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superfluous
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  • We will be superfluous even to ourselves, we will grow older, a few will adapt themselves, some others will merely submit, and most will be bewildered;--the years will pass by and in the end we shall fall into ruin.   (source)
    superfluous = more than is needed
  • She knew Mrs. Peter Blewett only by sight as a small, shrewish-faced woman without an ounce of superfluous flesh on her bones.   (source)
  • And so it went, the inexorable elimination of the superfluous.   (source)
  • He never took one step too many, and always went to his destination by the shortest cut; he made no superfluous gestures, and was never seen to be moved or agitated.   (source)
  • From the reservoir thus made we led the water down by pipes into the turtle's shell, which we placed near our dwelling, and from which the superfluous water flowed off through the hole made in it by Fritz's harpoon.   (source)
    superfluous = more than is desired
  • Most men ... are so occupied with the ... superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.   (source)
    superfluously = (extra) more than is needed
  • If, therefore, all the steps taken by the duke be considered, it will be seen that he laid solid foundations for his future power, and I do not consider it superfluous to discuss them, because I do not know what better precepts to give a new prince than the example of his actions;   (source)
    superfluous = more than is desired
  • But these messages aren't, like, superfluous.†   (source)
  • Arousal and orgasm are no longer thought necessary; they would be a symptom of frivolity merely, like jazz garters or beauty spots: superfluous distractions for the light-minded.†   (source)
  • We have another fairly superfluous weapon.†   (source)
  • For a house pet, however, it was superfluous.†   (source)
  • I was wishing now the room had shadows, that I could retreat from the warm circle of the superfluous fire into some darkness, that I wasn't sitting on the bed as if on a lighted stage, seeing her before me and in her mirrors, puffed sleeves and puffed sleeves.†   (source)
  • For instance, Mal Duff-who charged his clients considerably less than the $65,000 fee requested by Hall and Fischer-provided leadership and the essential infrastructure necessary to climb Everest (food, tents, bottled oxygen, fixed ropes, Sherpa support staff, and so on) but did not Purport to act as a guide; the climbers or' his team were assumed to be sufficiently skilled to get themselves safely up Everest and back down again, the Khumbu Icefall, but all of it had been rigged with ladders or ropes or both, rendering the conventional tools and techniques of ice climbing largely superfluous.†   (source)
  • f felt silly in my sage-green volunteer's uniform, and superfluous, unlike the white-uniformed doctors and nurses, or even the brown-uniformed scrubwomen with their mops and their buckets of grimy water, who passed me without a word.†   (source)
  • But after her quarrel with her daughter, embittered by the insults to her father, by her rancor toward her dead husband, by her anger at the hypocritical duplicities of Lucrecia del Real, whom she had considered her best friend for so many years, she felt herself superfluous in her own house.†   (source)
  • Life in the city made owning a car superfluous, however, and he'd never been able to justify the expense.†   (source)
  • "Superfluous," advised the count.†   (source)
  • Of course, real scouting skills were superfluous in a place as tame as Lonesome Dove, but Call still liked to get out at night, sniff the breeze and let the country talk.†   (source)
  • He had been afraid of wounding her all his life and voluntarily stuck to a stultifying discipline of monogamy, and now, after twenty years, he suddenly learned that it had all been superfluous and he had given up scores of women because of a misunderstanding!†   (source)
  • 'And a very good idea it was, too,' retorted Colonel Korn, 'since it eliminated that superfluous major that's been giving you such an awful black eye as an administrator.†   (source)
  • As it was, he and Arthur Lee were superfluous.†   (source)
  • So don't waste time with superfluous questions.†   (source)
  • And even that question was superfluous.†   (source)
  • Any rules after that were largely superfluous.†   (source)
  • They considered knowledge superfluous and judgment inessential.†   (source)
  • Very junior, quite superfluous, on good behavior, and extremely temporary; we would revert to cadet when we got back and could be busted at any time by the officers examining us.†   (source)
  • I think he feels ....superfluous to your life.†   (source)
  • So, it was superfluous to declare that it should not be done without the consent of a body, which alone had the power of doing it.†   (source)
  • The reason was not given, but it would have been superfluous in any case.†   (source)
  • One of his major themes was "superfluous Jews," and he scribbled away at length about the matter of "population transfer" and "expatriation."†   (source)
  • She had not opened them for a long time; she would never open them again, for sight was now as superfluous to her as to the many-sensed creatures of the lightless ocean deeps.†   (source)
  • a null and void affidavit, ruefully grinning at the firm, responsible solidity of the newly wired-up round of a chair (the veritable image of his soul: good wire, no loop without its function, a small detail in relation to the whole but necessary, however distasteful to people inclined toward elegance, and admirable in its small way: superfluously strung: final) so that, knowing he was not his father, he had been satisfied with what he was, had cleverly revelled in it: had not built huge barns as the Congressman did—the austere gray buildings of Stony Hill Farm, each barn stern and intransigent under its sharp, high gables and neatly louvered cupolas lifting up lightning rods lik†   (source)
  • Only the superfluous is sordid.†   (source)
  • He was in perfect condition, without an ounce of superfluous flesh   (source)
  • He contented himself with merely drinking his coffee and letting Mrs. Grubach feel that she was superfluous.   (source)
    superfluous = unneeded
  • The dog took no notice, for he had arrived at an age at which all superfluous barking was cynically avoided as a waste of breath   (source)
    superfluous = more than is needed
  • Well then, he would pursue the superfluous as an end in itself.†   (source)
  • No one is to speak impertinently or beside the question, superfluously or tediously.†   (source)
  • The rooms contained no superfluous furniture or people.†   (source)
  • -she cried defiantly, fighting not to drop' the one superfluous, protective word in that sentence.†   (source)
  • My precautions against disturbing the wolves were superfluous.†   (source)
  • Such a search would have seemed superfluous and vile, a cruel mockery of men so close to death.†   (source)
  • Words of comfort would be superfluous.†   (source)
  • She was superfluous.†   (source)
  • On the other hand, our expedition, running appalling risks, performing prodigies of superhuman endurance, achieving immortal renown, commemorated in august cathedral sermons and by public statues, yet reaching the Pole only to find our terrible journey superfluous, and leaving our best men dead on the ice.†   (source)
  • Mostly superfluous, as I said.†   (source)
  • The look she would give him was this, the one Brad was giving him now — that of gazing upon a human who was more burden than boon, more harm than good, irrelevant, superfluous to the forward progress of the world.†   (source)
  • The questions were superfluous; the former commando was continuously making his own assessment of his captor's physical and mental condition.†   (source)
  • There were no new stories left to tell, they could often finish each other's sentences, and both she and Frank had reached the point where a single glance was filled with enough meaning to make words largely superfluous.†   (source)
  • By the time they were within a week of Ogallala, all subjects other than whoring were judged to be superfluous.†   (source)
  • If the federal government's intervention isn't needed, this Constitutional provision will be superfluous.†   (source)
  • A superfluous major on his rolls meant an untidy table of organization and gave ammunition to the men at Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters who Colonel Cathcart was positive were his enemies and rivals.†   (source)
  • I threw myself into the lectures, defending, asserting the rights of women; and though the girls continued to buzz around, I was careful to keep the biological and ideological carefully apart-which wasn't always easy, for it was as though many of the sisters were agreed among themselves (and assumed that I accepted it) that the ideological was merely a superfluous veil for the real concerns of life.†   (source)
  • The appearance of the brother of Fontaine's wife was an exceptional move, worthy of the Jackal, a truly unexpected move within the swirling winds of confusion, but not this, not again Tranquility Inn's superfluous chapel.†   (source)
  • A fifth believe that a bill of rights would be superfluous, but the Constitution has the fatal power of regulating the times and places of election.†   (source)
  • Possibly, as John Quincy surmised, it was because Adams had denied him his chance for military glory, humiliated him at Trenton, and made his army superfluous.†   (source)
  • She faced, with the same look of detachment, a succession of men who went in and out of her office with over hurried steps and hands fumbling in superfluous gestures.†   (source)
  • But the man had chosen first to ask the opinion of friends, with the result that one word after another was removed as superfluous or redundant, until at last the sign was reduced to Thompson's name and the picture of the hat.†   (source)
  • The appointment of a second person as Vice President has been objected to as superfluous, if not mischievous.†   (source)
  • She could not identify the emotion that softened the lines of Galt's face: it had the quality of a smile, of gentleness, of pain, and of something greater that seemed to make these concepts superfluous.†   (source)
  • There were no superfluous objects, but she noticed a small canvas by a great master of the Renaissance, worth a fortune, she noticed an Oriental rug of a texture and color that belonged under glass in a museum.†   (source)
  • He sat down in front of the desk, not waiting for an invitation; he carried a briefcase, which he placed across his knees; he acted as if words were superfluous, since his reappearance in this office had made everything clear.†   (source)
  • She had never experienced the pleasure of motion, of walking as if her feet had no weight to carry, as if the support of the cane in her hand were merely a superfluous touch of elegance, the pleasure of feeling her steps trace swift, straight lines, of sensing the faultless, spontaneous precision of her gestures-as she experienced it while placing their food on the table in front of the two men.†   (source)
  • Morality is superfluous.†   (source)
  • And all this expressed itself in a torrent of words, superfluous, utterly false, murky, profoundly alien to life itself.†   (source)
  • Tents, camp stoves, sleeping bags, and a bundle of seven axes ( to this day I do not know why seven, for I was going to a treeless land where even one would have been superfluous ), skis, snowshoes, dog harness, a radio transceiver and innumerable boxes and bales whose contents were as inscrutable to me as to the pilot, followed in due course.†   (source)
  • Masses of superfluous things.†   (source)
  • Only in the buds that spotted it all over like drops of candle grease there was something not in accord with the rest, something superfluous, some disturbance, perhaps dirt or an inflammation causing them to swell, and the disturbance, superfluity, and dirt were the signs of life, which had already set the most forward of the trees on fire with its green leafy flame.†   (source)
  • But there aren't any losses for us to compensate; religious sentiment is superfluous.†   (source)
  • But not a line seemed superfluous, not a needed plane was missing.†   (source)
  • In the Indian conception of language, such attachments were superfluous and unpleasing, perhaps.†   (source)
  • Katy Maynard and the nurse weren't superfluous any more.†   (source)
  • You will now erase this superfluous reflection, my dear friend.†   (source)
  • This discussion is actually superfluous.†   (source)
  • Long years of superfluous and wasted immaturity.†   (source)
  • We were a superfluous, irresponsible lot of talented chatterboxes for whom reality had no meaning.†   (source)
  • One wicked daughter would have been quite enough, and Edgar is a superfluous character: indeed it would probably be a better play if Gloucester and both his sons were eliminated.†   (source)
  • The remark was superfluous.†   (source)
  • I saw myself as a dead-weary pilgrim, dragging myself across the desert of the other world, laden with the many superfluous books I had written, and all the articles and essays; followed by the army of compositors who had had the type to set up, by the army of readers who had had it all to swallow.†   (source)
  • Under his closeclipped hair this repellent head showed a number of thick ridges, as if the skull joinings were overgrown by layers of superfluous bone.†   (source)
  • Desdemona robbed of life or honour is nothing to a Mordred, robbed of himself—his soul stolen, overlaid, wizened, while the mother-character lives in triumph, superfluously and with stifling love endowed on him, seemingly innocent of ill-intention.†   (source)
  • One of these is superfluous, making nonsense of the whole passage, and in addition there is the slip ALIEN for akin, making further nonsense, and several avoidable pieces of clumsiness which increase the general vagueness.†   (source)
  • This unknown, superfluous free power streaming around a cold, wet, blackened Chicago day, from things laid out to be still, incapable, however, of being still.†   (source)
  • Thus, the original fire sticks having become superfluous, a clever and amusing epilogue was invented to give them a function in the plot.†   (source)
  • The question was almost superfluous.†   (source)
  • When she was well enough—she suffered from rheumatism and had female disorders—she worked in the wrapping department of a soap factory on the North Branch; and when she was at home sat with her mother in the kitchen, wrapped in a flamboyant floral material, heavy black hair slipping back loose and tuberous from a topknot, drinking coffee, knitting, reading, shaving her legs, playing operettas on the gramophone, painting her nails, and, doing these necessary or half-necessary or superfluous things, invisibly paid herself out farther and farther into the mood of a long-seated woman.†   (source)
  • General propaganda for one or another of the local solutions, therefore, is superfluous—or much rather, a menace.†   (source)
  • Before his day, such innovations would have been superfluous; for the people of the preceding period—who were four miles tall, with one hundred and twenty-eight ribs, enjoying a life span of two periods of countless years—were supplied in all their needs by ten "wish-fulfilling trees" (kalp a-vrks a), which gave sweet fruits, leavesthat were shaped like pots and pans, leaves that sweetly sang, leaves that gave forth light at night, flowers delightful to see and to smell, food perfect both to sight and to taste, leaves that might serve as jewelry, and bark providing beautiful clothes.†   (source)
  • What a superfluous question, Peter!†   (source)
  • She had gone down with the body, trailing the sun-glittering, expensive hearse in an undertaker's limousine with a nurse, who proved to be superfluous, and Katy Maynard, an old friend who proved, no doubt, to be superfluous, too.†   (source)
  • I realized that the thousands of men in black were the players of all those notes and parts in his scores which according to divine judgment were superfluous.†   (source)
  • Her voice had a luminous simplicity; she was being carried along, unresisting, any personal reaction would be superfluous, even pain or fear.†   (source)
  • Isn't this superfluous?†   (source)
  • They made a superfluous gesture of moving over for her.†   (source)
  • This superfluous energy has gone to his brain and to his muscle.†   (source)
  • Its richness in natural alcohol made any addition superfluous.†   (source)
  • You understand," he insisted, superfluously, looking hard at me.†   (source)
  • Nowadays, when we have all seen this sort of room, his precautions would be superfluous.†   (source)
  • It was quite a superfluous action, which another time might not have happened at all.†   (source)
  • Prince required but slight attention, lacking energy for superfluous movements of any sort.†   (source)
  • You see, I am perfectly aware of just how superfluous I am.†   (source)
  • The nearest surgeon came in, but, as Jude had inferred, his presence was superfluous.†   (source)
  • Or better: the circumstances made preparations superfluous—that was the humiliating part.†   (source)
  • "This is where I arrived," he said superfluously.†   (source)
  • It was eminently superfluous to him to be told that he was reaping the consequences.†   (source)
  • "Your repentance," I said, "is now superfluous.†   (source)
  • Mrs Chivery considered the latter precaution superfluous, but said she would try.†   (source)
  • His acts of that kind had been so slight that the request was almost superfluous.†   (source)
  • By swift consent, everything superfluous is dropped, everything graceful is renewed.†   (source)
  • 'It was no hint that your company was superfluous?†   (source)
  • How superfluous, how intrusive, he would be, if he were to force his way into— HEDDA.†   (source)
  • He saw so far beyond the mere facts of a case that really it was superfluous to know them.†   (source)
  • But how cast off all the superfluous, devilish burden of my outer man?†   (source)
  • I abandon to you, then, what is absolutely superfluous to me.†   (source)
  • Her husband was simply a superfluous and tiresome person.†   (source)
  • Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only.†   (source)
  • As we shall see M. Mabeuf again, later on, a few words will not be superfluous.†   (source)
  • This second cousin was a Middlemarch mercer of polite manners and superfluous aspirates.†   (source)
  • "Sus is superfluous," observed M. Gillenormand.†   (source)
  • It seemed to him something extraneous, superfluous, to which he could not accustom himself.†   (source)
  • In houses where people are among themselves, I am superfluous.†   (source)
  • I want the superfluous, the useless, the extravagant, excess, that which serves no purpose.†   (source)
  • Season that enormously with the superfluous for me.†   (source)
  • He drove so directly to the core of the matter, divesting a question always of all superfluous details, and with such an air of finality, that I seemed to find myself struggling in deep water, with no footing under me.†   (source)
  • Hugh proposed modifications in deference to people's feelings, which, he said rather tartly when Richard laughed, "had to be considered," and read out "how, therefore, we are of opinion that the times are ripe ....the superfluous youth of our ever-increasing population ....what we owe to the dead ...." which Richard thought all stuffing and bunkum, but no harm in it, of course, and Hugh went on drafting sentiments in alphabetical order of the highest nobility, brushing the cigar ash from his waistcoat, and summing up now and then the progress they had made until, finally, he read out the draft of a letter which Lady Bruton felt certain was a masterpiece.†   (source)
  • At any rate, they were superfluous.†   (source)
  • It would be superfluous to say what his answer was; and how he thought what he would have done had he been free, which should have rendered a long residence with a female friend quite unnecessary for Sue.†   (source)
  • Evgenie Pavlovitch, who went abroad at this time, intending to live a long while on the continent, being, as he often said, quite superfluous in Russia, visits his sick friend at Schneider's every few months.†   (source)
  • He surrendered so quickly, looked so wretched at the sight of his castle in ruins, and replied in so craven a tone to Swann, appealing to him not to persist in a refutation which was already superfluous, "All right; all right; anyhow, even if I have made a mistake that's not a crime, I hope," that Swann longed to be able to console him by insisting that the story was indubitably true and exquisitely funny.†   (source)
  • The question sounds superfluous, but it cannot have been really, for the lady answered, "No," adding, "Oh, I am so tired."†   (source)
  • The latter, however, was not discoverable in the conservatories, and Lily, oppressed by a sudden conviction of failure, was casting about for a way to rid herself of her now superfluous companion, when they came upon Mrs. Van Osburgh, flushed and exhausted, but beaming with the consciousness of duty performed.†   (source)
  • From his mother he had inherited the heavier proportions of the dog, so that he weighed, without any fat and without an ounce of superfluous flesh, over ninety pounds.†   (source)
  • It was annoying that Selden, when he came, should find that particular visitor in possession, but Lily was mistress of the art of ridding herself of superfluous company, and to her present mood Rosedale seemed distinctly negligible.†   (source)
  • Dickens, without the excuse of having to manufacture motives for Hamlets and Macbeths, superfluously punt his crew down the stream of his monthly parts by mechanical devices which I leave you to describe, my own memory being quite baffled by the simplest question as to Monks in Oliver Twist, or the long lost parentage of Smike, or the relations between the Dorrit and Clennam families so inopportunely discovered by Monsieur Rigaud Blandois.†   (source)
  • As they had been discussing a score of personal matters only half-an-hour before, the introductory style seemed a little superfluous.†   (source)
  • Rendered curious by this new direction of ideas, I talked with Johansen last night—the first superfluous words with which he has favoured me since the voyage began.†   (source)
  • Small within its gigantic proportions, and buoyed up by the power of a hundred superfluous horses, sat Nicole and a young woman whom he assumed was her sister.†   (source)
  • If the public were carefully informed, by means of printed advertisements, that at eight o'clock in the morning a train started for Pierrefonds which arrived there at ten, that could only be because going to Pierrefonds was a lawful act, for which permission from Odette would be superfluous; an act, moreover, which might be performed from a motive altogether different from the desire to see Odette, since persons who had never even heard of her performed it daily, and in such numbers as justified the labour and expense of stoking the engines.†   (source)
  • Although the meaning of his tirade was beyond her, she grasped that it was to be included among the scenes of reproach or supplication, scenes which her familiarity with the ways of men enabled her, without paying any heed to the words that were uttered, to conclude that men would not make unless they were in love; that, from the moment when they were in love, it was superfluous to obey them, since they would only be more in love later on.†   (source)
  • She had known Nettie Crane as one of the discouraged victims of over-work and anaemic parentage: one of the superfluous fragments of life destined to be swept prematurely into that social refuse-heap of which Lily had so lately expressed her dread.†   (source)
  • The Marquis de Forestelle's monocle was minute and rimless, and, by enforcing an incessant and painful contraction of the eye over which it was incrusted like a superfluous cartilage, the presence of which there was inexplicable and its substance unimaginable, it gave to his face a melancholy refinement, and led women to suppose him capable of suffering terribly when in love.†   (source)
  • It is superfluous for me to emphasize that I feel more than tolerance for Protestantism, that I have the deepest admiration for it as the historical opponent of forces that enslave the conscience.†   (source)
  • So, too, one could observe that as tubular bones developed, with each increase in solid surface material, the inner portion, which had become mechanically superfluous, was transformed step by step into fatty tissue, the marrow.†   (source)
  • Dr. Krokowski greeted the new resident with a kind of jovial, rugged, and reassuring heartiness, as if to imply that in his presence any diffidence was quite superfluous and cheerful mutual trust the only appropriate response.†   (source)
  • It wasn't snowing, exactly, but it had been raining heavily for days; ugly, thick fog filled the valley, where thunderstorms raged and rolled in knotty reverberations—absurdly superfluous, really, considering it was so cold that the heat had been turned on in the dining hall.†   (source)
  • He knew only one, dreadfully tedious topic of conversation: the ratio pi, that forlorn fraction, which a lesser genius of mental arithmetic named Zacharias Dase had once worked out to two hundred decimal places—a superfluous task, since even at two thousand places he would have had no greater prospect of approaching unattainable accuracy, indeed would not have been one whit closer to it.†   (source)
  • And yet that seemed quite as unlikely as her knowing that he had just asked himself, not a minute before, whether he should not have Joachim tell the director that his cold was already better and that he now thought the examination superfluous—a new plan whose advantages had withered beneath her inquisitive smile and that had suddenly become disgustingly boring.†   (source)
  • And out of simple pride, it appeared, almost superfluously, the glass tipped and knocked once for yes.†   (source)
  • His first object was to learn his limits, round which he would pace, occasionally freshening, with a blow of his axe, the marks on the boundary trees; and then he would proceed, with an air of great deliberation, to the centre of his premises, and, throwing aside his superfluous garments, measure, with a knowing eye, one or two of the nearest trees that were towering apparently into the very clouds as he gazed upward.†   (source)
  • I recalled, too, that during those two hours I had not said a single word to this creature, and had, in fact, considered it utterly superfluous; in fact, the silence had for some reason gratified me.†   (source)
  • He had left her that morning with a sense of the most superfluous of shocks: it was like a collision between vessels in broad daylight.†   (source)
  • The Rainbow, in Marner's view, was a place of luxurious resort for rich and stout husbands, whose wives had superfluous stores of linen; it was the place where he was likely to find the powers and dignities of Raveloe, and where he could most speedily make his loss public.†   (source)
  • Upon that, he pulled out a napkin, as if it were a magic clew without which he couldn't find the way up stairs, and led us to the black hole of the establishment, fitted up with a diminishing mirror (quite a superfluous article, considering the hole's proportions), an anchovy sauce-cruet, and somebody's pattens.†   (source)
  • Nicholas could not repress a smile at the odd figure before him, which, at all times more calculated to provoke mirth than anger, was especially so at that moment, when with one knee upon the ground, Mr Folair twirled his old hat round upon his hand, and affected the extremest agony lest any of the nap should have been knocked off—an ornament which it is almost superfluous to say, it had not boasted for many months.†   (source)
  • Only some thirty arid summers had he seen; those summers had dried up all his physical superfluousness.†   (source)
  • What was more, she showed and read to everyone the letter in Dounia's own handwriting to Mr. Svidrigailov and even allowed them to take copies of it—which I must say I think was superfluous.†   (source)
  • Let us say here that a prince's apartment was then composed of never less than eleven large rooms, from the chamber of state to the oratory, not to mention the galleries, baths, vapor-baths, and other "superfluous places," with which each apartment was provided; not to mention the private gardens for each of the king's guests; not to mention the kitchens, the cellars, the domestic offices, the general refectories of the house, the poultry-yards, where there were twenty-two general laboratories, from the bakehouses to the wine-cellars; games of a thousand sorts, malls, tennis, and riding at the ring; aviaries, fishponds, menageries, stables, barns, libraries, arsenals and foundries.†   (source)
  • That she was tall and straight in build, that she was lady-like in her movements, was all that could be learnt of her just now, her form being wrapped in a shawl folded in the old cornerwise fashion, and her head in a large kerchief, a protection not superfluous at this hour and place.†   (source)
  • Such was the Privy Councillor and superfluous member of various superfluous institutions, Ilya Epimovich Golovin.†   (source)
  • And one is bound to own, regarding this unfortunate wretch of a Rawdon Crawley, that the mere truth was enough to condemn him, and that all inventions of scandal were quite superfluous pains on his friends' parts.†   (source)
  • I remember that I thought it, in form, more like a riding-habit with the superfluous skirt cut off, than anything else.†   (source)
  • —Be wise, old man; discharge thyself of a portion of thy superfluous wealth; repay to the hands of a Christian a part of what thou hast acquired by the usury thou hast practised on those of his religion.†   (source)
  • Except for that small expenditure in the decoration of her infant, Hester bestowed all her superfluous means in charity, on wretches less miserable than herself, and who not unfrequently insulted the hand that fed them.†   (source)
  • When I consider how, amid the stillness of my chambers, Nippers would sometimes impatiently rise from his seat, and stooping over his table, spread his arms wide apart, seize the whole desk, and move it, and jerk it, with a grim, grinding motion on the floor, as if the table were a perverse voluntary agent, intent on thwarting and vexing him; I plainly perceive that for Nippers, brandy and water were altogether superfluous.†   (source)
  • If he really did take such a precaution, it was totally superfluous; at least so says the authentic old legend, which closes his story in the following manner: One hot summer afternoon in the dog-days, just as a terrible black thunder-gust was coming up, Tom sat in his counting-house, in his white linen cap and India silk morning-gown.†   (source)
  • But on this occasion the precaution was superfluous, and everything proceeded with the utmost smoothness and politeness.†   (source)
  • It is almost superfluous here to sketch the appearance of Napoleon on horseback, glass in hand, upon the heights of Rossomme, at daybreak, on June 18, 1815.†   (source)
  • The white double rosebush had evidently been propped up anew against the house since the commencement of the season; and a pear-tree and three damson-trees, which, except a row of currant-bushes, constituted the only varieties of fruit, bore marks of the recent amputation of several superfluous or defective limbs.†   (source)
  • To my idea your presence here is superfluous; I cannot endure you; I despise you; and if that is not enough for you ...'†   (source)
  • Comment is superfluous.†   (source)
  • "Oh, don't speak of that!" said Morris; and, indeed, it was quite superfluous, for he had contemplated the fact in all its lights.†   (source)
  • In fact, the exhortation seemed rather a superfluous one to a man with a great pair of iron fetters on his feet.†   (source)
  • It is superfluous to point out the immense effect of those inventions in extending civilization and developing the resources of that vast continent.†   (source)
  • But for all who saw them through a less mythical medium, the Miss Irwines were quite superfluous existences—inartistic figures crowding the canvas of life without adequate effect.†   (source)
  • "Come now, let us talk of you," she added, tossing her head, as though she would physically shake off something superfluous oppressing her.†   (source)
  • I cut off my superfluous and unnecessary desires, I subdue my proud and wanton will and chastise it with obedience, and with God's help I attain freedom of spirit and with it spiritual joy.†   (source)
  • Master Kidderminster, grown too maturely turfy to be received by the wildest credulity as Cupid any more, had yielded to the invincible force of circumstances (and his beard), and, in the capacity of a man who made himself generally useful, presided on this occasion over the exchequer — having also a drum in reserve, on which to expend his leisure moments and superfluous forces.†   (source)
  • A few excellent universities would do more towards the attainment of this object than a vast number of bad grammar schools, where superfluous matters, badly learned, stand in the way of sound instruction in necessary studies.†   (source)
  • This was said with a careless, abstracted indifference, which showed that my solicitude was, at least in his opinion, wholly superfluous.†   (source)
  • "Can something bad have happened to me?" he wondered as he got up: and at that moment he felt that something superfluous was hanging on his benumbed left arm.†   (source)
  • It was her fuzzy front of curls; for as she occupied herself in household matters in the morning it would have been a mere extravagance to put on anything so superfluous to the making of leathery pastry as a fuzzy curled front.†   (source)
  • It puts to rest many questions which he would otherwise be taxed to answer; while the only new question which it puts is the hard but superfluous one, how to spend it.†   (source)
  • When well assured this search was superfluous, he followed d'Artagnan, wondering to himself how this young Guardsman should know so well who the lady was to whom he had given hospitality, and that he should know better than himself what had become of her.†   (source)
  • Mrs. Ludlow was especially keen about my taking her to Europe; they all regard Europe over there as a land of emigration, of rescue, a refuge for their superfluous population.†   (source)
  • Farmer Oak had one-and-a-half Christian characteristics too many to succeed with Bathsheba: his humility, and a superfluous moiety of honesty.†   (source)
  • We entered the log house: the inside is quite unlike that of the cottages of the peasantry of Europe: it contains more than is superfluous, less than is necessary.†   (source)
  • In disproof of which superfluous remark Sir Leicester has indignantly written on the slate, "I am not."†   (source)
  • A gratuitous, entirely superfluous visit of that sort was sure to make a man disagreeable and ridiculous.†   (source)
  • "I can do so little—have I done it all well?" is the perpetually recurring thought; and there are no voices calling her away from that soliloquy, no peremptory demands to divert energy from vain regret or superfluous scruple.†   (source)
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