Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Seem   /sim/   Listen
Seem

verb
(past & past part. seemed; pres. part. seeming)
1.
Give a certain impression or have a certain outward aspect.  Synonyms: appear, look.  "This appears to be a very difficult problem" , "This project looks fishy" , "They appeared like people who had not eaten or slept for a long time"
2.
Seem to be true, probable, or apparent.  Synonym: appear.  "It appears that the weather in California is very bad"
3.
Appear to exist.
4.
Appear to one's own mind or opinion.  "I can't seem to learn these Chinese characters"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Seem" Quotes from Famous Books



... provision being made for obtaining information of the exact position and movements of the enemy, such as a corps of competent scouts could have given. That omission is fatal to the success of any military movement. Again, those who were in command of columns on the 2nd of June do not seem to have had an intelligent idea of the country they were about to move over, and had to rely on whatever chance information they could obtain, much of which, in the excited state of the minds of the people, was unreliable. ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald

... it would seem that Flamsteed had been engaged, to a certain extent, in the business carried on by his father. It is true that he does not give any explicit details, yet there are frequent references to journeys which he had ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... no dweller on the Sea Islands can now read a book like Kay's "Social Condition of the English People," without perceiving that the families around him, however fresh from slavery, have the best of the comparison. In the one class the finer instincts of humanity seem dead; in the lowest specimens of the other those instincts are but sleeping. I have seen men and women collected from the rice-fields by the hundred, at the very instant of transition from slavery to freedom. They were starved, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... shot a wallaby. Before starting, Barney, one of the black-boys had to be corrected by the Leader for misconduct, which had the effect of restoring discipline. On reaching Cawana Swamp, the fires of the natives were found quite fresh, from which it would seem that they had decamped on the approach of the party, leaving plenty of birrum-burrongs, or bee-eaters ('Merops Ornatus, Gould') behind them. An observation taken at night gave the latitude 18 degrees 1 minute 59 seconds, which gave about 41 miles ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine

... "It can't seem so without Marmee and little Pip," sighed Beth, glancing with full eyes at the empty ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... dependants and followers by protection. That therefore, which is true, do thou truly declare unto these Brahmanas. Indeed, do thou declare what is agreeable to the scriptures and to actual experience, asked by the Brahmanas who are eager to know. Thy words seem to demand credit. Thou art wise. Thou bearest also a celestial form. Thou hast come into the midst of learned Brahmanas. It behoveth thee to explain thyself.' Thus addressed by those regenerate persons, the mongoose, smiling, answered them as follows. 'Ye regenerate ones, the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... prevails. The sentences here are framed largely on one plan. They are mostly of the same length. The order of the words in them is the same; often the words are the same; and, even when they are not, those in one clause or sentence seem to suggest those in the next. This sameness is not accidental. The more real the murderer's fancied security is made in this paragraph to appear, the more startling in the next paragraph will be the revelation ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... severity than for indulgence; even her father himself is sometimes afraid lest her lofty pride should degenerate into a haughty spirit. When most alone, Emile dare not ask for the slightest favour, he must not even seem to desire it; and if she is gracious enough to take his arm when they are out walking, a favour which she will never permit him to claim as a right, it is only occasionally that he dare venture with a ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... answer did not seem to be resented, but rather appeared to have a subduing effect on the questioner, who turned, as if for further instruction, to another officer, evidently his superior in rank. The latter now rose, came forward, doffing his cap, ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr

... Frewer's collection. And Sir Henry selected him as one of the chief artists commissioned to decorate the interior of the Banqueting Hall specially erected for the celebration of the French Alliance in 1527. By all of which it would seem that in securing a new patron the painter had ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue

... taste in the choice of the most becoming forms and colours; but of actual ornaments one sees none at all. Here and there a gold fastener in the hair, here and there a gold or silver brooch on the dress—that is all; precious stones and pearls seem to be avoided by the ladies here. What ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... his fame as the controller of water and the fertilization of the earth became apotheosized also. I venture to put forward this suggestion only because none of the alternative hypotheses that have been propounded seem to be in accordance with, or to offer an adequate explanation of, the body of known ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... Allington, at Guestwick, as to whom she had once thought that he might fill that place of son-in-law,—to be well-beloved. Her quiet, beautiful Bell had seemed to like the man; and he had certainly done more than seem to like her. But now, for some weeks past, this hope, or rather this idea, had faded away. Mrs Dale had never questioned her daughter on the matter; she was not a woman prone to put such questions. But during the month or two last past, she had seen ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... custom is so singular as to merit a more general notice than it habitually receives: indeed, its existence might be doubted by the foreign reader, did not a Hungarian journal, Der Osten, furnish a detailed description of it. The only prerequisite to an audience would seem to be the lodging of the subject's name and rank with one of the emperor's secretaries, who thereupon appoints the day and hour for his appearance at the palace. If the emperor has been long absent from Vienna, his next audience-day is always a trying one, as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various

... asking you—ay, and expecting you—to take a fully-loaded slaver into port with only fourteen men to back you up, and no guns! The man ought to be ashamed of himself! But it is just like you navy fellows; you are constantly asking one another to do things which seem impossible!" ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... Darrell did not seem to observe George take leave, but walked on, his hat over his brows, lost in one of his frequent fits ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... themselves almost in an instant in their proper places, just as if they moved by mechanism; and not a human voice was heard as the different ropes were let go, and the huge mainsail, flapping furiously, descended towards the deck. The cutter did not seem to feel the immense weight of the canvass, increased as it was by the rain; but danced about as buoyantly as ever. In a few minutes vanished all idea of sending the mainsail adrift, and every thought was turned to the trysail. Five times the attempt was made to set it; but the furious blasts of wind, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... with the air of being in her proper place, like a king who stands in the waiting procession at the doors of a theatre where the management have not been warned of his coming; and strictly limiting her field of vision—so as not to seem to be advertising her presence and claiming the consideration that was her due—to the study of a pattern in the carpet or of her own skirt, she stood there on the spot which had struck her as the most modest (and from which, as she very well knew, a cry of rapture from ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... should perhaps be more fitly called dramatic poems, were a species of composition to which more than one writer of reputation had lately begun to turn their attention; though dramas not designed for the stage seem to most readers defective in their very conception, as lacking the stimulus which the intention of submitting them to the extemporaneous ocular judgement of the public can alone impart. Among such works, however, "The Mysterious Mother" ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

... has been long a dispute among the learned and travellers, whether or no there are cannibals or man-eaters existing, it may seem something strange that we should assert there is, beyond all doubt, one of that species often seen lurking near St. Paul's, in the city of London, and other parts of that city, seeking whom ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown

... she meant to say to him, but now that the moment had arrived it did not seem so easy. He might mistake her friendliness. He might think there was some unexpressed motive in the back of her mind, that she was trying to hold him to the compact made in Blister Haines's office a year ago. It would be hateful if he thought that. ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine

... deities of the Babylonian and Assyrian pantheons seem not to be connected by their names with natural phenomena. They are attached to particular cities or districts, and each district or city, as it becomes a great religious center, raises its favorite god to a position of preeminence. ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... "Things seem to be happening," he said, "right up to expectation, only more so. I own I didn't look for that British ship quite ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham

... right, Patricia," he said thoughtfully, "it does seem a shame to disturb the old Johnny, and creepy too. ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... Reynolds he said: 'How various he is,' but his admiration did not make him stray from his natural path to attempt the variety of another. Reynolds, equally admiring, said of him: 'I cannot make out how he produces his effects.' Perhaps Gainsborough did not know either. He does seem to paint by instinct, and successive pictures became more pleasing. Buoyant in his life as in his art, his last words were: 'We are all going to Heaven, and Van Dyck is of ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway

... "yes! it may be base and ungrateful—but no matter!—Twenty times I have felt jealous of the affectionate confidence which my children display towards you, while with me they seem always to be in fear. If their melancholy faces ever grow animated for a moment, it is in talking to you, in seeing you; while for me they have nothing but cold respect—and that kills me. Sure of the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... of a woman's wrong-doing, when surely it is a man's as well. There does not seem to be blame for him who is the more guilty. Only for poor women! . . . And, Auntie dear, it is such poor women that I should like to help . . . Not when it is too late, but before! But how can I help unless I know? Good girls cannot tell me, ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... swings round out of the dark into the sun; there is always morning somewhere; and for ever in this shifting region of the morning-light the good Altegans sees the little ones afoot—- shining companies and groups, couples and bright solitary figures; for they all seem to have a soft heavenly ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... not only of the ability of the people to furnish at a short notice such sums as may be required but of the entire confidence felt in the national securities. After nearly four years of a most expensive and wasting war, the means to continue it seem apparently undiminished, while the determination to prosecute it with vigor to the end ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... symbolizes the solemn gathering of the gods. At its conclusion, so it would seem, Marduk is formally installed as the leader to proceed against Tiamat. The gods vie with one another in showering honors upon Marduk. They encourage him for the fight by praising ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... And near the thorn, aboon the well, Whare Mungo's mither hang'd hersel.— Before him Doon pours all his floods! The doubling storm roars thro' the woods; The lightnings flash from pole to pole; Near and more near the thunders roll; When glimmering thro' the groaning trees, Kirk-Alloway seem'd in a bleeze; Thro' ilka bore the beams were glancing, And loud resounded mirth ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... about them. They, too, had passed from her life as phases of keen joy and keener sorrow do pass, like a dream and the shadows of a dream. It may be, life itself will seem at the end to be ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)

... course of the day Richard found that he was a lion. He had thrashed the bully of the school, and won the enviable position of champion of the Institute. But even this glory did not seem to be worth much; for since the fight, he realized that he had whipped a bigger fellow ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic

... in justice be added, that the slightly olive tinge in her complexion, her wavy hair, and a vague bluish reflection in the whites of her eyes would scarcely have betrayed the mixture of race. She did not seem to have heeded the Baron's pause, but she arranged, with an absent air, the folds of her mauve gown, while Dorsenne replied: "It is a fine and specious argument.... Its only fault is that it has no foundation. For I defy you to imagine yourself what you would have been in the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... sir," admitted Wagstaffe quickly. "Thank God, these fellows are only a minority, and a freak minority at that; but freak minorities seem to get the monopoly of the limelight in ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

... to jump up and give women their seats, but there were no men in this train. It was peopled with women who had been shopping, and who carried bundles. Many went on so far that Win began to believe they were taking a jaunt for fun, especially as they did not seem at all tired, but chewed something unremittingly with an air of calm delight. This was, perhaps, what Americans called a ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... hearing the downward stream With half-shut eyes ever to seem Falling asleep in a half dream! To dream and dream, like yonder amber light Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height; To hear each others' whispered speech; Eating the Lotos, day by day, To watch the crisping ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... and wagging his head without expressing either approval or disapproval, had begun to study on Pierre's face the effect of these curious stories. "No doubt, no doubt," he responded; "so many things are said! I know nothing myself, but you seem to be certain of ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... not seem probable, though. The return was painful, as they came back worried and ill, and were glad to take refuge at Nohant. They were just beginning to organize their life when Maurice Dupin died suddenly, from an accident ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic

... seem to be familiar with the tests made by good authorities on square slabs of reinforced concrete and of cast iron, which latter material is also deficient in tensile strength. These tests prove quite conclusively that the maximum bending moment per linear foot ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey

... in which the Jews usually quoted or referred to particular passages of Scripture, it does not seem altogether improbable that the several articles of the 'Oratio Dominica' might have been the initial sentences of several prayers; but I have not the least doubt that by the loud utterance of the 'My God! ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... it would seem to Milly, Ernestine's origin was not widely separated from that of Milly Ridge. She might very well have been one of the many little schoolmates, not exactly "nice," who sat beside Milly on the benches of the St. Louis public school. Her ancestry, to be sure, was more mongrel than ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... steady as the rock on which it rested; so, taking a deliberate aim, I let fly at her head, a little behind the eye. She got it hard and sharp, just where I aimed, but it did not seem to affect her much. Uttering a loud cry, she wheeled about, when I gave her the second ball close behind the shoulder. All the elephants uttered a strange rumbling noise, and made off in a line to the northward at ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman

... Bobbsey. "That circus is traveling all over Cuba, and the letters I sent never seem to catch up to them. However, I am sending one on ahead now, to a city where they will soon give a show. The fat lady will find it there waiting for her, ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope

... dissolved into thin air. They conceal themselves under bushes, in ditches, lie prone under hedgerows, dart into houses and outbuildings—in short, take every cover which is available, no matter how slender it may seem, with baffling alacrity. The attenuated column, however, is kept moving along the highway for the express purpose of deceiving ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... I saw Clemanthis, As when he was most charming to my Soul, But pale and languishing, having a Wound Like that I gave his Murderer To which with one of's Hands he seem'd to point; The other stretching out with passionate Actions, And gazing on me,—thus methought he spoke: —See how you recompense my faithful Sufferings, —See the performance of your Promises; Look on this Wound which you have given my Heart, That Heart ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn

... and yet, strange to say, many prefer confusion rather than admit that he performed the role assigned him of Heaven. For this very reason writers, even Jewish historians, are at a loss to account for the latter half of the prophet's life. They do not seem to know where he spent his last days; they know not the time, manner, nor place of his death. And why, you ask? We answer, Because they selfishly and persistently limited his life and labours to his own land. They have not been willing to allow that he was set as ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild

... culminate in convulsion. The light is now breaking upon the heretofore obscured vision of the American people. We can now begin to see with clearness that the colored man's disenthrallment is to become the white man's future security. This would almost seem to be the harmony of divine justice in the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... but not enthusiastically; "but just now I only want to know how old Time is. Millions and millions of years," she repeated to herself rather dreamily. "If you took forty from millions and millions it wouldn't make any difference worth mentioning. It makes even Adam seem almost as near as last week. And this morning I said I hadn't time to darn a hole in my stocking. I wonder if Eve said she had no time. Were there any ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton

... handwriting of Stephen. There could be no doubt about it, no possible doubt. Peter had seen that writing many times and he had always kept the letter that Stephen had written to him when he first went to Dawson's. To other eyes it might seem an ordinary enough hand—rough and uneducated and sprawling—anybody's hand, but Peter knew that there could be ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... a long time before he would dare smoke a cigar again, and his supply of cigarettes was destined to dwindle down to nothing before that day. But he did not seem to mind. ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... slyly though sleepily, "that it always is an inferior power of man, which it does not seem to have been ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... leaning quite close to her, "I am not seeking to blackmail you as you seem to imagine. I have only tried to tell you ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon

... November, probably when they experience the cold of the first autumnal rains. Those that are not of the largest size, as I said before, pass the winter in the deepest parts of the mud of rivers and lakes, and do not seem to eat much, and remain, I believe, almost torpid. Their increase is not certainly known in any given time, but must depend upon the quantity of their food; but it is probable they do not become of the largest size from the smallest in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various

... don't take it as an offence, for I don't mean any, but really, for a man that has been in the Kingdom as long as I reckon you have, you do seem to know powerful little ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain

... more nigh. And I perceived that the thing was, in part, a high rock, very tall and pointed and maybe an hundred feet high; but afterward I did find it to be more. And there was a monstrous great thing upon the top of the rock, that did seem very strange; and I stopt and lookt, and afterward went forward again; and so for a time, until that I was but a little way off. And now I saw that there did seem to be a mighty long rock laid across the topmost part of the upstanding rock, and yet had a very strange and shapely appearance; ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson

... Skene, the Fians were either Fairies or Cruithne. Now, Cruithne is simply a Gaelic name for the Picts. Consequently, the Fians were either Fairies or Picts—according to Dr. Skene. In one traditional story, already referred to, the Fians seem to be unhesitatingly regarded as Picts. This story, obtained in Sutherlandshire, tells how a certain king lived for a year with a banshee, or fairy woman,[45] by whom he had a son. When this son grew up he went to the country of the Fians,[46] and there he entered into the service of their king, ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie

... of the Erie railroad's treasury, ostensibly for purposes of litigation, and that it was clear "that large sums of money did come from the treasury of the Erie Railroad Company, which were expended for some purpose in Albany, for which no vouchers seem to have been filed in the offices of the company." The committee further found that "large sums of money were expended for corrupt purposes by parties interested in legislation concerning railways during ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... either man or animal, and the next day, watchful and surcharged with interest, they approached New Orleans, which was bulking so large to them. The river looped out into a crescent and narrowed greatly. As they came to the city, the Mississippi did not seem to them to be more than a third of a mile wide, but they knew that ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler

... the prolonged tension upon my nerves—ultimately subsided into a fitful, restless, nightmare kind of slumber, during which I continued in my dreams the researches upon which my thoughts had now been for nearly three weeks concentrated. Over and over again did I seem to arrange upon paper an experimental system of numbering the alphabet, in the hope of obtaining some intelligible result; and at length, to my great astonishment and inexpressible delight, methought I found ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood

... named Chapoltepec, along which the aqueduct, or pipes, for supplying Mexico with fresh water was carried; but this appears to have been too narrow for allowing any passage, at least the Spaniards do not seem to have availed themselves of it, in their long and arduous endeavours to force their way into Mexico. Near the south-west angle of the salt lake of Mexico, it communicated by a narrow neck or strait with the fresh water lake of Chalco; and at their junction a mound or causeway had been ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... Army of Fiends, fit body to fit head. Was this your discipline and faith engaged, Your military obedience, to dissolve Allegiance to the acknowledged Power supreme? And thou, sly hypocrite, who now wouldst seem Patron of liberty, who more than thou Once fawned, and cringed, and servilely adored Heaven's awful Monarch? wherefore, but in hope To dispossess him, and thyself to reign? But mark what I arreed thee now, Avant; Fly neither whence ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... on the morning when this chapter finds him. There is a certain retreat which the town would seem to have provided for the express benefit of lovers—a rustic arbour on a little mount near the railway station overlooking the Rhine Fall. The surly, red-bearded signalman who watched over the striped ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... a green color; and calling Eliza, she caused her to undress and step into the water. And while Eliza dived, one of the toads sat upon her hair, and the second on her forehead, and the third on her heart; but she did not seem to notice it; and as soon as she rose, three red poppies were floating on the water. If the creatures had not been poisonous, and if the witch had not kissed them, they would have been changed into red roses. But at any rate they became flowers, because ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... they are not. I have seen pictures and had some correspondence with Dr. Meader on them. They seem to be the Japanese species, C. crenata type, or possibly hybrid, not ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various

... you may say, is this—but step a bit nigher, for there's lashins o' room—the answer, as far as that goes, is what I make to you, sayin'— that if you wasn' so passin' wet, may be I'd blurt out what I had i' my mind. But, as things go, 'twould seem like ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... seem to sanction the acquisition and incorporation into our Federal Union of the several adjacent continental and insular communities as speedily as it can be done peacefully, lawfully, and without any violation of national justice, faith, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... the force from below.' He now was aware that no troops could be expected from the south, and Sir John Lawrence plainly told him that he had sent him the last man he could spare from the Punjab. On the 29th August Lawrence wrote to Wilson: 'There seem to be very strong reasons for assaulting as soon as practicable. Every day's delay is fraught with danger. Every day disaffection and mutiny spread. Every day adds to the danger of the Native Princes ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... 27.—Today the men have all been working on a patch of ground near here, just across the Big Watering, which Henry has let us have for wheat. It has to be sown this month. They seem pleased to do it. They have been fairly busy lately cutting a large quantity of wood for the winter, which is piled near their houses. Old Sam Swain and Tom Rogers go out every month fishing in order to find out for Mr. Keytel when the ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow

... upon his cushions, tired out by this long recital, while his nurse poured him out a glass of some stimulating medicine. Holmes sat silently, with his head thrown back and his eyes closed, in an attitude which might seem listless to a stranger, but which I knew betokened ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... hammer and the block, and that is a world of much solicitation to induce a vivid girl to merge an ideal in a living image. Supposing, when she has accomplished it, that men justify her choice, the living will retain the colours of the ideal. We have it on record that he may seem ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... and unhappy, and all of a sudden her only wish was to get within the protection of those covers. Perhaps it would not then seem so lonesome ...
— Billie Bradley at Three Towers Hall - or, Leading a Needed Rebellion • Janet D. Wheeler

... balance to weigh one another's sins, and coarser and finer are but human words; but faults in the higher nature may be less venial than those in the lower, and to the eye of Him who is love, a sin against love may seem a hundred times more base. No form of vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, not drunkenness itself, does more to unchristianize society than evil temper. For embittering life, for breaking up communities, for destroying the most ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various

... in a fight, for I have an idea he was brave, and it takes away in an instant any feeling of prejudice you may have against a man on account of his being fussy in dress, when you see him face death or danger without flinching. Fine clothes seem to fit such a man, but upon one who cannot stand fire they become a proper subject for ridicule. Custer with flashing eye and flowing hair, charging at the head of his men, was a grand and picturesque figure, the more so by reason of his fantastic uniform, which made him a conspicuous mark ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd

... division with a haughty lady does seem no more monstrous than the return of a colored hat. There is no choice when the head is everywhere, none whatever and the same thing would be so changeable if the hair were made of that silk. If the little one were that size and she is then the round spot would be alike and it was not. So there ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein

... some ten or fifteen years, brings up a wonderful "heap of notions," which at their birth made quite a different sensation from that which their "bare remembrance" would seem to sanction now. The statement made in a "morning paper" before us, of a fine horse being actually scared stone and instantaneously dead, by a roaring and hissing locomotive, brings to mind "a circumstance," which though it did not exactly do our knitting, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... seem to guard the intrepid wanderers—to enable them to cross abysses on frail bridges; to prevent them from sinking into invisible clefts and pits covered with snow; to make them safely escape the ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... slowly, "have not had that advantage; but, to outward appearance, you do not seem possessed of a craving for strong drinks. On the whole, I fancy that you are the luckier of the two. Yet I am not certain. You are—forgive my saying so even while I am smoking your excellent tobacco—painfully ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... I am a Bird of Wisdom. I am also an Observing Bird; and though my young friends may think I see less than I do, because of my blinking, and because I detest that vulgar glare of bright light without which some persons do not seem able to see what goes on around them, I would have children to know that if I can blink on occasion, and am not apt to let every starer read my counsel in my eyes, I am wide awake all the same. I am on the look-out when it's so dark that ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... parliamentary work was at this time less important than his work as an agitator. If in one sense the Corn Laws did not seem a promising theme for a popular agitation, they were excellently fitted to bring out Cobden's peculiar strength. It was not passion, but persuasiveness, to which we must look for the secret of his oratorical success. Cobden made his way to men's hearts by the union which they saw in him ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... said Lyveden excitedly. "You've got it in one. The place is so pathetically grateful for every stock and stone you set straight, that you just can't hold your hand. And all the time the work's so fascinating that you don't deserve any thanks. You seem to get deeper in debt every day. You're credited with every cheque you draw. If I stopped, it'd ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... is June. It has flowers. It has mild weather. It has a slight haze in the atmosphere. These things seem to flood one's soul ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood

... this is so evident, and so well known, that on Egyptian soil one defeat has almost always been accepted as decisive of the military supremacy. A beaten army may, of course, protract its resistance behind walls, and honour, fame, patriotism, may seem sometimes to require such a line of conduct; but, unless there is a reasonable expectation of relief arriving from without, protracted resistance is useless, and, from a military point of view, indefensible. Defeated commanders have not, however, always seen this, or, seeing it, they have allowed ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... realize it. But since he has known me, has felt my influence, has been subject to my volition, my sorcery, you may call it,—" his laugh was disagreeably conscious,—"he has developed the shadow of a great man. He will seem a great composer. I shall make him think he is one. I shall make the world believe it, also. It is my fashion of squaring a life I hate. But if I chose ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... descending to the methods of the grafters and the machine politicians the country over. If you have been sending these pie-eaters to me, stop it—don't do it any more. I have no earthly use for them; and they won't have any use for me after I open up on them and tell them a few things they don't seem to know, or to care ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... such misshapen answers. Rough wrathful words Are bastards got by rashness in the thoughts: Fair demeanours are virtue's nuptial babes, The offspring of the well-instructed soul; O, let them call thee mother, then, my wife! So seem not ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... thing," the computer replied. "They can't get nearly as far as Uranus on their power beam—it's all they can do to make Jupiter. They seem to think, though, that one or more of the satellites of Uranus or Neptune may be inhabited by beings similar to themselves, only perhaps even more so. But considering the difference between what we found on ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... 2. "A Iesuite, whereof this Countie of Lancaster hath good store."] Lancashire was, about this period, the great hot-bed of Popish recusants. From the very curious list of recusants given (Baines's Lancashire, vol. i. p. 541,) it would seem that Samlesbury ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts

... Moore had nothing better to do than eternally swab his face with that beastly old sponge! Why didn't he pick on some other fellow? Don felt quite aggrieved and tried to say so, but couldn't seem to make any sound. Then he realised that he had forgotten to open his lips. When he did he got a lot of cold water in his mouth and that made him quite peevish. He tried to raise his right hand, changed his mind ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour

... each with its gurgling rivulet of peaty-brown water flowing down from the mosses above. Only a narrow strip of arable land is here and there visible along the bottom of the dale, all above being sheep-pasture, moors, and rocks. At Glendinning you seem to have got almost to the world's end. There the road ceases, and above it stretch trackless moors, the solitude of which is broken only by the whimpling sound of the burns on their way to the valley below, the hum of bees gathering ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... traced out by blue phosphoric fire, while above them hovered the shape of a bleeding infant. Horror-stricken, she averted her gaze, but it encountered another object, equally appalling—her husband's portrait; or rather, it would seem, a phantom in its place; for the eyes, lighted up by infernal fire, glared at her from beneath the frowning and contracted brows, while the hand significantly pointed to the hearthstone, on which the sanguinary stains had now formed themselves into ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... he would say to Jeffreys, as the two lay at night almost on bare boards, "what's the odds? I may be miserable one day, but I'm jolly the next. Now you seem to prefer ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed

... however, very curious how these little bits of acquired knowledge dovetail into the occasional requirements of everyday life, and equally curious to what strange and mysterious uses some of our readers seem to apply them. What, for example, can be the object of Mr. Wm. Oxley, who writes to me all the way from Iowa, in wishing to ascertain the dimensions of a field that he proposes to enclose, containing just as many acres as there shall ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... was through the door, and there was no shadow of turning on his dark, determined face. I knew my man, and wasted no more words. Long ago it had grown to seem the thing most in nature that the hour of danger should ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... the first time, what an all-round, valuable creature he has become at 'The Seven Stars.' When he was along with his dying relation, I missed the man a thousand times in every twelve hours and I felt properly astonished to find how he was the prop and stay of my business. That may seem too much to say, seeing I'm a fairly clever woman and know how to run 'The Seven Stars' in a pretty prosperous way; but there is no doubt Legg is very much more than what he seems. He's a very human man and I'll go so far as to say this: I like him. There's great self-respect to him and ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... to me merely a new nomenclature for long-known and admitted phenomena; and beyond those, they seem to me to involve themselves in contradictions, divisions, and subdivisions of the brain, so minute and various, and requiring so much allowance for so many conditions, as considerably to neutralize each other, and render the result of their observations, which ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... Germans halt. The range is only 1,500 yards now and every British shot is telling. The effects are appalling. The gray masses move onward once more, seem to hesitate, but sharp bugle blasts launch them forward again and on the run ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... didn't look so frightfully ill," she whispered. "Have you been missing me? My dear, what a mess I seem to have made of our lives! Sit down! Let me take care of you! Let me do what I can for you, ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna

... avenues and the ancient Castle to the north. To the south, the fortress and the bridges; encircling the city a thick, high wall with here and there enormous gates flanked by towers so grim and old that they seem ready to topple over from the sheer fatigue of centuries. A soft, Indian summer haze hangs over the lazy-lit valley; it is always so in the ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... of the war-god several shorter thicker posts are erected, and to each of these two or three small pieces of human flesh, brought home from the corpses of the slain enemies for this purpose, are fastened with skewers. These pieces of flesh seem to be thank-offerings to the hawks to whom the success is largely attributed. These bits of flesh are dried over a fire at the first opportunity on the return journey, ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... him her Tobacco was gone, and begs of all Love, he wou'd give her another Pound, and she wou'd then consent to be Christned anew. I will make no Application, Tom, but if any of your Irish Conversions, seem to bear some Resemblance with this, as to their Motives and Conduct, I think you need not boast much of any Advantages, to be ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous

... may seem surprising that I could tolerate such a man as was Mr. Chiffinch, still more that I should have become on such terms with him. The truth is, that I regarded him as two men, and not one. On the one side he was the spy, the servant, the ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson

... individual who had waited outside the door the night before,—Lost Wing, Medaine's Sioux servant: evidently a self-constituted bodyguard who traveled more as a shadow than as a human being. Certainly the girl in the foreground gave no indication that she was aware of his presence; nor did she seem ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... warned me how small it would all seem. Such little fields—such little rivers—such tiny journeys! And these immense towns treading on each other's heels. Don't you feel ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... deprived of air and of light, in which fourteen females still languished in misery. It was with difficulty that the Prince smothered his emotion; and doubtless it was the first time that these unfortunate creatures had there witnessed compassion depicted upon a human countenance; I still seem to behold the affecting apparition. They fell at our feet, bathed in tears, and speechless, until, emboldened by our expressions of sympathy, they recounted to us their sufferings. Alas! all their crime consisted in having been attached to the same ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... "Kasra" are titles applied only to the latter dynasty and especially to the great King Anushirwan. They must not be confounded with "Khusrau" (P. N. Cyrus, Ahasuerus? Chosroes?), and yet the three seem to have combined in "Caesar," Kaysar and Czar. For details especially connected with Zoroaster see vol. I, p. 380 of the Dabistan or School of Manners, translated by David Shea and Anthony Troyer, Paris, 1843. The book is most valuable, but the proper ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... nearing fifty; but her slim little wiry body and her elfish, wrinkled face, never still, but ever alive with the same vivacity that years ago had attracted William Allsopp, made her seem younger than her years; and her husband treated her as though she were still ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne

... a series of essays so ephemeral and even superfluous may seem at the first glance to require some excuse; probably the best excuse is that they will have been completely forgotten, and therefore may be read again with entirely new sensations. I am not sure, however, that this claim is so modest as it ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton

... grimly. "What he means, Haljan, is that things are not always what they seem these days. One cannot always tell a friend from an enemy. The Planetara is a public vessel. You have—how many is it, Carter?—thirty or ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various

... said. "I seem to be singularly stupid this morning. A mild lunacy. You must forgive me, if you can. To tell you what you ask would be to enter upon forbidden ground, and I mustn't ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman

... pupil; Let me but guide my reverend master home, In token of the grateful memory Wherein I hold his guidance of my mind Up the steep paths of art. [While LORENZO speaks, RIBERA slowly gains consciousness of his situation, raises his hand to his head and shudders violently. LORENZO'S last words seem to ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... pianola, Henry Wimbush, smoking a long cigar through a tunnelled pillar of amber, trod out the shattering dance music with serene patience. Locked together, Gombauld and Anne moved with a harmoniousness that made them seem a single creature, two-headed and four-legged. Mr. Scogan, solemnly buffoonish, shuffled round the room with Mary. Jenny sat in the shadow behind the piano, scribbling, so it seemed, in a big red notebook. In arm-chairs by the fireplace, Priscilla and Mr. Barbecue-Smith ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... now—not all the squalor of the room could efface or diminish the majesty of their two figures. They sat like two tall old kings, eye to eye, not friends, or reconciled only in this last and lonely hour by meditation on man's common fate. If I cannot make you understand this, what follows will seem to you absurd, though indeed at the time ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... more astonishing is the statistical fact that the fishermen of all nations in Newfoundland waters catch each year nearly 1000 cod-fish for every single individual person there is in the whole population of the island. After this, numbers seem rather to weaken than strengthen the argument. But it is worth mentioning that there are nearly 80,000 local fishing boats of all sorts actually counted by the governments of Canada and Newfoundland, ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood

... as the result of the Zeppelin raid "England's industry to a considerable extent is in ruins" is probably based on the fact that three breweries were bombed. To the Teuton mind such a catastrophe might well seem overwhelming. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol 150, February 9, 1916 • Various

... great navy and standing army of ten thousand hired barbarians are not, as his father had said, the adamantine chains which secure the regal power, but the love, zeal, and affection inspired by clemency and justice; which, though they seem more pliant than the stiff and hard bonds of severity, are nevertheless the strongest and most durable ties to sustain a lasting government. Moreover, it is mean and dishonorable that a ruler, while ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... general is the child of Necessity—since it is born of multiplicity and the limitation of the Infinite, without which the Universe could not exist—it would seem that we ought to find it falling upon all beings without distinction, in uniform, regular, and impartial fashion. Instead of this, it is every moment losing its character of impersonality; it respects ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... thoughts go back, now, to that slow agony of my youth, I wonder how much of the histories I invented for such people hangs like a mist of fancy over well-remembered facts! When I tread the old ground, I do not wonder that I seem to see and pity, going on before me, an innocent romantic boy, making his imaginative world out of such strange experiences and ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... moment made their appearance in different parts of the crowd, and who expressed their wish to bid, as soon as they could get up to examine the cattle. Owing to the duskiness, the faces of the new comers did not seem to be recognized by the tories, who unsuspectingly opened and admitted them to the stand. Quickly availing themselves of the opportunity, the former, among the foremost of whom were Piper and Bart, ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... it at Starved Camp? Mr. and Mrs. Breen being left there with their own five suffering children and the four other poor, moaning little waifs, were tortured by situations too heart-rending for description, too pitiful to seem true. Suffice it to relate that Mrs. Breen shared with baby Graves the last lump of loaf sugar and the last drops of tea, of that which she had denied herself and had hoarded for her own babe. When this was gone, with quivering lips she and her husband ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton

... their mouths suitable for humans and snatch it from them; then the birds would follow and snatch it back; and they would all go chasing each other gaily for miles, parting at last with mutual expressions of good-will. But Wendy noticed with gentle concern that Peter did not seem to know that this was rather an odd way of getting your bread and butter, nor even that there ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie

... I could say much concerning those most wished and acceptable beginnings were they not already published in Iapon by the letters of the fathers: howbeit I will make a briefe rehearsall of all things, that I may not seem altogether to haue abandoned this labour. You know that from the time wherein the fathers of the society arriued in our Ilands, to the end they might augment Christian religion, they were in like sort most carefull how they might ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt

... existence, on the 28th of August, 1481. Alfonso's fiery character, in which all the elements of love, chivalry, and religion were blended together, resembled that of some paladin of romance; as the chimerical enterprises, in which he was perpetually engaged, seem rather to belong to the age of knight-errantry, than to ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... days passed before its former tranquillity was restored to the apartment in the Champs Elysees. Its "former tranquillity," indeed, did not seem to come back at all. There were new elements of discomfort and disturbance at work, even more than in the days before Maurice came, and when Mrs. Costello both feared and hoped for his coming. He was never mentioned now, except ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill

... is very old; see how the fire reddens its sad panels! the weary curtains are as old, and the tapestry on the arm-chairs stripped of paint, and the old engravings, and all these old things. Does it not seem to thee that even these blue birds ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... seem aware that for several months before he became editor of the "New Monthly" he wrote the "Monthly Commentary" for that magazine,—a pleasant, piquant, and sometimes severe series of comments on the leading topics ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... I've told you again and again that I'm not actually convinced. What you say is just conceivably possible. But it doesn't seem to me to be the most natural explanation. The most natural seems to me to be what I have said; and you're quite right in saying that it's this last thing that has made the difference. It's exactly like the grain that turns the ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson

... it had an immense foreign commerce, and its warehouses were filled with the silks and woollens manufactured in the vicinity. All this has passed away, the town has the aspect of a ruined place, and its lofty and elegant public buildings—the remains of former prosperity—seem to ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic

... been emphasized by the fact that all the higher civilizations have passed through a well-defined patriarchal stage of society in which each household was represented by its oldest warrior. From present indications it would seem that under the conditions of modern industrial society the arrangements that have so long subsisted are likely ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske

... and there await the fulfilment of time, is a disputed point. For our own part, we think it extremely doubtful, and should rather decide in the negative. In the first place, his expressions on this subject seem essentially figurative. He describes the prayers of the saints as being poured out from golden vials and burned as incense on a golden altar in heaven before the throne of God. "Under that altar," he says, "I saw the souls of them that were slain for the word of God." If the souls of the martyrs, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... as always, a little mocking in her tone to her husband, while Stepan Arkadyevitch was happy and cheerful, but not so as to seem as though, having been forgiven, he had forgotten ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... "You seem very anxious to get rid of us and bury us at the back of beyond," I said, nettled and unable to conceal my chagrin at the matter-of-fact way in which he wished to dispose ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths

... Whitworth (satirically). You seem to have been mighty intimate with this Thomas Leicester, whom you now call Griffith Gaunt. May I ask what was, or is, the nature ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various

... the impossibility of his hopes: if you were to stay a day or two, and convince him by your indifference that——" "Excuse me, that is what I cannot undertake," said Selina, blushing, and conscious of blushing. Lady Mary was too polite and too delicate to seem to observe her confusion, but, embracing her, said—"If we must part, then take with you my highest esteem, affection, and gratitude; and this much let me add, that my most sanguine expectations for my son's happiness would ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth

... violent, unjust man. Why the plague germs spared him I can never understand. It would seem, in spite of our old metaphysical notions about absolute justice, that there is no justice in the universe. Why did he live?—an iniquitous, moral monster, a blot on the face of nature, a cruel, relentless, bestial cheat as well. All he could talk about was ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London

... doesn't seem to me that things are so much better now, that we need to boast about them. There are no Indians, to be sure, but the river is about all human endurance and ingenuity can cope with, just as it was ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... products," and invite the participation of American exhibitors. A court in a central position on the main floor has been set aside for expected American contributions, and the ordinary charge for space is two shillings per square foot. This will probably seem a trifle steep to American exhibitors who are not accustomed to pay for space ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... No change of clothing was possible. Throwing themselves upon the wet sod, hungry, shivering, and sleepless, they would anxiously await the dawn. The cry of the lone night-bird, and the howling of wolves, would be added to the discord of the angry elements. In such hours this globe did indeed seem to be a sin-blighted world, upon which had fallen the ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott

... The name of Antichrist may seem ridiculous, but the Mahometans have liberally borrowed the fables of every religion, (Sale's Preliminary Discourse, p. 80, 82.) In the royal stable of Ispahan, two horses were always kept saddled, one for the Mahadi himself, the other for ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... seem that this was not the way in which she had spoken to him when they were alone. So I went ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler

... religion. From the moment the danger became apparent, he went among them confessing them and absolving them from their sins, and giving them such other consolation as he had to offer; but this did not seem to have any great effect, for the moment he left them, they began to howl and shriek as loud as ever. As to attempting to help themselves, that seemed far from their thoughts. Few of them could be induced to work at the pumps, or to assist in building the rafts. Yet, miserable as was their ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... court damsels with the like result, but this is very rare; as an old crone she goes about and asks for water, and woe to them who are uncivil! Saumai-afe means literally, "Come here a thousand!" A good name for a lady of her manners. My aitu fafine does not seem to be in the same line of business. It is unsafe to be a handsome youth in Samoa; a young man died from her favours last month—so we said on this side of the island; on the other, where he died, it was not so certain. I, for one, blame ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson



Words linked to "Seem" :   radiate, cut, stand out, shine, come across, jump, leap out, pass off, jump out, rise, sound, beam, feel, stick out, gleam, glisten, loom, glitter, look, be, rear, appear, glow, make, glint, lift



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org