1 To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body.
2 Caderousse's plans alarmed Andrea still more than his ideas; ideas were but the germ, the plan was reality.
The Count of Monte Cristo By Alexandre DumasContext Highlight In Chapter 81. The Room of the Retired Baker. 3 Providence, in the person of this little girl, had assigned to Hester's charge, the germ and blossom of womanhood, to be cherished and developed amid a host of difficulties.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContext Highlight In XIII. ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER 4 By thy first step awry, thou didst plant the germ of evil; but since that moment it has all been a dark necessity.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContext Highlight In XIV. HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN 5 He said it with some bitterness, and no doubt it contains the real germ of truth.
6 That is the germ of my great discovery.
7 Yet even by this deadly winter the germ of hope was not to be kept from sprouting in their hearts.
8 For to effect a gradual reform requires a sagacious man who can discern mischief while it is still remote and in the germ.
Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius By Niccolo MachiavelliContext Highlight In BOOK 1: CHAPTER XVIII. 9 Each breath the children take in such a house is full of the germs of evil.
10 My duty will be to develop these germs: surely I shall find some happiness in discharging that office.
11 But her course was too purely reasonable not to contain the germs of rebellion.
12 There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs.
13 We articled clerks, as germs of the patrician order of proctors, were treated with so much consideration, that I was almost my own master at all times.
David Copperfield By Charles DickensContext Highlight In CHAPTER 29. I VISIT STEERFORTH AT HIS HOME, AGAIN 14 The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires.