earnests

But the servants laying hold upon him, and informing him really that the king had bestowed on him the house and furniture of a rich man lately deceased, and that these were but the first-fruits or earnests of greater riches and possessions that were to come, he was persuaded at last with much difficulty to believe them.

The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans Plutarch 2003

And this difference must be admitted if we are obliged to the precise signification and common use of pledges and earnests among men, which we must inquire into.

Pneumatologia 1616-1683 1967

The good times have come; and yet they are only earnests of better days still that are on their way.

Grace Darling Heroine of the Farne Islands Eva Hope

Maybe this and similar earnests evinced during that noble Queen's reign, among which the shelter afforded to the Jewish people, will come into remembrance in mitigation of visitations deserved by the nation for its previous complicity in the hideous traffic in African souls of men.

Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked C. H. Thomas

He has avowed his purpose of trampling on the usages of civilized warfare, and given earnests of it in the plunder and wanton destruction of private property.

State of the Union Address (1790-2001) United States. Presidents.

‘I thank thee, Sancho, for thy good will, ’ quoth Don Quixote; ‘but I can assure thee that all these things which I do are no jests, but very serious earnests; for otherwise we should transgress the statutes of chivalry, which command us not to avouch any untruth, on pain of relapse; and to do one thing for another is as much as to lie.

The Third Book. XI. Which Treats of the Strange Adventures That Happened to the Knight of the Mancha in Sierra Morena; and of the Penance He Did There, in Imitation of Beltenebros 1909

Baron von Hügel has finely said, that the facts of this spiritual life are themselves the earnests of its objective.

The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day Evelyn Underhill 1908

Already we perceive that man's universe is no fixed order; and that the many ways in which he is able to apprehend it are earnests of a greater transfiguration, a more profound contact with reality yet possible to him.

The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day Evelyn Underhill 1908

It retained some of the sympathy of Europe which its beginnings had excited, and the western powers, regarding its representative institutions as earnests of good government, however ill they might work at the first, were disposed to give it every chance.

The Balkans A History of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey Nevill Forbes 1906

He was indeed a prince, a fairy prince in whom every lover of his novel and enchanting art felt a patriotic property, for his promise and performance in those earliest tales of 'The Luck of Roaring Camp', and 'Tennessee's Partner', and 'Maggles', and 'The Outcasts of Poker Flat', were the earnests of an

Literary Friends and Acquaintance; a Personal Retrospect of American Authorship William Dean Howells 1878