David Davies said, 'by enclosure an amazing number of people have been reduced from a comfortable state of partial independence to the precarious condition of mere hirelings, who when out of work immediately come on the parish.
The view that the war was a mere faction fight between nobles and their retainers, while the rest of the country went about their business, is somewhat exaggerated.
It was at once disregarded, a fate which met many of the proclamations and statutes of the Middle Ages, which often seem to have been regarded as mere pious aspirations.
Bunsen’s interest in my work, however, took a more practical turn than mere encouragement.
I wished to know what it all meant, for I was not satisfied with mere words.
Even Nineveh is now a mere desert of sand, and Ruskin’s new road also has long since been worn away.
He saw that the coincidences between the two could not be casual, and if they were so overwhelming in the mere termination of verbs, what might we not expect in words and names, even in mythological names?
For a time I thought of becoming a philosopher, and that sounded so grand that the idea of preparing for a mere schoolmaster, teaching Greek and Latin, seemed to me more and more too narrow a sphere.
Majorities, merenumerical majorities, by which the world is governed now, strike me as mere brute force, though to argue against them is no doubt as foolish as arguing against a railway train that is going to crush you.
Our simple faith was not shaken by mere questions of criticism, or by the problem how any human being could take upon himself to declare any book to be revealed, unless he claimed for himself a more than human insight.
I looked a mere boy, very harmless, not at all the clever smuggler the officials took me to be.
This was effected in part by the unexpected arrangements of old and well-known incidents, in part by the easier and coarser expedient of mere repetition.
Many of the soldiers who have joined since the outbreak of the war are mere boys, so your age will not be against you, only pray for a time give up all idea as to the necessity of washing.
But now as the diminished regiments paraded, mere skeletons of the fine corps which had marched gayly from their camping-ground of the night before, the terrible extent of their losses was manifest.
All hopes of capturing the fortress and returning to Constantinople to winter were now at an end, and the roads having become mere quagmires, the supplies of food and of fuel were growing scanty.
The sentry no longer kept in their immediate vicinity, and although he retained his gun in his hand, did so as a mere form.
The people are terribly ignorant, but even among them some sort of enlightenment is going on, and as they know better they will refuse to live and to work as mere beasts of burden.
The physician was of opinion that mere melancholy and vexation had brought him to his approaching end.
I had horses in abundance, and chests and bags full of fine things; but now you see me a poor sorry undone man, quite and clean broke and cast down, and in short a mere beggar.
Thou sleepest while I wake; thou singest while I mourn; and while I am ready to faint for want of sustenance, thou art lazy and unwieldy with mere gluttony.
The physic he uses, is fasting upon fasting, till he turns a body to a mere skeleton; as if to be wasted to skin and bones were not as bad as a fever.
When I heard thou wert made a governor, I was so transported, I had like to have fallen down dead with mere gladness; for thou knowest sudden joy is said to kill as soon as great sorrow.
But for mere scholars, that never trode the path of chivalry, to think me mad, I despise and laugh at it.
It is mere madness, sir," said he, "to attempt such an enterprise.
I hope these concessions are not merereflections of possible wealth; but I know that our fifty thousand feet of red mahogany logs are not.
His eyes closed from the mere force of this effort, and remained closed.
These didn't get Johnny, so why should a mere Spanish half-caste succeed?
Can it be," he thought to himself, "that the mere mechanical creation can seem to its creator to take on real life and a personality?
Some types of beater are suitable for producing certain results, and the mere substitution of a beater consuming less power is worse than useless unless it can be shown that the same effects are being obtained.
No mere paper rules will restrain these powerful and common forces of human nature.
The mere declaration of a principle, however, is of little avail unless it be supported by practical and specific rules of conduct through which the principle shall receive effect.
The organic growth which must ultimately determine the form of institutions has been away from the mere union of states towards the union of individuals in the relation of national citizenship.
And their declarations seemed in their view as a mere fancy, and they gave them no credence.
At great elevations the upward growth is checked early, and it becomes a mere evergreen bush.
Though a mere shrub in the far north, with us the Birch has a trunk sometimes as tall as eighty, but more frequently fifty feet, and a girth of from two to three feet.
Terribly harsh are these fruits to the palate, and a mere bite at an unripe one is sufficient to set teeth on edge and contract the muscles of mouth and face.
But the mere rumour of a rise of industry in Ireland created a panic in the commercial circles of England.
I got it from him before midday, on my mereword that I was certain of an order from his Lordship.
But surely," persisted the girl, "the outlook is improving, when you and I travel unmolested with a mere handful of men to guard us.
To Roland's aristocratic mind, every man who lacked noble blood in his veins stood on the same level, and it astonished him that any mere plebeian should claim precedence over another.
I am not yet a man of large experience, but at that time, although comparatively few days have elapsed, I was a mere boy, trusting in the good faith of the whole world, knowing nothing of its chicanery.
Twas mere chance that Heinrich and I met in the forest, and he was within a jot of impinging himself upon my sword in his hurry.
But our young friend's ill-humour could be traced to a much simpler cause than a mere prophetic dread of the future.
These worthy folks could not understand the difficulties; they could not realize that mere pluck and endurance avail nothing against stone walls and mighty cannon.
Now that they were no longer a glorious regiment but a mere mob of rebels, none was ready to give his life for the cause.
But Arthur knows what's what, and the little darling has had to put up with a mere captain of the Guides.
The shock of Captain Russell's murder was too sudden for her to realize fully, and the rest of the news seemed dwarfed to mere insignificance.
The British soldiers had fallen to with a will, as had the low-caste Madras sepoys, but the men from Bengal demanded to know whether Brahmans and Rajputs were mere coolies that they should so defile themselves.
A year or two later he and his cousin, Charlie Dorricot, had been shut up in the small fort of Chiras, with a mere handful of sepoys, and they had come through the siege with credit.
The most he seemed to get out of life was a miserable pretence of enjoyment--a mere attempt to persuade himself that he was having a good time.
He spoke, his face close to hers, his hot breath seeming to consume her, his words a mere whisper through lips that almost moved upon her own.
They followed a course across the veldt that began as a road and after a mile or two deteriorated into a mere rough track.
The mere fact that a German wants to do anything makes it all right to do it.
And I wouldn't want to get him in bad with his officers on mere suspicion.
What had once been houses were now mere pitiful heaps of wood and stone and mortar, and their inhabitants had long since been dispossessed or slain.
Only a few gaunt trees had been left standing, mere skeletons of what they had been, every branch and twig swept away by shells and bullets and even the bark stripped off, leaving the trunks in ghastly nakedness.
If any of them finished under the wire it was by mere chance and not because of any guiding intelligence.
When he got a clean shave and put on a string tie and backed into a "Prince Albert" coat he felt that he had made a very large concession to the mere fripperies of life.
The city began to lose some of its importance a few centuries before the Christian era and dwindled in size until twenty years ago it was a mere village of huts nestling in the shade of the great temples.
At Cherbourg he is transformed into a garcon d'ascenseur, and as the ship draws near Hamburg he is the Aufzugsbehueter, which is an awful thing to call a mere child.
The less important are not lighted, and are mere tunnels leading back to one or two bare chambers.
The strip of black land which yields the plentiful crops is nowhere more than ten miles wide, a mere fringe of fertility weaving along through dryness and desolation.
These are the only notes that have been found," added the counsel, with due gravity, "they seem to import much more than mere words convey.
A man is not an irrational creature, but a reasoning being, and has something within him beyond mere brutal instinct.
I have already done, and all I may yet do in the same way, I may reckon as nothing--mere pastime; something else must be done.
Mere idleness is the most disagreeable state of existence, and both mind and body are continually making efforts to escape from it.
I had at first some suspicion that it would prove a mere made-up gibberish; but I was soon undeceived.
How often things come about by mere chance that you wouldn't dare hope for!
Come, let them know how slight Were those thy crimes already done; mere training they For greater deeds.
Even men, let us venture the suggestion, like change for the mere sake of change.
Women are supposed to have liked to serve for mere love of service, for love of child, love of husband.
While it is quite true that shifting of man-power is needed, mere shuffling of the cards, as labor leaders suggest, won't give a bigger pack.
Our efforts at combination are a mere mushroom growth compared with the generations of training our big brothers have had in pooling brains.
Perhaps we have regarded the scene as a mere pastoral episode in a happy leave from the battle front, instead of realizing that it is a snapshot illustrating a well organized plan of securing labor.
The suggestion of mere "cutting down" may be a valuable goal to set for the well-to-do, but it is not a mark to be hit by those already down to bed rock.
I remember that I saw the first one three years ago, when a mere Child, and became violently ill from crying and had to be taken home.
It isn't very long, Bab, since you considered him a mere Child.
They think I am a mere child, you see, and so of course he took a NOM DE PLUME.
I'm seventeen, but I shall be a mere Child until I come out.
The mere thought of going back to school, when I am as old as at present and engaged also, is madening.
And that they treated me like a mere Child, which was the reason for everything, and about the Poem, which he considered quite good.
I am surounded by those who exist for the mere Pleasures of the day, or whose lives are bound up in Resitations.
It was then and there that I made up my mind to show them that I was no longer a mere child.
And since I was a mere baby I have been acustomed to intoxicants.
I told Jane the next morning, but she pretended to beleive that the cigar had been to strong for him, and that I should remember that, although very good-hearted, he was a mere child.
The meresound of the words she spoke unnerved him.
A mere reading of the penalties imposed by the parts of the Babylonian code translated above impresses vividly upon the mind the fact that underlying many of them is the principle so forcibly expressed in Exod.
As these bore no marks of cooking, they could not have been mere domestic ash-pits, and it is plausible to think of them as receptacles for the bodies of slaughtered victims.
To have recorded every opinion would have expanded the work far beyond the limits prescribed, and would have burdened the reader with many views that are mere vagaries.
In parts of the Central Provinces he has become degraded into a mere fetish, and is represented by a piece of iron fixed in a stone or in a tree.
While according to some authorities it is necessary to bathe in the Ganges in order to obtain forgiveness of sins, the same result is attained by mere contemplation of the Narmada.
In Mirzapur he lives in a tree; in front he looks like a man, but seen from behind he is quite hollow, only a mere husk without a backbone.
Falstaff speaks of "learning, a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil.
The weaver, on recovering his sight, did not fail to obey the orders of his benefactor, and he and his descendants have since then lived on the contributions of the faithful, though the tomb is a mere heap of clay and has no endowment.
Those who escape burning are believed to be truly possessed, while those who are burned are considered mere pretenders to divine frenzy.
The fame of this sole survivor of the Guildford coaches is of no mere mushroom growth, for it is now over twenty years since Mr. Walter Shoolbred first drove his own teams over this road, so that to-day he is become an institution.
It is no mere pose to assert that every English county has its own especial characteristics, an unmistakable and easily recognizable individuality: the fact has been so often noted and commented upon that it is fast becoming a truism.
It is of the Norman type, familiarized to many by prints of such well-known Norman towers as those of Rochester and of Hedingham Castles, and is at this time a mere shell, open to the sky.
To Pain's Hill succeeds Tartar Hill and Wisley Common; sombre fir trees lining the road and reflected in the great pond that spreads like some mystic mere over many acres.
