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Lack   /læk/   Listen
Lack

verb
(past & past part. lacked; pres. part. lacking)
1.
Be without.  Synonym: miss.  "There is something missing in my jewelry box!"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Lack" Quotes from Famous Books



... is the reason, Ruth, my lack of faith on this point. If I consecrated all but my money to the Lord, I might fear, for it would not bring happiness with it, but God's grace can dim even the shining of gold to the Christian, so that neither the eye nor the heart may be held ...
— 'Our guy' - or, The elder brother • Mrs. E. E. Boyd

... nearest resembling shell in Sowerby is the Ostrea acuminata,—an oyster of the clay that underlies the great Oolite of Bath. Few of the shells exceed an inch and a half in length, and the majority fall short of an inch. What they lack in bulk, however, they make up in number. They are massed as thickly together, to the depth of several feet, as shells on the heap at the door of a Newhaven fisherman, and extend over many acres. Where they lie open we can still detect the triangular disc of the hinge, with the single impression ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... of the country, after his brother's death, had not been placed in his hands; and, as reported by some, he was now meditating schemes for getting possession of it. Vaca de Castro well knew that there would be no lack of evil counsellors to urge Gonzalo to this desperate step; and, anxious to extinguish the spark of insurrection before it had been fanned by these turbulent spirits into a flame, he detached a strong body to Lima to secure that capital. At the same ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... Wherein no lack of flowers the verdurous night With stars and pearly nebula o'erlay; Azalea-boughs half rosy and half white Shine through the green and clustering apple-spray, Such as the fairy-queen before her knight Waved in old story, luring him away ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger

... discovered at a Christmas party that you cannot stand with your left side close against a wall and then lift your right leg, his first impulse was to confront Mr Gale with the trick. When Mr Gale read in a facetious paper an article on the lack of accurate observation in the average man, entitled, "Do 'bus horses wear blinkers?" his opening remark to Mr Sandbach at their next meeting was: "I say, Sandbach, do 'bus horses wear blinkers? Answer quick!" ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett

... gossip for some time, and it is very possible that Argyll saw a new Government as his chance to steal a march on Marlborough. Although Harley's Ministry did give the Order of the Garter to Argyll on 20 December 1710, he was never promoted over Marlborough, but that was not due to any lack of success in assuring a Tory victory in the election of the peers. Argyll's heavy-handed management of that election is the subject of Defoe's ...
— Atalantis Major • Daniel Defoe

... is, perhaps, insufficient, as, in most cases, the sentences were deferred. But what pleased one was the general lack of vindictiveness in the prosecution or in the police evidence. Hardly a bigamist climbed into the dock—and there was an apparently endless stream of them—to whom the local police did not give a glowing certificate ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd

... recurring, Long since wandered and come back, Like a whim of Grieg's or Gounod's, This same self, bird, bud, or Bluenose, Some day I may capture (Who knows?) Just the one last joy I lack, Waking to the far new summons, When the old spring winds ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... with the help of three or four women, hampered in every way for lack of proper materials, she labored hour after hour dressing wounds, setting broken bones, watching no few die, even despite the best that she ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... discussion of methods and in the maintenance of administrative discipline—with which all Christian nations, and especially the English-speaking, nations, have learned to meet the kindred difficulties of pauperism. It is in no small degree the lack of such a spirit in the conduct of Indian affairs, which has rendered the efforts and expenditures of our government for the advancement of the race so ineffectual in the past; and for this the blame attaches mainly to the want of correct information and of settled ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker

... longer take part in what shall he done in the world; thou wilt no more be occupied with what may befal thine inanimate remains, than thou wast able to be the day previous to that which ranked thee among the beings of thy species. To die is to cease to think; to lack feeling; no longer to enjoy; to find a period to suffering; thine ideas will perish with thee; thy sorrows will not follow thee to the silent tomb. Think of death, not to feed thy fears—not to nourish thy melancholy—but to accustom thyself to look upon it with a peaceable eye; to cheer thee ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... kingdom, had not been utterly able to rob his heir of everything, or he would undoubtedly have done so. At the age of twenty-one the young earl would come into possession of the property, damaged certainly, as far as an actively evil father could damage it by long leases, bad management, lack of outlay, and rack renting;—but still into the possession of a considerable property. In the mean time it did not fare very well, in a pecuniary way, with Clara, the widowed countess, or with the Lady Clara, her daughter. The means at the widow's disposal were only those which the family trustees ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... the gentleman who expected to be the president of the Steering-Grierson Company, that is not a pleasant programme; yet, my dear Carington, my circumstances are so precarious that I might attempt to fill it, if I did not see through Madeira's lack of principle, negatively speaking,—rascality, positively speaking. Now, I may have winked one eye occasionally during my business career, but I have never yet been able to shut both at once. It may be taste and it may be morals. Heretofore ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young

... better than to go together up into the woods, where under the old fir-tree was the small bench on which they could sit and tell each other all they knew; or to go down to the foaming Woodbach and there, sitting on the stones near the bank, watch the tossing waves rush down. They never seemed to lack topics of conversation. Erick told about his mother, and how they had lived together, and of her beautiful singing; and Sally never grew weary of hearing again and again the same stories, and would keep on ...
— Erick and Sally • Johanna Spyri

... 1857, Mr. Bond, then Professor Bond, director of the Harvard Observatory, again took up the matter with collodion wet plates, and in three masterly papers showed the advantages of photography in many ways. The lack of sensitiveness of the wet plate was perhaps the only reason why its use progressed but slowly. Quarter of a century later, with the introduction of the dry plate and the gelatine film, a new start was made. These photographic plates were very sensitive, ...
— The Future of Astronomy • Edward C. Pickering

... Inspector still confused and aggrieved by what he considered the detective's lack of business method, and Mr. Jacobs gazed round ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice

... dynasty, the Imperial ancestors were canonised, and an ancestral shrine was duly constituted. The general outlook would now appear to have been satisfactory from the point of view of Manchu interests; but from lack of means of communication, China had in those days almost the connotation of space infinite, and events of the highest importance, involving nothing less than the change of a dynasty, could be carried ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles

... sombre richness of tone and intricacy of design in view, combining sensational effect and sententious pregnancy of diction in works of laboured art, which, when adequately represented to the ear and eye upon the stage, might at a touch obtain the animation they now lack for chamber-students. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... conception of reason regulating desire suggests a power in the mind whose function it is to point to the highest good and to subordinate to it all the other impulses of man. In the ethics of Aristotle there is a reference to a faculty in man or 'rule within,' which, he says, the beasts lack. ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... he wishes to instruct or show up. Le Neveu de Rameau is a masterpiece of satire; yet there is no ill-nature in it. But the snarl is never very long absent from Mr. Wells's work; the background of it is disagreeable. Hence its complete lack of magic, of charm. And without some touch of these qualities, the a peu pres of journalism, of that necessarily hurried and improvised work which is the spendthrift of talent, can never become literature, as it once did—under the ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Still there was no lack of bravery amongst the savages, who, some twenty strong, being as many as could act in the narrow gully, charged home again, directly after sending in their arrows, and accompanying the beating of their ponies' ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... of Muscovy and east of the Holy Roman Empire was the kingdom of Poland, to which Lithuanians as well as Poles owed allegiance. Despite wide territories and a succession of able rulers, Poland was a weak monarchy. Lack of natural boundaries made national defense difficult. Civil war between the two peoples who composed the state and foreign war with the neighboring Germans worked havoc and distress. An obstructive parliament of great lords rendered effective administration impossible. ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... his possessions. Even upon that landing-place there was no lack of evidence of wealth. A Persian carpet covered the centre of the floor, and beyond its fringed margin a tessellated pavement of coloured marbles took new and brighter hues from the slanting rays of sunlight that streamed in through a wide stained-glass window upon the staircase. ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... had not been idle, but had been constantly employed in searching for objects of natural history, of which he found no lack even in the judge's garden. He had been watching, with great attention, the nest of a humming-bird, which he had discovered a short distance from the house, and invited me to come and see it. No parents could be more attentive to the wants ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston

... reconnoitring cavalry. Again, when King's single division, the rear-guard of Pope's army, appeared upon the turnpike, Jackson attacked it with the idea that it was the flank-guard of a much larger force. Nor was this want of accurate intelligence due to lack of vigilance or to the dense woods. As a matter of fact the Confederates were more amply provided with information than is usually the case in war, even in an open country ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... they seemed very like the rock itself, for they were the color of rocks and their shapes were as rough and rugged as if they had been broken away from the side of the mountain. They kept close to the steep cliff facing our friends, and glided up and down, and this way and that, with a lack of regularity that was quite confusing. And they seemed not to need places to rest their feet, but clung to the surface of the rock as a fly does to a window-pane, and were never ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... there." The rogues went thither, dug and found pure gold. Then they laid hold of it, ran away, and left their pots and bowls behind in the house. Catherine though she must use her new things, and as she had no lack in the kitchen already without these, she knocked the bottom out of every pot, and set them all as ornaments on the paling which went round about the house. When Frederick came and saw the new decorations, he said, "Catherine, what have ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... lack or stint of wealth to carry out every arranged plan, and Manella was too simple and primitive in her nature to question anything that her "little white angel" as she called her, suggested or commanded. Intensely grateful ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli

... thought of how she had lowered herself . . . Other people did not necessarily regard me as seriously as I did myself . . . And so on . . . until Dorinda called me in to sit at the table, and pretend to eat while she and Lute commented on my lack of appetite ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln

... single scene of comedy. The strain of exalted tragedy is maintained throughout. His jests and wit are not of the laughing kind. Sometimes they are grim and terrible, sometimes playful, but always serious and full of meaning. This lack of humor becomes very palpable in a translation, where it is not disguised by the transcendent beauty ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman

... face. carabo Moorish sail-and-row-boat. caracter character. carambano icicle. carbon m. charcoal. carbunclo carbuncle. carcajada burst of laughter. carcel f. prison. cardenal cardinal. cardenalicio pertaining to a cardinal. cardeno livid. carecer to lack, want. carencia want, lack. carga load. cargar to load, burden. cargo charge, care; hacerse —— to keep in mind. caricia caress. caridad f. charity. carino affection. carinoso affectionate. carlista cf. note 3, page 16. Carlos ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... too good a seat for my restive steed, and nipping him tightly, held on while he frantically tried the same movement again and again, till he was compelled to stop from lack of breath. And all the time his face grew blacker with fury, while mine was puckered up by mirth, for I was thoroughly enjoying the fun of the thing, and not in the ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn

... intervention of the Ericsson Monitor, the President took a party aboard to inspect the little champion which had saved the fleet and, perhaps, the capital, where the captain received them. He apologized for the limited accommodation, and for the lack of the traditional lemon and necessary attributes for a presidential visit. But ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... am surprised to find Mr Tanner named as joint guardian and trustee with myself of you and Rhoda. [A pause. They all look portentous; but they have nothing to say. Ramsden, a little ruffled by the lack of any response, continues] I don't know that I can consent to act under such conditions. Mr Tanner has, I understand, some objection also; but I do not profess to understand its nature: he will no doubt speak for himself. But we are agreed that we can decide nothing until ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... he, somewhat lack-a-daisically; 'I suppose that would be the best; but Charlotte thinks another plan might be joined with it.—She wants ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... her lack of manners, duchessa. I know what moves the maid. I must tell you that in the house where we lodge dwells also a beautiful young captain—beautiful as the day. It's little of his time he spends at home, but we have observed that he comes every evening to array himself ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle

... round shouldered, and sallow—had been taken by Mrs. Atterson from some charity institution. "Sister," as the boarders all called her, for lack of any other cognomen, would have her yellow hair in four attenuated pigtails hanging down her back, and she would shuffle about the dining-room in a pair ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd

... not only of interesting others, but of keeping up his own interest; in fact, he is often so absorbed in his existence, his work, and the people around him that he is not aware that there is such a malady as lack ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... map. Their true boundary is the 20th degree of longitude, and it will take them all their time to retain even that, as the Damaras are entirely opposed to them, and the German company which nominally holds that territory will soon have to liquidate for lack of funds. It is one thing to paint a map, and it is quite another to really occupy and govern a new territory. I am still waiting for the news of the signature of the charter, which I hope will not be much longer delayed. I think ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... pity thee; for now, let come what may, Fame, glory, riches, yet life will lack all. Wherewith can salt be salted? And what way Can life be seasoned ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... house down street," said the landlady, pointing with her finger where Ellen saw no lack of white- faced houses; "you see that big red store, with the man standing out in front? the next white house below that is Mis' Perriman's; just run right in and ask for Dr. Gibson. Good-bye, dear I'm real sorry you can't come in ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... Chad 1,175 km, Libya 354 km, Mali 821 km, Nigeria 1,497 km Coastline: 0 km (landlocked) Maritime claims: none; landlocked International disputes: Libya claims about 19,400 km2 in northern Niger; demarcation of international boundaries in Lake Chad, the lack of which has led to border incidents in the past, is completed and awaiting ratification by Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria; Burkina and Mali are proceeding with boundary demarcation, including the tripoint with Niger Climate: ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... delay of the law, and the costs all resulted in the escape of criminals as well as in the immunity of reckless debtors. The extortions of officials, and their occasional collusion with horse and cattle thieves, and the lack of regular administration of the law, led the South Carolina up-country men to take affairs in their own hands, and in 1764 to establish associations to administer lynch law under the name of "Regulators." The "Scovillites," ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... endeavour. Without a genuinely divine element—without the Spirit breathed into man by his Creator—we could not even realise our failure, nor aspire after a fuller portion of that same life-giving Spirit; it is what we have that tells us of what we lack, and directs us to Him who alone can supply our want ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... the very assembly itself in which he sat, that appears to us, at the end of five centuries, seriously moved by a desire for a free government, and not far from comprehending and following out the essential conditions of it. France had no lack of states-general, full of brilliancy and power, between 1356 and 1789, from the reign of Charles V. to that of Louis XVI.; but in the majority of these assemblies, for all the ambitious soarings of liberty, it was at one time religious ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... a devotee of fashion, heartily espoused his cause; but again the course of true love was barred by the question of settlements as broached by the old lawyer, and the man of war "retired with some resentment." There was, however, no lack of candidates for Mary's hand and dower. Captain D—— at once stepped into the breach and gallantly laid siege to the fair fortress. At last, it seemed Cupid's troublesome business was done; the captain's suit was agreeable ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead

... trance-this for lack of a better word-I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been all alone," Tennyson wrote. "This has come upon me through REPEATING my own name to myself silently, till all at once, as it were out ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... municipal regulations as the occasion demands. For such service, officers of sound, practical sense should be chosen—men whose appreciation of strict justice both to employer and employee would compensate even for a lack of mere skilful military knowledge; men without the mean prejudices which are the bane of some who wear the insignia ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz

... (though not on the Board) Sanitary Inspector, H. Grotchie and Dr. J. W. Good succeeding Dr. Thompson, who was the first medical officer, but had gone on leave. The year 1898 had been fever-scourged and haunted by a plague of scurvy, due largely to the lack of vegetables and fruit it was said. Dr. Good determined that this condition, resulting from the rush of thousands of people to camp on a frozen swamp, would not recur, and when Dr. Good made his mind up and contracted those heavy black ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... Their main purpose has been to secure that any statement of fact made in this book shall be true and demonstrable. If in any particular instances they have failed in this purpose, it has not been for lack of pains ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... that Japan is not a rich country. What we lack in gold, we are obliged to make up in ingenuity and devotion. Thanks to this idea of mine, the secret service of Japan pays for itself, and even ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward

... injunctions, of the nature of hard exacting toil. No doubt, there must be those who do the material work of the world; who gain, among other things, those "goods" which go to support the Mystics. But there will be no lack of such workers, through the inroads of religion; the broad ways of daily life are in no danger of contracting suddenly in to the path to the strait gate. Moreover, natural life itself is a poor thing unsupported by an unseen stream of spiritual ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole

... tiresome chiffchaff; from the distance would come the prolonged rich strain of the blackbird, and occasionally the lyric of the chaffinch. The song of this bird gains greatly when heard from a tall tree in the woodland silence; it has then a resonance and wildness which it appears to lack in the garden and orchard. In the village I had been glad to find that the chaffinch was not too common, that in the tangle of minstrelsy one could enjoy there his vigorous ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... Italy, France, and Great Britain. Germany cannot crush France supported by Great Britain and Russia, or keep Belgium, except as a subject and hostile province, and in defiance of the public opinion of the civilized world. In seven months Great Britain and France have made up for their lack of preparedness and have brought the military operations of Germany in France to a standstill. On the other hand, Great Britain and France must already realize that they cannot drive the German armies out of France and Belgium without a sacrifice of blood and ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... truant joys come trooping back, And trooping friends no less; But tears fall fast to meet the lack Of dearer happiness. For faith and love are two. Sad faith! 'Tis loss indeed, the loss ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... in a routine investigation just about fifty thousand years ago. There were at that time three different but similar racial strains of pulpy bipeds, numbering a total of perhaps a hundred thousand individuals. They showed many signs of an ability to reason, but a complete lack of civilization. While these creatures could by no means be classed among the intelligent races, there was a general expectation, which we reported to the Sunda, that they would some day come to be numbered among the Servants of the Emperor. So we let you alone, in ...
— Upstarts • L. J. Stecher

... with overwhelming success. [Footnote: The orations of Cicero against Verres are based upon information which the orator gathered by personally examining witnesses at the scenes of the rascality he unveiled. The orator showed a true Roman lack of appreciation of Greek art, and exercised his own love of puns to a considerable extent, playing a good deal upon the name Verres, which meant a boar. The extreme corpulence of the defendant, too, offered ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman

... were never far from their skenes, and whose one orderly instinct consisted in a blind obedience to their chief. O'Sullivan Og himself he believed to be The McMurrough's agent in his more lawless business; a fierce, unscrupulous man, prospering on his lack of scruple. The Colonel could augur nothing but ill from the hands to which he had been entrusted; and worse from the manner in which these savage, half-naked creatures, shambling beside him, stole from time to time a glance at him, ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman

... be ungenerous to the city in which we live without suffering the penalty which lack of fair interpretation always entails. Let us know the modern city in its weakness and wickedness, and then seek to rectify and purify it until it shall be free at least from the grosser temptations which now ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams

... lacks—humility. (HOLDEN laughs scoffingly) And I think you lack it. I'm asking you to co-operate with me for the good ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell

... the carriage had gone back for the bride, who in very simple raiment, but yet in bridal-white array, was taken up to the church. These Boltons were prosperous people, who had all their carriages, so that there was no lack of vehicles. Two of the girls from London and two from The Nurseries made up the bevy of bridesmaids who were as bright and fair as though the bride had come from some worldlier stock. Mrs. Robert, indeed, had done all she could to give to the whole concern ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... then he drew a dial from his poke; And looking on it with lack-lustre eye, Says, very wisely, 'It is ten o'clock; Thus we may see,' quoth he, 'how the ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess

... for such gross lack of discipline and respect—in fact, he seemed scarcely to heed at all what I said, but seated himself at the foot of a pine tree and lit his pipe. As I stood biting my lip and looking around at the woods encircling ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... perhaps on the side of plenteousness, and well served by two smart young women in black, with pink ribbons in their caps. Nor was there any lack of bright talk a good deal beyond the average. Miss Bradley was an admirable listener, and often by well-put questions or suggestions kept the ball rolling. Dinner was soon over, and coffee was ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... he was sent specially by Sir Henry to obtain from you some papers of great moment, which will ensure his immediate release. He bears Sir Henry's signet, and the knave hath no lack of assurance." ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... been met in a distant country, where he passed under another name, and was remarkable for his constant and almost suspicious success in gambling. I should be very curious to trace all these reports to their source. Their inventors can at least have no lack of imagination. The fact is, that there is unquestionably something strange and mysterious about the old man—but what does it amount to after all? He is an old Italian marquis, his foreign manners and appearance, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... written such charming letters! She may be only a singer; she may be a Russian princess in exile; she may be an adventuress of the most formidable type; she may be an American girl. One thing, she is not English. English women as I have found them lack the essential ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... what he could for the sick man's comfort, and he lay now, pale, worn, and wan, but no longer in pain, and by the bedside—a low narrow camp stretcher—sat a young soldier, holding from time to time a cup of water to the dry lips of the dying man. Clumsy he might be, but there was no lack of tenderness in ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth

... welcome, saying what gladness it was to him to see there those who had been so kind to him. Had he known when they would arrive, food would have been ready for them; and he assured them that, however long they might stay, they would be most heartily welcome, and that there should be no lack of provisions. They had done an immense service to him, and to all the other chiefs on the river, by breaking up the power of one who preyed upon all his neighbors, and was a scourge to trade. As there were ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty

... easy to discover satisfactory evidence that the 'Novum Organum' had any direct beneficial influence on the advancement of natural knowledge. No delusion is greater than the notion that method and industry can make up for lack of motherwit, either in science or in practical life; and it is strange that, with his knowledge of mankind, Bacon should have dreamed that his, or any other, 'via inveniendi scientias' would 'level men's ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley

... a remarkable fact," he said, "that thirst and hunger should make themselves felt by sensations in the mouth and stomach only, and not in the rest of the body. At this very moment, when all my organs are quite dry for lack of decent whisky, I am only warned by the mucous membrane in ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois

... as a tramp—in his own account of himself he used the word "tramp" with a shocking lack of pride—led him inevitably into the far Northwest. Men were doing things up there. The country fairly seethed with the activity of live, virile men who were taking the first staunch grip upon the tricky ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... said Hallin, promptly. But his remark had a deplorable lack of unction, for the goldfish, startled by George's pebble, were at that moment performing evolutions of the greatest interest, and his black eyes were greedily ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... scarcity. Mice fought shy of the canteen, and "Skilly" visibly suffered from lack of nourishment. A sergeant's wife provided welcome hospitality; but no sooner was "Skilly" billeted outside the canteen than the plague returned, and so she was recalled urgently to active service. Again was the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various

... sunny storm, And hail their nuts down on unweeded fields. No holidays," quoth she; "drop, drop, O, drop, Thou tired skylark, and go up no more; You lime-trees, cover not your head with bees, Nor give out your good smell. She will not look; No, Gladys cannot draw your sweetness in, For lack of holidays." So Gladys thought, "A most strange woman, and she talks of me." With that a girl ran up; "Mother," she said, "Come out of this brown bight, I pray you now, It smells of fairies." Gladys thereon thought, "The mother will not speak to me, perhaps The daughter may," ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow

... "It is strange indeed that, in view of the French ridicule made of the English on account of their lack of taste in dress, the best dressmakers ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton

... there is a notable absence of what is regarded as the chief attractions of some fashionable summer resorts. Neither bar nor bottles nor ball-room nor bands are to be found in this Christian home;—for a home it is—in its restful and refining influences. The young people find no lack of innocent enjoyment in the bowling alley or on the golf links, in the tennis tournaments or in rowing upon the lake, with frequent regattas. Instead of the midnight dance the evening hours are made ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

... reproach where none was meant, he sprang up with a self-aimed malison upon his lack of care for me, stirred the fire alive and brewed me a most delicious-smelling cup of broth. And afterward, when I had drunk the broth with some small beckonings of returning appetite, he spread his coat to screen me from ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... to work in the Antidote Shop, but his lack of public spirit was growing apparent. He ignored invitations from the Dream Shop, and never attended any of the popular public executions. When roving mobs were formed to have a little fun in the Mutant Quarter, Barrent usually pleaded a headache. He never joined the ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley

... which had been shipped from Vera Cruz to Baltimore in a sailing vessel. I was all eyes for the pony, and a very miserable, sad-looking object he was. From his long voyage, cramped quarters and unavoidable lack of grooming, he was rather a disappointment to me, but I soon got over all that. As I grew older, and was able to ride and appreciate him, he became the joy and pride of my life. I was taught to ride on him by Jim Connally, the faithful Irish ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son

... the higher schools; whether they are succeeding in business better than the blacks; whether town life is proving particularly attractive to them; whether they have greater or less moral and physical stamina, than the blacks. The lack of definite knowledge should at least stop the prevalent practice of taking the progress of a band of mulattoes and attempting to estimate that of the Negroes thereby. It may be that some day the mulatto will entirely supplant the black, but there ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey

... trousers. No juncture in her life had so much exercised her judgment. In the meantime the Doctor had become vastly pleased with his situation. Two of the summer boarders still lingered behind the rest, prisoners for lack of a remittance; they were both English, but one of them spoke French pretty fluently, and was, besides, a humorous, agile-minded fellow, with whom the Doctor could reason by the hour, secure of comprehension. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... "We only lack one thing," said Gatton; "the scheme upon which all these contrivances and apparently isolated episodes were hung together. Nothing, as we have already assumed, was accident, and nothing coincidence. It was with some deliberate purpose that the constable ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer

... education of the deaf as well, and to include all the country. No little interest was aroused in the matter, and zealous advocates appeared to present the claims of the new undertaking. The chief objection was the lack of precedent, while with some members of Congress the idea seemed strange of conferring college degrees upon the deaf. Opposition, however, did not prove strong, and the measure was finally enacted in 1864 ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best

... Chater said: "I've hardly seen you, dear, except at meals"—then threw the onus for her son's lack of local gossip upon her husband. Addressing him, "You've been with Bob all the morning," she told him. "I wonder you haven't given him all the news. But, there! I suppose you've done nothing but question him about what business ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... had heard so much about Bill Harewood, that they were much excited; but their sympathy kindly compensated for the lack of that of the elder brothers. Fulbert pronounced that a cathedral chorister could never be any great shakes; and Clement could not forgive one who had been frivolous enough to be distracted by a jackdaw; but Lance, trusting to his friend's personal attractions to overcome all prejudice, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... conclusion through mere external blundering, easily to have been prevented. Juliet saw clearly where Mildred does not, that loyalty to a deep and true love should triumph over all minor considerations, so that in her case the tragedy is, in no sense, due to her blindness of vision. In the "Blot," lack of perception of the true values in life makes it impossible for Mildred or Tresham to act otherwise than they did. But having worked out their problem according to their lights, a new light of a more glorious day ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... Madame de Warens—his 'Mamma'—deeply and sincerely is undeniable, notwithstanding which he now and then dwells on her improvidence and her feminine indiscretions with an unnecessary and unbecoming lack of delicacy that has an unpleasant effect on the reader, almost seeming to justify the remark of one of his most lenient critics—that, after all, Rousseau had the soul of a lackey. He possessed, however, many amiable and charming qualities, both as a man and a writer, which were evident to ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... of the status quo ante bellum, and I must say I was struck with the well-to-do aspect of the peasants in Servia. By peasants I mean the class answering to the German bauer. It is true they lack many things that Western civilisation regards as necessaries; but have they not had the Turks for their masters far into this century? Turning over Lady Mary Wortley Montague's Letters,[4] there occurs the following paragraph in her account of a journey through ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... with this interest in social things and this willingness to entertain the most radical ideas, there is a note of pessimism and disillusionment. Anatole France's work shows this double tendency well. He reflects the social revolt and lack of respect for the old society in a most subtle way, but also he mirrors the failing hope of the social enthusiast. He has a deep sympathy for the social idealist, but nearly every book suggests the inevitable wreckage of enthusiasm on ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... for strangers at which hot water is served instead of tea, and dried beans instead of kwashi, and millet instead of rice. The absence of tea, however, is much more significant than that of rice. But the people of Beppu do not suffer for lack of proper nourishment, as their robust appearance bears witness: there are plenty of vegetables, all raised in tiny gardens which the women and children till during the absence of the boats; and there is abundance of fish. ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... There was a lack of something in the dark appointments of the sitting-room. The traces of busy domestic life were not there, and sadness filled the place of the parents whom she had unfeignedly longed to see again. Through a door ajar she saw ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... of Judea, in the days of Herod the king. There are many myths and legends floating through the world that are often beautiful and useful, but they hang like gorgeous clouds in the air and are ever changing their shape and place. They are growths of the imagination and lack historic roots and reality. They are chary of names and dates and hide their origin in far-away mists. However powerfully and pathetically they may reflect the needs and hopes of the human heart, they are unsubstantial as dreams and afford no foundation on which ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden

... in Canada. He apparently had a minute knowledge of its mineral history, its great deposits in metals, in coal, and oil, which he declared to be among the richest in the world. The mining operations, however, carried out in Canada, he dismissed as being unworthy of consideration. He deplored the lack of scientific knowledge ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor

... seems to us—the common readers—that there is no difference between our interior world and the horizon of great authors, and we flatter ourselves by believing that we are 'only less daring, less brave than are thinkers and poets, that some interior lack of courage stopped us from having formulated our impressions. And in this sentiment there is a great deal of truth. But while this expression of our thoughts seems to us to be a daring, to the others it is a need; they even do not suspect how ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,

... features, and large, steady eyes. There was absolutely no expression in his face as for one brief instant our glances met. Then—"God be with you, Don Cristobal," said he. "I am glad to have been even of this slight service. I hope, senorito, you have not suffered from lack of air?" ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... and clear conscience give, others timid and suffer the oppression of their fears. Even among sinners some make the best of weaknesses and redeem them a great deal more than half, while others magnify smaller faults by lack of self-possession till they are an insupportable nuisance. We may well admit that from the successes of those days, those who succeed to our delight to-day may glean ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... either something wrong with the water pump, the spark is retarded, or a lack of sufficient lubrication, causing the motor to heat. It will take some time to find out and we shall have to ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis

... to that of general! He was a good example of a type of officer created by luck and their personal courage who, although displaying much bravery before the enemy, were nevertheless incapable of occupying effectively a senior position because of their lack of education. ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... that the word "fiddlesticks" is still applied to anything that is beneath contempt in its utter lack of importance. ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George

... barracks and houses."—M.—, deputy of the lower Rhine, says: "This army at Ettenheim is composed of about five or six hundred poorly-clad, half-paid men, deserters of all nations, sleeping in tents, for lack of other shelter, and armed with clubs, for lack of fire-arms and deserting every day, because money is getting scarce. The second army, at Worms, under the command of a Conde, is composed of three hundred gentlemen, and as many valets and grooms. I have to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... long hereditary customs and ceremonies, that, by taking it utterly away, Death, instead of putting the final touch to his perfection, would leave him infinitely less complete than we have already known him. He could not be roundly happy. Paradise, among all its enjoyments, would lack one daily felicity which his sombre little island possessed. Perhaps it is not irreverent to conjecture that a provision may have been made, in this particular, for the Englishman's exceptional necessities. It strikes me that Milton was of the opinion here ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... bed almost sick from my exposure and lack of food, and just as the old sand man of childhood's happy days began to sprinkle his grains in my eyes, I heard, way off in the distance, a peculiar click and a drawling voice calling off some numbers. "Four." "Sixteen." "Thirty-three." "Seventy-eight." "Ten." "Twenty-six," and then, a great ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... Manning. The psychographs will eliminate the hundreds of thousands of misfits, the men who will want to go for selfish reasons, who are running away from the past, or are dissatisfied with their lack of success in life and embittered because of failure. We can expect many criminal types. Those will be eliminated easily. We have set a specific quota from each of the satellites, planets, and asteroid ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell

... actually fallen in love with her true portrait, and the scenes where the two meet under this spell, are among the best in the whole Cabinet—which is a bold word. The others, though naturally unequal, never or very seldom lack charm, for the reason that Caylus knew what one has ventured to call the secret of Fairyland—that it is the land of the attained Wish—and that he has the art of scattering rememberable and generative phrases and fancies. Tourlou ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... and loyalty; wherefore have a care that what I shall now tell thee reach the ears of none but him to whom I shall bid thee impart it. Thou seest, Lusca, that I am in the prime of my youth and lustihead, and have neither lack nor stint of all such things as folk desire, save only, to be brief, that I have one cause to repine, to wit, that my husband's years so far outnumber my own. Wherefore with that wherein young ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... "The only thing I lack is a useful education, so that I am not sure I can make a very big living just at first, unless I ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke

... "In proportion as he lost the support of the public, Napoleon took pleasure in thinking that it was the lack of a future and not his own misdeeds that threatened his proud throne with premature fragility. The desire to make firm what he felt trembling beneath his feet, became his dominant passion, as if, with a new wife in the Tuileries, the mother of a male heir, the faults which had armed the whole ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... lowly progenitors, the pride of family and position, like that of would-be aristocratic sons who conceal the humble origin of their parents. But it is more than that; it is the old difficulty of walking by faith where there is nothing visible to walk upon: we lack faith in the efficiency of the biologic laws, or any mundane forces, to bridge the tremendous chasm that separates man from even the highest of the lower orders. His radical unlikeness to all the forms below him, as if he moved in a world apart, into which they could ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... make sulphuric acid; also, through the reduction in the production of the iron furnaces of the country, from the slag of which over 2,000,000 tons of so-called Thomas phosphate flour was produced, will involve a big reduction in the make of that valuable fertilizer. Thus, there is a lack of horses, of fertilizers, and of the guiding hand of man. This last, however, can be partly supplied by utilizing for farm work such of the prisoners of war as come from the farm. As Germany now holds considerably more than 600,000 prisoners, it can draw many farm laborers from among ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... "Oh, he doesn't lack brains, or pluck either," Fenwick said. "I should have been proud of a trick like that myself. I ought to have poisoned him when I had the chance. I ought to have got him out of the way without delay. But it seemed such a safe thing to kidnap ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White

... Grosvenor Street, and splendidly kept up. Then he had suddenly grown horribly sick of it, longed for freedom in a garret, and now he associated it with no thrill of pride or pleasure, but with boredom, depression, quarrels and lack of liberty. Liberty! Ah! That was it; that was what he felt more than anything else. He had married for money chiefly to get liberty. One was a slave, always in debt—but it was much worse now. The master of the house lost all his vitality, gaiety and air ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson

... the rooms where the display was made. Works deserving special mention are buttonholes made by Martha Howard of the seventh grade; patching by Lulu Gaston, and darning by Gertrude Williams. The cooking-school, for lack of money, was discontinued after three months, but during that time substantial progress was made, and there can be no question about the advisability of pushing the industrial work as far as possible the coming year. In the boys' department, too, all were surprised to see the articles ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 48, No. 7, July, 1894 • Various

... government,' the speakers, mostly of the higher or wealthier order of life, meaning thereby, the old and retrograde forms of monarchy, or something of that sort. Periods of disaster tend to reveal a latent lack of confidence in the permanency of existing things. Investigations in Sociology impeach the wisdom of our institutions, in common with that of all others that have been tried in the past, from another point of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... "You should see some of the country houses in England, Thomas. And then another reason why I dislike bush life is the utter lack of female society." ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke

... of the tale suffers from a very dull love-interest and some even more dreary racing humour. Archaic or not, however, Hillyard's anti-spy adventures, in an exquisite setting that the author evidently knows as well as his hero, are good fun enough. But the home scenes had (for me at least) a lack of grip and conviction by no means to be looked for from a writer of Mr. MASON'S experience. His big thrill, the suicide of the lady who first sends by car to the local paper the story of her end and then waits to confirm this by telephone before making it true, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various



Words linked to "Lack" :   need, mineral deficiency, deficiency, absence, dearth, stringency, shortness, demand, shortage, miss, have, exclude, deficit, tightness, famine



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