sense irreparable, of a definite and customary act like baptism from a child's existence, when hereafter the omission may cause him a pang quite disproportionate to any likes or dislikes of mine in the ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... enabled to get together on many little details and work them out on a common basis to our mutual advantage. We lumbermen should stand together and not make it hard for each other. For instance, your scale of wages is totally disproportionate to the present high cost of manufacture and the mediocre market; yet just because you pay it, you set a precedent which we are all forced to follow. However," he concluded, "let's not talk shop. I imagine ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... so personal, of the girls of two cities. While considering whether what at first looked like the mystery of this problem might not be in reality its clue, I became aware of another listener. Its lean and dismal length was disproportionate to that small ship. It had on but dungarees and a singlet, and the singlet, because of the length of the figure, was concave at the stomach, where, having nothing to rest upon, it was corrugated through the weight of a head made brooding ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... Administration to debauch political conventions and fraudulently overcome public sentiment, especially in the "rotten borough" districts—those where the party is not strong, and where the office-holders in consequence have a disproportionate influence. This was done by the Republican Administration in 1912, to the ruin of the Republican party. Moreover, there are numbers of States and municipalities where very little has as yet been done to do away with the spoils system. But in the National ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... However, in fact, it was not so, since the elections of deputies to the junta were not to be made by the people but by the captain general, advised by the city council. The representation was also very disproportionate. The deputies for Spain were to number 36 while ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... though he was sick of the sight of them already. When he came across his wife or children, he began grumbling crossly. It seemed to him, for some reason that day, that his children's manners were revolting, that his wife did not know how to look after the servants, that their expenditure was quite disproportionate to their income. All this meant that "the master" ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... shows us the importance of little acts which so frequently have an entirely disproportionate result. Mrs. Parrish found this true in her hospital ministrations. Little gifts and attentions often opened the way to the closed hearts of those to whom she ministered, and enabled her to reach the innermost concealed thought-life ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... is over the grain fields should be gleaned of shattered grain, and the straw left in the field should be gathered and housed, but if there is little to be gained by such work, and the expense is disproportionate, the stubble should be grazed: for in farming it is of the greatest importance that the expense of an operation shall not exceed the ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... Elegies, divided in the MSS. into four Books, are probably all that Propertius ever wrote. On account of the disproportionate length of Book ii., and the number 'tres' (which, however, may be said in ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
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