|
|
|
More "Abstract" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which result from an attentive examination of the past. The law consists in this—that each of our principal conceptions, each branch of our knowledge, passes successively through three different states of theory: the theologic, or fictitious; the metaphysic, or abstract; the scientific, or positive. In other terms, the human mind, by its nature, employs successively, in each of its researches, three methods of philosophizing, the character of which is essentially different, and even radically opposed; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... philosophy, he felt his ears tingling and his face getting red, as they approached the drive. It was crowded. They were kept standing a minute or two at the crossing. He made a desperate effort to abstract himself wholly from the visible world, and retire in a state of serene contemplation. But it would not do; and he was painfully conscious of the stare of lack-lustre eyes of well dressed men leaning over the rails, and the amused look of delicate ladies, lounging in open carriages, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... shocked, and at first refused to have any part in the matter; but the old threat brought him to terms, and he at last agreed to Lewis' plans that they should contrive to abstract Seabrooke's letter to Dr. Leacraft from among the others laid ready for the post, and keep it back until ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... a night journey by rail is a difficult matter; you go like an arrow whistling through a cloud; it is traveling in the abstract. You cross provinces, kingdoms even, unawares. From time to time during the night, I saw through the window the comet, rushing down upon the earth, with lowered head and hair streaming far behind; suddenly glares of gaslight dazzled my eyes, sanded with the goldust of sleep; or the pale bluish ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... the same genus; to set aside as more or less discrediting one another those various special and concrete elements in which such opinions disagree; to observe what remains after the discordant constituents have been eliminated, and to find for the remaining constituent that abstract expression which holds true ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... MS. "Journal of Voyage intended by God's permission in the good boat Adventure from Fort Patrick Henry of Holston River to the French Salt Springs on Cumberland River, kept by John Donelson." An abstract, with some traditional statements interwoven, is given by Haywood; the journal itself, with some inaccuracies, and the name of the writer misspelt by Ramsey; and in much better and fuller shape by A. N. Putnam in his "History of Middle Tennessee." ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... with the ear is very interesting. Gurlt declares that this chapter alone provides striking evidence for Alexander's practical experience and power of observation, as well as for his knowledge of the literature of medicine. He considers that only a short abstract is needed ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... vertical bands of red (hoist side), blue, and red; centered on the hoist-side red band in yellow is the national emblem ("soyombo" - a columnar arrangement of abstract and geometric representation for fire, sun, moon, earth, water, and ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... wages—yes! And why shouldn't they? Their old masters understand them better—and treat them generally better. They know our interest in them is only an abstract sentiment, not a real liking. We show it at every turn. But we are nearing Redlands, and Major Reed will, I have no doubt, corroborate my impressions. He insists upon our staying at his house, although the poor old fellow, I imagine, can ill afford to entertain company. But he ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... shall be recovered, by the later statutes of king William: and any person bribing the returning officer shall alio forfeit 300l. But the members returned by him are the sitting members, until the house of commons, upon petition, shall adjudge the return to be false and illegal. And this abstract of the proceedings at elections of knights, citizens, and burgesses, concludes our enquiries into the laws and customs more peculiarly relative to the ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... small though they are, compared with the great events which are ruled by our heavenly Father's will, how much is involved in them as far as we are concerned! and we need not measure the controlling care of Providence by the abstract greatness or littleness of any event. Compared with His infinity, the fate of an empire would be not more worthy of His care than the least event of our lives; but it is love—the same wonderful love that can comfort and bless the dying-pillow of a little one, in which we want more practical ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... the faithful and undaunted partaker of the labors and patriotic warfare of Wallace, fell in the unfortunate field of Falkirk, in 1298. The celebrated Marquis of Montrose, in whom De Retz saw realized his abstract idea of the heroes of antiquity, was the second of these worthies. And, not withstanding the severity of his temper, and the rigor with which he executed the oppressive mandates of the princes whom he served, I do not hesitate to name as the third, John Graeme, of Claverhouse, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... drawn upon darkness and wind. It opens a moment later on the greenhouse in the sunshine of a snowy morning. The snow piled outside is at times blown through the air. The frost has made patterns on the glass as if—as Plato would have it—the patterns inherent in abstract nature and behind all life had to come out, not only in the creative heat within, but in the creative cold on the other side of the glass. And the wind makes patterns of sound ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... her underlying "attitude," that invested her words with a new horsepower of solace. And Saltman's best stenographer actually produced an argument that Hugo had altogether passed by. She thought it worth while to point out that these things were not a question of abstract morals at all, but only ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... now-a-days be chiefly aided by the study of mathematics, was supplied by literary exegesis and deontological discussions. Very few abstract subjects troubled the mind of the young, the chief aim of their education being, as I have said, decision of character. People whose minds were simply stored with information found no great admirers. Of the three services of studies that Bacon gives,—for delight, ornament, and ability,—Bushido ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... the successful meeting of one emergency always helps us in the next, and as it is quite impossible to tell what you may meet under those nut trees,—let me give you a little abstract of Catherine Douglass, before you read it and before I go. The said lady wishing to keep the door against sundry lords and gentle men who came with murderous intent against her sovereign; and finding no bar to aid her loyal endeavours,—did boldly thrust her own arm through ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... activity sometimes becomes so strong, that the faculties seem to go through their operations almost without conscious effort, while their facility of action becomes so much increased as ultimately to give unerring certainty where at first great difficulty was experienced. It is not so much the soul or abstract principle of mind which is thus changed, as the organic medium through which mind is destined to act in the present ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... and a half since Ant. Wood printed a notice of the reverend Thomas Powell, and more than a century since the inquisitive Oldys devoted eighteen pages to an abstract of his Human industry;—yet we search in vain for the name of Powell in the dictionaries of Aikin, Watkins, Chalmers, Gorton, &c.—It is even omitted in the Cambrian biography of his ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.15 • Various
... one-third of the profits so soon as any arise from the business, after paying the workmen's wages and goods furnished, but abstract from the stock-in-trade, excepting the interest thereof, which is to be deducted before ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... fortunately for Frank, was not a man of the heroic kind. Abstract right was less to him than expediency and he missed the point of the comparison between his position and King Solomon's. He thought it better that his baby should suffer than that Miss Lentaigne's anger should be roused. He declined ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... thought him dull, very frequently, when he was only balancing between jealous and sensitive tastes;—and ignorant of the actual, when, in fact, his ignorance simply arose from the decided preference which he gave to the foreign and abstract. He was contemplative—an idealist; I was impetuous and devoted to the real and living world around me, in which I was disposed to mingle with an eagerness which might have been fatal; but for that restraint to which my own distrust of all things ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... intrusion. The general knows best whether it would be politic to shoot a skilful surgeon and an Englishman, who is willing and able to heal the wounds of the loyal subjects of King Ferdinand as well as of rebels. My belief is, that although he may love liberty in the abstract, he is too much engaged in his professional duties to interfere in any ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... right cheek, turn to him the other also," He was ready to risk the possibility of being misunderstood by some prosaic hearer, that He might the more effectually arouse men to a neglected duty. His language was concrete, not abstract; He taught by example and illustration; He thought, and taught others to think, in pictures. How often is the phrase, "The kingdom of heaven is like unto——" on His lips! Moreover, His illustrations were always such as common folk could best appreciate. The birds ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... But we are talking of the theory in the abstract, not of any particular case. One hardly expects ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... life, liberty and pursuit of happiness by securing to them an equal right in the bounties of nature—and passing strange it certainly is that men who would not dream of denying this right in the abstract are ever ready to ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... with breasts and who made the thighs of women anvils for the spear handles of men!" To the same amiable theologian are also ascribed the "Kitab Nawazir al-Ayk fi al-Nayk" Green Splendours of the Copse in Copulation, an abstract of the "Kitab al-Wishah fi fawaid al-Nikah" Book of the Zone on Coition-boon. Of the abundance of pornographic literature we may judge from a list of the following seven works given in the second page of the "Kitab Ruju'a al-Shaykh ila Sabah fi 'l-Kuwwat al-Bah[FN351]" ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... perished morasses are in process of time produced, and by their long roots fill up the interstices till the whole becomes for many yards deep a mass of vegetation. This fact is curiously verified by an account given many years ago by the Earl of Cromartie, of which the following is a short abstract. ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... published writings of De Witt on "the properties of curves" and on "the theory of probabilities" show that the greatest of Dutch statesmen might have become famous as a mathematician had the cares of administration permitted him to pursue the abstract studies that he loved. Of the scientific achievements of Christian Huyghens (1629-95), the brilliant son of a brilliant father, it is difficult to speak in adequate terms. There is scarcely any name in the annals of science that stands higher than his. His ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... by abstract meditation, that the Spirit or Self is distinct from its three bodies (viz. the gross, subtle and causal bodies), and that it is a portion of the one Spirit of the Universe (Brahma), every man ought to worship K.rish.na by means of ...
— The Siksha-Patri of the Swami-Narayana Sect • Professor Monier Williams (Trans.)
... what to sense appears, Sense is sense ere 'tis mine or mine in me is. When I hear, Hearing, ere I do hear, hears. When I see, before me abstract Seeing sees. I am part Soul part I in all I touch— Soul by that part I hold in common with all, And I the spoiled part, that doth make sense such As I can err by it and my sense mine call. The rest is wondering what these thoughts may mean, That come to explain and suddenly are gone, Like ...
— 35 Sonnets • Fernando Pessoa
... my own knowledge, but I have every reason to believe that I came into this world a small reddish person, certainly without a gold spoon in my mouth, and in fact with no discernible abstract or concrete "rights" or property of any description. If a foot was not set upon me, at once, as a squalling nuisance, it was either the natural affection of those about me, which I certainly had done nothing to deserve, or the fear of the law which, ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... account of the Simla story, even though the old maid might conceivably have given her a jaundiced account. The Duchess knew nothing of Aileen, and was little influenced, so far as he had observed her, by considerations of abstract justice or propriety, affecting persons whom ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with regard to the North Pole had at this date reached a pitch which can only be described as fevered, though that word hardly expresses the strange ecstasy and unrest which prevailed: for the abstract interest which mankind, in mere desire for knowledge, had always felt in this unknown region, was now, suddenly, a thousand and a thousand times intensified by a new, concrete interest—a ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... dismiss these abstract reflections for a fresh and active resentment. This is the fifth or sixth dog that has passed my Spion, harnessed to a small barrow-like cart, and tugging painfully at a burden so ludicrously disproportionate to his size, that it would seem a burlesque, ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... had ceased grazing again, and once more stood with ears pricked, gazing up the slope. Its master understood. This was no moment to consider abstract problems, however they might interest him. Stern reality lay ahead of him, and he knew he was in for an unpleasant time. He linked his arm through his horse's reins, and, with head bent, trailed slowly up the incline, pausing and stooping ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... has been, however, begun with a sincere wish to do justice to the disinterested and the good; and, as the task has proceeded, and increased information on the subject has been gained, it has been continued with a conviction that, whatever may be the nature or merits of the abstract principles on which it was undertaken, the Insurrection of 1715 forms an episode in the history of our country as creditable to many of the ill-fated actors in its tragic scenes, as any that have been detailed in the pages of ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... Absolution (from sin) senpekigo. Absolve senkulpigi. Absolve (from sin) senpekigi. Absorb sorbi. Absorption sorbo. Abstain deteni sin. Abstemious sobrema. Abstinence deteno. Abstinent detenema. Abstract (abridgement) resumo. Abstract abstrakti. Abstracted abstrakta. Abstruse tre malklara. Absurd absurda. Absurdity absurdo. Abundance suficxego. Abuse trouzi. Abuse trouzo. Abyss profundegajxo. Acacia akacio. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... unacquainted with the literature of their country, whether for seeking in it pleasing relaxation, or for borrowing from it a magic style, a fluent elocution, a harmony, a pomp of expression, with which the most abstract meditations can no longer dispense to be received favourably by philosophers and men of taste. Very few literati, on the other hand, are unacquainted with philosophy and the sciences, and, above all, with natural knowledge; whether not to ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... of its policy. I should look for a triumph of principle, rather than of interest, were I not pained to observe how seldom political leaders in America are wont to address the conscience, and rest any cause upon abstract right. The fathers of the republic knew better than to leave the moral powers of the people unexercised; but their successors seem to lack such faculties themselves, or to doubt their existence in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... bred, in the worst sense of the words; and I fear that no education will change his original quality, or greatly modify his early bias. So while the wasting of his substance is a great wrong in the abstract, it may be a real blessing to him. Events in this life work out strangely to our human eyes, yet there is a Providence in them that ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... both of them the ordinary words for love and friendship are derived from the same monosyllabic root, sak. On this, according to the inflectional laws of the dialects, are built up the terms for the love of man to woman, a lover, love in the abstract, a friend, friendship, and the like. It is also occasionally used by the missionaries for the love of man to God and of ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... abstract right and wrong, like personal likes and dislikes, do not grow strongly where expediency and advisability and advantage have to rule; she was only going to do what she must in Holland; the debt must be paid, honour demanded ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... man (none of the Goukthrapples or Rentowels) maintained his character with the common people, although he preached the practical fruits of Christian faith as well as its abstract tenets, and was respected by the higher orders, notwithstanding he declined soothing their speculative errors by converting the pulpit of the gospel into a school of heathen morality. Perhaps it is owing to this mixture of faith and practice ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... the reader to the close of Lord Lindsay's letter on Giotto,[11] from which I have drawn most of the particulars above stated, for a very beautiful sketch of his character and his art. Of the real rank of that art, in the abstract, I do not feel myself capable of judging accurately, having not seen his finest works (at Assisi and Naples), nor carefully studied even those at Florence. But I may be permitted to point out one or two peculiar characteristics in it which ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... so much I lose! Sir, you have wronged me to amount beyond Acres, and gold, and life, which makes them rich. And compensation I demand of you, Such as a man expects, and none but one That's less than man refuses! Where's the maid You falsely did abstract? ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... upon the barbarous niceties that our youth are forced to learn in those trifling logical schools that are among us. They are so far from minding chimeras and fantastical images made in the mind that none of them could comprehend what we meant when we talked to them of a man in the abstract as common to all men in particular (so that though we spoke of him as a thing that we could point at with our fingers, yet none of them could perceive him) and yet distinct from every one, as if he were some monstrous Colossus or giant; yet, for all this ignorance ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... evil doers: the theatre is a temple where the beautiful is always worshipped; it makes a continuous appeal to the higher senses and natural passions. In this temple vice is punished, and virtue rewarded; the great social problems are presented. In this temple instruction is less abstract, and, therefore, more profitable for the crowd. The apostles of this temple are full of faith and courage; they have the souls of missionaries marching always ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... Enumeration.—Many authors are already engaged in this research, and employ a method which I consider very bad and very dangerous—the method of concepts. This consists in looking at real and concrete phenomena in their most abstract form. For example, in studying the mind, they use this word "mind" as a general idea which is supposed to contain all the characteristics of psychical phenomena; but they do not wait to enumerate these characteristics or to realise them, and they ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... One of the powers of the human mind on which we set great store is that of entertaining general ideas. This is where we think we have the advantage of the members of the brute creation. They have particular experiences which at the time are very exciting to them, but they have no abstract notions,—or, at least, no way of expressing them to us. We argue that if they really had these ideas they would have invented language long ago, and by this time would have had Unabridged Dictionaries of their own. But we humans do not have to be content with this hand-to-mouth ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... the narrative in some measure complete I shall here add a summary abstract of the latter part of the voyage, whereof I have not had time to draw out of my journals a full and particular account at large. Departing therefore from the coast of New Holland in the beginning of September 1699 we arrived at Timor ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... Stanley says: "Livingstone followed the dictates of duty. Never was such a willing slave to that abstract virtue. His inclinations impel him home, the fascinations of which it requires the sternest resolution to resist. With every foot of new ground he travelled over he forged a chain of sympathy which should hereafter ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... the priest of his tribe. I told him also how powerless European science would be to detect it. How he took it I cannot say, for I never left the room, but there is no doubt that it was then, while I was opening cabinets and stooping to boxes, that he managed to abstract some of the devil's-foot root. I well remember how he plied me with questions as to the amount and the time that was needed for its effect, but I little dreamed that he could have a ...
— The Adventure of the Devil's Foot • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Carter was. Just on that one subject, though; nice enough guy otherwise. Here, look at some of the drawings he made, working out his formulas. Nice designs, huh? Might make good wall paper or fabric patterns. Real abstract ... that's what people seem to like. See all those little letters scattered around among the lines? Different kinds of vanishing points, they are. Carter claimed the whole world was full of vanishing points. You don't know what a vanishing point is? ...
— Vanishing Point • C.C. Beck
... complexion of the natives represented to have been first seen, as they will be hereafter explained. [Footnote: La Cosmographie Universelle de tout le Monde, tom. II, part II, 2175-9. (Paris, 1575.)] This publication of Belleforest is the more important, because it is from the abstract of the Verrazzano letter contained in it, that Lescarbot, thirty-four years afterwards, took his account of the voyage and discovery, word for word, without acknowledgment. [Footnote: Hist. de la Nouvelle France, p. 27, et seq. (ed. 1609). In a subsequent portion of his history (p. 244) Lescarbot ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... ingredients, in their beer, under severe penalties: but few instances of convictions under this act are to be met with in the public records for nearly a century. To shew that they have augmented in our own days, we shall exhibit an abstract from documents laid ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... the attempt to represent abstract ideas by means of pictures. The picture then ceases to represent an object and represents an idea. This is called an ideogram. While it has certain very obvious limitations, it has one advantage over ...
— Books Before Typography - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #49 • Frederick W. Hamilton
... sensible, and in due proportion to the sight.' This definition is exactly suited to the taste of Meno, who welcomes the familiar language of Gorgias and Empedocles. Socrates is of opinion that the more abstract or dialectical definition of figure ...
— Meno • Plato
... invariably the same. Moreover, any of us who are accustomed to reason on moral questions, and can observe carefully the processes through which the mind passes, will notice that there is constantly going on a re-adjustment, so to speak, of our ethical opinions, whether we are reviewing abstract questions of morality or the specific acts of ourselves or others. We at one time think ourselves or others more, and, at another time, less blameable for the self-same acts, or we come to regard some particular class of acts in a different light from what we used to do, either modifying our ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... present day, the danger to monarchy in Britain would appear to lie, not in increasing love for equality, for which, except as regards the law, Englishmen have never cared, but rather entertain an aversion; nor in any abstract democratic theories, upon which the mass of Englishmen pour the contempt with which they view theories in general; but in the constantly increasing tendency of monarchy to become slightly absurd, from the ever-widening discrepancy ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... answered, "can be determined on mathematical lines. Bravery is a delightful quality in the abstract, but brave men are killed as easily as cowards. Tell me, have ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... were abundantly confirmed by the weekly bills of mortality for those weeks, an abstract of which, as they respect the parishes which. I have mentioned and as they make the calculations I speak of ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... that the more worldly of them would play with a popular faith of their own purposes, as doubly-minded persons have often done since, all the while sincerely holding the same ideas themselves in a more abstract form; while the good and unworldly men, the true Greek heroes, lived by their faith as firmly as St. Louis, or the ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... sympathy occurred between them. She freed herself in an instant from the apprehension and timidity that before oppressed her. Whatever might ensue, a vague conviction of having achieved a great object pervaded, as it were, her being. Some great end, vast though indefinite, had been fulfilled. Abstract and fearless, she gazed upon the dazzling visage with a prophetic heart. Her soul was in a tumult, oppressed with thick-coming fancies too big for words, panting for expression. There was a word ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... he is enabled to overwhelm his enemies, to resume his family position, and to recover his property. The return of several other Grecian chiefs was the subject of an epic poem by Hagias which is now lost, but of which a brief abstract or argument still remains: there were in antiquity various other poems of similar title and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... infirmity of purpose, of his double purpose. She had perceived that a word from her might help Grace's chance, and had led the man on till he had committed himself, at any rate to her. In doing this she had been actuated by friendship rather than by abstract principle. But now, when the moment had come in which she must decide upon some action, she paused. Was it right, for the sake of either of them, that an offer of marriage should be made at such a moment ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... meet this test? Granting (what few will dispute) that their intelligence at least equals that of the men, will they be as likely as men to look beyond the immediate social welfare problem to the governmental principle at stake? Will an abstract proposition hold its own in their minds against a ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson
... said that man might not relieve individuals by individual exertion: though he cannot by abstract theories—nay, even by practical action in the wide ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of the feminine of the past participle. This often becomes an abstract feminine noun, answering to the French termination -ee; armee in Mistral's language is armado. Examples of forms peculiar ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... science not merely as a vast body of abstract and immutable truths, ... but as possessing a yet deeper interest for the human race, when it is remembered that this science constitutes the language through which alone we can adequately express ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... does the selection of good and suitable material, contrivance for special purpose, expert workmanship, proper finish and so on, far more than mere ornament, and indeed, that ornamentation itself was rather an exuberance of fine workmanship than a matter of merely abstract lines. Workmanship when separated by too wide a gulf from fresh thought—that is, from design—inevitably decays, and, on the other hand, ornamentation, divorced from workmanship, is necessarily unreal, and quickly falls ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... Homer. Between the two epochs the Greek, Latin, Umbrian, and Keltic lauguages had time to acquire distinct individualities. Far earlier, therefore, than the Homeric "juventus mundi" was that "youth of the world," in which the Aryan forefathers, knowing no abstract terms, and possessing no philosophy but fetichism, deliberately spoke of the Sun, and the Dawn, and the Clouds, as persons or as animals. The Veda, though composed much later than this,—perhaps as late as the Iliad,—nevertheless preserves the record of the mental life of this period. ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... if we could learn to think of them, wherever they occur, simply as braces, we might have better success in their treatment. Our abominable achievements in this line spring from an attempt to hide the use of the thing in its abstract beauty. The straight three by four inch braces found under any barn-shed roof are positively more agreeable to look at than the majority of the distorted, turned, and becarved blocks of strange device that hang in gorgeous array upon thousands of "ornamental" houses. Besides these there are ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... could easily apply to it all our rules; but, broken as it is into hills and valleys, filled with stones here, with a bank of clay there, and a sand-pit close by, we are obliged to sacrifice to general convenience, often, some special abstract rule. ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... elaborated, resulted in a drainage of the fluid myths and the exteriorisation of a being entirely abstract. Designated first as Brahmanaspati, Lord of Prayer, afterward more simply as Brahma, he was assumed to have been asleep in the secret places of the sky, from which, on awakening, he created ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... gentleman, who had taken the chief part in the first publication, made an able abstract and a comparison with the Grebo and Mandenga tongues ("Western Africa," part iv. chap. iv.). M. du Chaillu further abridged this abridgement in his Appendix without owning his authority, and in changing the examples he did all possible damage. In ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... and as a very great Artist, I should require more time than is still allotted to me of man's brief span of life and far, far more power than that which was given to those who wrote of him in a hurry during his lifetime.... Do you wonder, then, that I should rather elect to regard Irving in the abstract, when called upon to suggest a fitting monument, than to promise a faithful portrait?... Let us be grateful, however, that a great artist is to be commemorated at all, side by side with the effigies of ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... overlooked, for example, by the illustrators. To be sure, the great majority of the artists who illustrated "Don Quixote" knew nothing whatever of Spain. To them a venta conveyed no idea but the abstract one of a roadside inn, and they could not therefore do full justice to the humour of Don Quixote's misconception in taking it for a castle, or perceive the remoteness of all its realities from his ideal. But even when better informed they seem to have no apprehension ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... him. He would not permit anyone to say that his suppression of the Taeping rebellion was a marvellous feat, and he evaded and resented all the attempts made by those in power to bring him into prominence as a national hero. Modesty is becoming as an abstract principle of human conduct, but Gordon carried it to an excess that made it difficult not so much for his fellow-men to understand him, as for them to hold ordinary workaday relations with him. This was due ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... wished and expected. The duty of an officer, the most imposing of all others to the inexperienced mind, because accompanied with so much outward pomp and circumstance, is in its essence a very dry and abstract task, depending chiefly upon arithmetical combinations, requiring much attention, and a cool and reasoning head to bring them into action. Our hero was liable to fits of absence, in which his blunders excited some mirth, and called down some reproof. This circumstance ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... would have to found his attack on the principle of abstract justice; he would never be able to persuade his father that he lacked any detail truly needful to his happiness. To go into details would be to ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... plain English, then let us have it as poetical as possible, and as unlike English; as ungrammatical, abrupt, involved, transposed, as the clumsiness, carelessness, or caprice of man can make it. If it be correct to express human thought by writing whole pages of vague and bald abstract metaphysic, and then trying to explain them by concrete concetti, which bear an entirely accidental and mystical likeness to the notion which they are to illustrate, then let the metaphysic be as abstract as possible, the concetti as fanciful and far-fetched as possible. If Marino and Cowley ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Captain made a deep impression upon the men. The desperation of our case, depressed finances, heavy hospital lists, and many other causes, independently of abstract justice, are fast removing that question beyond the ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... the ranges for fully a third of my time. The spirit of the mining population, as well as of the cattlemen, while not actually hostile, is one of indifference to religious thought. They care nothing whatever for it in the abstract, and have no use for any minister, unless it may be to marry their children or bury their dead. I am hence obliged to meet with them merely as man to man, and thus slowly win their confidence before I dare even approach a religious topic. For three long years I worked ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... erect, her supple figure fell into lines of indolently provocative grace; and the warm, golden notes welling from her throat seemed to be flung broadcast and indifferently to her listeners, as alms are often flung, without interest, toward abstract poverty and not to the poor breathing thing ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... depends on those aids which a rigid morality might disparage—the social state of a people whose integrity calls for the application of means the most certain to disseminate distrust and disunion, are facts which constitute reasons for political action that, however assailable in the mere abstract, the mind of statesmanlike form will at once accept as solid and effective, and to reject which would only show that, in over-looking the consequences of sentiment, a man can ignore the most vital interests ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... operators. They could tell precisely where Wilton, Pelham, and Little had been weak, as they termed it, and precisely what they should have done to render the enterprise a success. Still, running away, in the abstract, was not a popular idea in the squadron at the present time; but Sanford believed that he and his companions could enjoy all the benefits of an independent excursion without incurring any of its perils and penalties. Let him demonstrate his ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... the four men took small cognisance. The pudgy man did not curse the little man, nor did the little man swear, in the abstract. Eight widened eyes were fixed upon the center of the room ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... that upon which they have spent so many anxious hours, and do something different and better. It is my intention to teach you, step by step, how to lay on what you prepare for the brush: but not to say "get this or that oil," or "this or that colour," except in the abstract—red, orange, amber, yellow, ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... how little does any man know of his own personality,—of his personality in action? He may study himself; he may find out what his faculties, what his traits of character are, in the abstract as it were; but what they are in action, in movement,—how they appear to others,—he cannot know. The eye that looks around upon a landscape sees everything but itself. It is just as a man may look in the glass and see himself ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... appears to be one of the later writings of Plato, in which the style has begun to alter, and the dramatic and poetical element has become subordinate to the speculative and philosophical. In the development of abstract thought great advances have been made on the Protagoras or the Phaedrus, and even on the Republic. But there is a corresponding diminution of artistic skill, a want of character in the persons, a laboured march in the dialogue, and a degree of confusion and incompleteness in the general ...
— Philebus • Plato
... and value of these mineral products may be seen in the following abstract from the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... rest of the story is not droll, and is in no way connected with our present tale, it may be given in abstract.] ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... give me great pleasure and doubtless be altogether proper as a matter of abstract justice; but I fear rather impolitic. ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... written to you on the subject of our finances, I enclose you now an abstract of a paper on that subject, which Gouverneur Morris communicated to me. You will be a better judge of its merit than I am. It seems ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... to reason out the question. Abstract practical views interested her, and she had much depth and observation, more original than if she had read more and thought less. Of course, no conclusion was arrived at; but the two cousins had an argument of much enjoyment and ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... or the landscape chill and darken with remorse. It is impossible to think of Hawthorne without at the same time thinking of the few great masters of imaginative composition; his works, only not abstract because he has the genius to make them ideal, belong not specially to our clime or generation; it is their moral purpose alone, and perhaps their sadness, that mark him as the son of New ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... soil a small percentage of water will cause better germination than in a clay soil. While different seeds vary in their power to abstract water from soils, yet it seems that for the majority of plants, the best percentage of soil-water for germination purposes is that which is in the neighborhood of the maximum field capacity of soils for water, as explained in Chapter VII. Bogdanoff has estimated ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe
... attributes, to become infinitely wise and powerful and good. Hence their claim to suspend the course of nature, and to produce miraculous phenomena. For this purpose it was necessary that they should abstract themselves from every thing mortal, have no human passions or partialities, and divest themselves as much as possible of all the wants and demands of our material frame. Zoroaster appears indeed to have preferred morality to devotion, to have condemned celibacy and fasting, and to have ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... unto us on the glory of Narayana, that glory which is the highest and which is immutable. I heard it from him and have recited it to thee exactly as I heard it, O sinless one. This cult, with its mysteries and its abstract of details, was obtained by Narada, O king, from that Lord of the universe, viz., Narayana himself. Even such are the particulars of this great cult. I have, before this, O foremost of kings, explained it to thee in the Hari-Gita, with a brief reference to its ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... a crime. It might even be a virtue, and Madison be applauded for his courage in avowing a change of opinion, if he saw in the practical application of Hamilton's principles dangers that had not occurred to him when looking at them only as abstract theories. But the Federalists believed that Madison, governed by these purely selfish motives, sacrificed his convictions of what was best for the country that he might secure for himself a position on what he foresaw was the winning side. It is quite likely that ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... taste for women was a little raised by the pictures which Richardson had left in his imagination, Dora, with equal facility, turned into his new idea of a heroine—not his heroine, for she was engaged to White Connal—merely a heroine in the abstract. Ormond had been warned that he was to consider Dora as a married woman—well, so he would, of course. She was to be Mrs. Connal—so much the better:—he should be quite at ease with her, and she should teach him French, and drawing, and dancing, and improve his manners. He was conscious that ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... contending for their liberties and for a share in public honours." The reason for this I believe to be, that men deceive themselves more readily in generals than in particulars. To the commons of Rome it seemed, in the abstract, that they had every right to be admitted to the consulship, since their party in the city was the more numerous, since they bore the greater share of danger in their wars, and since it was they who by their valour kept Rome free and made her powerful. ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... in junior high school grades presents many difficulties which cannot be solved by a more or less abstract study of educational and industrial needs. Experimentation on an extensive scale, covering a considerable period of time, is necessary before definite conclusions can be drawn as to the limitations and possibilities of such work. It is with a full appreciation of this fact that the following ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... prospective advantages of such a mediator. Accustomed to her parents' extravagant denunciations, and her uncle's more repressed but practical contempt of them, the unfortunate girl early developed a cynical disbelief in the virtues of kinship in the abstract, and a philosophical resignation to its effects upon her personally. Believing that her father and uncle fairly represented the fraternal principle, she was quite prepared for the early defection and distrust of her vagabond and dissipated brother Stephen, ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... him, and seemed like to remain so. And what, after all, are the hearts that beat closest to our own but sealed books, which we open from time to time, at random; too often at the wrong page? But a ballroom is no fit place for abstract meditation. The lust of eye and ear, the pride of life, challenge the sense at every turn, till mere thought seems ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... other out; who know the cardboard and lath and plaster of the architectural arrangements or suspect the water-supply and drainage behind; talks where one knows that the other is shirking some practical conclusion, divagating into the abstract, and has to pick his way among hidden interests and vanities, or avert his eyes from moral vistas which he knows of.... "So-and-so is such a delightful talker—so witty and so wonderfully unprejudiced; I cannot understand ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... meadows down the stream were empty of human beings; and as for the wood, there would be no one but his own keeper in the wood. Doubtless that keeper would, from the abstract point of view, regard poaching with abhorrence. But he would perceive that his master was doing a real kindness to the Glazebrook trout by giving them that chance of making a sportsman-like end. At any rate the keeper would ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... a good poem, each word and thought enhances the value of those which precede and follow it; and every syllable has a loveliness which depends not so much on its abstract sound as on its position. Look at the same word in a dictionary, and you will ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... torch in one hand and with the other drags her victim, who personifies (but with no attempt at a likeness) Savonarola. Behind are the figures of Remorse, cloaked and miserable, and Truth, naked and unafraid. The statues in the niches ironically represent abstract virtues. Everything in the decoration of the palace points to enlightenment and content; and beyond is the calmest and ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... government and the institution to have in its management five government directors in a board of twenty-five. The tariff policy of Madison was sustained by the Southern party and opposed by the Federalists, especially in New England. Thus it became more a question of sectional interests than of abstract political economy. The capital of New England was invested in shipping, so that the exclusion of articles of foreign production was bound to injure, by a high tariff, New England's carrying trade. ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... adventures shocking every idea of verisimilitude, and serving only as a vehicle for the strange humor of the writer. The work is replete with evidences of Rabelais's learning. It would be useless to attempt giving any abstract or analysis of a book which is simply a wild chaos of material jumbled together with little regard to logic, order, or method of whatever sort. We shall better represent its character by giving a ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... Grey, Polynesian Mythology, p. 1 ff.; Taylor, New Zealand, chap. vi; cf., for Polynesia, W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, chap. xiii. The abstract ideas reported by Taylor are remarkable: from conception came increase, from this came swelling, then, in order, thought, remembrance, desire; or, from nothing came increase and so forth; or, the word brought forth night, the night ending in death. The significance ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... of fact, none of his listeners showed any inclination to cheer. War in the abstract was a thing to cheer about, but war in the concrete—war with its possibilities—thus brought home to each individual mind ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... him with his overcoat.] Surely I am too obnoxious in the abstract for your uncle to entertain such a ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... prove as ineffectual as repentance; for though we should render to God a perfect obedience for the remainder of our lives, still the sin we have committed is sufficient to procure our conviction and condemnation; for the wages of sin is death! Shall we, then, have recourse to the abstract mercy of God, as the foundation upon which to rest our hope of pardon? This is the Unitarian's plea: "I believe," he says, "that God is merciful; and I repose in his kindness, and trust he will have compassion ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various
... will not enter to-night on the abstract benefits of such an Establishment. I will rather take one of the ministers who was presented to one of the parishes of Mansoul, and shall thus let you see how that State Church worked out practically in one of its ministers at any rate. And the preacher and pastor I shall so take up was neither ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... marry Nigel arises from an abstract objection to marriage itself," said Mr. Ferrars, "it is a subject which we might talk over calmly, and ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... of a very uncommon order; her habits of thought and reading were profoundly speculative; she delighted in metaphysical subjects of the greatest difficulty, and abstract questions of the most laborious solution. On such subjects she incessantly exercised her remarkably keen powers of analysis and investigation, and no doubt cultivated and strengthened her peculiar mental faculties and tendencies by the perpetual processes ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... (he answered): it still remains for him to learn particulars—to know, that is, what things he has to do, and when and how to do them; or else, if ignorant of these details, the profit of this bailiff in the abstract may prove no greater than the doctor's who pays a most precise attention to a sick man, visiting him late and early, but what will serve to ease his patient's pains [2] ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... flounder desperately. Still, he assured himself, it had to be. And if it had to be that way it was better to have it so understood. Betty would never look at him again with that disturbing message in her eyes. He would not be troubled by a futile longing. But it hurt. He had never imagined how so abstract a thing as emotion could breed such an ache in a ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... home. The only point of importance not cleared up was that which related to the opening of the casket,—the disappearance of the contents; the lock had been unquestionably forced. No one, however, could suppose that some third person had discovered the hiding-place and forced open the casket to abstract its contents and then rebury it. The only probable supposition was that the man himself had forced it open, and, deeming the contents of no value, had thrown them away before he had hidden the casket and purse, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Terror, in Athenian garments, are endurable, and come, as the delicate critics express it, within the "limits of pleasurable sensation." But the scenes of their own St. Giles's, delineated by their own countryman, are too shocking to think of. Yet if we could abstract our minds from the fascinating colors of the picture, and forget the coarse execution (in some respects) of the print, intended as it was to be a cheap plate, accessible to the poorer sort of people, for whose instruction it was done, I think we could have no hesitation in conferring the palm of ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... from such an impeachment and declares that their language "combines wealth, grace, strength, and gentleness. It has expressions for abstract ideas, for Futurity, Eternity, and Existence, and enough numerical terms to express all possible combinations of our numerals." It might be noted in passing that it was these same Brazilian natives that the Portuguese ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... he must be certain that the 24th cup-and-saucer was a mere Irish bull—an empty piece of impertinence—a disgusting pleonasm—and a downright logical absurdity. For a 24th grand jury man is as much a metaphysical chimaera as an "abstract Lord Mayor," or a 30th of February. Not only, therefore, without reason, but even against reason, people have a superstitious regard to certain numbers: and Mr. Constable has a right to his superstition, which possibly may rest on this consideration—that 3 ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... alluded to, in the eighteenth Sonnet, as a worthy compeer of the country parson of Chaucer, &c. In the seventh book of the Excursion, an abstract of his character ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... this report the old rat was so much elated that he promptly detailed rats to go forth; and as he drew the mandatory arrow, and inquired who would go and steal the rice, a rat readily received the order and went off to rob the rice. Drawing another mandatory arrow, he asked who would go and abstract the beans, when once more a rat took over the arrow and started to steal the beans; and one by one subsequently received each an arrow and started on his errand. There only remained the scented taros, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... do him then the justice I have done since; for we students and abstract thinkers are apt too much, in our first youth, to look to the depth, of a man's mind or knowledge, and not enough to the surface it may cover. There may be more water in a flowing stream only four feet ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... asks this question: "Is a man who owns a horse, or a cow, or such things, destitute?" The Commissioners answer: "No, in the abstract; but better give him relief than to drive him to permanent destitution." On the 27th of May an inspector, who appears to have been in a state of worry and excitement, writes to head-quarters:—"Entirely deserted ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... appear, however, that Augustin cared much. In all the conceit of his false knowledge, he had that kind of inhumanity which drives the intellectual to make litter of the sweetest and deepest feelings as a sacrifice to his abstract idol. Not only did he not mind very much if his apostasy made his mother weep, but he did not trouble, either, to reconcile the chimeras of his brain with the living reality of his soul and the things of life. Whatever he found inconvenient, he tranquilly denied, content if he ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... foregoing paragraphs, relating to nervous impressions, their registry, and the consequences, that spring from them, I have given an abstract of views presented in my work on "Human Physiology," published in 1856, and may, therefore, refer the reader to the chapter on "Inverse Vision, or Cerebral Sight;" to Chapter XIV., Book I.; and to Chapter VIII., Book II.; of that work, for ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... chance to be somebody. Pearl was the happiest little girl in the world. Every night she brought home faithfully what she had learned at school, at least the interesting part of it, and when the day's work had been dull and abstract, out of the wealth of her imagination she proceeded ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... high-school students, college students, and specialists in psychology averaging middle age. Almost without exception it was found that clear and vivid images played a smaller part in the thinking of the older group than of the younger. More or less abstract ideas and concepts seemed to have taken the place of the ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... predispositions, as limiting the sphere of the will, and, consequently, of moral accountability, opens a very wide range of speculation. I can give you only a brief abstract of my own opinions on this delicate and difficult subject. Crime and sin, being the preserves of two great organized interests, have been guarded against all reforming poachers with as great jealousy as the Royal Forests. It is so easy to hang ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... know. I have no experience of women. In the abstract, it seems to me that every man has a right to some explanation from the woman ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... as landowner convinced him that slave labor was the least efficient of all. This conviction led him very early to believe in the emancipation of the slaves. I do not find that sentiment or abstract ideals moved him to favor emancipation, but his sense of fitness, his aversion to wastefulness and inefficiency made him disapprove of a system which rendered industry on a high plane impossible. Experience only confirmed these convictions of his, and in his will he ordered ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... be said in the way of abstract argument, for or against the theory of a wider democratizing of institutions in any civilized country, much trouble might well be saved to all European lands by recognizing this palpable fact, (for a palpable fact it is,) that some ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... supreme dominion, Machiavelli's great merit is that he looked afresh at the facts and discarded the old, worn formulas of the schoolmen; his great defect is that he set before his mind as a premise an abstract "political man" as far divorced from living, breathing, complex reality as the "economic man" of Ricardo. Men, he thought, are always the same, governed by calculable motives of self-interest. In general, he thought, men are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly and covetous, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... say that while pleasure, in the abstract, is a great, perhaps the greatest, good; pleasures, our actual pleasures in the ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... have a constitutional distaste for being recognized, but those of Brittany appear to visit their vengeance upon the members with which they are actually beheld. "See what thieves the fairies are!" cried a woman, on beholding one abstract apples from a countrywoman's pocket. The predatory elf at once turned round and tore out the eye that ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... against his own beneficent calling. No money-lender would ever get justice in a British court of law; easier for the camel to thread the needle's eye. That flagrant forgery would be accepted at sight by our vaunted British jury. The only chance was to abstract it before the ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... walking. Hazlitt proceeds to examine why this should be, and discovers a number of good reasons. But there is one reason, omitted by him, or perhaps left for the reader to infer, on which we may profitably spend a few minutes. It forms part of a big subject, and tempts to much abstract talk on the universality of the Fine Arts; but I think we shall be putting it simply enough if we say that an artist is superior to an "artiste" because he does well what ninety-nine people in a hundred are doing ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of any such man on the products of his genius is limited by a variety of circumstances; but, as a mere matter of abstract justice, the whole of it ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... contained members of popular choice; and the king, who was supported by the revenue of his demesnes, and by dues from his military tenants, does not appear at first to have imposed, by legislative authority, general taxes to provide for the security and good government of the community.—These were abstract notions, not prevalent in ages when the monarch was a lord paramount rather than a supreme magistrate. Many of the feudal perquisites had been arbitrarily augmented, and oppressively levied. These the Great Charter, in some cases, reduced to a certain ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... tubing or piping such as is used in the chemical laboratory or that often found attached to feeding bottles. Take about a foot of this and hold one end firmly. Abstract the air by means of the mouth, and it will be found that immediately the air is taken out the tube collapses. Now if the rubber be variable in thickness, here and there along these lines of least resistance will be found certain twists, and ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... This abstract doctrine required to be elucidated and fixed. From a hypothesis to concentrate and reduce it to a reality was the ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... chapbook, Hibernian Tales, as the "Black Thief and the Knight of the Glen," the Black Thief being Conall, and the knight corresponding to the King of Lochlan (it is given in Mr. Lang's Red Fairy Book). Here it attracted the notice of Thackeray, who gives a good abstract of it in his Irish Sketch-Book, ch. xvi. He thinks it "worthy of the Arabian Nights, as wild and odd as an Eastern tale." "That fantastical way of bearing testimony to the previous tale by producing ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... October 1st, 1859, in my father's Diary occurs the entry: "Finished proofs (thirteen months and ten days) of Abstract on 'Origin of Species'; 1250 copies printed. The first edition was published on November 24th, and all copies sold ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... consistent regard to the solemnity of the subject were delivered within the walls of a vast and gloomy cavern. The schoolmen taught that all knowledge might be obtained from the assistance of the fallen angels. They were skilled in the abstract sciences, in the knowledge of precious stones, in alchymy, in the various languages of mankind and of the lower animals; in the Belles-Lettres, Moral Philosophy, Pneumatology, Divinity, Magic, History, and Prophecy. They could ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... the Method of Enumeration.—Many authors are already engaged in this research, and employ a method which I consider very bad and very dangerous—the method of concepts. This consists in looking at real and concrete phenomena in their most abstract form. For example, in studying the mind, they use this word "mind" as a general idea which is supposed to contain all the characteristics of psychical phenomena; but they do not wait to enumerate these characteristics or to realise them, and they remain satisfied with the extremely ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... unpleasantness of mien, but now he wore neatly trimmed, old-fashioned whiskers, the sable moustache having disappeared; and his dress was half-clerical, a modification which had changed his expression sufficiently to abstract the dandyism from his features, and to hinder for a second ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... Every little, in a long strain, helped, and if he happened to affect her as a firm object she could hold on by, he wouldn't jerk himself out of her reach. People in difficulties held on by what was nearest, and he was perhaps after all not further off than sources of comfort more abstract. It was as to this he had made up his mind; he had made it up, that is, to give her a sign. The sign would be that—though it was her own affair—he understood; the sign would be that—though it was her own affair—she was ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... Street, which was the patrimony and whole estate of two children. With the rear house taken away, the income from the front would not be enough to cover the interest on the mortgage. It was one of those things that occasionally make standing upon abstract principle so very uncomfortable. I confess I never had the courage to ask what was done in their case. I know that the tenement went, and I hope—well, never mind what I hope. It has nothing to do with the case. The house ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... one's eye. I know not how many hours he sits there; but while I saw him he was a pattern of diligence and unwandering thought. He had taken himself out of the age, and put himself, I suppose, into that about which he was writing. Being deaf, he finds it much the easier to abstract himself. Nevertheless, it is a miracle. He is a thin, middle-aged man, in black, with an intelligent face, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... on the resolution by which Mr. Luttrell was seated with a summary of the arguments used in it, taken from the "Annual Register," which, as is universally known, was at this time edited by Mr. Burke. It is a very fair and candid abstract, which, in fact, puts the whole question on one single issue, "that the House of Commons is the sole court of judicature in all cases of election, and that this authority is derived from the first principles of our government, viz., the necessary independence of the three branches of the ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... accorded to Servia has worked beneficially is for my readers to judge. The abstract question of the advantages thus conferred admits of debate, and for my own part I believe the present miserable state of the province to be mainly owing to the European guarantee. She was not sufficiently enlightened to profit by ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... only to meet the needs of Ireland but the needs of the Imperial Parliament." This Bill, however, in his opinion, was ill-adapted to the latter purpose. It would be a block rather than a relief to the congestion of business. But these objections were "abstract and academic" in face of the ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... "almost the same as if she had participated" in it. The mutual relations of these persons, who are made to represent the whole of society, afford matter for infinite meditation, the artistic and moral abstract of which the author ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... somewhat barbarous tongue which was the official language till 1362, and with which our legal jargon is saturated. We find in Anglo-French many words which are unrecorded in continental Old French, among them one which we like to think of as essentially English, viz., duete, duty, an abstract formed from the past participle of Fr. devoir. This verb has also given us endeavour, due to the phrase se ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... meeting Redmond had given her no illusions; from Mabel Connemora, from what she herself had heard and seen—and experienced—she knew the street woman's life, and she could not live that life for herself alone. She could talk about it to Redmond tranquilly. She could think about it in the abstract, could see how other women did it, and how those who had intelligence might well survive and lift themselves up in it. But do it she could not. So she resolved upon suicide, firmly believing in her own resolve. And she was not one to deceive herself ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... would positively come as a relief. To say that they are lukewarm is only to fairly indicate a state of feeling which is rapidly degenerating into frigidity. They declare that the Bill is unworkable, and while maintaining their abstract right to demand whatever they choose, believe that, taking one consideration with another, the lot of autonomic Ireland would ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... sects. He looked upon their projects as childish and theatrical, that gave as little promise of changing the world's history as battles between tin soldiers on some nursery floor. He seemed no longer concerned with ideals, abstract rights, or "eternal verities." Those who misunderstood him or were little associated with him were horrified at what they thought was his cynical indifference to such glorious visions as liberty, fraternity, and ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... Congress and nearly the same members, and without questioning the wisdom or patriotism of those who stood in opposition, I venture to recommend the reconsideration and passage of the measure at the present session. Of course the abstract question is not changed; but in intervening election shows almost certainly that the next Congress will pass the measure if this does not. Hence there is only a question of time as to when the proposed amendment will go to the States for their action. And as it is to so go at all ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Thagaste. It does not appear, however, that Augustin cared much. In all the conceit of his false knowledge, he had that kind of inhumanity which drives the intellectual to make litter of the sweetest and deepest feelings as a sacrifice to his abstract idol. Not only did he not mind very much if his apostasy made his mother weep, but he did not trouble, either, to reconcile the chimeras of his brain with the living reality of his soul and the things of life. Whatever he found inconvenient, he tranquilly denied, content ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... position so admirably brought out by Browning in his 'Ring and the Book,' so it is also, I think, a truism that every man has (not always consciously) a philosophy. A philosophy is, after all, a point of view; it is not necessarily an abstract academic position; nor is it always a well-defined attempt to discover the ultimate purpose of things. It can be, and very often is, a point of view ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... rule. It offers itself in a great number of applications of calculation to the movements of the heavenly bodies, or to the physics of terrestrial bodies, and in general in the problems which lead to equations of a high degree. As soon as he wishes to quit the domain of abstract relations, the calculator has occasion to employ the roots of these equations; thus the art of discovering them by the aid of an uniform method, either exactly or by approximation, did not fail at an early period to excite the attention ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... realisation, in short, of the classical ideal of comedy—there had been nothing like Jonson's comedy since the days of Aristophanes. "Every Man in His Humour," like the two plays that follow it, contains two kinds of attack, the critical or generally satiric, levelled at abuses and corruptions in the abstract; and the personal, in which specific application is made of all this in the lampooning of poets and others, Jonson's contemporaries. The method of personal attack by actual caricature of a person on the stage is almost as old as the drama. Aristophanes so lampooned ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... love of God is more than either. With all their beauty, what do these abstract loves bring us? The country we love can give us a grave and a stone. Humanity crucifies its redeemers. Wolsey summed up the matter: 'Had I but served my God with half the zeal with which I served my king, He would not in mine age, have left ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... additional information regarding the architecture of Chichen-Itza and Uxmal, and his deductions therefrom—are contained in a communication to the Minister of the United States at Mexico, and are here given in abstract, as throwing light upon the discoveries that have been made, and the inferences which have been ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... fell upon him eagerly, but he could tell me nothing. He had left the Pottawatamies the day after the wedding, and had heard no rumors of any Englishman. I did not take him into my confidence. He had outlived the time when the abstract terms "ambition" and "patriotism" had meaning to him. The story of my hopes would have tinkled in his ears like the blarings of a child's trumpet. But in one matter he ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... whirled through her mind—as jeers, jibes, they came, a laugh behind them. A something somewhere was very commendable while it remained abstract! Having a fine large understanding about Ann had nothing to do with having Ann for a sister-in-law! "Calls" were less beautiful when responded to by one's brother! This (and this tore an ugly wound) was what came of helping people in their quests ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... be absurd to attribute to the Blackfoot of to-day any such abstract conception of the name of the Creator as that expressed in the foregoing quotation. The statement that Old Man was merely light personified would be beyond his comprehension, and if he did understand what was meant, he would laugh ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... at this point, and when it flowed on again, it was in a slightly varied channel, and gradually changed from the abstract into matters ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... which divide the House of Commons, and hold the destinies of the people in their hands." Of the speeches of these three leaders, and the arguments adduced by them, he accordingly attempts to give an abstract; though as his information must have been derived, we imagine, principally through the medium of an interpreter, this first essay at Parliamentary reporting is not particularly successful; and if we are to conclude, from his constant use of the phrase zemindars to denote the landed interest, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... with her little finger in her mouth, would ponder these sayings. They gave her a feeling of life again, and vivified things which had meant nothing to her. She managed to find some meaning in his struggling, abstract speeches. And they were the medium through which she came distinctly at ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... is the object of the Philosophy of Religion. This branch of study aims to pass beyond recorded facts and local adjustments in order to weigh the theoretical claims of religions, and measure their greater or less conformity with abstract truth. The formal or regulative laws of ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... I should judge that they were the product of his own seething imagination, and therefore impregnated with that pleasurable exultation which is experienced in all energetic exertion of intellectual power; that in the same mood he had generalized the causes of 160 the war, and then personified the abstract and christened it by the name which he had been accustomed to hear most often associated with its management and measures. I should guess that the minister was in the author's mind at the moment ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... all an accident, As everybody knows. Why sing of these? Nor would I rank with Sam that man who went Down into Aetna's womb—Empedocles, I think he called himself. Themselves to please, Or else unwillingly, they made their springs; For glory in the abstract, Sam made his, To prove to all men, commons, lords, and kings, That "some things may be done, ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... lingered in her heart with a sort of call to heaven, like distant Sabbath bells, although in her despair she had turned away from his voice. He was the only one who had spoken to her kindly. The murder, shocking though it was, was an absent, abstract thing, on which her thoughts could not, and would not dwell: all that was present in her mind was Jem's ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... with the other drags her victim, who personifies (but with no attempt at a likeness) Savonarola. Behind are the figures of Remorse, cloaked and miserable, and Truth, naked and unafraid. The statues in the niches ironically represent abstract virtues. Everything in the decoration of the palace points to enlightenment and content; and beyond is the ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... ordination of Maoris, not only to the diaconate but also to the priesthood, in order that the Maori Christians might have an opportunity of receiving the Holy Communion at least once a quarter. But this the bishop would not do. He was favourable to such a policy in the abstract, but he and the missionaries themselves were so much impressed with the educational and social deficiencies of even the best of the Maori converts, that they shrank from their admission to Holy Orders. Selwyn had hoped that St. John's College would have ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... flexible sympathy had ended by falling into one current with that reflective analysis which tends to neutralize sympathy. Few men were able to keep themselves clearer of vices than he; yet he hated vices mildly, being used to think of them less in the abstract than as a part of mixed human natures having an individual history, which it was the bent of his mind to trace with understanding and pity. With the same innate balance he was fervidly democratic in his feeling for the multitude, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... foundation. "Otherwise," they thought, "psychology will be unable to move forward a single step, and may even obstruct every other branch of Natural History." Instances have not been wanting of physiology poaching on the preserves of purely metaphysical and abstract knowledge, all the time feigning to ignore the latter absolutely, and seeking to class psychology with the positive sciences, having first bound it to a Bed of Procrustes, where it refuses to yield its secret ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... our limited means, is not to be estimated by the narrow rules that we apply to men. No, we must not measure the ordinances of God by laws that are plausible in our own eyes. Justice is a relative and not an abstract quality; and, until we understand the relations of the Deity to ourselves as well as we understand our own relations to the Deity, we reason ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... choose. But we are talking of the theory in the abstract, not of any particular case. One hardly expects to find ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... that Orange won't hear of such a course. I see great dangers ahead for him, but I see no honourable way of avoiding them. When a man, careless of danger, unconcerned with profit, takes up the cause of God against the world, others may not follow, but they must admire him. Abstract sentiments of virtue do not charm me. Orange is a Roman Catholic, however, and therefore a practical idealist. The practical idealists of England are the Dissenters—mostly the Methodists. John Wesley was considered crack-brained by his contemporaries at Oxford; he was a greater ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... the Duke and I went for a walk. He kept his promise and did not bore me. We discussed all sorts of things, some interesting, and all in the abstract. We left personalities alone. At ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... affairs of life, was in his view the sum and substance of religion. The doctrine of the Atonement never commended itself to his reason, and his sense of justice was disturbed by the idea of the innocent suffering for the guilty. He moreover thought it had a pernicious tendency for men to rely on an abstract article of faith, to save them from their sins. With the stern and gloomy sects, who are peculiarly attracted by the character of Deity as delineated in the Old Testament, he had no sympathy. The Infinite One was ever present to his mind, as a loving Father to ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... before he will consent to live it. The Englishman just lives ahead, not aware that there is a problem; or convinced that, if there is one, it will only be solved "by walking." The philosopher proceeds from the abstract to the concrete. The Englishman starts with the concrete, and may or, more probably, may not arrive at the abstract. No general rules are of any use to him except such as he may have elaborated for himself out of his own experience. ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... of this kind in England too. However, I once heard a German professor say that the English boy outdid the German in gesunder Menschenverstand (sound common sense), but that the German wins in the race when it comes to the abstract knowledge (Wissen) that he and his countryfolk prize above all the treasures of the earth. No one who knows both countries can doubt for a single moment that the professor was right, and that he stated the case as fairly as it can be stated. ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... shadow, the old waddie remembering rides and thirsts of far away and long ago. He was a wonderful storyteller, and most of his pictures tell stories. He never generalized, painting "a man," "a horse," "a buffalo" in the abstract. His subjects are warm with life, whether awake or asleep, at a particular instant, under particular conditions. Trails Plowed Under, prodigally illustrated, is a collection of yarns and anecdotes saturated with humor and humanity. It incorporates the materials ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... weekly publication of the same size as the Scientific American and contains articles too long or too technical for the parent paper. Lectures and Papers read by famous scientists before learned societies are published in full or in abstract; articles from foreign papers, otherwise inaccessible to those who read English only, are translated; and original articles on technical subjects are a few of the valuable features ...
— Wholesale Price List of Newspapers and Periodicals • D. D. Cottrell's Subscription Agency
... Plato, and Socrates, but recent times have been the real cradle of aesthetics as a science. Modern philosophy was the first to recognize that beauty in art is one of the means by which the contradictions can be removed between mind considered in its abstract and absolute existence and nature constituting the world of sense, bringing back ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... systematically with the prongs and hoes of regular study, of example, and precept; and, being a vigorous sprout when she was transplanted, she has made good use of her opportunities, and, behold! early mental salad, and very fine! You men theorize, ratiocinate, declaim, dogmatize about abstract propositions, and finally get your feet tangled and stumble over facts right under your noses, that women would never fail to pick up and put aside. The soul of Thales possesses you all, whereas we who sit at the cradle, and ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... because they had not enough of the language of those countries to understand so much as they have related. Objects falling under the observation of the senses might be clearly known; but every thing intellectual, every thing abstract—politicks, morals, and religion, must be darkly guessed. Dr. Johnson was of the same opinion. He upon another occasion, when a friend mentioned to him several extraordinary facts, as communicated to him by the circumnavigators, ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... From an abstract point far outside the boundaries of these rural counties, it is easy enough to condemn the frame of mind that lets such things take place. But the fact is that people in rural local governments and those who elect them often have even more respect and love for ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... peculiarity of the Indian dialects, is the abundant use which they allow of figurative language, a result of their total want of terms expressive of abstract, and purely spiritual ideas. To clothe these in words, they must have recourse to figures, chiefly metaphor and allegory, hence arises so much of what an American writer calls "the picturesque brilliancy" of the savage tongues. To express the term "prosperity," for example, the Indian will ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... the cheap severity of abstract ethics! My wife was very plain, never had my ruffs properly starched, and knew nothing about cookery. Why, there was a buck I had shot in Hogley Woods, a magnificent pricket, and do you know how she had it sent up to table? However, it is no matter now, for it is all ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... which Page now prepared to play his part in what was probably the greatest diplomatic drama in history. The materials with which this drama concerned itself were such apparently lifeless subjects as ships and cargoes, learned discourses on such abstract matters as the doctrine of continuous voyage, effective blockade, and conditional contraband; yet the struggle, which lasted for three years, involved the greatest issue of modern times—nothing less than the survival of those conceptions ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... their short-lived pleasure. These several kinds of persons are foul objects steeped skin and all in lewdness. The lustful love, for instance, which has sprung to life and taken root in your natural affections, I and such as myself extend to it the character of an abstract lewdness; but abstract lewdness can be grasped by the mind, but cannot be transmitted by the mouth; can be fathomed by the spirit, but cannot be divulged in words. As you now are imbued with this desire only in the abstract, you are certainly well fit to be ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... however, in whom the blood of the Moors was stronger than the faith in their new religion, which, however good in the abstract, was ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... is a public-spirited body; its contribution to the general life is not only abstract and literary; for many of its members are identified with modern movements toward better citizenship. Miss Balch, besides her work on municipal committees, is connected with the Woman's Trade Union League, and is interested in the great movement ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... prose in Castilian, but he must needs employ Galician for his Cantigas de Santa Maria. The Portuguese nobles, with King Diniz (reigned 1279-1325) at their head, filled the idle hours of their bloody and passionate lives by composing strangely abstract, conventional poems of love and religion in the manner of the Provencal canso, dansa, balada and pastorela, which had had such a luxuriant growth in Southern France in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. A highly elaborated metrical system mainly distinguishes ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... while physical force is on the side of the brute," said Julius, "no abstract recognition of equality ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... upon abstract points, between Saint Aldegonde, Leoninus, and Doctor Gaill, then ensued, during which the Prince, who had satisfied himself as to the result of the conference, retired from the apartment. He afterwards had a private convention with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... from the abstract to the concrete, and draw upon my note-book for illustrations of this theory that the Chinese are a self-taxing ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... of her object, the Gy readily promises; and as the characteristic of this extraordinary people is an implicit veneration for truth, and her word once given is never broken even by the giddiest Gy, the conditions stipulated for are religiously observed. In fact, notwithstanding all their abstract rights and powers, the Gy-ei are the most amiable, conciliatory, and submissive wives I have ever seen even in the happiest households above ground. It is an aphorism among them, that "where a Gy loves it is her pleasure to obey." It will be observed that in the relationship of the sexes ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... style, with an insight not less clear, than I at present possess. My judgment was stronger than were my powers of realizing its dictates; and the faults of my language, though indeed partly owing to a wrong choice of subjects, and the desire of giving a poetic colouring to abstract and metaphysical truths, in which a new world then seemed to open upon me, did yet, in part likewise, originate in unfeigned diffidence of my own comparative talent.—During several years of my youth and early manhood, I reverenced those who had re- introduced the ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... my state, thou perfect model Of heaven itself, and abstract of the angels, Forgive the late disturbance of my soul! I'm clear by nature, as a rockless stream; But they dig through the gravel of my heart, And raise the mud of passions up to cloud me; Therefore let me conjure you, do not go; 'Tis ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... window with Rosa for a few words of consultation, and then asking for pen and ink, sketched out a line or two of agreement. In the meantime Mrs. Billickin took a seat, and delivered a kind of Index to, or Abstract of, the ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... to rise above them into some more nebulous region in our search for the Absolute. Love, Light, and Spirit are for us names of God Himself. And observe that St. John does not, in applying these semi-abstract words to God, attenuate in the slightest degree His personality. God is Love, but He also exercises love. "God so loved the world." And He is not only the "white radiance" that "for ever shines"; He can "draw" us to Himself, and "send" His Son to ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... earth, is a great and marvelous work, whether it be the work of an abstract God, or whether it be the work of ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... him at once the right hand of fellowship, and to the moment of his decease, that cordiality was never withdrawn. I had read so much of poetry, and sympathized so much with poets in all their eccentricities and vicissitudes, that, to see before me the realization of a character, which in the abstract most absorbed my regards, gave me a degree of satisfaction which it would be difficult ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... "Abstract of Proceedings of the Proceedings Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, During the Year ...
— Washington's Masonic Correspondence - As Found among the Washington Papers in the Library of Congress • Julius F. Sachse
... through unknown seas and traces for him in the heavens an unerring path to his appointed haven. And had not mathematicians toiled for so long, and, to uninstructed observers, apparently so fruitlessly, over the abstract relations of lines and surfaces, it is probable that but few of our mechanical inventions would have seen ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... in short, bewildering himself as much as ever his great namesake has done with theories and schools. But, Clemency, who was his good Genius - though he had the meanest possible opinion of her understanding, by reason of her seldom troubling herself with abstract speculations, and being always at hand to do the right thing at the right time - having produced the ink in a twinkling, tendered him the further service of recalling him to himself by the application ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... a difference in deeper ethics, it did not extend to the surface of things by which men live. It explained; but did it excuse, especially in the eye of abstract ethics? Had not these men broken the law, and is not the upholding of the law important in its moral effect on ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... called the mover of nature, divided it into two, one congenial to man's happiness, the other inimical to his welfare; these they deified in the same manner as they had before done nature with her various parts. These abstract, metaphysical beings, became the sole object of their thoughts; were the subject of their continual contemplation; they looked upon them as realities of the highest importance: thus nature quite disappeared; ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... road. You reject abstract theories, and have little consideration for cheapness and plenty. Your chief care is the interest of the producer. You desire to emancipate him from external competition, and reserve the national market ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... hurried to the window. And Anna was conscious of a few moments of exquisite emotion. After all, life had still its pulsations. The joy of being loved thrilled her as nothing before had ever done, a curious abstract joy which had nothing in it at that moment ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... now to speak; and as it is curious and important, not merely on account of the geographical knowledge it conveys, but also from the insight it gives us into the commercial transactions of the countries which he visited, we shall give rather a full abstract of it, availing ourselves of the light which has been thrown upon it by the learned and ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... evident that we have here a case of the type: the similarities of various persons are amalgamated, their differences cancelled, and in the resulting percept those traits emphasized which have particularly pleased or interested us. This, in the abstract, may serve for a description of the origin of an idea of character quite as well as of an idea of physical form. But the different nature of the material — the fact that a character is not a presentation to sense, but a rationalistic synthesis ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... emeritus Professor Swan,[7] of St. Andrews, and his later friend, Professor P. G. Tait. It is a curious enough circumstance, and a great encouragement to others, that a man so ill equipped should have succeeded in one of the most abstract and arduous walks of applied science. The second remark is one that applies to the whole family, and only particularly to Thomas Stevenson from the great number and importance of his inventions: holding as the Stevensons did a Government appointment, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ratlike eyes, but he was sure that they would sell out for no small sum, and in so far as he could remember there had been in his pockets, when he came here, not more than five or six louis. Doubtless the old Michel had managed to abstract those in his daily offices about the room, for Ste. Marie knew that the clothes hung in a closet across from his bed. He had seen them there once when ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... such travail of the spirit as I endured during the fevered days when I was engaged on the poem. It was not as if I wanted to say that snow was white or grass was green. I could do that without a dictionary. It was a question now of the loftiest sentiments, of the most abstract truths, the names of which were very new in my vocabulary. It was necessary to use polysyllables, and plenty of them; and where to find rhymes for such words as "tyranny," "freedom," and "justice," when you had less than two ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... is in general overlooked by those who either write English history or comment upon it. Most writers of or upon English history proceed either upon servile principles, or upon no principles: and a good Spirit of English History, that is, a history which should abstract the tendencies and main results [as to laws, manners, and constitution] from every age of English history, is a work which I hardly hope to see executed. For it would require the concurrence of some philosophy, with a great deal of impartiality. How idly do we say, in speaking of the events ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... ANYONE or ANYTHING? Only he is worthy of respect who does not harm his fellows; and of those who do not harm their fellows there are but few. To this point you must pay attention—you must teach him words of variable import, words more abstract, as well as ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... not go against the age," said Campbell; "it would be absurd to do so. I only spoke of what was right and wrong on abstract principles; and, to tell the truth, I can't help liking the mixture myself, though ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... honestly; "I don't. Babe hasn't the make-up for a professional woman in any line. She is too self-centred, too impetuous. She needs something to humanize her womanhood, not make an abstract thing of her. I'd rather see Babe a gentle, loving woman than the greatest light ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... marble or bronze of well-known statues ranged along the corridors—a forlorn troupe of nude and shivering divinities. The immense hall below, with its violent frescos and its brand-new Turkey carpets, was panelled in oak, from which some device of stain or varnish had managed to abstract every particle of charm. A whole oak wood, indeed, had been lavished on the swathing and sheathing of the house, With the only result that the spectator beheld it steeped in a repellent yellow-brown from top to toe, against which no ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... opportunity of education before every one, that even his servants must go to school! He is not one of those who can see needs that are far away but not those that are right at home. His belief in education, and in the highest attainable education, is profound, and it is not only on account of the abstract pleasure and value of education, but its power of increasing actual earning power and thus making a worker of more value to ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... children's studies, and never attempted to link them to the things of every-day life. But while this claim might be justified to some extent, it was by no means sufficient to cover the facts of the case. The truth is, it was quite as much the teachers' duty to link these abstract studies with concrete facts, as it was ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... ever entirely to shatter the faith of such men, and however they may be wronged by individuals of the opposite sex their subjective attitude toward woman in the abstract is one of chivalrous respects. As far as outward appearances were concerned Little Eva might have passed readily as a paragon of all the virtues. As yet, there was no sign nor line of dissipation marked upon her ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... follows a long account, the monotonous details of which may properly be omitted. It records the sale, to nearly sixty different purchasers, of the goods indicated in the abstract which ensues. In this abstract, the amounts are given in pieces of eight and reals; these were at that time the ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... redoubled fury, and once or twice I detected a stealthy exchange of glances between Captain Courcy and the two travellers. Thus far their plans had worked out beautifully; I was, to all appearance, entirely in their power, and it would be easy for them during the night to abstract the note. The one point in my favour was that they believed I knew nothing of the plot, and I took pains not to undeceive them. I laughed at the captain's jokes, and applauded his stories, though half expecting every moment ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... be influenced by it to the full extent to which it is capable of influencing human nature—except through this medium. We may hold that just because it is Divine, it must be eternally true, omnipresent in its gracious power; but even granting this, it is not known as an abstract or eternal somewhat; it is historically, and not otherwise than historically, revealed. It is achieved by Christ, and the testimony to Christ, on the strength of which we accept it, is in the last resort ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... last the ceremony ended, some of the performers were so hoarse from incessant singing that they could hardly speak. [Footnote: Compare the account of La Harpe with that of the Chevalier de Beaurain; both are in Margry, VI. There is an abstract in ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... and henceforth I shall never cease to pray that your resolution may prove fortunate in all respects. You no longer require my direction in your studies, but I will suggest that it might be expedient for you to give more attention to positive and less to abstract science. Remember those noble words of Sir David Brewster, to which, I believe, I have already called your attention, 'If the God of love is most appropriately worshipped in the Christian temple, the God of nature may be equally honored in the temple of science. Even from its lofty minarets ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... most thorough-paced Utilitarians who go these extreme lengths? These lengths, extreme as they are, are legitimate deductions from tenets held in common by the most moderate and cautious as well as by the most reckless of the sect. Crime in the abstract is condemned not less vehemently by the latter than by the former; but by both equally it is condemned on account, not of its inherent vileness, but solely of its observed results. If the results were different, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... her attention had been absent, and how little account she could give of what had passed by her like the wind; but she need not have been at a loss, for Agatha, with sparkling eyes and clasped hands, burst out into a very able and spirited abstract of the speech, and the future it portrayed, showing perhaps more enthusiasm than the practised public speaker thought it prudent ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... that, as the best iron is not made into nails, so the best men are not made into soldiers. With our Western civilisation, the best men and steel and soldiers found them an easy victim. There are no people in the world who have a higher regard for abstract justice and right than the Chinese. It is admitted by every man who has had large commercial dealings with them that there are no people who have a greater regard for straightforward, honest dealing. In our dealings with them, as regards this campaign, ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... the evidence of that operation, or the nature of that cause, requires a long chain of reasoning from the most extensive physical principles. Our present subject of investigation requires no such abstract distant media, by which the effect is to be connected with its cause; the actual operation in general is the object of our immediate observation; and here we have only to reason from less to more, and not to homologate things which may, to men ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... delight in the joyous business of living. But the strong current which lifted him so buoyantly was an emotion which no shyness or stiffness hampered in the expression—in its essence an exultant patriotism of race. Democracy meant to him in this stage of his development, not any abstract theory of government, but the triumph of ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... a truth that bodies in space attract each other with a force that varies inversely as the square of the distance between them. Fact is concrete, and is a matter of physical experience: truth is abstract, and is a matter of mental theory. Actuality is the realm of fact, reality the realm of truth. The universe as we apprehend it with our senses is actual; the laws of the universe as we comprehend them with ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... the knowledge of your name and address. I have drawn airy images of you, but they do not become incarnate, and I am not sure that I should recognize you in the brief moment of passing. Your nature is not of those which are instantly legible. As an abstract power, it has wrought in my life and it continually moves my heart with desires which are unsatisfactory because so vague and ignorant. Let me offer you personally, my gratitude, my earnest friendship, you would laugh if I were to ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... more by token that he was very rich and knew wonder-well how to entertain whomsoever he deemed deserving of honour. But Messer Betto had never been able to win and to have him, and he and his companions believed that this betided for that Guido, being whiles engaged in abstract speculations, became much distraught from mankind; and for that he inclined somewhat to the opinion of the Epicureans, it was reported among the common folk that these his speculations consisted only in seeking if it might be ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... afternoon to decline going to church, on the ground that he was going to tea at Mr. Lunn's, whose pretty daughter Sally had been an early flame of his, and, when the church-goers were at a safe distance, to abstract the guineas from their wooden box and slip them into a small canvas bag—nothing easier than to call to the cowboy that he was going, and tell him to keep an eye on the house for fear of Sunday tramps. David thought it would be easy, too, to get to a small thicket ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... Waverley is first presented to us is, as a delineator of human character. When we regard him in this light, we are struck at once by the fertility of his invention, and the force, novelty, and fidelity of his pictures. He brings to our minds, not abstract beings, but breathing, acting, speaking individuals. Then what variety! What originality! What numbers! What a gallery has he set before us! No writer but Shakspeare ever equalled him in this respect. Others may have equalled, perhaps ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... of fairy) had produced a command out of a drawer almost as unexpectedly as in a fairy tale. But a command is an abstract idea, and it seemed a sort of "lesser marvel" till it flashed upon me that it involved the ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... poets personify abstract things, and not poets only but sculptors[7] and painters too. All the great things of the world are ...
— Plays of Near & Far • Lord Dunsany
... of the Story.—However abstract the thinking of civilized man may become, "all our intelligence," to quote Ladd's "Outlines of Physiological Psychology," "is intelligence about something or other, ... resting on a basis of sensations and volitions." Difficult as it is and difficult as ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith
... of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the center of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... extirpation of the stomach is considered by most surgeons entirely unjustifiable, as there is seldom hope of cure or prospect of amelioration. La Tribune Medicale for January 16, 1895, gives an abstract of Langenbuch's contribution upon total extirpation of the stomach. Three patients were treated, of whom two died. In the first case, on opening the abdominal cavity the stomach was found very much contracted, presenting extensive carcinomatous infiltration on its posterior surface. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... government came a pure democracy, social and political—it came of individual interest and neighborly love and of no abstract philosophical theory or of protest against oligarchy; it came from the application, voluntary for the most part, of "older institutions and ideas to the transforming influence of land," free land; and such has been the result, says Professor Turner, [Footnote: See ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... probably has a close connection with the scarcity of organic beings in that part of the ocean. After the elaborate paper by Ehrenberg, on the phosphorescence of the sea, it is almost superfluous on my part to make any observations on the subject. (8/8. An abstract is given in No. 4 of the "Magazine of Zoology and Botany.") I may however add, that the same torn and irregular particles of gelatinous matter, described by Ehrenberg, seem in the southern as well as in the northern hemisphere to be the common cause of this phenomenon. The particles were so minute ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Mensheviki, and Social Revolutionists) and the Bolsheviki or revolutionary Socialists. The Cadets were the first to gain the upper hand, but were soon swept away, for they strove to satisfy the soldiers, workers and peasants with abstract, political ideals. The Mensheviki and Social Revolutionists succeeded ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... a name which any advantageous distinction has made eminent, but some latent animosity will burst out. The wealthy trader, however he may abstract himself from publick affairs, will never want those who hint, with Shylock, that ships are but boards. The beauty, adorned only with the unambitious graces of innocence and modesty, provokes, whenever ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... the parent of civil wars. It shakes the foundations of states. Jansenism can excite only theological quarrels and wars of the pen. The Reformation attacked the power of the Church; Jansenism was concerned exclusively with abstract questions. The Jansenist disputes sprang from problems of grace and predestination, fate and free-will—that labyrinth in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... Roy savagely. Not that the abstract fact of the bells ringing was of any moment to him, but he was in a mood to be angry with everything. "Here, you!" continued he, seizing hold of a boy who was running by, "what be them ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... is because he was able to give his narrative the reality of a travel-book instead of the insubstantial quality of a dream. He leaves the reader with the feeling that he is moving among real places and real people. As for the people, Bunyan can give even an abstract virtue—still more, an abstract vice—the skin and bones of a man. A recent critic has said disparagingly that Bunyan would have called Hamlet Mr. Facing-both-ways. As a matter of fact, Bunyan's ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... avaro (III. 287), is barely mentioned. Perhaps Vicente felt that he would have been too much of an abstract type, ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... much to say for themselves. There is an ancient heresy which tells us that, on most occasions, ladies are prone to have the last word; but certain it is that they are making themselves heard now. On the special subject of her so-called "Rights" the abstract Woman was, I knew, prodigiously emphatic—how emphatic, though, I was not quite aware, until having seen from the top of a City-bound omnibus that a lady whom I will describe by the Aristophanic name of Praxagora would lecture at the Castle Street Co-operative Institute. I went and co-operated ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... highest sphere is action from the general or abstract thoughts which we have been able to work up by the apperceiving activity of the mind. In this sphere we have a special name for those thoughts which influence us directly and lead us to action: we call such thoughts ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... feeling to affect his judgment. He thought only of what was good for the Soudan, and he was convinced that the only way to restore law and order there was to place Zebehr in power. One of the faults of our system of party government is that the Cabinet does not consider so much what is right in the abstract, as what will most affect the public mind. The national hatred of slavery is, in England, rightly very strong; but circumstances alter cases. The Cabinet could not face public opinion, although the public were at that time ill-informed, and ignorant of many important elements in ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... is believed to be rather abstract than practical, whether slavery ever can or would exist in any portion of the acquired territory even if it were left to the option of the slaveholding States themselves. From the nature of the climate and productions in much the larger portion ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... best to wean him from the fatal habit. She even ventured to abstract his brandy bottle and dilute its contents. On being detected, she underwent a personal correction which was not soon forgotten. The poor creature, indeed, underwent every sort of humiliation from her worthless husband, which she bore in silence, hoping ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... were true Englishmen. John Bull has suffered the idea of the Invisible to be very much flattened out of him. Jonathan is conscious still that he lives in the world of the Unseen as well as of the Seen. To move John, you must make your fulcrum of solid beef and pudding; an abstract idea will ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... demesnes, and by dues from his military tenants, does not appear at first to have imposed, by legislative authority, general taxes to provide for the security and good government of the community.—These were abstract notions, not prevalent in ages when the monarch was a lord paramount rather than a supreme magistrate. Many of the feudal perquisites had been arbitrarily augmented, and oppressively levied. These the Great Charter, in some cases, reduced to a certain sum; while it ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... is unsatisfactory. The hero's surrender to the lust of the flesh, undoubtedly suggested by Goethe's Faust and consistent in Goethe's poem, is foreign to the conflict of this play, which, not being human, as is that of Faust, but an abstract antagonism of general historic principles, should have been solved without the interference of the mere creature weaknesses of the hero and the mere creature sympathies of the reader. Immermann planned to untie the knot in a second part, which was to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... precisely how much of casual, dogged pluck was enshrined in that soldierly phrase. It struck the note of courage and command. It was Lance incarnate. It steadied him, automatically, at a crisis when his shaken nerves might not have responded to any abstract ethical appeal. He closed his eyes a moment to collect himself; swayed, the merest fraction—then deliberately ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... pronominal base used in compounds; Dak wa pronominal prefix some, something. Prefix wo (wa-|-o) forms abstract ...
— The Dakotan Languages, and Their Relations to Other Languages • Andrew Woods Williamson
... into what manner of place fate has brought him. The walls are pasted with appropriate advertisements: "Some Account of the Pope's Bull," "A Cock and Bull Story," "Theatre Royal, Haymarket—John Bull" "To be Sold by Auction, the Bull Inn," "Abstract of the Act against Bull-baiting," and so on. In Libra Striking the Balance (same year), a dishonest tradesman has been detected in using false weights and measures. The beadle holds up a pair of scales, one of which weighs very much heavier than the other. ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... she conscientiously set about to do them good, if they would be done good to. Mrs. Francis's heart was kind, when you could get to it; but it was so deeply crusted over with theories and reflections and abstract truths that not very many people knew that she ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... more familiar to me than things I'd never seen before. Especially afterwards. But while things were remembered, persons, I found by-and-by, were completely forgotten. Or rather, while I remembered after a while generalities, such as houses and men, recognising them in the abstract as a house, or a man, or a horse, or a baby, I forgot entirely particulars, such as the names of people and the places I had lived in. Words soon came back to me: names and facts were lost: I knew the world as a whole, not my own old ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... termination of the feminine of the past participle. This often becomes an abstract feminine noun, answering to the French termination -ee; armee in Mistral's language is armado. Examples of forms peculiar to ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... instantly of his favor, and not at all from badness of heart. Beggars, especially genteel beggars, ought never to show themselves, but to ask for charity through the newspapers. One can love one's neighbors in the abstract, or even at a distance, but at close quarters it's almost impossible. If it were as on the stage, in the ballet, where if beggars come in, they wear silken rags and tattered lace and beg for alms dancing gracefully, then one might ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the testimony of God and the reasonings of men; the words of the Spirit and human inferences. Faith in the testimony of God, and obedience to the commandments of Jesus, are their bond of union, and not an agreement in any abstract views or opinions upon what is written or spoken by divine authority. Hence all the speculations, questions, debates of words, and abstract reasonings, found in human creeds, have no place in their religious fellowship. Regarding Calvinism and Arminianism, Trinitarianism ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... excitement in which the public shared. What little Venice imbibes of these things is from outside influence, after due lapse of time. A prosperous, luxurious city of merchants and statesmen, she was too much bound up in the transactions and sensations of actual life to develop any abstract and thoughtful ideals. ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... made abstract substantives, by adding the termination ness; and a few in hood or head, noting character or qualities: as white, whiteness; hard, hardness; great, greatness; skilful, skilfulness, unskilfulness; godhead, manhood, maidenhead, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... is pointed out, is concerned with a unique event. History never repeats itself. If nothing else, the mere circumstance that every event has a date and location would give historical facts an individuality that facts of the abstract sciences do not possess. Because historical facts always are located and dated, and cannot therefore be repeated, they are not subject to experiment and verification. On the other hand, a fact not subject to verification is not a fact for natural ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... earthquake had seriously affected it; and it was with some concern and anxiety that he thought he could detect certain slight alterations of shape, here and there. Not, of course, that it mattered to him, in the abstract, how much or how little the island had altered in shape, provided—but this was a very big proviso—that it had not so seriously affected his dockyard as to damage the cutter, or caused the treasure-cave to collapse to such an extent as to obliterate its situation, or bury the treasure ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... not the result of new research; nor is it an abstract resuming historical and critical discoveries on its subject up to date. Of this latter there are several already before the British public; the former, as I said, it was not for me to attempt. Nor do I feel my book to be altogether even what it ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... auspices, and had soon come to a decision that it would be a good thing and a just to lock up all the Brownbies in the great jail of the colony at Brisbane. He probably knew nothing of law or justice in the abstract, but he greatly valued law when exercised against those he hated. The western fence of which mention has been made ran down to the Mary River, hitting it about four miles west of Medlicot's Mill; so that there was a considerable portion ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... stamping on them the most hateful character possible, are said to be, these men, in very truth, are. I do not mean that all of them are hateful personally, any more than all the Inquisitors, or all the buccaneers. But the position which they occupy, and the abstract excellence of which they are in arms to vindicate, is that which the united voice of mankind habitually selects as the type of all hateful qualities. I will not bandy chicanery about the more or less of stripes or other torments ...
— The Contest in America • John Stuart Mill
... History and Antiquities of the Cathedral of Salisbury, &c. (1723, 8vo.), it is printed, and described as "An Architectonical Account of this Cathedral", by "an eminent gentleman". Part of the same report was printed in Wren's Parentalia (1750); and a short abstract of it will also be found in Dodsworth's Salisbury Cathedral (written by the late Mr. Hatcher), p. 172. In a communication from the last named gentleman in 1841, when he was engaged upon his History ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... my dear Geraldine. We'll play chess every night, if you like. I don't care much for the game in the abstract, I admit; but I am never tired of admiring your judicious play, or the exquisite ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... preaching against the absent wrong-doer, no haranguing evil in the abstract, but there was never lacking a definite and personal denouncement of present and personal sin. One tremendous word loomed large before his hearers, nor could any misunderstand when he talked about SIN, and the arousing thought was ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... 'Hige-meethum' (2910) is glossed by H. as dat. plu. ( for the dead). S. proposes 'hige-meethe,' nom. sing. limiting Wiglaf; i.e. W., mood-weary, holds head-watch o'er friend and foe.—B. suggests taking the word as dat. inst. plu. of an abstract noun in -'u.' The translation would be substantially the same ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... receiving this remark as abstract philosophy, rather than as having a personal meaning. 'But I think I should consider pounds, shillings, and pence a very fair reward, if I only had enough ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... tendencies, and enables us to correctly value and define their nature. Faculties of kindred qualities may be grouped together, and their antagonisms represented in the opposite arc of the circle. Let us employ a circle to represent mind. The conception of the abstract quality of good, requires contrast with one of a converse nature, bad, (see Fig. 69). Opposite faculties may be portrayed in the same manner. The functions of the cerebrum and spinal system ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... your liberality towards men of great parts and small fortunes, and give you broad hints that I mean myself. And I was just going on in the usual method to peruse a hundred or two of dedications, and transcribe an abstract to be applied to your Lordship, but I was diverted by a certain accident. For upon the covers of these papers I casually observed written in large letters the two following words, DETUR DIGNISSIMO, which, for aught I knew, might contain some important ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... completely overlooked, for example, by the illustrators. To be sure, the great majority of the artists who illustrated "Don Quixote" knew nothing whatever of Spain. To them a venta conveyed no idea but the abstract one of a roadside inn, and they could not therefore do full justice to the humour of Don Quixote's misconception in taking it for a castle, or perceive the remoteness of all its realities from his ideal. But even when better informed ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... went no further; and it needed the man of both educated and practical mind like Count Lardarel to turn the discovery to account and extract the blessing. In like manner it was clear that in our educational schemes for the benefit of the people, there must not only be the scientific investigator of abstract truth, but also the scientific technologist to point the way to the practical realisation of tangible profit. Moreover, and a still more important truth, it is the scientific education of the proprietors and heads we want—educated capital rather than ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... the merit of these stories was so quickly recognized as that of Indiana and Valentine. The author might abstract herself awhile from passing events and write idylls, but the public had probably not yet settled down into the proper state of mind for fully enjoying them. Moreover Madame Sand's antagonists in politics and social science, as though under the impression that she could not write except ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... in one of the London newspapers, but no one paid any effective attention to them. If Dreyfus had been convicted in England, it is probable that no voice would ever have been raised in his favour; it is absolutely certain that there would never have been a second trial. A keen sense of abstract justice is only to be found in conjunction with a rich fount of imaginative sympathy. The English are too self-absorbed to take much interest in their neighbours' affairs, too busy to care for abstract questions of right ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... are seldom used from European authorities; to Ramsbotham, whose compendious eulogy is all that self-love could ask; to the "Fifth Annual Report" of the Registrar-General of England, in which the second-hand abstract of my Essay figures largely, and not without favorable comment, in an important appended paper. These testimonies, half forgotten until this circumstance recalled them, are dragged into the light, not in a paroxysm of vanity, but to show that there ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... mention a name which any advantageous distinction has made eminent, but some latent animosity will burst out. The wealthy trader, however he may abstract himself from publick affairs, will never want those who hint, with Shylock, that ships are but boards. The beauty, adorned only with the unambitious graces of innocence and modesty, provokes, whenever she appears, a thousand murmurs of detraction. The genius, even when he endeavours only ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... from Barbara through her brother, one of the men-servants, that Mr. Roper hath of late lien on the ground and used a knotted cord. I have made him an abstract from the Fathers ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... though humanity consisted of only one sex,—their own. Mr. Prohack, worried though he was by a too acute realisation of the fact that humanity did indeed consist of two sexes, despised the lot of them. And yet simultaneously the weaker part of him envied them, and he fully admitted, in the abstract, that something might convincingly be said in favour of monasteries. It was a most ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... to rule them, and an eye to direct them. Out of this arose one of his deficiencies. He could go largely into the generalities of a subject, and relished greatly others doing it, so that they did do it really and well; but he was averse to abstract and wide reasonings. Principles he rejoiced in: he worked with them as with his choicest weapons; they were the polished stones for his sling, against the Goliaths of presumption, error, and tyranny in thought ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... the Caribs from such an impeachment and declares that their language "combines wealth, grace, strength, and gentleness. It has expressions for abstract ideas, for Futurity, Eternity, and Existence, and enough numerical terms to express all possible combinations of our numerals." It might be noted in passing that it was these same Brazilian natives that the Portuguese settlers sought to decimate by spreading ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... It has been vulgarised. Let us talk about compatibility. Now, I should say that, no doubt, and speaking scientifically, there is one particular woman supremely fitted to each man. I put aside consideration of circumstances; we know that circumstances will disturb any degree of abstract fitness. But in the nature of things there must be one woman whose nature is specially well adapted to harmonise with mine, or with yours. If there were any means of discovering this woman in each case, then I have no doubt it would be worth a man's utmost effort to do so, and any amount of erotic ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... turned slowly away with the most abstract air, confounded amid his shrewd acting, and he did not collect himself until half-way back to his comrades. Then, beginning to hum an old darky tune, he stirred up and replenished the fire, and set about preparation for the midday meal. But he did ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... that it forms a photographic picture of the object; for there can be no photographing taste or smell or feeling; but it forms an image of some kind which it presents to the intellect. This power at once proceeds to form, not a brain-picture, but an intellectual or abstract image of the object presented. For instance, you see this book, and at once you, in some mysterious way which has never yet been explained, impress some image of it on your brain. That you do so is clear from the fact that the image remains when the book is withdrawn. ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... take a broader view of things, and consider in our pupil man in the abstract, man exposed to all the accidents of human life. If man were born attached to the soil of a country, if the same season continued throughout the year, if every one held his fortune by such a tenure that he could never ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... by Burke's enemies that he was violent, and not having sufficient command over himself, was therefore unfitted to command others. This conclusion, sound enough in the abstract, is more easily made than proved, and in the present instance receives direct contradiction from the undeviating cordiality between the leader and his second. In the cases of Landells and Dr. Beckler, universal opinion pronounced Burke to be in ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... perfectly aware of what I say, before I try to alter her belief. Now the Indian language, although quite sufficient for Indian wants, is poor, and has not the same copiousness as ours, because they do not require the words to explain what we term abstract ideas. It is, therefore, impossible to explain the mysteries of our holy religion to one who does not well understand our language. I think, however, that the Strawberry now begins to comprehend sufficiently for me to make the first attempt. I say first attempt, because I have no idea of making a ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... I believe she has not diagnosed the case with sufficient care. Did she look like a person who was theorizing, or did she look like one who has fallen off precipices herself and brings to the aid of abstract science the confirmations of personal experience?"— "Bitte?" —It was too large a contract for the Stubenmadchen's vocabulary; she couldn't call the hand. I allowed the subject to rest there, and asked for something to eat and smoke, and something ...
— Quotations from the Works of Mark Twain • David Widger
... expedition. As a general thing, the English are traders and diplomats, rather than soldiers. Their character for bravery has been won through the lavish use of their subsidizing gold, rather than through any innate warlike propensities on their part. They have never fought for a myth, or an abstract, chivalrous idea; but always for some bread and beef object, however apparently unconnected with the project said to be had in view. In the exemplification of their Christian missionary spirit, too, this feature of their character ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... was his ambition to be first with every piece of intelligence, and he enjoyed telling news, even of a harassing description. Mr. Lawrence believed that Miss Abingdon's niece was already engaged to Peter Ogilvie, and he began by a series of deft questions to try to abstract the definite information that he ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... Abstract justice is a figment. No jury and no judge can be impartial. The other day a man was charged with striking a Socialist orator with an ice-pick. The judge lectured the orator on his Bolshevism, and then gave the accused imprisonment ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... our language for which he could not furnish a more forcible Saxon equivalent. "The impenetrability of matter" was suggested; and Kemble, after half a minute's reflection, answered, "The un-thorough-fareableness of stuff." Still, no English writer would think of discarding such an abstract, but convenient and accurate, term as "impenetrability," for the coarsely concrete and terribly ponderous word which declares that there is no possible thoroughfare, no road, by which we can penetrate ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... over the abstract of title of the vineyard called Tokay on the rancho called Petaluma. It is a sad long list of the names of men, beginning with Manuel Micheltoreno, one time Mexican "Governor, Commander-in-Chief, and ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... name was often used, in the plural, to signify the gods in general, as that of Istar was used for the goddesses. No myth has come down to us in which he plays the principal part, a fact which is to be accounted for by his comparatively late arrival at a position of abstract supremacy.[111] ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... for their cloisters. Why should they have done so? he wondered—and then came to a sudden mental stop, absorbed in a somewhat surprised contemplation of a new version of himself. He was becoming literary, historical, bookish! His mind had begun to throw open again, to abstract thoughts and musings, its long-closed doors. He had read and dreamed so much as a lad, in the old book-shop! For many years that boyhood of eager concern in the printed page had seemed to him to belong to somebody ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... know we talked about it; but I'm hanged if I'll try unless I'm sure you are absolutely keen. I thought it all out after—after I'd seen her, and it seemed to me all very well in the abstract giving her up to another man and all that, but when it came to the point, would you be really sure to want me to carry through? I've seen her now, you know, and I'm glad I've seen her. I'll be glad always for that, but it needn't ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... you will have in this world. Therefore, say I, cultivate romance. Devour a goodly number of the healthier novels. Weep and laugh over them—believing every word. Amadis de Gaul, even, is a better model than Gradgrind. Adore each the other sex—positively worship! Both are worshipful (in the 'abstract'). ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... incorporated in the earth, tobacco may be obtained for many years, but it is always an exhausting crop. It has been stated that 170 Lbs. of mineral matter are removed in less than three months from one acre of land, by a crop of tobacco. This is very much more than wheat or other grains abstract from the soil in ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... of the army, but suppress the details of barbarities such as those which sully the annals of Ashur-natsir-pal, who had boys and girls burned on pyres and the heroes of small nations flayed alive. An ethical tendency becomes apparent in the exaltation of the Babylonian Shamash as an abstract deity who loved law and order, inspired the king with wisdom and ordained the destinies of mankind. He is invoked on ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... not abstract; they were very deep and keen. Both the Americans felt winnowed before ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... instance, following Buckle, that through civilisation mankind becomes softer, and consequently less bloodthirsty and less fitted for warfare. Logically it does seem to follow from his arguments. But man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic. I take this example because it is the most glaring instance of it. Only look about you: blood is being spilt in streams, and in the merriest way, as though ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... by the Raja of Gorkha, I might altogether refer on the subject to Colonel Kirkpatrick’s account, contained in his eighth chapter; but for the sake of connection, and in order to communicate my opinions on the subject, I shall here give an abstract of Colonel Kirkpatrick’s account, referring to his own work ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... on, "My friend, it was because I wished to be gentle in the breaking to you, for I know you have loved that so sweet lady. But even yet I do not expect you to believe. It is so hard to accept at once any abstract truth, that we may doubt such to be possible when we have always believed the 'no' of it. It is more hard still to accept so sad a concrete truth, and of such a one as Miss Lucy. Tonight I go to prove it. Dare ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... hard to reason with himself, to force himself to feel the reality of his own belief that all was well; for he had no doubt of it, as an abstract truth. It was the power of getting comfort from it that was wanting. If only his heart could stop thumping and his brain burning, he would have done the rejoicing that Rosalind was there, knowing all he knew, and loving him; that Sally was ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... PITFALLS. Tameness Exercise Sovenliness Exercises Wordiness Exercises Verbal Discords Exercise 1. Abstract vs. Concrete Terms; General vs. Specific Terms Exercise 2. Literal vs. Figurative Terms ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... for ever English shores. Then came the deadly frost of William's icy influence. The reign of Anne was conspicuous more for letters than for art: architecture, more especially, was vulgarized under Vanbrugh. George I. had no conception of anything abstract: taste, erudition, science, art, were like a dead language to his common sense, his vulgar profligacy, and his personal predilections. Neither George II. nor his queen had an iota of taste, either in language, conduct, literature, or art. To be vulgar, was haut-ton; to be refined, to have pursuits ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... Salamanca were great schools of magic. The teachers taught that all knowledge might be obtained by the assistance of fallen angels. These teachers were skilled in the abstract sciences, in alchemy, in the various languages of mankind, and of the lower animals, divinity, magic, and prophecy. They professed to possess the power of controlling the winds and waters, and of influencing the stars. They also pretended ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... learned, vehement discussion upon abstract points, between Saint Aldegonde, Leoninus, and Doctor Gaill, then ensued, during which the Prince, who had satisfied himself as to the result of the conference, retired from the apartment. He afterwards had a private convention with Schetz and Leoninus, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... it was but a passing shower. At daylight, however, the rain was pouring profusely. Wealthy actually cried; Ellen scolded a little; Halstead made certain irreverent remarks; while Gram sought to inculcate resignation in the abstract. ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... bayonets, and if, after thus coercing her again into her constitutional orbit, her loyalists had been found unable to hold her there without negro ballots, the question of negro suffrage in Indiana would most obviously have been very different from the comparatively abstract one which it now is. It would, it is true, have involved the question of justice to the negroes of Indiana, but the transcendently broader and more vital question of national salvation also. Let me add further, that should Congress pass this ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... certain amount of drill. When he became heir-apparent by the death of his elder brother in 1865, he began to study the principles of law and administration under Professor Pobedonostsef, who did not succeed in awakening in his pupil a love of abstract studies or prolonged intellectual exertion, but who influenced the character of his reign by instilling into his mind the belief that zeal for Eastern Orthodoxy ought, as an essential factor of Russian patriotism, to be specially cultivated by every right-minded tsar. His elder brother ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... clear and melancholy. Emigration, from a word of the most cheerful import, came to sound most dismally in my ear. There is nothing more agreeable to picture and nothing more pathetic to behold. The abstract idea, as conceived at home, is hopeful and adventurous. A young man, you fancy, scorning restraints and helpers, issues forth into life, that great battle, to fight for his own hand. The most pleasant stories ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... regular study, of example, and precept; and, being a vigorous sprout when she was transplanted, she has made good use of her opportunities, and, behold! early mental salad, and very fine! You men theorize, ratiocinate, declaim, dogmatize about abstract propositions, and finally get your feet tangled and stumble over facts right under your noses, that women would never fail to pick up and put aside. The soul of Thales possesses you all, whereas we who sit at the cradle, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... appeals to the feelings, with unexceptionable sentiments. Though the present work may not equal his former efforts, many of the poems possess a native elegance, natural and unaffected, totally devoid of the tinsel embellishments and abstract hyperboles of several contemporary sonneteers. The last sonnet in the first volume, p. 152, is perhaps the best, without any novelty in the sentiments, which we hope are common to every Briton at the present crisis; the force and expression ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... a long strain, helped, and if he happened to affect her as a firm object she could hold on by, he wouldn't jerk himself out of her reach. People in difficulties held on by what was nearest, and he was perhaps after all not further off than sources of comfort more abstract. It was as to this he had made up his mind; he had made it up, that is, to give her a sign. The sign would be that—though it was her own affair—he understood; the sign would be that—though it was her own affair—she was free to clutch. Since she took him for a firm object—much ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... ideas of St. John, but that it represents a mixture of Greek philosophy with Jewish theology, and that its final form, which one of the most eminent among recent Christian scholars has characterized as "an unhistorical product of abstract reflection," is mainly due to some gifted representative or representatives of the Alexandrian school. Bitter as the resistance to this view has been, it has during the last years of the nineteenth century ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... the flashing glance from a pair of bright eyes, set in the pale yellow face of a slender Sakai girl, had blinded him, and bereft him of reason. Life no longer seemed to hold anything of good for him unless Chep, the Bird, as her people called her, might be his. In the abstract he despised the Sakai as heartily as ever, but, for the sake of this girl, he smothered his feelings, dwelt among her people as one of themselves, losing thereby the last atom of his self-respect, and finally ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... in hand any volume of Divinity, or school metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames; for it can contain nothing but sophistry ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... as an essayist. His critical faculty was pronounced, and he had carefully developed it; and it was possible that when the world had completely palled upon him, he would shut himself up at Crumford Hall and give the public the benefit of his accumulated opinions, abstract and biographical. But he was not ready for that yet; he needed several years more of experience, observation, and assiduous cultivation of the habit of analysis; and in the meantime he was in a condition of cold disgust with himself and with Fate. It may also have been gathered ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... deep and beneficent guile in the simplicity of his style, as limpid as a brook, and yet, as over a brook, in its overtones hover a myriad of sparkling dragon-flies and butterflies; in its depths lie a plethora of trout. He deals with the most obstruse and abstract subjects with such ease and grace, without for one moment laying aside the badge of authority, that they assume a mysterious fascination to catch the eye of the passerby. In his fictions he has sometimes ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... the last one in the world to decry facts as such. In the abstract I have the highest opinion of them. But facts, as someone has said, are stubborn things; and stubborn things, like stubborn people, are frequently tiresome. So it occurred to me that possibly there ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... name for the Privet lasted with a slight alteration into Shakespeare's time. Turner in 1538 says, "ligustrum arbor est non herba ut literator[u] vulgus credit; nihil que minus est quam a Prymerose." In Tusser's "Husbandry" we have "set Privie or Prim" (September Abstract), and— ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... the money game. He was always making it, piling it up ruthlessly but honestly. Then that craving petered out, and he took a hand in the collecting game. What will come next I don't know. As a boy I was always afraid of him. He was kind to me, but in the abstract. I was like an extra on the grocer's bill. He put me into the hands of a tutor—a lovable old dreamer—and paid no more attention to me. He never put his arms round me and ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... Middle Ages is an expression of the spirit of feudalism and of the genius of the Church. From the union of feudalism and Christianity arose the chivalric ideals, the new courtesy, the homage to woman. Abstract ideas, ethical, theological, and those of amorous metaphysics, were rendered through allegory into art. Against these high conceptions, and the overstrained sentiment connected with them, the positive ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... the conflict between the interests of an oligarchy based upon slavery and a democracy in which slavery, if it exists at all, exists as a mere accident that may be dispensed with without any radical social revolution. Slavery, as opposed to divine law or to abstract justice, never has brought, nor ever will bring, two countries into conflict with each other; but slavery made indispensable as a peculiar institution, as an organized fact, as a fundamental social necessity, must come into conflict with the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... repeatedly, to the clogging of my narrative and in violation of my artistic canons; and I did it in order to hammer into the average human understanding that these dog-heroes of mine were not directed by abstract reasoning, but by instinct, sensation, and emotion, and by simple reasoning. Also, I endeavoured to make my stories in line with the facts of evolution; I hewed them to the mark set by scientific research, and awoke, one day, to find myself bundled neck and ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... Helen Walder, ideally beautiful and day dreaming of the emancipation of woman, she had parted. Helen went to Paris to study science. Janina had no desire to go, for she didn't feel the need of any knowledge of an abstract nature. She yearned for something that would exert a more potent influence upon her temperament something that would absorb her whole being for ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... one steady rush of work from March to November; unceasing, uncomplaining activity for the barest support, followed by three months of hibernation and caring for the cattle. Horace Greeley said: "If our most energetic farmers would abstract ten hours each per week from their incessant drudgery and devote them to reading and reflection in regard to their noble calling, they would live to a better purpose and bequeath ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... excellence? This is certainly the staunch opinion of men of the world; but I call on honour, virtue, and worth, to give the stygian doctrine a loud negative! However, this must be allowed, that, if you abstract from man the idea of an existence beyond the grave, then the true measure of human conduct is, proper and improper: virtue and vice, as dispositions of the heart, are, in that case, of scarcely the same import and ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... is especially associated with the three names of Woo, Choo, and Moo—names by no means uncommon in Chinese nomenclature. We heard of a boy named the abstract numeral, "sixty-five," because his grandfather happened to reach that age on the very day of his birth. Mr. Moo was the local telegraph operator, with whom we, and our friends Woo and Choo, of Shanghai, associated. All operators in the Chinese telegraph system are required to ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... things are often seen to signify the things most high. A parable, paraballo, is that which "throws before" us such concrete imagery as best serves to foreshadow and to fit the mind to understand a certain abstract principle. As we become disciples, "learners" of the Truth, we find it speaks to us only through such emblems as enable us to reason from the things we do already know to those concerning which we wish to be informed. The words ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... in this part, is composed of brief biographies of Popes written immediately after their decease and in some instances during their lives. For a fuller statement of the whole period, see Hefele, 332 ff., who gives an abstract of the following and also of two letters alleged to have been written by Gregory II to the Emperor, which Hefele accepts as genuine. For a criticism of these letters, see Hodgkin, op. cit., VI, 501-505. Hodgkin gives an excellent account of ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... end of his demonstration, he was accustomed to look at his watch and remark conclusively, "Reason is the highest principle!" Reason! Never do I hear this word without recalling Dr. Saul Ascher, with his abstract legs, his tight-fitting transcendental-grey long coat, his forbidding icy face, which could have served as frontispiece for a textbook of geometry. This man, deep in the fifties, was a personified straight line. In ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... statesmen, for whose purpose this antipathy happens to be convenient, flattering it all they can; saying that though they have no intention of laying hands on an Establishment which is efficient and popular, like the Anglican Establishment here in England, yet it is in the abstract a fine and good thing that religion should [xviii] be left to the voluntary support of its promoters, and should thus gain in energy and independence; and Mr. Gladstone has no words strong enough to express his admiration of the refusal of State-aid ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... proclamation of His truth in the world ever since. I believe, as I think Scripture teaches me to believe, that in the world today Christ is working; and that it is a mistake to talk about the results of 'Christianity,' meaning thereby some abstract system divorced from Him. It is the working of Jesus Christ in the world that has brought 'nobler manners, purer laws'; that has given a new impulse and elevation to art and literature; that has lifted the whole tone of society; that has ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... because he was unfortunate. She imagined that her dislike was due to his faults, and every now and then she abused him for them; but his faults would have been forgotten if he had been prosperous. She hated misery, and not only misery in the abstract, but miserable weak creatures. She was ready enough, as we have seen, to right a wrong, especially if the wrong was championed by those whom she despised; but for simple infirmity, at least in human beings, she had no more mercy ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... number of Sales and Grants of Crown Lands, Clergy Reserves, Conditions, &c. II. Information for Emigrants; Number of Emigrants arrived; with extracts from Papers issued by Government Emigration Agents, &c. III. Abstract of the American Passengers' Act, of Session 1835. IV. Transfer of Capital. V. Canadian Currency. VI. Canada Company. ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... opium upon the mind deserves to be mentioned; its influence upon the faculty of memory. The logical memory, De Quincey says, seems in no way to be weakened by its use, but rather the contrary. His own devotion to the abstract principles of political economy; the character of Coleridge's literary labors between the years 1804-16, when his use of opium was most inordinate; together with the cast of mind of many other well-known opium-eaters, confirms ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... of development in which they had any idea of One Supreme, Over-ruling Power. But our scholars differ on that point, many contending that the Mexicans distinctly affirmed the existence of such a God. To form such conceptions implies a power of reasoning on abstract topics that is vain to expect of a people in their state of development. We think, therefore, that the idea that they had such a belief, arises from a misconception. Let us see if we can discover how ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... whether, if she sent the baby on shore by somebody else, 'he' would know it, meeting it in the street: which, seeing that he had never set eyes upon it in his life, was not very likely in the abstract, but was probable enough to the young mother. She was such an artless little creature; and was in such a sunny, beaming, hopeful state; and let out all this matter, clinging close about her heart, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... sought to lose the sense of her own cares, in the visionary scenes of the poet; but she had again to lament the irresistible force of circumstances over the taste and powers of the mind; and that it requires a spirit at ease to be sensible even to the abstract pleasures of pure intellect. The enthusiasm of genius, with all its pictured scenes, now appeared cold, and dim. As she mused upon the book before her, she involuntarily exclaimed, 'Are these, indeed, the passages, that have so often ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... religious superstition, and crudest form of ceremony and worship, up to the most refined idealism and beautiful symbolisms, runs the gamut of the Hindu Religions. Many people are unable to conceive of an abstract, ideal Universal Being, such as the Brahman of the Hindu Philosophy, and consequently that Being has been personified as an Anthropomorphic Deity, and human attributes bestowed upon him to suit the popular fancy. In India, as in all other countries, the priesthood ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... worse, abstract terms, which from century to century have become more abstract and therefore further removed from experience, more difficult to understand, less adaptable and more deceptive, especially in all that relates to human life and society. Here, due to the growth of government, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... coins and models in it, and so forth. Yet it was a little too large for assurance on this idea. I felt an impatience to see it opened. About eleven, as nothing seemed happening, I walked back, full of such thought, to my home in Maybury. But I found it difficult to get to work upon my abstract investigations. ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... L' Allegro and Il Penseroso, together with some particular thoughts, expressions, and rhymes, more especially the idea of a contrast between these two dispositions, from a forgotten poem prefixed to the first edition of BURTON'S ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, entitled, 'The Author's Abstract of Melancholy; or, A Dialogue between Pleasure and Pain.' Here pain is melancholy. It was written, as I conjecture, about the year 1600. I will make no apology for abstracting and citing as much of ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... alone remains of the two giants who concluded the cycle of classic school of criminology. In a lucid moment of his scientific consciousness, which soon reverted to the old abstract and metaphysical theories, he announced in an introductory statement in 1879, that criminal justice would have to rejuvenate itself in the pure bath of the natural sciences and substitute in place of abstraction the living and concrete study of facts. ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... seems quite remarkable. And yet, after all, it was, in a way, just what nations do. When they love a great and noble thing, they embody it—they want it so that they can see it with their eyes; like liberty, for instance. They are not content with the cloudy abstract idea, they make a beautiful statue of it, and then their beloved idea is substantial and they can look at it and worship it. And so it is as I say; to the Dwarf, Joan was our country embodied, our country made visible flesh cast ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... myself as little able to understand where the difficulty lies, or to detect any lurking obscurity, as those critics found themselves to unravel my logic. Possibly I may not be an indifferent and neutral judge in such a case. I will therefore sketch a brief abstract of the little paper according to my own original design, and then leave the reader to judge how far this design is kept in sight ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... calculated to secure votes, but utterly false and hypocritical; for, while indulging in these pharasaical expressions of love for the Union, they nominate, at the same time, as their candidate for the Vice President, an avowed secessionist and disunionist. We have nothing to do with the abstract opinions or wishes of Mr. Pendleton as regards the Union. Jefferson Davis repeatedly, and up to the very period of secession, expressed quite as much devotion to the old flag and to the Union as Mr. Pendleton. But Mr. Davis soon became the head of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of light upon the movements of concrete industrial factors at many points, the intellectual difficulties involved in simultaneously following the double study, in constantly passing from the more concrete to the more abstract contemplation of industrial phenomena, would tax the mental agility of students too severely, and would greatly diminish the chance of a substantially accurate understanding of either aspect of ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... following page Mr. Darwin says:- "Although I am fully" (why "fully"?) "convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume under the form of an abstract, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists," &c. I have not quoted the whole of Mr. Darwin's sentence, but it implies that any experienced naturalist who remained unconvinced was an old-fashioned, prejudiced person. I confess that ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... genius. Speaking of Hugh Miller brings him before us at the time that he was writing for the Caledonia Mercury. He was then editor of The Witness, but gave to the former paper such moments as he could abstract from his more serious duties. His department in the Mercury was the reviewing new publications. Besides his engagement with these two journals, he was pursuing those studies which made him the prince of British geologists. Geology was his passion. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... so Dolly had to give that point up; and accordingly, while she studied him, he had full and equal opportunity to study her. It was a doubtful satisfaction. He could rarely meet Dolly's eyes, while yet he saw how coolly they perused him, how calmly they studied him as an abstract thing. He wanted to see a little shyness, a little consciousness, a little wavering, in those clear, wise orbs; but no! Dolly sat at her work and did it as unconcernedly as if she were five years old, to all appearance; ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... the silent Marjory, of whom nothing is ever heard, between her solemn lover of fifty and her sad mother. But she is voiceless, and though there are letters of religious counsel addressed to her under the title of "weill belovit sister," there is not among them all, so strange is the abstract effect of religious exhortation thus applied, one gleam of anything like individual character, or which can throw any light upon what she was; which, considering the marked individuality of the writer, is curious exceedingly. We must ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... considered as an eligible terminus of anybody's walk, under any circumstances, I have not been able to determine. Never having walked from my residence to that place, I am unable to verify the assertion, though I may state as a purely abstract and separate proposition, that it takes me the better part of an hour ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... have a violent quarrel, on which all the people in the vicinity collect to watch, including probably the owner of the stall. In this case the Chauwa or boy, who has posted himself in a position of vantage, will quickly abstract the article agreed upon and make off. Or if there are several purchasers at a shop, the man will wait until one of them lays down his bundle while he makes payment, and then pushing up against him signal to the Chauwa, who snatches up the bundle and bolts. If he is caught, the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... generosity and commercial instinct does you credit,' I answered. 'It is rare to find so much love for an abstract study side by side ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... awake at last, Who put away the meats they used to sup, And down upon the dust of earth outcast The dregs remaining of the ancient cup, Then turn to wakeful prayer and worthy act. The Dead, upon their awful 'vantage ground, The sun not in their faces, shall abstract No more our strength; we will not be discrowned As guardians of their crowns, nor deign transact A barter of the present, for a sound Of good so counted in the foregone days. O Dead, ye shall no longer cling to us With rigid hands of desiccating praise, And drag us backward ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... because of its adaptation to the capacities and imitative disposition of children. They judge by the organs of sense, and by their perceptions of truth through externals. Naked abstract truth does not sufficiently interest them. They are pleased with history, narrative, illustration, more than with philosophy. They are awake to the first and receive from them a lasting impression; while the impression made by the second is dreamy and ephemeral. ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... inventive arts? And we do rejoice in the success, thus far, of our experiment of self-government. Our faith is firm and unwavering in the broad principles of human rights proclaimed in 1776, not only as abstract truths, but as the corner stones of a republic. Yet we cannot forget, even in this glad hour, that while all men of every race, and clime, and condition, have been invested with the full rights of citizenship under our hospitable ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... Wars of New England with the Eastern Indians, 16 (ed. 1859). Penhallow was present at the council. In Judge Sewall's clumsy abstract of the proceedings (Diary of Sewall, ii. 85) the Indians are represented as professing neutrality. The governor and intendant of Canada write that the Abenakis had begun a treaty of neutrality with the English, but that as "les Jesuites ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... of which the last chapter contains an abstract, there are a few observations which it may be proper to make, by way of applying its testimony to the particular propositions for which ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... any gradation in crimes, or whether we do not mistake in supposing the transgression of one Law of God more heinous than that of another, would be a point too difficult and too abstract for us to enter into, but as human nature is more shocked at the shedding of blood than at any other offence, we may be allowed to treat those who are guilty of it as bloody and unnatural men, who besides ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... Time, that seems to have no boundaries in the abstract, is a very fiend for bounding the divine concrete—after a time Amory spoke hesitatingly on the other side of the curtain ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... join; his "letter" was ready to be handed in. But as he quickly scanned the faces about him, he could get no gleam of light upon the all-important question. Suddenly his meditations were ended, the abstract giving way to the concrete, by the aforementioned leader abruptly inquiring, "Mr. Vance, what persuasion are ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... See Axtell, The Deification of Abstract Ideas in Roman Literature and Inscriptions (Chicago, 1907), p. 59 foll., where the views of Mommsen, Boissier, Marquardt, and Wissowa are discussed. Axtell's own conclusion is given on p. 62 foll. In the main it seems to agree with ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... The law consists in this—that each of our principal conceptions, each branch of our knowledge, passes successively through three different states of theory: the theologic, or fictitious; the metaphysic, or abstract; the scientific, or positive. In other terms, the human mind, by its nature, employs successively, in each of its researches, three methods of philosophizing, the character of which is essentially different, and even radically opposed; at first the theologic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... Aspasia," and "The Gurney Papers." Considering that I was already in the midst of several books, this is rather too much, but I could not help it; the books were lent me and must be read and returned speedily. I have been all the morning employed in writing an abstract of the Report of the Prison Discipline Society, and am wearied ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... des Kalewiden: Esthnisches Volksmaerchen. Leipzig, 1875. An abstract of the story ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... the sense, Dazl'd and spent, sunk down, and sought repair Of sleep, which instantly fell on me, call'd By Nature as in aide, and clos'd mine eyes. Mine eyes he clos'd, but op'n left the Cell 460 Of Fancie my internal sight, by which Abstract as in a transe methought I saw, Though sleeping, where I lay, and saw the shape Still glorious before whom awake I stood; Who stooping op'nd my left side, and took From thence a Rib, with cordial spirits warme, And Life-blood streaming fresh; wide was the wound, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... the Counsel Chambers when the Cause was Assign'd for Sentence at the next Court 13. 4 For Coach hire 3. For drawing a Breif for Councell 4.13. 4 For Drawing and making an Index and Abstract of the Process and Copy 1. 6. 8 For Copys of the Opinions given by the Counsell for their Use ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... Grace all the Affidavits I had taken since the Gipsy Trial which related to that Affair. I then told the Messenger that I had taken none, as indeed the fact is the Affidavits of which I gave my Lord Chancellor an Abstract having been all sworn before Justices of the Peace in the Neighbourhood of Endfield, and remain I believe in the Possession of ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... of cloth.) Our efforts puzzled everyone (including the plantons) more than considerably; which was natural, considering that everyone did not know that by this exceedingly simple means we were effecting a study of colour itself, in relation to what is popularly called "abstract" and sometimes "non-representative" painting. Despite their natural puzzlement everyone (plantons excepted) was extraordinarily kind and brought us often valuable additions to our chromatic collection. ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... an abstract proposition," says Mr. Robert, "that is quite correct; but in this instance the situation is somewhat more complicated. As a matter of fact, I find myself in a ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... process which thereupon took place in Rita's mind would be a barren task, since its result was a foregone conclusion. Daring ambition rather than any merely abstract virtue was the keynote of her character. She had rebuffed the advances of Sir Lucien as she had rebuffed others, primarily because her aim in life was set higher than mere success in light comedy. This she counted but a means to a more desirable ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... I knew that the word was the name of the process that was going on in my head. This was my first conscious perception of an abstract idea. ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... Ciaran, and there is danger of confusion between them. The name reappears in Cornwall, with the regular Brythonic change of Q to P, in the form Pieran or Pirran. This Pieran is wrongly identified by Skene[8] with our saint; a single glance at the abstract of the Life of St. Pieran given by Sir T.D. Hardy[9] will show how mistaken this identification is. A similar confusion is probably at the base of the curious statement in Adam King's Scottish Kalendar of Saints, that Queranus was an "abot in Scotl[a]d under king Ethus, ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... needed in his work; it gave body to his creations, but in his most characteristic and original tales this body was not to be one of external fact, but of moral thought. His genius contained a primary element of reflection, of meditation on life, of the abstract; and while his imagination might take its start and find an initial impulse, an occasion, in some concrete object on which it fastened, its course in working itself out was governed by this abstract moral intention. In ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... has a point of view, a position so admirably brought out by Browning in his 'Ring and the Book,' so it is also, I think, a truism that every man has (not always consciously) a philosophy. A philosophy is, after all, a point of view; it is not necessarily an abstract academic position; nor is it always a well-defined attempt to discover the ultimate purpose of things. It can be, and very often is, a point of view really ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... Cochrane. "I'm not trying anything so abstract as furnishing hope to a frustrated humanity! Nobody can supply an abstraction! Nobody can accomplish an abstraction! Everything that's actually done is specific and real! Maybe you can find abstract qualities in it after it's done, but I'm ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... been unduly worked in this instance," Hillard declared with emphasis. "Beauty in women has always been to me something in the abstract, but it is so no longer. There is one thing which I wish to impress upon you, Dan. She is not an adventuress. She has made no effort to trap me. On the contrary, she has done all she could to keep out of ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... the souls of unborn men and women who would love it hereafter. Somehow its age-old and ever-young message seemed to come soothingly to her heart. "All end is but beginning, and no end is final. The present is but hesitation between past and future. Shadows and sunlight are abstract things until you see them side by side—filtered through my branches. Winds are silent until they find voice through my leaves.... My staunch column gives you your standard of uprightness ... beneath me red men and white have fought and whispered ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... obloquy and sneers sure to attend upon any proposal to retrace it. However, the repealing measure was proposed and carried, Shelburne supporting the ministers with all his might, though, doubting as he did even the abstract right of England to tax her colonies, he with only four other peers divided the House against them on the question of the well-known declaratory resolution. Sic vos non vobis. Though the Rockingham administration repealed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... wants are satisfied by two dollars a day he is getting the same result as the banker, whose standard of living crowds his big income. Having secured the essentials, then, what is the next urge of life? Happiness. That, however, brings us to a more abstract question. ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the love of woman is shown to be the same as the love of beauty; and that in its turn is identical with the love of the principle of beauty in all things. Keats was always very sensitive to the mysterious effects of moonlight, and so for him the moon became a symbol for the great abstract principle of beauty, which, during the whole of his poetic life, he worshipped intellectually and spiritually. "The mighty abstract Idea I have of Beauty in all things stifles the more divided and minute domestic happiness," he writes to his brother George; and the ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... philosophers had not more to say about the incongruity of people who had never had any trouble of their own sitting in judgment upon people who had known nothing but trouble. He was thinking also that abstract rules did not always fit smoothly over concrete cases, and that it was hard to make life ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... property and abolishing hurtful privileges, as was done in France. Afterwards Napoleon asked many questions about the Cortes, and when Lord John told him that many of the members made good speeches on abstract questions, but they failed when any practical debate on finance or war took place, Napoleon drily remarked: 'Oui, faute de l'habitude de gouverner.' Presently the talk drifted to Wellington, or rather Napoleon adroitly led it thither. He described the man who had driven the French out of Spain as ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... decline going to church, on the ground that he was going to tea at Mr. Lunn's, whose pretty daughter Sally had been an early flame of his, and, when the church-goers were at a safe distance, to abstract the guineas from their wooden box and slip them into a small canvas bag—nothing easier than to call to the cowboy that he was going, and tell him to keep an eye on the house for fear of Sunday tramps. David thought it would be easy, too, to ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... as limiting the sphere of the will, and, consequently, of moral accountability, opens a very wide range of speculation. I can give you only a brief abstract of my own opinions on this delicate and difficult subject. Crime and sin, being the preserves of two great organized interests, have been guarded against all reforming poachers with as great jealousy as the Royal Forests. It is so easy to hang a troublesome fellow! It is so much simpler ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... one chance," he continued. "Pickpockets usually abstract the money, instantly, and throw the book and papers away. They want no tell-tale evidence. It may be the case here—they, likely, didn't examine the letter, just saw it was a letter ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... varied as they arose from their different customs, they participated in the same intellectual faculties, suffered from the same wants, and were alive to the same pleasures; they perceived that there were no conventional fashions, nor national distinctions, in abstract truths and fundamental knowledge. A new spirit seems to bring them nearer to each other: and, as if literary Europe were intent to form but one people out of the populace of mankind, they offer their ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... that the constituted authorities of this Republic are bound to regard the rights of the South in this respect as they would view any other legal and constitutional right, and that the laws to enforce them should be respected and obeyed, not with a reluctance encouraged by abstract opinions as to their propriety in a different state of society, but cheerfully and according to the decisions of the tribunal to which their exposition belongs. Such have been, and are, my convictions, ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... no patient Grizel, the very last person to be trapped in the bog of love's despondency. Abstract melancholy produced by colours, memories, or sounds was an easy enough matter with her, but she was not the person to mourn long over the loss of a man snatched from ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... concerned so much with recording the intrigues of kings and the movements of armies as with scrutinising the motives and estimating the personal forces which have shaped the ages. Even in the domain of theology itself this tendency is visible. Our theologians are not content with discussing abstract doctrines or recounting the decisions of church councils, but are turning to the gospels and seeking to depict the life of Jesus—to probe the secret of His divine humanity and to interpret the meaning for the world of His ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... need of sound guidance. Though Scharnhorst had pointed out the way of salvation, a strategic tempter was soon at hand in the person of General von Phull, an uncompromising theorist who planned campaigns with an unquestioning devotion to abstract principles. Untaught by the catastrophes of the past, Alexander once more let his enthusiasm for theories and principles lead him to the brink of the abyss. Phull captivated him by setting forth the true plan of a defensive campaign ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... conventionalities. Mrs. Baggs was not quite so sober in her habits, perhaps, as matrons in general are expected to be; but, for my particular purpose, this was only a slight blemish; it takes so little, after all, to represent the abstract principle of propriety in the short-sighted eye of ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... subjected to the ordeal by the priest of his tribe. I told him also how powerless European science would be to detect it. How he took it I cannot say, for I never left the room, but there is no doubt that it was then, while I was opening cabinets and stooping to boxes, that he managed to abstract some of the devil's-foot root. I well remember how he plied me with questions as to the amount and the time that was needed for its effect, but I little dreamed that he could have a personal reason ...
— The Adventure of the Devil's Foot • Arthur Conan Doyle
... speak, my good Galeotti? and didst thou think thy speaking it would offend me?" said the King. "Alack, I know that thou art well sensible that the path of royal policy cannot be always squared (as that of private life ought invariably to be) by the abstract maxims of religion and of morality. Wherefore do we, the Princes of the earth, found churches and monasteries, make pilgrimages, undergo penances, and perform devotions with which others may dispense, unless ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... born equal," says Montesquieu; but in the hands of such a thinker no danger need be apprehended from such an axiom. For having drank deeply of the true spirit of law, he was, in matters of government, ever ready to sacrifice abstract perfection to concrete utility. Neither the principle of equality, nor any other, would he apply in all cases or to every subject. He was no dreamer. He was a profound thinker and a real statesman. "Though real equality," says he, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... he was so flustered. He barely recognized Elisaveta dressed up as a boy in her sailor jacket and short breeches. She sat so erect there, and smiled her abstract, indifferent smile. ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... moved Northward, and the other branch, with the masters, will be moved Southward, so that, by the time the Northern army will have penetrated to the centre of the border slave States, they will be relieved of the substance and abstract rights of slave property for all time ...
— The Abolition Of Slavery The Right Of The Government Under The War Power • Various
... given to Napoleon upon his graduation read thus:—"This young man is reserved and studious, he prefers study to any amusement, and enjoys reading the best authors, applies himself earnestly to the abstract sciences, cares little for anything else. He is silent, and loves solitude. He is capricious, haughty, and excessively egotisical, talks little, but is quick and energetic in his replies, prompt and severe in his repartees, has great pride and ambition, aspiring to any thing. The young man ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... to me to give insufficient prominence to the gaiety of Stevenson. It was his cardinal quality in those early days. A childlike mirth leaped and danced in him; he seemed to skip the hills of life. He was simply bubbling with quips and jest; his inherent earnestness or passion about abstract things was incessantly relieved by jocosity; and when he had built one of his intellectual castles in the sand, a wave of humor was certain to sweep in and destroy it. I can not, for the life of me, recall any of his jokes; and written down in cold blood, they might not seem funny ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... Parsis is fire, and it would seem that the earthly fire, which is called Ahura Mazda's son, is venerated as the offspring and representative of the heavenly fire or the sun. Thus Ahura Mazda may have been originally an old god of the heavens, and may have become the abstract spirit of light from whom the sun in turn was derived. If, as is now supposed, the original home of the Aryan race was somewhere in northern Europe, whence the Iranian and Indian branches migrated to the east, the religious ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... nobler natures often saw the guardian spirits of others. Thus Njal saw the fylgjur of Gunnar's enemies, which gave him no rest the livelong night, and his weird feeling is soon confirmed by the news brought by his shepherd. From the fylgja of the individual it was easy to rise to the still more abstract notion of the guardian spirits of a family, who sometimes, if a great change in the house is about to begin, even show themselves as hurtful to some member of the house. He believed also that some men had more than one shape; that they could either take the shapes of animals, ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... have a room with a view of the sea. It would be at the price of from thirty to fifty francs a day. Mary said that she would like to see a room for thirty francs, and felt economical and virtuous as she did so. She had been brought up to consider economy a good thing in the abstract, but she knew practically nothing of the value of money, as she had never bought anything for herself until she went to London. It seemed to her now that, with fifty thousand pounds, she was so rich that she could have anything she ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and that gentleman concerned in the stamp-office that I so strangely recoiled from at Haydon's. I think I had an instinct that he was the head of an office, I hate all such people,—accountants' deputy accountants. The mere abstract notion of the East India Company, as long as she is unseen, is pretty, rather poetical; but as she makes herself manifest by the persons of such beasts, I loathe and detest her as the scarlet what-do-you-call-her of Babylon. I thought, ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... feats of this kind in England too. However, I once heard a German professor say that the English boy outdid the German in gesunder Menschenverstand (sound common sense), but that the German wins in the race when it comes to the abstract knowledge (Wissen) that he and his countryfolk prize above all the treasures of the earth. No one who knows both countries can doubt for a single moment that the professor was right, and that he stated the case as fairly ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... masculine and trenchant figures "The Four Powers." These are of heroic height, and create an impression of superhuman size and strength even when raised so far above the ground. They have a simple robustness that accords well with their theme. Two of the Powers are abstract, the driving powers of thought; these are Invention and Imagination. Two are concrete, representing the mightiest powers of modern mechanics, Steam Power and Electric Power. Steam Power is forcing the driving arm of an engine; Electric Power, the world at his feet, handles the lightnings. ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... considered his own life tolerably sacred," he responded. "As an abstract proposition life may be sacred. Practically it's about the cheapest thing on earth. It persists and repeats and increases in spite of war, pestilence, and famine. The principal value of the individual life is its service ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... of understanding were his substance, it would be necessary for it to be subsisting. Now a subsisting act of intelligence can be but one; just as an abstract thing that subsists. Consequently an angel's substance would neither be distinguished from God's substance, which is His very act of understanding subsisting in itself, nor from the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... was of what is usually called a very good family—being nearly connected with the Walpoles, Earls of Orford, and the Turners of Warham, in Norfolk. But for further information on this point, we refer them to an abstract of the pedigree prefixed to the letters. In the year 1777, and several following years, Nelson's principal correspondents were his brother, the Rev. William Nelson, who succeeded as second Baron Nelson ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... it was a charming profession. Meanwhile, by going to the very opposite extreme from sophistry, I mean by a more than Quixotic veneration for an abstract dogma you hold to be true, and by your determination to make people die for it, you are causing fearful misery of body, untold agony of soul, to a woman and a man whom you should have every reason to like. Go to, ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... orator, or moralist, but he became all these by merely daring to tell us whatever passed through his mind, in its naked simplicity and force, that he thought any ways worth communicating. He did not, in the abstract character of an author, undertake to say all that could be said upon a subject, but what in his capacity as an inquirer after truth he happened to know about it. He was neither a pedant nor a bigot. He neither supposed that he was bound to know all things, nor that ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... typical March night, this one upon which the extraordinary incident about to be related took place. It was the kind of night that novelists use when they are handling a mystery that in the abstract would amount to nothing, but which in the concrete of a bit of wild, weird, and windy nocturnalism sends the reader into hysterics. It may be—I shall not attempt to deny it—that had it happened upon another kind of an evening—a soft, mild, balmy June evening, for instance—my own ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... aeternitate tua digna). Late in the second century such phrases become commoner. With Severus Alexander (A.D. 221-35) coins begin to show the legend Perpetuitas Aug., and before very long the indirect and abstract language changes into direct epithets which are incorporated in the emperors' titulature. The first case which I can find of this is that before us, of Philip (A.D. 244-9); a little later, Aurelian (A.D. 270-5) is styled semper Augustus and, from Diocletian onwards, ...
— Roman Britain in 1914 • F. Haverfield
... for instance, a little bundle of most excellent leaflets issued by the League for Social Service of New York. They deal with such subjects as The Duties of American Citizenship, The Value of a Vote, The Duty of Public Spirit, The Co-operative City, &c. They include an admirable abstract in twenty-four pages, of Laws Concerning the Welfare of Every Citizen of New York, and the same Society issues similar abstracts of the laws of other States. They have a large and well-equipped lecture organisation, and they issue excellent practical Suggestions ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... wonder so much why they should have been WOMEN, and halt between two opinions in the matter. Sometimes I think it is because they were made by a man for men; sometimes, again, I think there is an abstract reason for it, and there is something more substantive about a woman than ever there can be about a man. I can conceive a great mythical woman, living alone among inaccessible mountain-tops or in some lost island ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Bridge was discovered in 1909 by William Boone Douglass, Examiner of Surveys in the General Land Office, Santa Fe. Following is an abstract of the government report ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... was that Mr. Rylands did not know. He had known this sort of thing only in the abstract. He had never had the least acquaintance with the class to which his wife had belonged, nor known anything of their methods. It was a revelation to him now, in the woman he loved, and who was his wife. He was not shocked so much as he ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... to an examination of her desertion of Arnaud, but she could find no trace of conventional regret; of what, she felt, her sensation ought to be. The instinctive revolt from oblivion was an infinitely stronger reality than any allegiance to abstract duty. She was consumed by the passionate need to preserve the integrity of being herself. The word selfish occurred to her but to be met unabashed by the query, why not? Selfishness was a reproach applied by those ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... lying at the open door, watching the movements of Thor (the raven), whose depredatory proclivities were well known to the dog. Thor, perfectly aware that a detective's eye was upon him, did not venture to abstract any of the wreckage, but assumed an air of careless curiosity as he hopped about among Mr. Adiesen's ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... of the conflict between the interests of an oligarchy based upon slavery and a democracy in which slavery, if it exists at all, exists as a mere accident that may be dispensed with without any radical social revolution. Slavery, as opposed to divine law or to abstract justice, never has brought, nor ever will bring, two countries into conflict with each other; but slavery made indispensable as a peculiar institution, as an organized fact, as a fundamental social necessity, must come into conflict ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... numerous Kami, more or less abstract beings without any distinguishing functions, who preceded the progenitors of the Yamato race, and there was the goddess of the Sun, pre-eminent and supreme, together with deities of the Moon, of the stars, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... perfectly capable of seeing and describing an abstract wife like that in blistering terms that would make an industrious street-walker look almost respectable by comparison. But when he looked at Rose, he saw her through the lens, as some one to be loved and desired,—and prevented, if ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... bands of red (hoist side), blue, and red; centered on the hoist-side red band in yellow is the national emblem ("soyombo" - a columnar arrangement of abstract and geometric representation for fire, sun, moon, earth, water, and the ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... only that these rights, enjoyed by one portion of the American people, may be extended to embrace the whole, not less for the abstract but all-sufficient reason, that they have been given to the whole by the Creator, than that by their application to the whole, the more general will be the benefits experienced; and the deeper, broader, more prevailing and more enduring will become those benefits. Manifestly, such must be the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... muscle quivered; no nerve thrilled; no artery throbbed. But there seemed to have sprung up in the brain that of which no words could convey to the merely human intelligence even an indistinct conception. Let me term it a mental pendulous pulsation. It was the moral embodiment of man's abstract idea of Time. By the absolute equalization of this movement—or of such as this—had the cycles of the firmamental orbs themselves been adjusted. By its aid I measured the irregularities of the clock upon the mantel, ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... live at Four Forks, in his own house; and next winter we're going to Sacramento. I suppose it's all right, father, eh?" She emphasized the question with a slight kick through the bed-clothes, as the parental McClosky had fallen into an abstract revery. ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... much interest in abstract statements. 'You remember,' she said, turning to Baruch, 'that man Chorley as has the big farm on the left-hand side just afore you come to the common? He wasn't a Surrey man: he came ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... a more or less indefinite notion abroad that the Bantu languages, as compared with those of Europe, are but poor and ineffective vehicles for the conveyance of abstract ideas, wherefore the capacity to form and entertain such ideas may be taken to be innately inferior in the Native brain. That the language of a people embodies, so to speak, in objective form the intellectual progress made by it is ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... understanding what Bergson has to say requires a very considerable effort from anyone, but the feat is perhaps most difficult of all for those who have carefully trained themselves in habits of rigorous logical criticism. In attempting to describe what we actually know in the abstract logical terms which are the only means of intercommunication that human beings possess, Bergson is driven into perpetual self-contradiction, indeed, paradoxical though it may sound, unless he contradicted himself ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen
... he could conceive of no words, no thoughts, no arguments adequate to that strife. Had he been a Papist he might have turned with hope, even with pious confidence, to the Holy Stoup, the Bell and Book and Candle, to the Relics, and hundred Exorcisms of his Church. But the colder and more abstract faith of Calvin, while it admitted the possibility of such possessions, supplied no weapons of ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... the "Clarion." Moreover, he was bitterly disappointed in Hal as a man. Had his superior "gone on the loose" and contracted a liaison with some woman of the outer world, Ellis would have passed over the abstract morality of the question. But to take advantage of a girl in his own employ, and then so cruelly to leave her to her fate,—there was rot at the heart of the man who could do that. The excision of the offending "Relief Pills" ad. after the culmination of the tragedy, ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... an ear for it; whim also to construe lord and master relaxed but reboant and soaring above the verbal to harmonic truths of abstract or transcendental, to be hummed subsequently by privileged female audience of one bent on a hook-or-crook plucking out ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... in the latter particular of what he wished and expected. The duty of an officer, the most imposing of all others to the inexperienced mind, because accompanied with so much outward pomp and circumstance, is in its essence a very dry and abstract task, depending chiefly upon arithmetical combinations, requiring much attention, and a cool and reasoning head to bring them into action. Our hero was liable to fits of absence, in which his blunders excited some mirth, and called down some reproof. This circumstance ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... the same time, we feel inclined to agree with Mr. Farrer that the red berries of the mountain-ash probably singled it out from among trees for worship long before our ancestors had arrived at any idea of abstract divinities. The beauty of its berries, added to their brilliant red colour, would naturally excite feelings of admiration and awe, and hence it would in process of time become invested with a sacred significance. It must be remembered, too, that all over ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... compared with these in this respect. These are the most liberal in scale of all the old Teutonic poems; the largest epic works of which we know anything directly. These are the fullest in composition, the least abstract or elliptical; and they still want something of the scale of the Iliad. The poem of Maldon, for instance, corresponds not to the Iliad, but to the action of a single book, such as the twelfth, with which it has been already ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... resolute. I had caught Aunt Elizabeth's eye as she passed me, and the contempt in it had cut me to the quick. This bird despised me. I am not a violent or a quick-tempered man, but I have my self-respect. I will not be sneered at by hens. All the abstract desire for Fame which had filled my mind five minutes before was concentrated now on the task ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... Spinoza became recognized by the esoteric few as one of the world's great thinkers, although the good people with whom he lived knew him only as a model lodger, who kept regular hours and made little trouble. Occasionally visitors would come from a distance and remain for hours discussing such abstract themes as the freedom of the will or the nature of the over-soul. And these visitors caused the rustic neighbors to grow curious, and we find Spinoza moving into the city and renting a modest back room. By a curious chance, his ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... virtually, one of the favoured nation, by habit and connection as well as in blood? and did not England's greatness send down a reflected light on all her sons?—only poetical justice, as it was earlier sons who had made the greatness. But of that Mrs. Dallas did not think. 'England' was an abstract idea of majesty and power, embodied in a land and a government; and Westminster Abbey was in a sort the record and visible token of the same, and testimony of it, in the face of all the world. So Mrs. Dallas enjoyed Westminster Abbey, and her heart swelled in contemplation ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... How far this condition limits the system of shaft grouping we shall see presently. The reader must remember, that we at present reason respecting shafts in the abstract only. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... me!" ejaculated my mother, again breaking into our conversation after a brief pause, during which she must have gone through an abstract mental calculation. "Why, that will be barely a month from ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... ends with two appendices: the first an abstract of Thomas Candish's circumnavigation; the second an abstract of Dutch expeditions to ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... numerous works may be seen in the Biogr. Dictionaires, or in Watts's Bibl. Britt. To his "Christian Morals," Dr. Johnson has prefixed his Life. It is so masterly written, that it is impossible to give even an abstract. Dr. Kippis has, however, in part, transcribed it. He was chosen Honorary Fellow of the College of Physicians, as a man virtute et literas ornatissimus. In 1671, he received the honour of Knighthood from Charles II., a prince, (says ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... duty. Of our men 21 have died, and many more are sore hurt or sick. Mr Burton has been sick for six weeks, and is now so very weak that, unless God strengthen him, I fear he will hardly escape. Your worship will find inclosed an abstract of all the goods we have sold, and also of what commodities we have received for them; reserving all things else till our meeting, and to the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... If one takes up a review of a book on America by Mr. Wells or Mr. Bennett, it is in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred in order to find out what the author thinks, not what the reviewer thinks. If the reviewer begins with a paragraph of general remarks about America—or, worse still, about some abstract thing like liberty—he is almost invariably wasting paper. I believe it is a sound rule to destroy all preliminary paragraphs of this kind. They are detestable in almost all writing, but most detestable of all in book-reviews, where it is important to plunge ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... the most interesting place on the face of the earth; and perhaps he was right. Let us hear what he has to say about this halo of old association: "To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible if it were endeavoured; and would be foolish if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... Man has these faculties developed, the animals have them undeveloped. In the "Life and Letters of Charles Darwin," published by his son, is a letter from Mr. Darwin to W. Graham, written in 1881, from which I quote the following: "I have no practice in abstract reasoning, and I may be all astray. Nevertheless, you have expressed my inward conviction, though far more vividly and clearly than I could have done. But then, with me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... pleasure, nor was it pain, but a chilliness of soul which proceeded from the gloomy and severe task that I had undertaken—a task which, when I considered the danger and the advantages annexed to its performance, was sufficient to abstract me from every other object. It was really the first exercise of that jealous spirit of mistaken devotion which keeps the soul in perpetual sickness, and invests the innocent enjoyments of life with a character of sin and severity. It was this gloomy feeling that could alone have strangled in ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... extension. He asserted, that man thinks eternally, and that the soul, at its coming into the body, is informed with the whole series of metaphysical notions: knowing God, infinite space, possessing all abstract ideas—in a word, completely endued with the most sublime lights, which it unhappily forgets at ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... kings of Sicily, fills books of the Istoria Civile of Giannone, (tom. ii. l. xi.-xiv. p. 136-340,) and is spread over the ixth and xth volumes of the Italian Annals of Muratori. In the Bibliotheque Italique (tom. i. p. 175-122,) I find a useful abstract of Capacelatro, a modern Neapolitan, who has composed, in two volumes, the history of his country from Roger Frederic ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... grew older, his poetry, dominated too much by his acute intellect, became more and more abstract. In Under the Old Elm, for example, he speaks ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... inevitable product of cause and effect. We know that. We must admit that he is just as much a fact of the universe as a shower of rain or a storm at sea that swallows a ship. We freely grant in the abstract that there must be, at the present stage of evolution, a certain number of persons with unfair minds. We are quite ready to contemplate such an individual with philosophy—until it happens that, in the course of the progress of the solar system, ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... cannot be absolutely maintained. It may be also that the number of intervals following that concerning which judgment is to be given, and with which that interval may be compared, has an influence on the accuracy of the judgment made. If we abstract from this last set of results, the tendency which appears is toward an increase in accuracy of perception of comparative durations from the beginning to the end of the series, a tendency which appears more markedly ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... NOTE B, p. 80. The abstract of the report of the Brook House committee (so that committee was called) was first published by Mr. Ralph (vol. i. p. 177), from Lord Halifax's collections, to which I refer. If we peruse their apology, which we find in the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... flat in the abstract, and he had not expected this concrete result. But he said, "We will look at ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... small valise in his hand, and a light summer overcoat flung over his shoulder. Many half-thoughts grazed his mind, and ere the first had taken shape, the second and the third came and chased it away. And still they all in some fashion had reference to Bertha; for in a misty, abstract way, she filled his whole mind; but for some indefinable reason, he was afraid to give free rein to the sentiment which lurked in the remoter ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... loaded with grain for Rouen; and on the eastern horizon the armada, in crescent at present, moving with fires banked at two knots, a glare hiding them from the naked eye, but the glass revealing them like toys in the abstract, ethereally hazy. ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... and with which our legal jargon is saturated. We find in Anglo-French many words which are unrecorded in continental Old French, among them one which we like to think of as essentially English, viz., duete, duty, an abstract formed from the past participle of Fr. devoir. This verb has also given us endeavour, due to the phrase se ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... said Jean thoughtfully. "I like Jack—he's clever. He has all the moral qualities which one admires so much in the abstract. I could ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... the interpretation given to many of these myths that one is compelled to question. Bachofen's way of applying mythical tales has no scientific method; for one thing, abstract ideas are added to primitive legends which could only arise from the thought of civilised peoples. For instance, he accepts, without any doubt, the existence of the Amazons; and believes that the myths which refer to them record "a revolt for the elevation of the feminine sex, ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... position as the starting-point for a greater prize. Lady Eynesford was, here again, with him—up to a point. She thought (and thoughts are apt to put themselves with a bluntness which would be inexcusable in speech) that it was high time that Eleanor Scaife was married, and, from an abstract point of view, this could hardly be denied. Lady Eynesford took the next step. Eleanor and Coxon would suit one another to perfection. Hence the invitations to tea, and Lady Eynesford's considerate withdrawals into the house, or out of sight in the ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... It softened the blow to a certain extent that Mike should be going to Wain's. He had the same feeling for Mike that most boys of eighteen have for their fifteen-year-old brothers. He was fond of him in the abstract, but preferred ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... association with Krafft. Through him the young lawyer came into intimate personal touch with a large class of people who would otherwise have been remote from him. He heard of their difficulties and problems at first hand, saw the actual effect of abuses that, looked at from above, were abstract or academic. Police brutality as a phrase carried little significance; police brutality as a clubbing of Malachi Hogan, who was brought in with his skull crushed, and whose blood stained Keith's new coat, meant something. Waste of public funds, translated before his eyes into eviction for ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... leaves us as far from the origin as ever. What does it all mean? What is behind it all? The "voice of God," says the artist, "the voice of the devil," says the man in the front row. Are we, because we are, human beings, born with the power of innate perception of the beautiful in the abstract so that an inspiration can arise through no external stimuli of sensation or experience,—no association with the outward? Or was there present in the above instance, some kind of subconscious, instantaneous, composite ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... ancient city's walls. There are many such imperfect syncretisms or eclecticisms in the history of philosophy. A modern philosopher, though emancipated from scholastic notions of essence or substance, might still be seriously affected by the abstract idea of necessity; or though accustomed, like Bacon, to criticize abstract notions, might not extend his ...
— Sophist • Plato
... amusement, to the disturbance of an invalid who is lying in a critical state in the next room. Do the mere consequences make this otherwise innocent amusement evil? Yes, if you consider the amusement in the abstract: but if you take it as this human act, the act is inordinate and evil in itself, or as it is elicited in the mind of the agent. The volition amounts to this: "I prefer my amusement to my neighbour's recovery," which is an act unseemly and unreasonable in the mind of a social being. Utilitarians ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... him and liked him, and because he had shown himself no partisan of either side in the civil war, though he was known to be inclined, in the way of abstract opinion, toward a form of government that was not monarchy, the commissioners appointed in 1646 to bring Charles from Newcastle named Harrington as one of the King's attendants. The King was pleased, and Harrington was ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... not yet united: and Edith the Christian maid dwelt in the home of Hilda the heathen prophetess. The girl's blue eyes, rendered dark by the shade of their long lashes, were fixed intently upon the stern and troubled countenance which was bent upon her own, but bent with that abstract gaze which shows that the soul is absent from the sight. So sate Hilda, and so reclined ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Translation by Goerres, with Von Hammer's Review, Vienna Jahrbuch von Lit. 17, 75, 77. Malcolm's Persia, 8vo. ed. i. 503. Macan's Preface to his Critical Edition of the Shah Nameh. On the early Persian History, a very sensible abstract of various opinions ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... cried Roy savagely. Not that the abstract fact of the bells ringing was of any moment to him, but he was in a mood to be angry with everything. "Here, you!" continued he, seizing hold of a boy who was running by, "what be them ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... that manner celebrated his 80th birthday; and it was opened October 1, 1880. The College, which is estimated to have cost L100,000, was built entirely by the founder who also endowed it with an income of about L3,700 per annum, with the intention of providing instruction in mathematics, abstract and applied; physics, mathematical and experimental; chemistry, theoretical, practical, and applied; the natural sciences, geology, metallurgy and mineralogy; botany, zoology and physiology; English, French and German, to which have since been added Greek, Latin, English literature, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... there between that strong description and the sentence quoted from the Freethinker in our Indictment, which declared the same being as "cruel as a Bashi-Bazouk and bloodthirsty as a Bengal tiger"? The one is an abstract and the other a concrete expression of the same view; the one is philosophical and the other popular; the one is a cold statement and the other a burning metaphor. To allow the one to circulate with impunity, and to punish the other with twelve months' imprisonment, is to turn ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... sufficient for a crop yielding 31 bushels of wheat; the phosphorus is sufficient for a crop of 44 bushels, and the potassium for a crop of 35 bushels per acre. Dr. Hopkins, in his recent valuable work on "Soil Fertility and Permanent Agriculture" gives, on page 154, a table from which we abstract ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... the exercise of its own reasoning powers or from its senses. How does it learn the meaning of words? Certain nouns like "papa" or "cat" it may easily be made to understand by pointing at the object referred to and uttering the word, but how does it learn the meaning of abstract nouns, or of verbs and other parts of speech which cannot be illustrated by pantomime? It is almost inevitable that the child should use many words the meaning of which it does not understand, and when young children ...
— How to Study • George Fillmore Swain
... "Livingstone followed the dictates of duty. Never was such a willing slave to that abstract virtue. His inclinations impel him home, the fascinations of which it requires the sternest resolution to resist. With every foot of new ground he travelled over he forged a chain of sympathy which should hereafter bind the Christian nations ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... hand. When he tried to do so his conclusions seemed grotesquely fanciful and farfetched. This delay was all the more annoying because on the morrow the girl was to be buried, and, therefore, the precious hours were slipping away. He tried repeatedly to attain that abstract, subconscious mood in which alone shines the pure light ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... to be danced, the theatrical action must go forward with the utmost rapidity: there must not be one unmeaning entry, figure, or step in them. Such a piece ought to be a close crouded abstract of ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... temple where the beautiful is always worshipped; it makes a continuous appeal to the higher senses and natural passions. In this temple vice is punished, and virtue rewarded; the great social problems are presented. In this temple instruction is less abstract, and, therefore, more profitable for the crowd. The apostles of this temple are full of faith and courage; they have the souls of missionaries marching always toward ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... he was looked upon as the hope of the Barnburners and the most dangerous foe of the Hunkers. Even Horatio Seymour was afraid of him. He did not advocate abolition; he did not treat slavery in the abstract; he did not transcend the Free-soil doctrine. But he spoke with such power and brilliancy that Henry Wilson, afterward Vice President, declared him "the bright particular star of the revolt."[372] He was not an impassioned ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Articles can be verified in standard periodical indexes and abstracting services such as Reader's Guide, Education Index, Psychological Abstracts, Engineering Index, etc. Give full citation including volume, series, year/date, page, abstract number of verification. If request could not be ...
— The Long Island Library Resources Council (LILRC) Interlibrary Loan Manual: January, 1976 • Anonymous
... opposites: but in strictness he should rather have spoken of a harmony which succeeds opposites, for an agreement of disagreements there cannot be. Music too is concerned with the principles of love in their application to harmony and rhythm. In the abstract, all is simple, and we are not troubled with the twofold love; but when they are applied in education with their accompaniments of song and metre, then the discord begins. Then the old tale has to be repeated of fair Urania and the coarse Polyhymnia, ...
— Symposium • Plato
... mathematical science not merely as a vast body of abstract and immutable truths, ... but as possessing a yet deeper interest for the human race, when it is remembered that this science constitutes the language through which alone we can adequately express the great facts of the natural world ... those who thus think on mathematical ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... Secretary of the Interior herewith attached gives much interesting statistical information, which I abstain from giving an abstract of, but refer you to ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... deepest observers of human nature, owed their renown more to an acute observation of the phenomena of feeling, an intuitive knowledge of what people like and dislike, a retentive memory, and a happy knack of making all these available at the right moment, than to any profound reasoning on abstract principles. Like some untaught arithmeticians, their calculations came out correct, but they could not have gone through the steps of ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... is generally concrete. The artist may wish to give expression to a general truth, or philosophical principle, or ethereal fancy. These appear very abstract, but the artist embodies in material forms the idea he wishes to convey. The poet expresses his thought by the suggestion of material imagery, and emotion is most readily aroused by ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... token I can give) that the moth and rust of time have not eaten away the affection which I had for you all, and that those two thieves, Change and Death, which were so early busy with us, have not been able to undermine the house of our Love, nor abstract the treasure of ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... The reader who is not satisfied with the picture now given of these wretched and disgusting beings, may turn to the abstract of Bougainville's Voyage, quoted in the preceding volume of this collection, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... but the thin shadow And blank foreboding, never a wainscot rat Rasping a crust? Or at the window pane No fly, no bluebottle, no starveling spider? The windows frame a prospect of cold skies Half-merged with sea, as at the first creation, Abstract, confusing welter. Face about, Peer rather in the glass once more, take note Of self, the grey lips and long hair dishevelled, Sleep-staring eyes. Ah, mirror, for Christ's love Give me one token ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... pass to Jupiter or Mercury, and instantly he becomes aware of a revolting individuality. He sees before him the opposite pole of deity. The river-god had too little of a concrete character. Jupiter has nothing else. In Jupiter you read no incarnation of any abstract quality whatever: he represents nothing whatever in the metaphysics of the universe. Except for the accident of his power, he is merely a man. He has a character, that is, a tendency or determination to this quality ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... remains, in fact, a mere abstraction, inasmuch as the former is not comprehended and exhibited as a development of it—an organization produced by and from Reason. I wish, at the very outset, to call your attention to the important difference between a conception, a principle, a truth limited to an abstract form, and its determinate application and concrete development. This distinction affects the whole fabric of philosophy; and among other bearings of it there is one to which we shall have to revert at the close of our view of universal history, in investigating the aspect of political affairs ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... perjury, that were ever witnessed in this or any other country on a similar occasion. The whole number of votes polled was forty-one thousand three hundred. It is a notorious fact, that there are not forty thousand legal voters residing in the city. In the abstract this election is but of little importance. Its moral influence on other sections of the country remains to be seen. Generally, the effect of such a triumph is unfavourable to the defeated party in other places; and it would be so in the present instance, if the contest had been an ordinary ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... (prayer) "to stand" (i.e., to begin). Hereupon the worshippers recite the Farz or Koran commanded noon-prayer of Friday; and the unco' guid add a host of superogatories Those who would study the subject may consult Lane (M. E. chaps. iii. and its abstract in his "Arabian Nights," I, p. 430, or note 69 to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... beneficent vital-spark every body, but a lawyer, is in search; and it is what every body, but a lawyer, is delighted to find. No wonder therefore that a lawyer should meet discomfiture, and confusion, when he pretends to discuss the abstract nature of justice, in any place except in these aforesaid ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... came. If he loved abstract truth, he saved himself by propounding the most popular of all principles, the absolute good, which rules rulers, and judges the judge. If he made transcendental distinctions, he fortified himself by drawing all his illustrations from sources disdained by orators, ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... She agreed. She respected her husband in the same way as she respected the General Post Office, as something large, secure and fixed; and though she knew the small number of his talents she appreciated his abstract value as a male. She was glad that he had suggested coming with her. ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... the first part of this tale should be of peculiar interest to the student of Shakspeare as well as to those engaged in tracing the genealogy of popular fiction. Jonathan Scott has given—for reasons of his own—a meagre abstract of a similar tale which occurs in the "Bahar-i- Danish" (vol. iii. App., p. 291), ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... only integral parts of the person, but its most distinctive attributes. When Earl Grey said he would stand or fall by his order, it was as if he had said, he would stand or fall by himself. Take a noble lord, and, if the process be possible, abstract him mentally from his titles and privileges, and offer the two lots separately for sale in the market, who would not buy the latter if they could? who would, in most cases, even bid for the first? It is the title that is asked everywhere to dinner; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... moral and intellectual system of doctrine, comprehending at once the past, the present, and the future condition of man. Jesus Christ divulged the sacred and eternal truths contained in these views to mankind, and Christianity, in its abstract purity, became the exoteric expression of the esoteric doctrines of the poetry and wisdom of antiquity. The incorporation of the Celtic nations with the exhausted population of the south, impressed upon it the figure of the poetry existing in their mythology and ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... her neighbours, and to the conduct of people with whom she lives, almost invariably right. She has a quick insight, and an affectionate heart, which together keep her from going astray. She knows how to do good, and when to do it. But to abstract argument, and to political truth, she is wilfully blind. I felt it to be necessary that I should select this opportunity for making Jack understand that I would not fear his opposition; but I own that I could have wished that Mrs ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... My judgment was stronger than were my powers of realizing its dictates; and the faults of my language, though indeed partly owing to a wrong choice of subjects, and the desire of giving a poetic colouring to abstract and metaphysical truths, in which a new world then seemed to open upon me, did yet, in part likewise, originate in unfeigned diffidence of my own comparative talent.—During several years of my youth and early manhood, I reverenced those who had re- introduced the manly simplicity ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the application of the law again showing how interest may be developed in a specific college subject. Let us choose one that is generally regarded as so "difficult" and "abstract" that not many people are interested in it—philology, the study of language as a science. Let us imagine that we are trying to interest a student of law in this. As a first step we shall select some legal term and show what philology can tell about it. A term frequently encountered ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... probably lost quite half of the communications he made, and much we have is damaged, broken, and partly effaced. In the abstract that follows the reader must be prepared therefore for a considerable amount of break, hiatus, and change of topic. Mr. Wendigee and I are collaborating in a complete and annotated edition of the Cavor record, ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... suggested the necessity of preparing for war, Lord Grey said the preparation should be by gaining the hearts of our own people—and he advocated, but very temperately, Reform. He did not, however, allow that there was any abstract right to a particular mode of constituting a Legislature. The right of the people was to a good Government, and to whatever form of Legislative Assembly might seem best to ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... majority of those who have undertaken to interpret "Don Quixote." It has been completely overlooked, for example, by the illustrators. To be sure, the great majority of the artists who illustrated "Don Quixote" knew nothing whatever of Spain. To them a venta conveyed no idea but the abstract one of a roadside inn, and they could not therefore do full justice to the humour of Don Quixote's misconception in taking it for a castle, or perceive the remoteness of all its realities from his ideal. But even when better informed ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... course which is the specific characterisation of Michelangelo. As years advanced, his pulses beat less quickly and his body shrank. But the man did not alter. With the same lapse of years, his style grew drier and more abstract, but it did not alter in quality or depart from its ideal. He seems to me in these respects to be like Milton: wholly unlike the plastic and ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... Aristotle placed it in riches and outward prosperity. Plato believed in prayer; but Aristotle thought that God would not hear or answer it, and therefore that it was useless. Plato believed in happiness after death; while Aristotle supposed that death ended all pleasure. Plato lived in the world of abstract ideas; Aristotle in the realm of sense and observation. The one was religious; the other secular and worldly. With both the passion for knowledge was boundless, but they differed in their conceptions of knowledge; the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... expect a person of your (as I imagine) limited intellect to know anything about the scientific subjects which interest me, but I feel sure that you are perfectly aware that the calculus is abstract and not concrete. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... from such attempts on our peace and safety. The United States are becoming too important in population and resources not to attract the observation of other nations. It therefore may in the progress of time occur that opinions entirely abstract in the States which they may prevail and in no degree affecting their domestic institutions may be artfully but secretly encouraged with a view to undermine the Union. Such opinions may become the foundation of political ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Tyler • John Tyler
... question of abstract sovereignty, it was certainly impolitic for an absolute monarch to recognize the right of a nation to repudiate its natural allegiance. But Elizabeth had already countenanced that step by assisting the rebellion against Philip. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... from the council of Chalcedon to the death of Anastasius, may be found in the Breviary of Liberatus, (c. 14—19,) the iid and iiid books of Evagrius, the abstract of the two books of Theodore the Reader, the Acts of the Synods, and the Epistles of the Pope, (Concil. tom. v.) The series is continued with some disorder in the xvth and xvith tomes of the Memoires Ecclesiastiques of Tillemont. And here I must ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... be an old subject between them, and they discussed it languidly, like some abstract ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... beauty, and they misunderstood the language of admiration. The latter I suspect to be at the root of the whole matter. Poets were, as we shall presently see, everlastingly praising small waists, and women fell into the error of supposing that a small waist was, in the abstract, a beauty and an attraction. When or where the mistake originated I cannot tell, but here are the words of praise of probably a fourteenth-century lover: "Middel heo hath menskful smal," or, "She hath a graceful small waist." At a later day Master Wither included ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... The following abstract of the history of Virginia Maria de Leyva is based on Dandolo's Signora di Monza (Milano, 1855). Readers of Manzoni's I Promessi Sposi, and of Rosini's tiresome novel, La Signora di Monza, will be already familiar with her in romance under the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... the opposite tendency: he had to translate his internal thoughts into the external shapes of the Mythus before he could grasp fully his own mind. His conception of the world was mythical; this form he understood and not that of abstract reflection. We may well exclaim: Happy Homeric man, to whom the world was ever present, not himself. Yet both sides belong to the full-grown soul, the mythical and the reflective; from Homer the one-sided modern mind can recover a part of its spiritual inheritance, which ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... not to be a public character. For instance, no judicious artist would have attempted to murder Abraham Newland. For the case was this; everybody read so much about Abraham Newland, and so few people ever saw him, that there was a fixed belief that he was an abstract idea. And I remember that once, when I happened to mention that I had dined at a coffee-house in company with Abraham Newland, everybody looked scornfully at me, as though I had pretended to have played at billiards with Prester John, or to have had an affair of honor with the Pope. And, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... universal, because human speech does not differ with the difference of human tongues. These three parts are: first, nouns—the names of things; second, verbs—the names of events; and, third, the partitives—or the words which express the relations of things to events. Thus the most abstract of verbs, "to be," refers to an event; for when a man says, "I am," he is mentioning an event in the history of the universe which did not occur till ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... uttermost to keep Englishmen for Oxford or to win them back from Paris. Oxford clerks fought the battle of England against the legate Otto, and we shall see them siding with Montfort. The eminently practical temper of the academic class could not neglect the world of action for the abstract pursuit of science. Eager as men were to know, to prove, and to inquire, the age had little of the mystical temperament about it. The studies which made for worldly success, such as civil and canon ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... Vaert, van Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, van by Noorden, om langes Noorwegen de Noortcaep, Laplant, Vinlant, Ruslandt ... tot voorby de revier Oby, Franeker, 1601. Another edition at Amsterdam in 1624, and in abstract in Saeghman's collection of travels in 1665. The voyage is also described in Blavii Atlas Major, 1665. Linschoten was "commis" on board, a post which included both the employment of supercargo and that of ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... the same time almost passionate, impatience which was to devote us for some time to variety, almost to incoherency, of interest. We had fared across the sea under the glamour of the Swiss school in the abstract, but the Swiss school in the concrete soon turned stale on our hands; a fact over which I remember myself as no further critical than to feel, not without zest, that, since one was all eyes and the world decidedly, at such a pace, all images, it ministered to the panoramic. ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... This question, from an abstract, speculative phase of the Monroe Doctrine, took on the concrete and somewhat urgent form of security for our trans-Isthmian routes against foreign interference towards the middle of this century, when the attempt to settle it was made by the oft-mentioned Clayton-Bulwer ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... legislates for universal humanity on philanthropic principles; it legislates for itself. There is no country where there are not high duties on some things, not even England. No nation can be governed on abstract principles and in disregard of its necessities. When it was for the interest of England to remove duties on corn, in order that manufactures might be stimulated, they took off duties on corn, because the laboring-classes ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... be endured! And yet, with what utmost stretch of courage,—even though he were willing to devote himself certainly and instantly to the worst fate that he had pictured to himself,—could he immediately rush away from these abstract speculations, encumbered as they were with personal flattery, into his own most unpleasant, most tragic matter! It was the unfitness that deterred him and not the possible tragedy. Nevertheless, through it all, he was sure,—nearly sure,—that ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... keenest observation, and the acutest quickness of instinctive cunning—though their plans were generally predicated on the soundest reason, they showed in this, and in all cases, a want of the combination of thought, and the abstract and extended views of the whites on such occasions. For a single effort, nothing could be imagined wiser than their views. For a combination made up of a number of elements of calculation, they had no reasoning powers ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... London and the great merchant towns were steady for the House of York. Zeal for the Lancastrian cause was found only in Wales, in northern England, and in the south-western shires. It is absurd to suppose that the shrewd traders of Cheapside were moved by an abstract question of hereditary right, or that the wild Welshmen believed themselves to be supporting the right of Parliament to regulate the succession. But it marks the power which Parliament had gained that, directly as his claims ran in the teeth of a succession established by it, the Duke ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... polyphonic music to train their powers to the same seriousness of attention expected and freely given in the appreciation of an oration, a drama or a cathedral. These latter manifestations of artistic expression, to be sure, are less abstract than the fugue and more closely related to daily life. Yet no effort is more repaying than the mental and emotional energy expended in listening to the interweavings of a good fugue; for, conscious of missing the periodic divisions of the Folk-song, we have ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... of the mysterious exercise of human intelligence in its earliest development from this habit of symbolizing and presenting in an outward form an abstract conception, thus giving a concrete meaning and material expression to the external fact. We see how everything assumed a concrete, living form, and can better understand the conditions we have established as necessary in the early days of the development ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... works, and specially of the Celestiall courses, by reason of the continuall motion of the heauens, searching after the first mouer, and from thence by degrees comming to know and consider of the substances separate & abstract, which we call the diuine intelligences or good Angels (Demones) they were the first that instituted sacrifices of placation, with inuocations and worship to them, as to Gods; and inuented and stablished all the rest of ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... preceding chapter I have given an abstract of the life of Tom O' the Dingle; I will now give an analysis of his interlude; first, however, a few words on interludes in general. It is difficult to say with anything like certainty what is the meaning ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... equal, vertical bands of red (hoist side), blue, and red; centered on the hoist-side red band in yellow is the national emblem ("soyombo" - a columnar arrangement of abstract and geometric representation for fire, sun, moon, earth, water, and the ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... of the languages of America. What a structure of little monosyllabic and disyllabic forms is added to the verb and to the substantive, in the Coptic language! The semi-barbarous Chayma and Tamanac have tolerably short abstract words to express grandeur, envy, and lightness, cheictivate, uoite, and uonde; but in Coptic, the word malice,* metrepherpetou, is composed of five elements, easy to be distinguished. (* See, on the incontestable ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... friends—lovers that may be, or might have been—because they never would have done it themselves. Neither was given to much speaking. Indeed, I fear their conversation this day, if recorded, would have been of the most feeble kind—brief, fragmentary, mere comments on the things about them, or abstract remarks not particularly clever or brilliant. They were neither of them what you would call brilliant people; yet they were happy, and the hours flew by like a few minutes, until they found themselves back again beside the laurel bush at the ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... efficiency of such regulations has been distrusted mainly because they have seemed to exalt mere educational and abstract tests above general business capacity and even special fitness for the particular work in hand. It seems to me that the rules which should be applied to the management of the public service may properly conform in the main to such as regulate the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... power. He loved to mingle with his pupils, converse with and question them, and he had great skill in drawing them out. In his instruction he employed many illustrations, and proceeded from the concrete to the abstract. ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... in judgment on any one's thoughts, and we must not take any man's gauge of character in the abstract as the correct one; only take the ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... brain, heart, or animal fervor they may have, over what is needed for wifehood or maternity. Theodora, he thought, angrily, looked at the war as these women did, had no poetic enthusiasm about it, did not grasp the grand abstract theory on either side. She would not accept it as a fiery, chivalric cause, as the Abolitionist did, nor as a stern necessity, like the Union-saver. The sickly Louisianian, following her son from Pickens to Richmond, besieging God for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... church dedicated to the Virgin. But in spite of all, the storm raged with redoubled fury, and even the admiral feared for the result. In case of a catastrophe, he thought it well hastily to write upon a parchment an abstract of his discoveries, with a request that who ever should find the document would forward it to the King of Spain; wrapping the parchment in oil-cloth, he enclosed it in a wooden barrel, which ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... which those improbabilities advert. Now it is certain, that persons who are acquainted with Popery, are generally convinced, and readily agree, that Maria Monk's narrative, is very much assimilated to the abstract view which a sound judgment, enlightened by the Holy Scriptures, would form of that antichristian system, as predicted by the prophet Daniel, and the apostles, Peter, ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... continued two hundred years, becomes, in its turn, an acquired right, is not explained in the address to which we allude. The principal fault to be found with such reasoning as this of the Prussian Conservatives, is that it is altogether too vague and abstract. There can be no development without something new; there can be, in social affairs, nothing new without some sort of innovation. Innovation, as such, can therefore not be condemned without condemning ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... equal to the situation. He turned quickly to Pake, squatting in the doorway, and exploded in Cree. Pake answered in kind. It takes a roundabout course to say anything of an abstract nature in Cree. Finally Garth heard the ominous name of Mary Co-que-wasa enter into ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... presuming to say what Miss Vervain's need of instruction is—that your idea is a very good one." He mused in silence his wonder that so much addlepatedness as was at once observable in Mrs. Vervain should exist along with so much common-sense. "It's certainly very good in the abstract," he added, with a glance at the daughter, as if the sense must be hers. She did not meet his glance at once, but with an impatient recognition of the heat that was now great for the warmth with ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... continued, in a deep voice, "I have made it a rule to abstract nothing from booty. But even so, my share will be beyond a doubt far larger than your fortune. Permit me to return it to you ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... avoid extremities, if it could be done with propriety. With this view General Hamilton has been ready to enter into a frank and free explanation on any and every object of a specific nature; but not to answer a general and abstract inquiry, embracing a period too long for any accurate recollection, and exposing him to unpleasant criticisms from, or unpleasant discussions with, any and every person who may have understood him in an unfavourable sense. This (admitting ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... bricks one atop the other; join them with mortar; and the law will defend your wall. Build up in writing an edifice of your thoughts; and it will be open to any one, without serious impediment, to abstract stones from it, even to take the whole, if it suit him. A rabbit-hutch is property; the work of the mind is not. If the animal has eccentric views as regards the possessions of others, ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... the power and amplify the character of a Jupiter, a Mars, a Venus, or a Pan. It is in the nature of man, that personal divinities once created and adored, should present more vivid and forcible images to his fancy than abstract personifications of physical objects and moral impressions. Thus, deities of this class would gradually rise into pre-eminence and popularity above those more vague and incorporeal—and (though I guard myself from absolutely solving in this manner the enigma ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... general variability of taste we have in great measure failed to grasp certain laws of beauty which obtain whether appreciated or not. Abstract beauty is but a concept, a thought form for purposes of discussion. The beauty perceived pertains to something, and in that something lie its definitions and limitations. This we practically recognize in certain marked and simple forms. The points which we admire ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... role of landed proprietor in the abstract. He would not have let the Manor and lived elsewhere for the world. He went regularly to church on Sunday morning, though it bored him extremely, because, like Major Pendennis, he thought that "when a gentleman is sur ses terres he must give an example to the country people." Had he been starving ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... garden alcove, books are doubly grateful. As in the library ornamented with flowers they seem to be more enjoyed, so their union there is irresistibly attracting. To enjoy reading under such circumstances most, works of imagination are preferable to abstract subjects. Poetry and romance—"De Vere" and "Pelham"—lighter history— the lively letters of the French school, like those of Sevigne and others—or natural history—these are best adapted to peruse amidst sweets and flowers: in short, any species of writing that does not keep the mind ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various
... problems all other interests paled, for they were no will-o'-the-wisps of theoretical politics. It needs a long political education to appreciate abstract ideas, and the Greeks were still in their political infancy, but the realization of Greater Greece implied for them the satisfaction of all their concrete ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... away from the place, under the gentle impulsion of the elder sister's paddle, the younger sat musing, as was her wont whenever her mind was perplexed by any idea more abstract and difficult ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... paints a "still-life," the decorator creates a color-harmony of abstract or conventional forms, and the costumer produces a color-composition in textiles. The decorator and costumer approach closer to pure color-composition than the artist in his still-life. The latter is a grouping of objects primarily for their color-notes. Why bother with a banana when ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... fundamental idea of his system, that human progress depends on the success with which the laws of phenomena are investigated and the extent to which a knowledge of them is diffused, overlooks the essential element of movement, which is not abstract knowledge, but vital force. Men and nations move in virtue of their passionate, moral, and spiritual forces, and these determine the character of their intellectual development and expression. A nation which knew all the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... picture-making faculty. Men of talent evolve arguments, men of genius create emblems, parables and pictures. Minds oftentimes called profound use long abstractions, and are called deep thinkers, because nobody can understand them. But along comes a man of genius, and he squeezes the juice out of the abstract argument, and flings the rind away, and tells you ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... at his side, was offering enthusiasm to a Geometry class. "Young gentlemen, a swift, perfect demonstration of a pure abstract truth is as beautiful and delightful to me—to any uncorrupted mind—as perfect music ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... (Chevremont, I., 40, 47, 54). "The reports of extraordinary cures effected by me brought me a great crowd of the sick. The street in front of my door was blocked with carriages. People came to consult me from all quarters.... The abstract of my experiments on Light finally appeared and it created a prodigious sensation throughout Europe; the newspapers were all filled with it. I had the court and the town in my house for six months.... The Academy, finding that it could not stifle my discoveries tried to make it appear that they ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... sometimes worked in the house of a friend, but generally in a London or suburban lodging, often with his children about him, and all their noise; for, as in the Blantyre mill, he could abstract his attention from sounds of whatever kind, and go on calmly with his work. Busy though he was, this must have been one of the happiest times in his life. Some of his children still remember his walks and romps with ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... the probabilities of inadvertence are diminished, and the mere attention being left comparatively unemployed, what advantages are obtained by either party are obtained by superior acumen. To be less abstract—Let us suppose a game of draughts where the pieces are reduced to four kings, and where, of course, no oversight is to be expected. It is obvious that here the victory can be decided (the players being at all equal) only by some recherch movement, the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... is not the result of new research; nor is it an abstract resuming historical and critical discoveries on its subject up to date. Of this latter there are several already before the British public; the former, as I said, it was not for me to attempt. Nor do I feel my book to be altogether even what it was intended to be; but am conscious that ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... ground, and the dam there, which is indispensable to the sea-level project, has also been considered unsafe by some of the engineers. In all questions of this kind the aggregate experience of mankind ought to have greater weight than the abstract theories of individuals, and I am confident that our engineers, who have so successfully solved problems of the greatest magnitude in the reclamation projects of the far West and in the control and regulation ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden
... talked of love so often as an abstract thing, she had seen so many love-makings of others, and so many men had tried to make love to her in her short brilliant life, and she had always thought it could not come near her, because, of course, she really loved Ronald. She had marveled, indeed, at what people were willing to do, and ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... brilliant officers, like Sir William Drury, Sir Nicolas Malby, Sir Warham St. Leger, Sir John Norreys, and John Zouch. These papers are the basis of Mr. Froude's terrible chapters on the Desmond rebellion, and their substance in abstract or abridgment is easily accessible in the printed calendars of the Record Office. They show that from first to last, in principle and practice, in council and in act, the Tamerlane system was believed in, and carried out without a trace ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... valuable, from a sense of duty, if one realises one's own unfitness for such labours. I wish with all my heart that all classes cared equally for the things which I love. I should like to be able to talk frankly and unaffectedly about books, and interesting people, and the beauties of nature, and abstract topics of a mild kind, with any one I happened to meet. But, as a rule, to speak frankly, I find that people of what I must call the lower class are not interested in these things; people in what I will call the upper class are faintly interested, in a ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... problem which no one but himself could solve. He was only half conscious of his surroundings; he was moving in a kind of detached world of his own, where the warders and the Sheriff and those who followed were almost abstract and unreal figures. He was living with a past which had been everlasting distant, and had now become a vivid and buffeting present. He returned no answers to the questions addressed to him, and would not talk, save ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Grewgious retired into a window with Rosa for a few words of consultation, and then asking for pen and ink, sketched out a line or two of agreement. In the meantime Mrs. Billickin took a seat, and delivered a kind of Index to, or Abstract of, the ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... you cannot compare it, even in its quarrels, with any of the mere collisions of separate institutions. You could compare it with the emancipation of negroes from planters—if it were true that a white man in early youth always dreamed of the abstract beauty of a black man. You could compare it with the revolt of tenants against a landlord—if it were true that young landlords wrote sonnets to invisible tenants. You could compare it to the fighting ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... of these caves was communicated to the Geological Society in a paper read on the 13th of April 1831, of which an abstract was published in its Proceedings, but the particulars respecting the animal remains found by me have derived great additional importance from the discoveries made by Professor Owen since my return to England. I may be excused therefore for again calling attention to the situation ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... universal Church. The defenders of the French kingship formed a better estimate than was formed at Rome of the effect which would be produced by such doctrine on France, in the existing condition of the French mind; they entered upon no theological and abstract polemics; they confined themselves entirely to setting in a vivid light the pope's pretensions and their consequences, feeling sure that, by confining themselves to this question, they would enlist ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the highest value; and to him that would know of egoism and the egoist the study of Sir Willoughby is indispensable. There is something in him of us all. He is a compendium of the Personal in man; and if in him the abstract Egoist have not taken on his final shape and become classic and typical it is not that Mr. Meredith has forgotten anything in his composition but rather that there are certain defects of form, certain structural faults and weaknesses, which prevent you from accepting as conclusive the aspect ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... danger of his life, disregarded all semblance of danger. He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes in complete enjoyment of Hussein's cigarettes, which were really excellent, and said, in the even, matter-of-fact tones of one who discusses an abstract problem— ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... that the stomach needs bulk as well as nutriment. It would not prosper with the necessary elements in their condensed form. So abstract truths in their lowest terms do not always promote mental digestion like more bulk in the way of pictures and discussions of these truths. Here is bulk as well ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... acknowledge the existence of Deity and must therefore have an abstract idea of spirit, you must have some notions on the subject, and should be able to tell me how it ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the masters, will be moved Northward, and the other branch, with the masters, will be moved Southward, so that, by the time the Northern army will have penetrated to the centre of the border slave States, they will be relieved of the substance and abstract rights of slave property for all time ...
— The Abolition Of Slavery The Right Of The Government Under The War Power • Various
... tour of this country in 1881 to stir up interest in the cause. It was soon apparent that the growth of the Socialist party organization was hindered by the fact that its methods were too studious and its discussions too abstract to suit the energetic temper of the times. Many Socialists broke away to join revolutionary clubs which were now organized in a number of cities without any clearly defined principle save to fight the ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... prepared for the press, which were bought from the printer by the Sectaries, and probably destroyed. It is also stated, that there were six octavo volumes of notes written by Gillespie at the Westminster Assembly then extant, containing an abstract of its deliberations. Of these manuscript volumes there are two copies in the Wodrow MSS., Advocates' Library, but neither of them appears to be Gillespie's own hand-writing; the quarto certainly is not, and the octavo seems to be an ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... a moment. "And what on earth," he said, "do you think the world is made of? Why do you think I have been doing things for you? The abstract pleasure of goodness? Are you one of the members of that great white sisterhood that takes and does not give? The good accepting woman! Do you really suppose a girl is entitled to live at free quarters on any man she ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... by men qualified by intellect and study to deal with them are the obvious resort. There is room among the two hundred judges for some such men, but the juries are little more numerous than is required for the examination of and report on objects. For more abstract inquiries they will need recruits. These should be supplied by the leading philosophical associations of this country and Europe. The governments have all an interest in enlisting their aid, and the Centennial Commission ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... over. He had now but to abstract the money he wanted, and replace the book where he had found it. He put the book on ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... of the self-made man in the abstract. It is the true spirit of Americanism which caused him to raise himself from the ranks of the poor and obscure, and educate himself, or, more likely still, grow rich without education. But is it necessary for him to have the bad taste to boast of it, and never let you forget ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... apartment—the one which he thought it most important for a German to know, namely, the smoking-room. "According to his idea," continued the professor, "every German has three national characteristics, smoking, singing, and Sabbath-breaking; the first and only idea in which I found him led astray by an abstract theory." Later, his hostess, explaining to him the method and routine of life in an English country-house, said that the ladies retired about eleven, while the gentlemen finished their day's work in the smoking-room—the secluded apartment—or enjoyed a cigar at the billiard-table; ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... clergyman of my own parish, who is, perhaps, rather too corpulent, and in other respects is not an Oberlin or a Tillotson, than at the deeds of heroes whom I shall never know except by hearsay, or at the sublimest abstract of all clerical graces that was ever conceived by an able novelist. [Footnote: ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... would demand, "men—and women—increasing the risks of this uncertain life?" But he was also full of respect for them. There was a certain nobility rightly attributable to emigration itself in the abstract. It was the cutting loose from friends and aid,—those sweet-named temptations,—and the going forth into self-appointed exile and into dangers known and unknown, trusting to the help of one's own right hand to exchange honest toil for honest ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... in 1909 by William Boone Douglass, Examiner of Surveys in the General Land Office, Santa Fe. Following is an abstract of the government ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... of their general character and resemblances is, indeed, entirely inconsistent with certain well-known facts regarding the mental operations of primitive or semi-civilized man. To the mind of primitive man abstract conceptions of things, while doubtless not entirely wanting, are at best but vaguely defined. The experience of numerous investigators attests how difficult it is, for instance, to obtain from a savage the name of a class of animals in distinction from a particular species of that class. Thus it ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... case with writers of "Diaries," "Memoirs," "Autobiographies," and the like, a good deal of matter is deflected into Evelyn's famous Diary from possible letters: while his numerous and voluminous published works may also to some extent abstract from or duplicate his correspondence. But there is enough of this[98] to make him a noteworthy epistoler. And it is interesting, though not perhaps surprising, to find that while his Diary is less piquant than his friend Mr. Pepys's, his letters are more so. Not surprising—first, ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... filled the window with flowering plants for his mother, and the whole room was fragrant with his hyacinths. The little Greys had sent Mrs Enderby a bunch of violets; Phoebe had made bold, while the gardener was at breakfast, to abstract a bough from the almond tree on the grass; and its pink blossoms now decked the mantelpiece. These things were almost too much for the old lady. Her black eyes looked rather too bright, and her pale thin face twitched when she spoke. She talked a great deal ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... he obtained. To male sheep he gave nothing, to ugly female sheep a very little, to pretty female sheep the rest. Ferrand hazarded an inference, but he was a foreigner. The Englishman preferred to look upon the preacher as guided by a purely abstract love of beauty. His eloquence, at any rate, was unquestionable, and Shelton ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... not do him then the justice I have done since; for we students and abstract thinkers are apt too much, in our first youth, to look to the depth, of a man's mind or knowledge, and not enough to the surface it may cover. There may be more water in a flowing stream only four feet deep, and certainly ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... most rudimentary view of the matter. An abstract and indefeasible right of insurrection may exist, maintainable in any and every case; and yet a particular instance of insurrection maybe foolish, wicked, and altogether worthy of ruin and extinction. And the writer believes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... Parliament, is designedly homely in style, and the magnificence of Milton's diction is still further tamed down by the necessity of resorting to dictation. It is nevertheless a powerful piece of argument, in its own sphere of abstract reason unanswerable, and only questionable in that lower sphere of expediency which Milton disdained. In the following August appeared a sequel with the sarcastic title, "Considerations on the likeliest means to remove Hirelings ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... say that, Marquis. I will look with care into the matter. Doubtless you have with you an abstract of the necessary documents, the conditions of the present mortgages, the rental of the estate, its probable prospects, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... origin to some name—to our mother or to you, to my Chief in London, to an impersonal Foreign Office that has since honoured me with money and a complicated address upon my envelopes, or even, by a stretch of imagination, to that semi-abstract portion of my being some men call ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... the primary purpose is to convey an abstract truth, a something bigger and broader than the mere interesting events described, the illustrations add much to the meaning and purpose of the text. Here the artist shows not only the physical attributes of the real animal, but in a subtle way goes a step further ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... observes, "It appears strange that, in so early a stage of civilisation, the monks should be so alive to the beauties of nature. The contemplative habits of monastic life must at all times have imparted to the mind a feeling of abstract beauty, independent of any idea of real utility. Secure of an uniform, peaceful existence, limited in his pleasures and his ambition, sheltered by his sacred office, above others, from the reverses of fortune, the monk of the thirteenth century was in a position to love, ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... give his narrative the reality of a travel-book instead of the insubstantial quality of a dream. He leaves the reader with the feeling that he is moving among real places and real people. As for the people, Bunyan can give even an abstract virtue—still more, an abstract vice—the skin and bones of a man. A recent critic has said disparagingly that Bunyan would have called Hamlet Mr. Facing-both-ways. As a matter of fact, Bunyan's secret is the direct opposite of this. His great and singular gift was ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... suggested by his aristocratic connexions and historical name. His speech was remarkable for clearness and cogency rather than for rhetorical brilliancy, and he was careful to rest his case on constitutional equity and political expediency of the highest order rather than on vague and abstract principles of popular rights. The debate on the motion for leave to bring in the bill lasted seven nights, and was vigorously sustained on both sides. The drastic and sweeping character of the measure took the whole house by surprise, while its authors justly claimed some credit for moderation ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... This being so, I must add that the character of Captain Brassbound's mother, like the recovery of the estate by the next heir, is an interpolation of my own. It is not, however, an invention. One of the evils of the pretence that our institutions represent abstract principles of justice instead of being mere social scaffolding is that persons of a certain temperament take the pretence seriously, and when the law is on the side of injustice, will not accept the situation, and are driven mad by their vain struggle against it. Dickens has drawn ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... Divine unity. The soul of the State is the higher, the more complex unity, and it is not merely in the actions of the individual in relation to or as an organic part of the State that we must seek for the entire influence of the State upon individual life, or for the perfect expression of the abstract energy of the State in itself and by itself. Man in such relations does often merit the reprobation of Rousseau, and his theory of the deteriorating effects of a complex unity upon the single unity of the individual soul seems often ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... form a corrected Abstract, from No. 75 of the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, of a communication made to that Society on the 20th January 1868, and entitled Pyramidal Structures in Egypt and elsewhere; and the Objects of their Erection. Some additional points are dwelt ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... had been debating on an abstract topic without any immediate application to themselves. But now Dick leaned across the table with a smile upon his face which Thresk ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... Granville being against all commercial treaties, I for good ones and against bad ones, and Chamberlain for punishing Italy for her conduct to us.' [Footnote: 'March 5th, 1883.—We turned to Tariff Treaties: Lord Granville and Mr. Gladstone wishing for a general and abstract declaration against them, and I, with support of Childers, urging most strongly the other view. The proposed declaration was a gratuitous piece of folly, for we were not called on to say ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... day set apart for sacred things, and Mrs. Viggins, as she called herself,—I cannot imagine a Mr. Viggins for no man in his senses could have married such a creature,—as I was saying, Mrs. Viggins is not at all sacred, and I must endeavor to abstract my mind from her till tomorrow, as far as posserble. My first duty today is to induce Mr. Holcroft to take us to church. It will give the people of Oakville such a pleasing impression to see us driving to church. Of course, I may fail, Mr. Holcroft is evidently a hardened ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... Dealing in particular with the aberrations of Menius, the Synod at Eisenach, 1556, adopted seven theses which Menius was required to subscribe. The first declared: "Although the proposition, Good works are necessary to salvation, may be tolerated hypothetically and in an abstract way in the doctrine of the Law (in doctrina legis abstractive et de idea tolerari potest), nevertheless there are many weighty reasons why it ought and should be avoided no less than this one: Christ is a ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... friend, it was because I wished to be gentle in the breaking to you, for I know you have loved that so sweet lady. But even yet I do not expect you to believe. It is so hard to accept at once any abstract truth, that we may doubt such to be possible when we have always believed the 'no' of it. It is more hard still to accept so sad a concrete truth, and of such a one as Miss Lucy. Tonight I go to prove it. Dare you ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... at last, his hands in the pockets of his short gray coat, his brow bent and thoughtful. 'Well, the process in you has been the typical process of the present day. Abstract thought has had little or nothing to say to it. It has been all a question of literary and historical evidence. I am old-fashioned enough'—and he smiled—'to stick to the a priori impossibility ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Mormon; but when the editor had rewritten the first six books, he felt that these were properly his own performance, and the 'Words of Mormon' were assigned a position just in front of the Book of Mosiah, when the abstract of Mormon ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... are, indeed, all second-hand, and mostly fallacious; but he knew instinctively something which is for ever hidden from the mass of mankind—the difference between an argument and a confused stirring of prejudices. Then, again, he was not content with abstract generalities: he was always trying to enforce his views by facts industriously collected from such books of medicine, anatomy, geology, astronomy, chemistry, and history as he could get hold of. For instance, he does not preach ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... also an abstract conception of cooperation, which, in its one-sided emphasis upon equality, excludes any form of leadership, or direction, and in fear of inequality allows no place for competition. Selection of rulers by lot in a large and complex group is one illustration; jealous ...
— The Ethics of Coperation • James Hayden Tufts
... he was charged with using it, and its effect at the time, we may be inclined to believe that his judgment of the line of argument to be pursued was as likely to be appropriate as that of the critic who formed his opinion according to some abstract standard of propriety. ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... may be communicated to the mind and the heart in two ways—by abstract treatment, and by illustration. It must be taken up in its absolute connection with God, and with our own souls. In solitary meditation, in self-examination, and in prayer, we shall learn the intrinsic claims which Faith and Duty have upon reason ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... is much more than mere abstract help and grace, much more even than the Holy Spirit bringing us strength, and peace, and purity. It is ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... collated the list with the Population Returns (Parish Register abstract) 1831, and noted any difference. In addition to the list given from Sir Geo. Nayler's MS. the following early registers ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 32, June 8, 1850 • Various
... seek their pleasure, and ambitious men Fix all their hopes on riches gained by fraud. The women will be fickle and desert Their beggared husbands, loving them alone Who give them money. Kings, instead of guarding, Will rob their subjects, and abstract the wealth Of merchants, under plea of raising taxes. Then in the world's last age the rights of men Will be confused, no property be safe, No joy and no ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... subject to which each part related, and moreover as the original work of Babhravya was difficult to be mastered on account of its length, Vatsyayana, therefore, composed his work in a small volume as an abstract of the whole of the works ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... had failed, and it remained for the Emperor to make it impossible for the Pope to live at Rome except as a dependant of the German King. With Tuscany, Lombardy, and Sicily under the imperial control, there was no room for papal action in Italy. In a contest of abstract principles the Emperor had entirely failed to subdue the Pope; and the interest and importance of the contest between Frederick and Alexander lay in the fact that each was the representative of an idea. This is no ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... such a view. From what he told the representative of a Peking newspaper he never expressed the views attributed to him. Be this as it may, I cannot help having my doubts. All Dr. Goodnow is alleged to have said bearing on the merits of the monarchical and republican system of government as an abstract subject of discussion, such as the necessity of the form of state (Kuo-ti) being suited to the general conditions of the country and the lessons we should learn from the Central and South American republics, are really points ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... questions about the Cortes, and when I told him that many of them made good speeches on abstract questions, but that they failed when any practical debate on finance or war took place, he said, "Oui, faute de l'habitude de gouverner." He asked if I had been at Cadiz at the time of the siege, and said the French ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... explain to the Indians what is necessary for their salvation, and let him not play the discreet among them. Let him use similes and examples in his sermons that they can understand, and not plunge into depths of abstract ideas, for that is a jargon which they do not understand; and they especially detest Latin phrases. The statement that the Indians have no faith is a pretext of the devil, to discourage the gospel ministers. Let him do with fervor whatever he finds to do, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... imagine him cherishing sordid views of life. Asked what of all things he most admired, he might truly answer, "The imaginative intellect." He was a fledgling poet. He worshiped what he called thoughts, would rave about a thought in the abstract, apostrophize an uncaught idea. When a concrete thinkable one fell to him, he was jubilant over the isolate thing, and with his joy value had nothing to do. He would stand wrapped in the delight of what he counted its beauty, and yet ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... I were the doctor's man, I sent him on to see the groom in the stable. But soon one falls into the humour of it. There is no offence meant; and why should any be taken? They are kindly, generous folk; and if they pay no respect to your profession in the abstract, and so rather hurt your dignity, they will be as leal and true as possible to yourself if you can win their respect. I like the grip of their greasy ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... Peter mean by telling slaves to obey their owners? Is all this consistent with the doctrine of human equality? Mr. Henson simply reads into certain New Testament utterances what was never in the speakers' minds. His abstract argument is indeed perilous in regard to such composite writings as the Gospels and the Epistles. Let it be assumed, for argument's sake, that Christianity does somewhere assert the Equality of Men. Then it condemns Royalty as well as Slavery; yet Peter says, "Fear God and honor ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... Expedient to answer to all the Consultations that we receive from all Quarters on this Subject; but having reflected that this same Relation would be of no Use but to Persons of the Faculty who are instructed and experienced in the Knowledge and Cure of Diseases, we have thought proper to add here an Abstract of the different Methods which we have made use of in treating the different Kinds of diseased Persons contained in the five Classes mentioned above; presuming that they may be of Service to the young Physicians and Surgeons that are actually ...
— A Succinct Account of the Plague at Marseilles - Its Symptoms and the Methods and Medicines Used for Curing It • Francois Chicoyneau
... wore on, no change for the better occurred. A woman does not reason to just conclusions, either from facts or abstract principles like man; but takes, for the most part, the directer road of perception. If, therefore her womanly instincts are all right, her conclusions will be true; but if they are wrong, false judgment is inevitable. The instincts of Mrs. Uhler were wrong ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... introduce the following Remarks, and to instruct the Ignorant in those things, I hope it shall not be thought a barren Digression, especially when I shall tell you that it is a most exact Representation of what is yet to come in a Scene of Affairs, of which I must make a short Abstract, ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... Now Jacko had been introduced to Gangoil under German auspices, and had soon come to a decision that it would be a good thing and a just to lock up all the Brownbies in the great jail of the colony at Brisbane. He probably knew nothing of law or justice in the abstract, but he greatly valued law when exercised against those he hated. The western fence of which mention has been made ran down to the Mary River, hitting it about four miles west of Medlicot's Mill; so that there was a considerable portion of the Gangoil ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... not one wholly built on abstract sentiment of philanthropists, but it involved physical resistance: Violence ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... distinguished from modern, or scientific, Socialism. The Utopians regard human life as something plastic and capable of being shaped and molded according to systems and plans. All that is necessary is to take some abstract principle as a standard, and then prepare a plan for the reorganization of society in conformity with that principle. If the plan is perfect, it will be enough to demonstrate its advantages as one would demonstrate a sum in arithmetic. The ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... tend more to mollify that fierce and gloomy spirit of devotion to which they are subject. Even the English church, though it had retained a share of Popish ceremonies, may justly be thought too naked and unadorned, and still to approach too near the abstract and spiritual religion of the Puritans. Laud and his associates, by reviving a few primitive institutions of this nature, corrected the error of the first reformers, and presented to the affrightened and astonished mind some sensible, exterior observances, which might occupy it during its ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... of red (hoist side), blue, and red; centered on the hoist-side red band in yellow is the national emblem ("soyombo" - a columnar arrangement of abstract and geometric representation for fire, sun, moon, earth, water, ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... carefully developed it; and it was possible that when the world had completely palled upon him, he would shut himself up at Crumford Hall and give the public the benefit of his accumulated opinions, abstract and biographical. But he was not ready for that yet; he needed several years more of experience, observation, and assiduous cultivation of the habit of analysis; and in the meantime he was in a condition of ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time: after your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... importance to remove all ticks, so far as this is possible, from sick animals, since they abstract a considerable quantity of blood and ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... Diddling—or the abstract idea conveyed by the verb to diddle—is sufficiently well understood. Yet the fact, the deed, the thing diddling, is somewhat difficult to define. We may get, however, at a tolerably distinct conception of the matter in hand, by defining—not the thing, diddling, in itself—but man, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... that the Festin de Pierre of Moliere is not a play for amorists, and that one bar of the voluptuous sentimentality of Gounod or Bizet would appear as a licentious stain on the score of Don Giovanni. Even the more abstract parts of the Don Juan play are dilapidated past use: for instance, Don Juan's supernatural antagonist hurled those who refuse to repent into lakes of burning brimstone, there to be tormented by devils with horns and tails. Of that antagonist, ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... directed to a proper object, is followed by delight. The sense delights in the object perceived through its abstract similitude, either by reason of its beauty, as in vision, or by reason of its sweetness, as in smell and hearing, or by reason of its healthfulness, as in taste and touch, properly speaking. But all delight is by reason of proportion. But since species ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... Greek, while it always remained conditioned by being in its essence and origin an inscriptional poem, took in the later periods so wide a range of subject and treatment that it can perhaps only be limited by certain abstract conventions of length and metre. Sometimes it becomes in all but metrical form a lyric; sometimes it hardly rises beyond the versified statement of a fact or an idea; sometimes it is barely distinguishable from a snatch of pastoral. The ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... have been able to obtain it appears that our manufactures, though depressed immediately after the peace, have considerably increased, and are still increasing, under the encouragement given them by the tariff of 1816 and by subsequent laws. Satisfied I am, whatever may be the abstract doctrine in favor of unrestricted commerce, provided all nations would, concur in it and it was not liable to be interrupted by war, which has never occurred and can not be expected, that there are other strong reasons applicable to our situation and relations with other countries which impose ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... very oppressive for a time, caused very different sensations from those experienced during the almost stifling calms of Port Essington. At Cape York, however, calms seldom lasted above a few hours, as from its peninsular position the land receives the full influence of nearly every breeze. An abstract of the thermometrical observations made on board the Rattlesnake shows ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... for aid, and no man of them all might lift his hand in a daughter's defence. Uncle and aunt and cousin, home, family—none of these words had any place in the freedman's vocabulary. Right he had, in the abstract; in the concrete, none. Justice would not hear his voice. The law was still color-blinded ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... to abstract the principle involved in some other essays. But I forbear. These specimens are sufficient for the purpose of informing the reader that I do not write without a thoughtful consideration of my subject; and also, that to think reasonably upon any question has never been allowed ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... which I should like to give expression might perhaps too readily fall into abstract or philosophical terms. They might, on the other hand, only too readily clothe themselves in cant phrases and assume the hortatory tone. I shall try to avoid dialectic or theory on the one hand, and preaching on the other. I take it that what I am to say is addressed ...
— The business career in its public relations • Albert Shaw
... powder- magazine to the ship; and with every breath we breathe, and every meal we eat, we are putting one or more of them in peril. If we clung as devotedly as some philosophers pretend we do to the abstract idea of life, or were half as frightened as they make out we are, for the subversive accident that ends it all, the trumpets might sound by the hour and no one would follow them into battle - the blue-peter might ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Homeric poems proper back in the ages before chronological history began, and at the same time assigns the purely Cyclic poems to definite authors who are dated from the first Olympiad (776 B.C.) downwards. This tradition cannot be purely arbitrary. 2) The Cyclic poets (as we can see from the abstract of Proclus) were careful not to trespass upon ground already occupied by Homer. Thus, when we find that in the "Returns" all the prominent Greek heroes except Odysseus are accounted for, we are forced to believe that the ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... validity of an Act of Parliament. It is the inveterate habit of our judges to deal with particular cases as they come before them, and with particular cases alone. They will find themselves greatly perplexed when they come to pronounce judgment upon abstract questions of law. This is not all. The proposed arrangement is as foreign to the spirit of American Federalism as it is to the spirit of English law. The Supreme Court of the United States never in strictness pronounces an Act either of Congress or of a ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... upon his position as the starting-point for a greater prize. Lady Eynesford was, here again, with him—up to a point. She thought (and thoughts are apt to put themselves with a bluntness which would be inexcusable in speech) that it was high time that Eleanor Scaife was married, and, from an abstract point of view, this could hardly be denied. Lady Eynesford took the next step. Eleanor and Coxon would suit one another to perfection. Hence the invitations to tea, and Lady Eynesford's considerate withdrawals into the house, or out of sight in the garden. ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... St. John, but that it represents a mixture of Greek philosophy with Jewish theology, and that its final form, which one of the most eminent among recent Christian scholars has characterized as "an unhistorical product of abstract reflection," is mainly due to some gifted representative or representatives of the Alexandrian school. Bitter as the resistance to this view has been, it has during the last years of the nineteenth century won its way more and more to acknowledgment. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... bashful maid, as well as by birth a lady, she had felt that it might be a very nice thing to contemplate sailors in the distance, abstract sailors, old men who pulled ropes, or lounged on the deck, if there was one. But to steal an unsuspected view at a young man very well known to her, and acknowledged (not only by his mother and himself, but also by every girl in the parish) as the Adonis ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... neighborhood would be of no good to me unless I saw her, and of course I could not see her. And if this could be so, what would be worse for me, or for her, than our seeing each other? From these abstract questions I came to a more practical one: What should I do? To go away seemed to be a sensible thing, but I was tired of going away. I liked my home, and, besides, Sylvia would be in the neighborhood. It also seemed wise to stay, ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... inadequate knowledge of the duration of things (II:xxxi.) and the periods of their existence (II:xliv.Note) we can only determine by imagination, which is not so powerfully affected by the future as by the present. Hence such true knowledge of good and evil as we possess is merely abstract or general, and the judgment which we pass on the order of things and the connection of causes, with a view to determining what is good or bad for us in the, present, is rather imaginary than real. Therefore ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... children in the primary grades and is chiefly preparatory to the real study of history in the higher grades. The need for this stage lies in the fact that the child's "ideas are of the pictorial rather than of the abstract order"; yet his spontaneous interest in these things must be made to serve "as a stepping-stone to the acquired interests of civilized life." The definite objects at this ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education
... is a natural right possessed by every people. They may revolutionize their governments when they become oppressive. The Constitution was adopted as the logical consequence of this idea. There is no use now in discussing the abstract question of secession. We must treat the present condition of the Gulf States as a revolution in fact accomplished. We must meet them fairly. I vote against this amendment, and wish to stand right upon the record. If the history of this Convention is to be written, ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... Ioannina, conceived very much the same impression of the state of his mind.[4] But, assuredly, even this melancholy, habitually as it still clung to him, must, under the stirring and healthful influences of his roving life, have become a far more elevated and abstract feeling than it ever could have expanded to within reach of those annoyances, whose tendency was to keep it wholly concentrated round self. Had he remained idly at home, he would have sunk, perhaps, into a querulous satirist. But, as his ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the other hand, they were united by a common language, by a common political and legal tradition, and by the fact that none of them had ever been really independent sovereign states. Nobody dared or cared to object to union in the abstract; nobody advocated the alternative of complete separation; it was only a strong efficient union which aroused the opposition of the Clintons and the Patrick Henrys. Nevertheless, the conditions making for separation have the appearance of being more insistent and powerful than ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... Brooke, "but apart from the great question of one another which is just now fixing us on the rack, or on the wheel, or pressing us to any other kind of torment, and considering the great subject of mirthfulness merely in the abstract, do you not see how true it is that it is and must be the salt of life, that it preserves all living men from sourness, and decay, and moral death? Now, there's Watts, for instance—Isaac Watts, you know, author of that great work, 'Watts's Divine Hymns and Spiritual Songs for Infant Minds,' ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... are foul objects steeped skin and all in lewdness. The lustful love, for instance, which has sprung to life and taken root in your natural affections, I and such as myself extend to it the character of an abstract lewdness; but abstract lewdness can be grasped by the mind, but cannot be transmitted by the mouth; can be fathomed by the spirit, but cannot be divulged in words. As you now are imbued with this ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... represented to have been first seen, as they will be hereafter explained. [Footnote: La Cosmographie Universelle de tout le Monde, tom. II, part II, 2175-9. (Paris, 1575.)] This publication of Belleforest is the more important, because it is from the abstract of the Verrazzano letter contained in it, that Lescarbot, thirty-four years afterwards, took his account of the voyage and discovery, word for word, without acknowledgment. [Footnote: Hist. de la Nouvelle France, p. 27, et seq. (ed. 1609). ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... philosophic attitudes are but two ways of seeing. The poet who is not also a philosopher is like a flower without a root. Both seek the same infinitude; one apprehending the idea, the other the image. One seeks truth for its beauty; the other finds beauty, an abstract, intellectual beauty, in the innermost home of truth. Poetry and metaphysics are alike a disengaging, for different ends, of ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... going to believe this," I say. "Once I didn't believe it myself. I realize that it all sounds impossible. But after you've once been there—" Then I'm off. When I've finished, there isn't an hysterical superlative adjective or a complimentary abstract noun unused in my vocabulary. I've told all the East about California. I've told many of the countries of Europe about California. I even tell Californians about California. I will say to the credit of Californians ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... genuine wish for reform among a Moslem people. What would have happened had the Notables been free to work out the future of Egypt, it is impossible to say. The fate of the Young Turkish party and of Midhat's constitution of December 1877 formed by no means a hopeful augury. In the abstract there is much to be said for the two chief demands of the Notables—that the Khedive's Ministers should be responsible to the people's representatives, and that the Dual Control of Great Britain and France ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... the camp. But if we thought we were going to wander whither we pleased we were soon disillusioned. We were huddled in one corner and our boundaries, although undefined in the concrete were substantial in the abstract, being imaginary lines run between sentries standing with loaded rifles ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... more than one reason. It shows us what is a general form, or law of nature in mathematical shape, and it also illustrates the progress of science as it advances from the most abstract conceptions of number and geometry, to more concrete phenomena such as physics. The formula for refraction which Ptolemy helped to shape, is geometrical in form. With him, as with the discoverer of the right angle in a semicircle, the mind was working to find a general ...
— Progress and History • Various
... word aghual, standing parallel with the Maya ahau, which doubtless corresponds to the abstract form ahaual of the word ahau, is to be referred rather to a primitive form avu, a'ku, ahu, than to ahau. In the Tzental Pater Noster which Pimental gives, we find the phrase "to us come Thy kingdom (Thy dominion)" expressed by the words aca taluc te aguajuale. ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... Ireland but the needs of the Imperial Parliament." This Bill, however, in his opinion, was ill-adapted to the latter purpose. It would be a block rather than a relief to the congestion of business. But these objections were "abstract and academic" in face of ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... ever get justice in a British court of law; easier for the camel to thread the needle's eye. That flagrant forgery would be accepted at sight by our vaunted British jury. The only chance was to abstract it before the case ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... direction of one's private observation is no more the schoolmaster's business than the shape and direction of one's nose. It is, indeed, possible to certain gifted and exceptional persons that they should not only see acutely, but abstract and express again what they have seen. Such people are artists—a different kind of people from schoolmasters altogether. Into all sorts of places, where people have failed to see, comes the artist like a light. The artist cannot ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... white ha' time or inclination to praise the Lord an' his grace an' bounty when their life's one long struggle wi' hardships an' adversity. The God ye offer them disna mitigate these things. Forbye that, the Indian disna want to be Christianized. When ye come to a determination of abstract qualities, his pagan beliefs are as good for him as the God of the Bible. What right ha' we to cram oor speeritual dogmas ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... one of those whom Plato calls the [Greek: philaekooi kai philotheamones], "who gladly acknowledge the beautiful wherever it is met with, in sounds, and colours, and figures, and all that is by art compounded from these;" much less had he ascended "to that abstract notion of beauty" which the same philosopher considers it so much more ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... theory, and a signal confirmation of the view that new ideas, theories and discoveries emanate from the material conditions. The role of the great man is still an important one. We need the men who are capable of abstract thought, capable of perceiving the essential relations and significance of the facts, and of drawing correct inductions from them. Such men are rare, but there are always enough of them to perform these functions. And the Great Man, born out of due time, before the material and economic conditions ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... code of his fellows and judge right and wrong by the circumstances? Explicitly he had given her to understand that his standards of honesty would not square with hers, since he lived in a rough mining camp where questions had two sides and were not to be determined by abstract rule. ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... (b) its musical setting; called by the same name, with the same pronunciation in each case; and lastly, connected, in one case, with an actual hut or shanty. Against this concrete argument we have a landsman's abstract speculation, which (a) begs the whole question, and (b) which was never heard of until a few years before the disappearance of the sailing ship. I do not assert that the negroid derivation is conclusive, but that from (un) chante will ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... ought to be kept pure from Roman Catholic members. Indeed, during the century which followed the Revolution, the inclination of an English Protestant to trample on the Irishry was generally proportioned to the zeal which he professed for political liberty in the abstract. If he uttered any expression of compassion for the majority oppressed by the minority, he might be safely set down as a bigoted Tory and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... knowledge would have helped him. Supposing he had seen a New York stock-list of 1900, and had studied the statistics of railways, telegraphs, coal, and steel — would he have quitted his eighteenth-century, his ancestral prejudices, his abstract ideals, his semi-clerical training, and the rest, in order to perform an expiatory pilgrimage to State Street, and ask for the fatted calf of his grandfather Brooks and a clerkship in the ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... threw his emphasis where men need it thrown,—not on abstract ideas, but on action. His teaching was always as to conduct. Purity, forgiveness, rightness of ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... of vocational training in junior high school grades presents many difficulties which cannot be solved by a more or less abstract study of educational and industrial needs. Experimentation on an extensive scale, covering a considerable period of time, is necessary before definite conclusions can be drawn as to the limitations and possibilities of such work. It ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... means, he acquires a just idea of beautiful forms; he corrects nature by herself, her imperfect state by her more perfect. His eye being enabled to distinguish the accidental deficiencies, excrescences, and deformities of things from their general figures, he makes out an abstract idea of their forms more perfect than any one original; and what may seem a paradox, he learns to design naturally by drawing his figures unlike to any one object. This idea of the perfect state of nature, ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... crimes, a great blunder. The manner in which it was carried was not only morally scandalous; it also entirely vitiated it as a work of statesmanship. No great political measure can be rationally judged upon its abstract merits, and without considering the character and the wishes of the people for whom it is intended. It is now idle to discuss what might have been the effect of a Union if it had been carried before 1782, when the Parliament was still unemancipated; if it had been the result of a spontaneous ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... and it is one of the reasons that she is so much in arrears in many of the great essentials. In carrying out the practice in this identical case, a serious private wrong was inflicted, in order that, in form, an abstract and perfectly useless principle might be maintained. The inns at Southampton were filled with troops, who were billeted on the publicans, will ye, nill ye; and not only the masters of the different houses, but travellers were subjected to a great ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the solemnity of the subject were delivered within the walls of a vast and gloomy cavern. The schoolmen taught that all knowledge might be obtained from the assistance of the fallen angels. They were skilled in the abstract sciences, in the knowledge of precious stones, in alchymy, in the various languages of mankind and of the lower animals; in the Belles-Lettres, Moral Philosophy, Pneumatology, Divinity, Magic, History, and Prophecy. They could ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... characterized the evil scholar; for that restlessness seemed to supply to his nature vices not constitutional to it. Dalibard had not the avarice that belongs either to a miser or a spendthrift. In his youth, his books and the simple desires of an abstract student sufficed to his wants, and a habit of method and order, a mechanical calculation which accompanied all his acts, from the least to the greatest, preserved him, even when most poor, from neediness and want. Nor was he by nature vain and ostentatious,—those infirmities accompany a larger and ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... left four-and-twenty hours in suspense and come within an ace of ultimate rejection. Captain Reid had primed himself; no sooner was the king on board, and the Hennetti question amicably settled, than he proceeded to express my request and give an abstract of my claims and virtues. The gammon about Queen Victoria's son might do for Butaritari; it was out of the question here; and I now figured as "one of the Old Men of England," a person of deep knowledge, come expressly to visit Tembinok's dominion, and eager to report upon it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spirits seemed at times quite indifferent to nice questions of constitutional law. Calhoun dismissed constitutional objections to a national bank with a wave of the hand: he thought discussion of such abstract themes "a useless consumption of time." On introducing his bill for internal improvements, in December, 1816, he intimated that he did not propose to indulge in metaphysical subtleties respecting the Constitution. "The instrument was not intended as a thesis for the logician ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... in the shape of an over-stretched likeness, that she never would have seen had he indicated it directly, became transfused from his mind to hers by his abstract, half-amused observation of the great dancing gourd—that capering antiquity, lumbering volatility, wandering, self-adored, gross bald Cupid, elatest of nondescripts! Her senses imagined the impressions agitating Beauchamp's, and exaggerated them beyond limit; and when he amazed her with a straight ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in a tone of soft reproach. She disliked the notion of a cockpit, but she was a lover of abstract truth, ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... Vicar of Christ bound by office or by vow to be the preacher of the theory of gravitation, or a martyr for electro-magnetism? Would he be acquitting himself of the dispensation committed to him if he were smitten with an abstract love of these matters, however true, or beautiful, or ingenious, or useful? Or rather, does he not contemplate such achievements of the intellect, as far as he contemplates them, solely and simply in their relation to the interests of Revealed Truth? Surely, what he does he does ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... strange intuitions about things and was doomed to work out her own salvation as a metaphysician. When she asked her mother who made God, a slap in the face demonstrated to her the limits of human inquiry. The natural instinct of the child over-rode the long travail of the race to conceive an abstract Deity, and Esther pictured God as a mammoth cloud. In early years Esther imagined that the "body" that was buried when a person died was the corpse decapitated and she often puzzled herself to think what was done with the isolated head. When her mother was being tied up in ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... such, I say, were persons not to be tolerated upon the face of God's earth. We do not tolerate them now. We punish them by law. We even destroy them wholesale in war, without inquiring into their individual guilt or innocence. David was taught, not by abstract meditation in his study, but by bitter need and agony, not to tolerate them then. If he could have destroyed them as we do now, it is not for us to say that he would have been wrong. And what if he were indignant, and what ...
— David • Charles Kingsley
... following, did not rely much more on those Vows, than we do on those waggish Inscriptions by which Men offer us their Goods, To Day for Money, and to Morrow for Nothing. They often began their Prayers very mystically, and spoke many Things in a spiritual Sense; yet they never were so abstract from the World in them, as to end One without beseeching the Gods to bless and prosper the Brewing Trade in all its Branches, and, for the Good of the Whole, more and more to increase the Consumption of the ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... The student should hold in mind that the prophet deals primarily with the moral and religious conditions of his own people at the time of his ministry. His denunciations, warnings and exhortations are, therefore, not abstract principles, but are local and for Israel. The prophet was then first of all a Jewish patriot and revivalist filled with the Holy Ghost and ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... diffused a liberal spirit of inquiry and toleration, and encouraged the Arabian sages to suspect that their caliph was a tyrant, and their prophet an impostor. [72] The instinct of superstition was alarmed by the introduction even of the abstract sciences; and the more rigid doctors of the law condemned the rash and pernicious curiosity of Almamon. [73] To the thirst of martyrdom, the vision of paradise, and the belief of predestination, we must ascribe the invincible enthusiasm of the prince and people. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... journey by rail is a difficult matter; you go like an arrow whistling through a cloud; it is traveling in the abstract. You cross provinces, kingdoms even, unawares. From time to time during the night, I saw through the window the comet, rushing down upon the earth, with lowered head and hair streaming far behind; suddenly glares of gaslight dazzled my eyes, sanded with the goldust of sleep; or the pale bluish ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... before me, for instance, a little bundle of most excellent leaflets issued by the League for Social Service of New York. They deal with such subjects as The Duties of American Citizenship, The Value of a Vote, The Duty of Public Spirit, The Co-operative City, &c. They include an admirable abstract in twenty-four pages, of Laws Concerning the Welfare of Every Citizen of New York, and the same Society issues similar abstracts of the laws of other States. They have a large and well-equipped lecture organisation, and they issue excellent practical Suggestions for Conferences and Courses ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... into Archie's mind that young John Graham was "just trying him," as boys say; and, in perfect simplicity and good faith, he gave an abstract of the chapter, with comments of his aunt's, and some of his own upon it. It was not very clear or very complete, it is true; but it was enough to change considerably the expression of ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... of love so often as an abstract thing, she had seen so many love-makings of others, and so many men had tried to make love to her in her short brilliant life, and she had always thought it could not come near her, because, of course, she really loved Ronald. ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... personify abstract things, and not poets only but sculptors[7] and painters too. All the great things of the world ...
— Plays of Near & Far • Lord Dunsany
... grew first sympathetic, then thoughtful, as he looked. In a dim, abstract way he had been conscious that Darsie Garnett was what he would have described as "a pretty kid," but the charm of her personality had never appealed to him until this moment. Now, as he looked at the dark eyelashes resting on the white cheek, the droop of the ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... knowledge of the real belief of the people is that they are usually examined by leading questions, and are apt to reply affirmatively to whatever the querist puts to them. Their thoughts on these dark subjects are either extremely vague and misty or extremely material; the world of abstract thought, in which European minds have learned to move with an ease and confidence produced by the possession of a whole arsenal of theological and metaphysical phrases, being to ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... with the impalpable, dim subjects that lie beyond the border-land of exact knowledge, the poetic instinct seeks always to bring them into clear definition and bright concrete imagery, so that it might seem for the moment as if painting also could deal with them. Every abstract conception, as it passes into the light of the creative imagination, acquires structure and firmness and colour, as flowers do in the light of the sun. Life and Death, Love and Youth, Hope and Time, become persons in poetry, not that they may wear the tawdry ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... as basis a fundamental conception that made aim to grapple with the pro-foundest problems compassed by the mysteries of life and death, and a temper to yield only where human perception fails. Abstract indeed in theme the lyric is, but few are the products of thought out of which imagination has delved a more concrete and ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... Jonson's comedy since the days of Aristophanes. "Every Man in His Humour," like the two plays that follow it, contains two kinds of attack, the critical or generally satiric, levelled at abuses and corruptions in the abstract; and the personal, in which specific application is made of all this in the lampooning of poets and others, Jonson's contemporaries. The method of personal attack by actual caricature of a person on the stage is almost as old as the drama. Aristophanes so lampooned ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... totally different class and of a type that awoke his disapproval. To a youth of his training and of his worldly experience the genus woman is divided into two species—old women and young women. The former are interesting only in a motherly way, and demand nothing more than abstract courtesy. They do not matter. The latter, on the contrary, separate themselves again into two families or suborders—viz., good women and bad women. The demarcation between the two branches of the suborder is distinct; there is nothing common to the two. Good women are ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... kind of mental oppression. I lay in my bed perfectly conscious, and with open eyes, but without power to speak or to move, and all the while my brain was oppressed to distraction by the presence of a single and abstract idea, the idea of solid immensity. It seemed to me in my agonies that the horror of this visitation arose from its coming upon me without form or shape, that the close presence of the direst monster ever bred in hell would have been a thousand times more tolerable ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... supporters. Still, they acted as if they were confident that in the long run they could ward off the final blow. They were persuaded that the Liberal Government would neither have the courage nor the power to accomplish their purpose. "Why waste time over abstract resolutions?" asked Mr. Balfour. "The Liberal party," he said, "has a perfect passion for abstract resolutions"—and again, "it is quite obvious they do not mean business." Even when the Bill itself was introduced, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... does, {206} formulate merely its geometrical or dynamical skeleton; to do so would be contrary to the intent of art to represent things in their perceptual concreteness. Similarly art does not represent abstract virtues. Nevertheless, if it is not to depart from the truth art must, at the same time that it conveys the color and vividness of life, also conform to its proper laws, and demonstrate the consequences of action as they are. And the same standard of clearness and fidelity, which requires that ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... in the acknowledged ascendancy of Parliament and the triumphant aristocracy of 1688, was never based on abstract principles of the rights of barons and landowners, but sprang from the positive, definite conviction that those who furnished arms and men for the king, or who paid certain moneys in taxation, were entitled to be heard in the councils of the king; and the charters given in the twelfth ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... persons of a capacity high, if not quite first rate, which enables them, granted fair chances, to rise quickly into positions where they can effectively serve the community. These men, whatever occupation they follow, be it that of abstract thinking, or literary production, or scientific research, or the conduct of affairs, whether commercial or political or administrative, are the dynamic strength of the country when they enter manhood, and its realised wealth when they are ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... charity? But even success cannot save the gambler and libertine from the tedium of existence, and when the preacher said, "These men dare not be alone," Evelyn thought of Owen, and of her constant efforts to keep him amused, distracted; and when the preacher said it was impossible for the sinner to abstract himself, to enter into his consciousness without hearing it reprove him, Evelyn thought of herself. The preacher made no distinctions; all men, he said, when they are sincere with themselves, are aware of the difference ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... nearly so, an abstract should be made of it, and a rough draught of the whole work put down, not yet distributed into its parts; the detailed arrangement should then be introduced, after which adornment may be added, the diction receive its colour, the phrasing ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... rebellious, declaring war on the world and swearing to wrest from it every good thing that those he loved might ever covet—and for himself unparalleled power." He paused and spread his hands apart with a gesture of dismissing the abstract. "I have proven myself able to realize my dreams. I shall go on. My aspirations of empire look far ahead: my horizons are limitless. There are few people to whom I can express my ambitions. But you—" He came across and took her hand. "You can understand. Tell me, Mary, is there anything ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... the type. So far as this newer method has been applied, it has been found that the variations of the gorilla type frequently, in the case of individual organs, overlap the variations of the human type, and that the structure of man differs from the structure of any anthropoid type only in that the abstract central point of its variations is slightly different from the abstract central point of the variations presented by individual ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... customers, to have railway servants protected from drink, and the enforcement of the laws against liquor is the most direct way to protect them from drink. This is all by the way, however; Companies are not abstract reasoners. ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... a question between ideals, yours and mine—pure abstract ideals, and yours are the nobler. I was bound up in the old vicious notions, and all the time you were splendid and new." His voice broke. "I must actually thank you for what you have done—for showing me what I really am. Solemnly, ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... courses at table. It's like the architecture of the facade at Milan, half-Gothic, half-Grecian." Reding: "It's what is always used, I believe." Campbell: "Oh, yes, we must not go against the age, it would be absurd to do so. I only spoke of what was right and wrong on abstract principles; and to tell the truth, I can't help liking the mixture myself, ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis
... arose who began to consider things in the abstract, and to relate them to his neighbor, and formulate conclusions about them. He was the first real Thinker, Then air-philosophy and element-philosophy grew up—beast-worship, animalism, fire-worship, and the rudiments of simple scientific learning, as, for instance, ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... are two very different things. The fact is that Mathematics and Physics do not, as Kant assumes, present the same problem for solution, and do not therefore admit of one solution applicable to both. It is not the case that there is a science of abstract Physics corresponding to the science of Mathematics and sharing in the same character of necessity. In Mathematics we have truths which we cannot but accept, and accept as universal and necessary: in Physics we have no such truths, nor has Kant even endeavoured to prove that we have. The ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... some pieces on human life and manners, such as (to use my Lord Bacon's expression) come home to men's business and bosoms, I thought it more satisfactory to begin with considering man in the abstract, his nature and his state; since, to prove any moral duty, to enforce any moral precept, or to examine the perfection or imperfection of any creature whatsoever, it is necessary first to know what condition and ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... he could not open it so as to abstract the bonds and leave the box in the safe. In that case, he said, it might be some time before the ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... nature, is not capable of serving of God: no, not nature where grace dwells, as considered abstract from that grace that dwells in it. Nothing can be done aright without grace, I mean no part nor piece of gospel-duty. 'Let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably.' Nature, managed by grace, seasoned with grace, and held up with ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... moment for ever—a process which would require an eternity for its accomplishment.[P] Moreover, the chain of dependent existences in this infinite succession is not, like a mathematical series, composed of abstract and homogeneous units; it is made up of divers phenomena, of a regressive line of causes, each distinct from the other. Wherever, therefore, I stop in my addition, I do not positively conceive the terms which lie beyond. I apprehend them only as a series of unknown somethings, of which ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... between faith and opinion; between the testimony of God and the reasonings of men; the words of the Spirit and human inferences. Faith in the testimony of God, and obedience to the commandments of Jesus, are their bond of union, and not an agreement in any abstract views or opinions upon what is written or spoken by divine authority. Hence all the speculations, questions, debates of words, and abstract reasonings, found in human creeds, have no place in their religious ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... may occupy art and poetry or our own spirits for a time; but sooner or later they come back with a sharp rebound to the simple elementary passions—anger, desire, regret, [222] pity, and fear: and what corresponds to them in the sensuous world—bare, abstract fire, water, air, tears, sleep, silence, and what De Quincey has called the "glory ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... equality of fortunes; I have allowed myself no attack upon persons, no assault upon the government, of which I, more than any one else, am a provisional adherent. If I have sometimes used the word PROPRIETOR, I have used it as the abstract name of a metaphysical being, whose reality breathes in every individual,—not alone in a ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... L900 sea-rent in gold, while twenty yards yonder rode his smoking ship loaded with grain for Rouen; and on the eastern horizon the armada, in crescent at present, moving with fires banked at two knots, a glare hiding them from the naked eye, but the glass revealing them like toys in the abstract, ethereally hazy. ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... work attested by these reprintings was thoroughly deserved, for North's Plutarch is among the richest and freshest monuments of Elizabethan prose literature, and, apart altogether from the use made of it by Shakespeare, is in itself an invaluable repertory of honest, manly, idiomatic English. No abstract of the Plutarchian matter need be given here, as all the more important passages drawn upon for the play are quoted in the footnotes to the text. These will show that in most of the leading incidents the great Greek biographer is closely followed, though in many cases these incidents ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... that of teachers of morality who have no message but Be good! Be good! and no motive by which to urge it but the pleasures of virtue and the disadvantages of vice, but when the vagueness of the abstract thought of goodness solidifies into a living Person and that Person makes his appeal first to our hearts and bids us love him, and then opens before us the unstained light of his own character and beseeches us to be like him, the repellent becomes attractive: the impossible becomes possible, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... made what progress I could in the language, and in addition I pushed my explorations here and there. Either I missed some subtle point or their language was excessively simple—almost exclusively composed of concrete substantives and verbs. There seemed to be few, if any, abstract terms, or little use of figurative language. Their sentences were usually simple and of two words, and I failed to convey or understand any but the simplest propositions. I determined to put the thought of my Time Machine and the mystery of the bronze doors under the sphinx as much as ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... or origin. Some companion with whose feelings and actions you are in close personal contact, or some character from history or fiction by whose personality you have been strongly attracted, gives you your keenest impressions of moral qualities. To begin with abstract moral teaching, or to put faith in it, is to misunderstand children. In morals as in other forms of knowledge, children are overwhelmingly interested in personal and individual examples, things which have form, color, ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... themselves and come into that direct contact with reality which constitutes the fundamental distinction of scientific education. Mathematics will soar into its highest regions; while the high peaks of philosophy may be scaled by those whose aptitude for abstract thought has been awakened by elementary logic. Finally, schools of pictorial and plastic art, of architecture, and of music, will offer a thorough discipline in the principles and practice of art to those in whom lies nascent the rare faculty of aesthetic representation, or ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... while easily sustained upon abstract principles, demands consideration upon what are recognized as the urgent necessities of the case. It is a measure of relief,—a shield to break the force of a blow already descending with violence, and render it harmless. The work of destruction has already been set in motion all over ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... much more than mere abstract help and grace, much more even than the Holy Spirit bringing us strength, and peace, and purity. It is personal ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... extremely abstract conception and one with which we have no practical concern. I fancy I can hear the reader saying "The Lord only knows how the world started, and it is His business and not mine," which would be perfectly true if this originating faculty were confined to the Cosmic Mind. But it is not, ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... runs further back. Some historians have allowed themselves to think that the American notion of liberty is essentially declamatory, a sort of futile echo of Patrick Henry's "Give me Liberty or give me Death"; and not only declamatory, but hopelessly theoretical and abstract. They grant that it was a trumpet-note, no doubt, for agitators against the Stamp Act, and for pamphleteers like Thomas Paine; that it may have been a torch for lighting dark and weary ways in the Revolutionary War; but they believe it likewise to be a torch which gleams with ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... he had done that day he saw that much of it had fitted an abstract pattern of justice, as if he had been thinking of himself as an INC man. Or ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... will afford some opportunities of contributing to the welfare of mankind," is the characteristic opening of his first Adventurer. And when we have admired the real excellence of his heart, we must wonder at the vigour of a mind, which could so abstract itself from its own sorrows and misfortunes, which too often deaden our feelings of pity, as to sympathize with others in affliction, and even to promote innocent cheerfulness. Bowed down by the loss of a wife[6], on whom he had called from ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... was ushered into his presence, Iemon made profound obeisance and explained the cause of their presence. The visitations of O'Iwa to the district were causing the greatest public commotion. Not as a matter of private interest, but of public utility his interference was sought. If Iemon thought to abstract a copper "cash" from the priestly treasury he made a gross mistake. Besides, the individual who disturbs the public peace suffers severely from official mediation, no matter what form this takes. Shu[u]den inquired minutely as to the visit of the Daiho[u]-in, of ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... inaugural address was at all eccentric or mysterious. He had been told what he ought to do; he had tried to do it, as was quite right and proper. He deserved some reward. And he got it,—though only as an encouragement to abstract virtue, of course. The young lady was pleased to be friendly, gracious, charming. Her mother came in presently, was equally friendly and gracious, and almost as charming. Her father came home to dinner, and was friendly too, and hearty, and very hospitable. Her brothers were friendliest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... religious simplicity of these performances was broken in upon, and the devil and a circle of infernal associates were introduced to relieve the performance, and to excite laughter by all sorts of strange noises and antics. By and by, abstract personifications, such as Truth, Justice, Mercy, etc., found their way into these plays, and they then became moral plays, or "Moralities." These were in their highest vogue in the reigns of Henries VII. and VIII., and Holinshed tells a story of ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... in evil, and to an observer it was the revelation of one who was less and more than human—capable of falling below the scale of the tiger, or of rising above that of man. Such chaotic souls exist. There was something inscrutable in that face. Its secret reached the abstract. You felt that the man had known the foretaste of evil which is the calculation, and the after-taste which is the zero. In his impassibility, which was perhaps only on the surface, were imprinted two petrifactions—the petrifaction of the heart proper ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... girls' letters and put them in that receptacle, hanging the key on a little hook in the hall. Morning after morning it was she who received the postbag, unlocked it, and brought the contents to Mrs. Clavering, who always distributed the letters herself. Thus it was easy for Bertha to abstract the letters which contained the Dawlish postmark. She did this for a reason. It would never do for Florence to find out that her mother had not received the letter with the ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... Turner's landscapes. But I knew nothing about them. Without previous instruction I should probably have placed something worthless on the same level with them, and I could not fix my attention on them long. A water-colour by Turner, on which all his power had been expended, an abstract of years and years of toil and observation, was unable to detain me for more than five minutes, and in those five minutes I very likely did not detect one of its really distinguishing qualities. As to the early religious ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... actually present. Our moral faculty, according to all those of its interpreters who are entitled to the name of thinkers, supplies us only with the general principles of moral judgments; it is a branch of our reason, not of our sensitive faculty; and must be looked to for the abstract doctrines of morality, not for perception of it in the concrete. The intuitive, no less than what may be termed the inductive, school of ethics, insists on the necessity of general laws. They both agree that the morality of an individual ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... of the Wars of New England with the Eastern Indians, 16 (ed. 1859). Penhallow was present at the council. In Judge Sewall's clumsy abstract of the proceedings (Diary of Sewall, ii. 85) the Indians are represented as professing neutrality. The governor and intendant of Canada write that the Abenakis had begun a treaty of neutrality with the English, but that as "les Jesuites observoient les sauvages, le traite ne ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... twinkling eyes, "for that is an abstract remark, in which species of discourse truth-telling is comparatively easy. Abstract remarks are a great relief to the lazy honest man. They spare him the trouble of meticulous investigation of unimportant facts. But a concrete remark, touching ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... their palaces, and made facades to delight their eyes; the Japanese have wanted small furniture for their small rooms, and have developed wonderful skill and taste in designing it. Neither art nor science can remain long afloat in high abstract regions above the needs and interests of human life. ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... banging, shrieking and caterwauling from embryonic tenori and virtuosi, such as, within a month, would have cured all but the most persistent music-lovers of any further desire for the expression of that abstract art. ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... of abstract volition. I could not take them off. They were held by some terrible fascination; and I felt, or fancied, that the moment this should be broken, the animal ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... worship and organisation. (4) The effort to adjust the doctrine of religion to the prevailing doctrinal opinions. (5) Political and social circumstances. (6) The changing moral ideals of life. (7) The so-called logical consistency, that is the abstract analogical treatment of one dogma according to the form of another. (8) The effort to adjust different tendencies and contradictions in the church. (9) The endeavour to reject once for all a doctrine regarded as erroneous. (10) The sanctifying power of blind ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... oxygenations possible in the ordinary degrees of temperature had taken place. Hence, no new combustions or oxygenations can happen without destroying this equilibrium, and raising the combustible substances to a superior degree of temperature. To illustrate this abstract view of the matter by example: Let us suppose the usual temperature of the earth a little changed, and that it is raised only to the degree of boiling water; it is evident, that, in this case, phosphorus, which is combustible in a considerably lower degree of temperature, would no longer exist ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... (bodhyanga). Hardy defines it as meaning "perfect tranquillity;" Turnour, as "meditative abstraction;" Burnouf, as "self-control;" and Edkins, as "ecstatic reverie." "Samadhi," says Eitel, "signifies the highest pitch of abstract, ecstatic meditation; a state of absolute indifference to all influences from within or without; a state of torpor of both the material and spiritual forces of vitality; a sort of terrestrial nirvana, consistently culminating ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... nothing was dearer to me than those convictions... Well! ... love has come and neither they nor any regrets for them remain! It is even difficult for me to believe that I could prize such a one-sided, cold, and abstract state of mind. Beauty came and scattered to the winds all that laborious inward toil, and no regret remains for what has vanished! Self-renunciation is all nonsense and absurdity! That is pride, a refuge from well-merited unhappiness, and salvation from the envy of others' ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... especially a tenement in Roosevelt Street, which was the patrimony and whole estate of two children. With the rear house taken away, the income from the front would not be enough to cover the interest on the mortgage. It was one of those things that occasionally make standing upon abstract principle so very uncomfortable. I confess I never had the courage to ask what was done in their case. I know that the tenement went, and I hope—well, never mind what I hope. It has nothing to do with the case. The house is down, and the main issue ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... who will attentively consider the abstract now given, of the experiments made by many observers in several countries, will, I think, be convinced that by grafting two varieties of the potato together in various ways, hybridised plants can be ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... truths are revealed in supernatural visions. With these helps, and his own industry, Automathes becomes a self-taught though speechless philosopher, who had investigated with success his own mind, the natural world, the abstract sciences, and the great principles of morality and religion. The author is not entitled to the merit of invention, since he has blended the English story of Robinson Crusoe with the Arabian romance of Hai Ebn Yokhdan, which he might have read in the Latin version of Pocock. In the Automathes ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... in Grosvenor Gardens two ladies were at that same moment speaking of the FitzHenrys. It was quite easy to see that the smaller lady of the two was the mistress of the house, as also of that vague abstract called the situation. She sat in the most comfortable chair, which was, by the way, considerably too spacious for her, and there was a certain aggressive sense of possession ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... sake. Each nation produces a spiritual type of it, which becomes one of the deepest national characteristics, and the Celtic type is easily distinguished. No Celt ever cared for landscape. "It is loveliness I ask, not lovely things," says Fiona; and it is but a step from this to that abstract mystical and spiritual love of beauty, which is the very soul of the Celtic genius. It expresses itself most directly in colours, and the meaning of them is far more than bright-hued surfaces. The pale green of running water, the purple and pearl-grey of doves, still more the ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... the Rue du Saint-Esprit or in the Square one of these bewildering phenomena, careful and exhaustive researches had invariably reduced the fabulous monster to the proportions of a person whom one 'did know,' either personally or in the abstract, in his or her civil status as being more or less closely related to some family in Combray. It would turn out to be Mme. Sauton's son discharged from the army, or the Abbe Perdreau's niece come home ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... listened to the bells chiming all about the vale, say whether 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number' would be promoted by the destruction of all the feudality which belongs inseparably to this scene, and by the substitution of some abstract political rights for all the beef and ale and music and dancing with which they are made merry and glad even for so brief a space. The Duke of Rutland is as selfish a man as any of his class—that is, he never does what he does ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... curiosity, and his ways were "past finding out." He was bold and fearless physically, but there his courage ended. He avowed himself to be a Republican, yet he was an innate aristocrat. He was always declaiming against despotism and tyranny in the abstract, yet he was domineering and arbitrary in his household, in his family, and in his business. He affected primitive simplicity, yet was one of the vainest of men. In fact, his whole nature was a ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... colours in a solid or insoluble state, prepared for the artists' use. Hitherto, we have treated of colours in the abstract sense, as appealing to the eye only: we have now to consider ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... afterwards. But while things were remembered, persons, I found by-and-by, were completely forgotten. Or rather, while I remembered after a while generalities, such as houses and men, recognising them in the abstract as a house, or a man, or a horse, or a baby, I forgot entirely particulars, such as the names of people and the places I had lived in. Words soon came back to me: names and facts were lost: I knew the world as a whole, not my own old ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... Mongolian—or rather Turanian—worshippers of Budh. The latter process would have made more headway but for the influence of the reigning dynasty, which discourages it on system. The change implied in this proselytism is greater in respect of some social practices than in the abstract principles of religious belief. The polyandry of the Tibetans is in direct contrast with the polygamy of the Moslems, and is far more strictly maintained. It is favored by the circumstance that, contrary to what usually obtains in old countries, the males in this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... last several thousand years. Nor has his mind changed. There is no faculty of the mind of man to-day that did not exist in the minds of the men of long ago. Man has to-day no concept that is too wide and deep and abstract for the mind of Plato or Aristotle to grasp. Give to Plato or Aristotle the same fund of knowledge that man to-day has access to, and Plato and Aristotle would reason as profoundly as the man of to-day and ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... them was joined Burnet, whose well known hatred of Popery was likely to give weight to what he might say on such an occasion. Somers was the chief orator on the other side; and to his pen we owe a singularly lucid and interesting abstract of the debate. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... They did him good,—in the same way that the making of many shoes would have done him good had he been a shoemaker. In catching fishes and riding after foxes he could not give his mind to the occupation, so as to abstract his thoughts. But Cicero's de Natura Deorum was more effectual. Gradually he returned to a gentle cheerfulness of life, but he never burst out again into the violent exercise of shooting a pheasant. After that his mother died, and again he was called upon to endure ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... reasoned, yet at the same time almost passionate, impatience which was to devote us for some time to variety, almost to incoherency, of interest. We had fared across the sea under the glamour of the Swiss school in the abstract, but the Swiss school in the concrete soon turned stale on our hands; a fact over which I remember myself as no further critical than to feel, not without zest, that, since one was all eyes and the world decidedly, at such a pace, all images, it ministered ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... recited this discourse unto us on the glory of Narayana, that glory which is the highest and which is immutable. I heard it from him and have recited it to thee exactly as I heard it, O sinless one. This cult, with its mysteries and its abstract of details, was obtained by Narada, O king, from that Lord of the universe, viz., Narayana himself. Even such are the particulars of this great cult. I have, before this, O foremost of kings, explained ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... but energetic. At intervals the combatants would cling affectionately to one another, and on these occasions the red-jerseyed man, still chewing gum and still wearing the same air of being lost in abstract thought, would split up the mass by the simple method of ploughing his way between the pair. Toward the end of the first round Thomas, eluding a left swing, put Patrick neatly to the floor, where the latter remained for the necessary ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... the history and considering religious writings, the second large group of medieval productions, one finds the most significant translator's comment associated with the saint's legend, though occasionally the short pious tale or the more abstract theological treatise makes some contribution. These religious works differ from the romances in that they are more frequently based on Latin than on French originals, and in that they contain more deliberate and more repeated references ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... rendered also false as well as weak by the introducing sentence, "Volvitur Euryalus leto," after which the simile of the drooping flower is absurd. Of criticism, the chief use of which is to warn all sensible men from such business, the following abstract of Diderot's notes on the passage, given in the 'Saturday Review' for April 29th, 1871, is worth preserving. (Was the French critic really not aware that Homer had written the lines ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... speaking of her in the abstract, merely. But is it not true that the marked characteristic of all Englishmen is tyranny? Don't they rule wherever they go? Aren't they always and everywhere the dominant class—the oppressors? Watch the British tourist in any far country. Does he ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... him, or his powers of concentration were more than ordinarily great, that he could turn from the contemplation of a subject like the one left at the cross-roads corner, a subject which Burns was pretty sure vitally concerned him, to a mere abstract discussion of a modern sociological problem, bare of practical illustration, and dealing purely with one man's notions not yet worked out to ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... bring out a shade of meaning) not because we object to it, but because by doing so we would run the risk of identifying The Absolute with some idea of a personal god with certain theological attributes. Nor does the word "Principle" appeal to us, for it seems to imply a cold, unfeeling, abstract thing, while we conceive the Absolute Spirit or Being to be a warm, vital, living, acting, feeling Reality. We do not use the word Nature, which many prefer, because of its materialistic meaning to the minds of many, although ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... to the elucidation of your statement," observed the old gentleman, in the tone of one discussing a point of abstract science, "it may be remarked that the state of mind which ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... Accustomed to her parents' extravagant denunciations, and her uncle's more repressed but practical contempt of them, the unfortunate girl early developed a cynical disbelief in the virtues of kinship in the abstract, and a philosophical resignation to its effects upon her personally. Believing that her father and uncle fairly represented the fraternal principle, she was quite prepared for the early defection and distrust of her vagabond and dissipated brother Stephen, and accepted ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... being capable of adopting savage methods when it comes to punishing such a fellow as this M'Bongwele," exclaimed Lethbridge, when von Schalckenberg had come to an end. "Mere hanging seems absolutely inadequate; yet what can we do? Our sense of abstract justice may be so keen that, for the moment, we are in full sympathy with the old Mosaic law of 'an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,' but which of us could deliberately set to work to serve the savage as he has served others? We simply could not do it; and I suppose it ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... men in his day—and a good many in our own—Matthew had a low opinion of woman. It had been instilled into him, as it was at that time into every man who wrote himself "esquire," that the utmost chivalrous reverence was due to the ladies as an abstract idea; but this abstract idea was quite compatible with the rudest behaviour and the supremest contempt for any given woman in the concrete. Woman was an article of which there were two qualities: the first-class thing was a toy, the second was a machine. Both were for the use of ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... the moods of this old school-friend had begun to stir me. Meeting her on my daily walks to town by the back way through the new avenue, I found her seemingly anxious to avoid me, and difficult to warm to any interest but in the most remote and abstract affairs. Herself she would never speak of, her plans, cares, ambitions, preferences, or aversions; she seemed dour set on aloofness. And though she appeared to listen to my modestly phrased exploits with attention and respect, and some trepidation at the dangerous portions, ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... even so," said Leicester, looking at an abstract of astrological calculations which he had in his hand; "the stronger influence will prevail, and, as I think, the evil hour pass away. Lend me your hand, Sir Richard, to doff my gown; and remain an instant, if it is not too burdensome to ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... remarking that soda-water, though a good thing in the abstract, was apt to lie cold upon the stomach unless qualified with ginger, or a small infusion of brandy, which latter article he held to be preferable in all cases, saving for the one consideration of expense. Nobody venturing to dispute these positions, he ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... course make some money before we can marry. It 's rather droll, certainly, to engage one's self to a girl whom one is going to leave the next day, for years. We shall be condemned, for some time to come, to do a terrible deal of abstract thinking about each other. But I wanted her blessing on my career and I could not help asking for it. Unless a man is unnaturally selfish he needs to work for some one else than himself, and I am sure I shall run a smoother and swifter course for knowing that that ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... generally applicable." Yet, understood in the sense in which it was originally promulgated and afterwards explained, this early Socialist program still affords the most valuable key we have as to what Socialism is, if we view it on the side of its practical efforts rather than on that of abstract theories. Marx and Engels recognize that the measures I have mentioned must be acknowledged as "insufficient and untenable," because, though they involve "inroads on the rights of property," they do not go far enough to destroy capitalism and establish a Socialistic ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... language. In the Proposal he had declared with a pretense of knowledge, that Anglo-Saxon was "excepting some few variations in the orthography... the same in most original words with our present English, as well as with German and other northern dialects." But in An Abstract of the History of England (probably revised in 1719) he says that the English which came in with the Saxons was "extremely different from what it is now." The two statements are not incompatible, but the emphasis is remarkably changed. It is possible ...
— An Apology For The Study of Northern Antiquities • Elizabeth Elstob
... play, is at least personal and vital. These qualities compensate, in some measure, for the narrowness of available opportunities. Formal instruction, on the contrary, easily becomes remote and dead—abstract and bookish, to use the ordinary words of depreciation. What accumulated knowledge exists in low grade societies is at least put into practice; it is transmuted into character; it exists with the depth of meaning that attaches to its coming ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... to explain the ideal pantheism which Brahmanical philosophers substituted for the Nature-worship taught in the earlier Vedas. This proved too abstract for the people; and the Brahmans, in the true spirit of modern Jesuitism, wishing to accommodate their religion to the people,—who were in bondage to their tyranny, and who have ever been inclined to sensuous worship,—multiplied ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... in the abstract. But it is not a quality that tends to the making or the keeping ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... was something here of which she could take hold. Not that Father Bruno had suggested a new course of action so much as that he had supplied a new motive power. To do good, to give alms, to be kind to poor and sick people, Doucebelle had been taught already: but the reason for it was either the abstract notion that it was the right thing to do, or that it would help to increase her little heap of ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... depend greatly on the use of language, they are not fair to the deaf child, nor to the child with a speech defect, nor to the foreign child. Also, some persons who are clumsy in managing the rather abstract ideas dealt with in the Binet tests show up better in managing concrete objects. For all such cases, performance tests are useful. Language plays little part in a performance test, and concrete objects are used. The "form board" ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... which was manifested and certainly enjoyed by Duse, when she demanded that the stage be cleared of actors in order to save the creative life of the stage, is the same disgust that makes us yearn for wooden dolls to make abstract movements in order that we may release art from its infliction of the big "A", to take away from art its pricelessness and make of it a new and engaging diversion, pastime, even dissipation if you will; for all real expression is a phase of dissipation in itself: To release ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... illustration is one of the most marked features of his teaching. In one sense this simply proves him to be a genuine Oriental, for to contemplate and present abstract truths in concrete form is characteristic of the Semitic mind. In the case of Jesus, however, it proves more: the variety and homeliness of his illustrations show how completely conversant he was alike with common life and with spiritual truth. There is ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... the people; and if that welfare demands other measures, we must take them." This was not difficult, because the imperial power had gradually shaped two instruments wherewith to act: one was the laws sanctioned by the legislature and pertaining ordinarily to abstract questions of jurisprudence; the other was the Emperor's personal decrees, which, though discussed by the council of state, were the expression of the Emperor's will, and covered in their scope the whole ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... of State politics from personal belief. But we are not concerned at present with the personal philosophy of the two kings, but with the way it affected their people. This people, as far as the Netherlands were concerned, were the last in Europe to tolerate such hard and abstract methods of government, and nothing perhaps is more enlightening, if we try to form an adequate opinion of Belgian temperament, than the upheaval caused by the reforms proclaimed by the "benighted" and by the "enlightened" monarch. It was ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... business. People say to authors, just as they do to tailors: 'I want such and such an article. Make it and I'll pay you for it.' Now, your tailor may consider the Imperial Roman costume more artistic than that of today, and so may you in the abstract, but if he sent home a toga in place of a pair of trousers, you would discontinue dealing with him. So if it amuses you to make togas, well and good; I don't quarrel with it; but, personally, I mean to go into the gents' furnishing line and to do my ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... the notion that heat is matter. He thus laid the corner-stone of the modern theory that heat light, electricity, magnetism, chemical action, and all other forms of energy are in essence motion, are convertible into one another, and as motion are indestructible. The following abstract of Count Rumford's paper is taken from "Heat as a Mode of Motion," by Professor John Tyndall, published by D. Appleton & Co., New York. This work and "The Correlation and Conservation of Forces," edited by Dr. E. L. Youmans, published by the ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... keen insight into abstract truth; but he was an Englishman to the backbone in his severe adherence to the real and the concrete. He had a most classical taste, and a genius for philosophy and art; and he was fond of historical inquiry, and the politics of religion. He had no turn ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... best apology may be found in the cheerful resolution, with which, about eight years afterwards, he suffered death in the cause of religion. The authentic history of his martyrdom has been recorded with unusual candor and impartiality. A short abstract, therefore, of its most important circumstances, will convey the clearest information of the spirit, and of the forms, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Von Hammer's Review, Vienna Jahrbuch von Lit. 17, 75, 77. Malcolm's Persia, 8vo. ed. i. 503. Macan's Preface to his Critical Edition of the Shah Nameh. On the early Persian History, a very sensible abstract of various opinions in ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... wisdom.' They wanted demonstration, abstract principles, systematised philosophies, and the like. Paul comes again with his 'We preach Christ and Him crucified.' The wisdom is there, as I shall have to say in a moment, but the form that it takes is directly antagonistic to the wishes of these wisdom-seeking ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... represent his best work in both arts. These are arranged, not in chronological order, but in a way which will lead the student from the subjects most familiar and easily understood to those which are more abstract and difficult. ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... a distinguished botanic physician of Ohio, with several other physicians, both of the old and the new school, whom I have not named, do not hesitate to regard a pure vegetable diet, in the abstract, as by far the best for all mankind, both in ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... lecture at the Working Men's Club; and the subject of my lecture is the inherent nobility of man, and the necessity of man worship. Women have turned from men and are occupied now with their own aspirations, losing sight thereby of the ideal that God gave them. My poem is a sort of abstract, an epitome, a compendium ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... he had carefully developed it; and it was possible that when the world had completely palled upon him, he would shut himself up at Crumford Hall and give the public the benefit of his accumulated opinions, abstract and biographical. But he was not ready for that yet; he needed several years more of experience, observation, and assiduous cultivation of the habit of analysis; and in the meantime he was in a condition of cold disgust with himself and ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... of the Atlantic Pact builds on such precedents. The novel feature is its enlarged conception of defensible American interests abroad. In the words of the published abstract of the Report of the Committee on Foreign Relations on the Pact, "Article 5 records what is a fact, namely, that an armed attack within the meaning of the treaty would in the present-day world constitute an attack ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... by the late Sir George Gipps of the state of society in the distant interior of New South Wales is perfectly correct, nor can there be any doubt but that it entails evils on the stock-holders themselves which, on an abstract view of the question, I cannot help thinking they have it in their power to lessen, or entirely to remove, when an influx of population shall take place; but, however regular their establishments may be, they cannot, as single men, have the same influence over those whom they ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... capacity high, if not quite first rate, which enables them, granted fair chances, to rise quickly into positions where they can effectively serve the community. These men, whatever occupation they follow, be it that of abstract thinking, or literary production, or scientific research, or the conduct of affairs, whether commercial or political or administrative, are the dynamic strength of the country when they enter manhood, and ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... otherwise irksome, since social morality, the responsibility of man towards the life of man, will, in the new order of things, take the place of theological morality, or the responsibility of man to some abstract idea. Next, the day's work will be short. This need not be insisted on. It is clear that with work unwasted it CAN be short. It is clear also that much work which is now a torment, would be easily endurable if it ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... as has been before observed, that facts too stubborn to be resisted have produced a species of general assent to the abstract proposition that there exist material defects in our national system; but the usefulness of the concession, on the part of the old adversaries of federal measures, is destroyed by a strenuous opposition to a remedy, upon the only principles that can give it a chance of success. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... to adjust the doctrine of religion to the prevailing doctrinal opinions. (5) Political and social circumstances. (6) The changing moral ideals of life. (7) The so-called logical consistency, that is the abstract analogical treatment of one dogma according to the form of another. (8) The effort to adjust different tendencies and contradictions in the church. (9) The endeavour to reject once for all a doctrine regarded as erroneous. (10) The ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... escaped slave, caused a riot in which the court-house was attacked by a mob, one of the assailants was killed, and the militia were called out. Other like seizures elsewhere aroused the indignation of people who, whatever were their abstract theories as to the law, revolted at the actual spectacle of a man dragged back from freedom into slavery. May 22, 1856, Preston S. Brooks strode suddenly upon Charles Sumner, seated and unarmed at his desk in the senate-chamber, and beat him savagely over the head with ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... went on to demand his daughter from Lady Belamour, taking with him Betty, whom he allowed to be a much better match for my Lady than he could be. Very little faith in his cousin Urania remained to him in the abstract, yet even now he could not be sure that she would not talk him over and hoodwink him in any actual encounter. Sir Amyas likewise accompanied him, both to gratify his own anxiety and to secure admission. The young man still looked pale and worn with ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... subservience of lawyers, the servility of judges, gave scarce a hope that justice would not be wrested to serve the purposes of the crown; that considerations of state policy would not prove stronger than any abstract belief of the prisoner's innocence or guilt. That we have not misrepresented the degraded condition of the English tribunals during the period we have mentioned, a reference to the state trials passim, will abundantly prove. Nor is it at all strange that such should ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... Dickens that in this period of youthful strain we do not feel the strain but feel only the youth. His own amazing wish to write equalled or outstripped even his readers' amazing wish to read. Working too hard did not cure him of his abstract love of work. Unreasonable publishers asked him to write ten novels at once; but he wanted to write twenty novels at once. All this period is strangely full of his own sense at once of fertility and of futility; he did work which no one else could have ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... dropped from him in his conversations with my brother and others. But, on the whole, the simple fact was that he never ventured to go deeply into the fundamental questions. His official duties left him little time for abstract thought; and his surpassingly ingenious and versatile mind employed itself rather in framing excuses for not answering than in finding thorough answers to possible doubts. He adopted a version of the ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... perished by spontaneous combustion, and the serenade had been in honour of their ashes, it would have been impossible to surpass the unutterable despair expressed in that one chorus: 'Go where glory waits thee.' It was a requiem, a dirge, a moan, a howl, a wail, a lament, an abstract of everything that is sorrowful and hideous ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... know, and do not think essential to decide. As far as these triangles are individual, they are made so by the will of God, and not by the substance you call triangle. The universal—the abstract right angle, or any other abstract form—is only an idea, a concept, to which reality, individuality, or what we might call energy is wanting. The only true energy, except man's free ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... to the words of love which I addressed to him,— I forgot every painful thought, every fear, and every regret, in the happiness of the moment; but as soon as my attention was forced away from ourselves, and directed to abstract subjects, it wandered to the thousand objects of alarm and disquietude which ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... was drawn and quartered in MacFlecnoe, while the two were yoked for castigation in Part II. of Absalom and Achitophel, which appeared in 1682. Dryden possessed preminently the faculty for satire. He did not devote himself exclusively to an abstract treatment, nor, like Pope, to bitter personalities; he blends and combines the two methods most effectively. Every one of his brisk, nervous couplets carries a sting; every distich is a sound box ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... It is not a punishment; it is peace. But Durga Ram, called Umballa, will spend the remainder of his days in the treadmill, which is a concrete hell, not abstract." ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... clump of aged trees the young man came in view of a light and elegant country-house in the half-timbered Gothic style of the late revival, apparently only a few years old. Surprised at finding himself so near, Christopher's heart fluttered unmanageably till he had taken an abstract view of his position, and, in impatience at his want of nerve, adopted a sombre train of reasoning to convince himself that, far from indulgence in the passion of love bringing bliss, it was a folly, leading to grief and disquiet—certainly ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... of actuality in Italy that it is in England," his Eminence replied; "but in the abstract, and other things equal, my attitude would of course be one ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... two plans, the convention then went, on May 30, into a committee of the whole to consider the fifteen propositions in the Virginia plan seriatim. They wisely concluded to determine abstract ideas first and concrete forms later. Apparently for the time being little attention was paid to Pinckney's plan, and this may have been due to the hostile attitude of the older members of the convention to ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... cheese' had vanished! A sturdy "rat" of a beggar, whom we had relieved on the road, with his olfactories all alive, no doubt, "smelt" our cheese, and while we were gazing at the magnificent clouds, contrived to abstract our treasure! Cruel tramp! An ill return for our pence! We both wished the rind might not choke him! The mournful fact was ascertained a little before we drove into the courtyard of the house. Mr. Coleridge bore the loss with great fortitude, observing, that we should never starve with a loaf ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... persons not to be tolerated upon the face of God's earth. We do not tolerate them now. We punish them by law. We even destroy them wholesale in war, without inquiring into their individual guilt or innocence. David was taught, not by abstract meditation in his study, but by bitter need and agony, not to tolerate them then. If he could have destroyed them as we do now, it is not for us to say that he would have been wrong. And what if he were indignant, ...
— David • Charles Kingsley
... mice. I have also finished Tennyson. I have read him right through in the course of the year, which is much the best way to read a poet, as you can follow the development of his thoughts. His mind, to my thinking, was profound but not of very wide range, and strangely abstract. His only pressing intellectual problems are those of immortality and evil, and he reached his point of view on those before he was forty. He never advances or recedes from the position summarised in the preface to "In Memoriam," d. 1849. The result is that his later ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... material qualities; Vedana, sensation; Sanna, abstract ideas; Samkhara, tendencies of mind; Vinnana, mental powers, or consciousness. Of these we are formed; by them we are conscious of existence; and through them communicate with the world ...
— The Buddhist Catechism • Henry S. Olcott
... OF THE RED RACE. PAGE Natural religions the unaided attempts of man to find out God, modified by peculiarities of race and nation.—The peculiarities of the red race: 1. Its languages unfriendly to abstract ideas. Native modes of writing by means of pictures, symbols, objects, and phonetic signs. These various methods compared in their influence on the intellectual faculties. 2. Its isolation, unique in the history of the world. 3. Beyond all others, a hunting ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... even to your sympathy, but to you. Their very spirits are composed of a sort of sunflower dust that settles everywhere. And if they have what we term the higher life at all, it is expressed by a woodland call to some tree-top spirit in you. Thus, here am I, really desirous of an abstract, artistic training of the mind, already taking liberties with the sacred corners of your editorial dignity by impressing ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... to-night despatch'd sixteen businesses, a month's length apiece; by an abstract of success: I have conge'd with the duke, done my adieu with his nearest; buried a wife, mourned for her; writ to my lady mother I am returning; entertained my convoy; and between these main parcels of despatch effected ...
— All's Well That Ends Well • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... Englishmen with a few strangers among them into a body of strangers among whom two or three Englishmen still kept their places. The result of their "deep speech" with William was not likely to be other than an assent to William's will. The ordinary freeman did not lose his abstract right to come and shout "Yea, yea," to any addition that King William made to the law of King Edward. But there would be nothing to tempt him to come, unless King William thought fit to bid him. But once at least William did gather together, if not every freeman, at least all freeholders of ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... imitating in the round naves of a few churches the rotunda of the Holy Sepulchre. Other instances of devout imitation might be found, if we looked for them. But the imitation of a concrete model is a different thing from translating abstract mysteries into the plan and elevation of a building. And, although the ground plan with nave, transepts, and chancel, certainly forms a cross; and, although, as time went on, the resemblance to the chief symbol of the Christian faith was no doubt recognised and valued, the plan itself, as we have ...
— The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson
... this eternal Crabbe is relished in America (I am not looking to my Edition, which would be a hopeless loss anywhere): he certainly is little read in his own Country. And I fancy America likes more abstract matter than ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... Mist.Ford. He will seeke there on my word: Neyther Presse, Coffer, Chest, Trunke, Well, Vault, but he hath an abstract for the remembrance of such places, and goes to them by his Note: There is no hiding you ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... this table. What! Because bread is good and wholesome and necessary and nourishing, shall you thrust a crumb into my windpipe while I am talking? Do not these muscles of mine represent a hundred loaves of bread? and is not my thought the abstract of ten thousand of these crumbs of truth with which you would choke off ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... voice cheered Florimel a little, as she lay forsaken in her misery. Her whole effort now was to keep herself from fainting, and for this end, to abstract her mind from the terrors of her situation: in this she was aided by a new shock, which, had her position been a less critical one, would itself have caused her a deadly dismay. A curious little sound came to her, apparently from somewhere ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... could get respectable lodgings in the neighbourhood of Red Lion Square for a week?" said Mrs. Furnival, once more bringing the conversation back from the abstract to the concrete. ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... [298] Abstract of Randolph's instructions, from his own pen (Strype, Annals iii. i. 442): 'Nothing shall be done prejudicial to the King's title, but the same to pass by private assurance from Her ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... be turned against the throne. The sovereign people of America may give political equality to their old slaves, and invite them to share in the legislation of great interests: it is in accordance with that theory of abstract rights which Rousseau, the creator of the French Revolution, propounded,—which gospel of rights was accepted by Jefferson and Franklin, The monarchs of the world have their own opinions about the political rights of those whom they deem ignorant or inexperienced. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... neglected it. An experimenter in this direction, he now and then forgot that the proper subject-matter of the novel is man—man either individual or collective—and spent himself in fruitless endeavours to endow the abstract with reality. ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... the existence of Deity and must therefore have an abstract idea of spirit, you must have some notions on the subject, and should be able to tell me how it ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... mountainous counties of Virginia, fifteen miles from an east and west railway line. Armitage opened a duly recorded deed which conveyed to himself the title to two thousand acres of land; also a curiously complicated abstract of title showing the successive transfers of ownership from colonial days down through the years of Virginia's splendor to the dread time when battle shook the world. The title had passed from the receiver of a defunct shooting-club to Armitage, who had been charmed by the description of the ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... take in hand any volume of Divinity, or school metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames; for it can contain nothing ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... returned. Mr. Hobhouse is a greater man at the hustings, Lord Rolle at Plymouth Dock; but Mr. Bentham would carry it hollow, on the score of popularity, at Paris or Pegu. The reason is, that our author's influence is purely intellectual. He has devoted his life to the pursuit of abstract and general truths, and to ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... indeed be cited, but it is in the brilliant literature of German Social Democracy that the most scientific expression of the new spirit is to be sought. Truly Marx has been indeed translated. His abstract and etiolated internationalism has been replaced by the warm humanity of writers like, say, David or Pernerstorfer. The principle of nationality is Vindicated by the latter in a noble passage. I quote it from Sombart's "Socialism ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... three equal, vertical bands of red (hoist side), blue, and red; centered on the hoist-side red band in yellow is the national emblem ("soyombo" - a columnar arrangement of abstract and geometric representation for fire, sun, moon, earth, water, and the ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... with the uneasiness that every boy feels at any abstract approach to the great topic. The girl went straight on, with all the serenity of the least experienced of her sex. Her big blue eyes were gravely fixed on his reddened face. Her own was quite calm, and very serious indeed. Her soft lips were set as firmly as one rose leaf may be folded against ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... Ages is an expression of the spirit of feudalism and of the genius of the Church. From the union of feudalism and Christianity arose the chivalric ideals, the new courtesy, the homage to woman. Abstract ideas, ethical, theological, and those of amorous metaphysics, were rendered through allegory into art. Against these high conceptions, and the overstrained sentiment connected with them, the positive intellect and the mocking ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... seems to me, philosophy moves toward this reading of existence. The revolt from the last century's materialism is almost complete. In religious language, abstract thought is again finding and feeling God within the world; and finding too in this discovery and realization the meaning, and perhaps—if we may dare to use such a word—the purpose of life. It suggests—and ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... a country, the characteristics of a people, their intellectual, moral and spiritual condition, etc. Whereas, the temperance cause, in its strictest sense, is everywhere identical, and its laws universal; the essence of which in the abstract is simply 'to abstain' and 'to obey.' But suppose, for the sake of argument, that you are right in your opinion, I ask then, is there sufficient reason in the act of having withdrawn myself ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... for religion. But what to me is always most seductive in the book is, that to this edition (not copy, of course) of 1651 Master Izaak Walton, when he came, in his Compleat Angler of 1653, to discuss such abstract questions as the transmission of sound under water, and the ages of carp and pike, must probably have referred. He often mentions "Sir Francis Bacon's" History of Life and Death, which is included in the volume. No ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... I therefore at once abandoned. But knowing that the jurisprudence of Masonry is founded, like all legal science, on abstract principles, which govern and control its entire system, I deemed it to be a better course to present these principles to my readers in an elementary and methodical treatise, and to develop from them those necessary deductions which reason ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... case, Forkel was of opinion that the hard modulation was a faithful record of what the composer wished to express.[69] The natural order of history seems inverted here. One would have expected Forkel to look upon the music from an abstract, but Buelow from a poetical point of view. C.H. Bitter—also on purely musical grounds—condemns Buelow's alterations. He says:—"Even weaknesses of great masters, among which the passages in question are not to be counted, ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... Mrs. Owen, Dan's business was quickly transacted. She produced an abstract of title and bade him read aloud the description of the property conveyed while she held the deed. At one point she took a pen and crossed a t; otherwise the work of Wright and Fitch was approved. When she ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... courteous reader take offence at the opinions broached in the conclusion of the last Chapter. The Editor himself, on first glancing over that singular passage, was inclined to exclaim: What, have we got not only a Sansculottist, but an enemy to Clothes in the abstract? A new Adamite, in this century, which flatters itself that it is the Nineteenth, and destructive ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... rampant provincial and separatist spirit. On the other hand, they were united by a common language, by a common political and legal tradition, and by the fact that none of them had ever been really independent sovereign states. Nobody dared or cared to object to union in the abstract; nobody advocated the alternative of complete separation; it was only a strong efficient union which aroused the opposition of the Clintons and the Patrick Henrys. Nevertheless, the conditions making for ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... collection of experiments, described with just the right amount of abstract information and no more, and placed in progressive order. The recent inventions of the phonograph and microphone lend an extraordinary interest to this whole field of experiment, which makes Professor Mayer's manual ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... of PARLAK is mentioned in the Shijarat Malayu or Malay Chronicle, and also in a Malay History of the Kings of Pasei, of which an abstract is given by Dulaurier, in connection with the other states of which we shall speak presently. It is also mentioned (Barlak), as a city of the Archipelago, by Rashiduddin. Of its extent we have no knowledge, but the position (probably of its northern extremity) is preserved ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... women that we are not able to analyse those whom we love, but only worship them in the abstract. But he had a friend, his best friend; he could analyse him; the poet. He was present at Karl Mander's last meeting, and he came to me from it when your father was dead. We talked together of everything as much as I then could. He wrote about him the most beautiful things that have ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... their administration. And the means of seduction allowed by law, such as the covert bribery of shows and festivals, were used openly and boldly." What, then, could be hoped from the laws when they were made the channel of extortion and oppression? Law, the glory of Rome in the abstract, became the most dismal mockery of the rights of man. Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its savor it is good for nothing, not even for the dunghill. When the laws practically add to the evils they were ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... into account the number of people who were gathered together here in a small area I didn't see among the temperate and able-bodied any worse examples of hard luck than I saw among my former associates. In fact of sheer abstract hard luck I didn't see as much. In seventy-five per cent of the cases the conditions were of their own making—either the man was a drunkard or the women slovenly or the whole family was just naturally vicious. Ignorance may excuse some ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... my humble opinion, which is, that no man can be in his proper senses at the moment he commits so rash an act as self-murder. ...The Bible declares that a man clings to nothing so strongly as his own life, I therefore view it as an axiom, and an abstract principle, that a man must necessarily be out of his mind at the moment of destroying himself." Byron, probably, read the report of the inquest in Cobbett's Weekly Register (August 17, 1822, vol. 43, pp. 389-425). The "eulogy" was in perfectly good taste, but there ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... wouldn't. Impersonally, he was entertaining about South Africa, about the Caucasus, about Alaska, Mexico, anywhere you care to think; but concretely he might have been an illustrated lecture for all he mentioned himself. He was passionately fond of abstract argument. "Y' see," he would explain, "I don't get half as much of this sort of thing as I want. Of course, one does run across remarkable people—now, I met a cow-puncher once who knew Keats by heart—but as a rule I deal only with material things, mines and prospects and assays and that ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Homestead Acts and by the distribution of credit through the Farm Loan Banks. Indeed, this desire for home ownership has, without question, stimulated more people to purposeful saving than any other factor. Saving, in the abstract, is, of course, a perfunctory process as compared with purposeful saving for a home, the possession of which may change the very physical, mental, and moral fibre of one's ...
— Better Homes in America • Mrs W.B. Meloney
... man's averdupoise was his abstract of title. There was nothing said about records and patentees as long as you worked your ground; but, likewise, when you didn't work it, somebody else usually did. We had a thousand feet of as good dirt as ever laid out in the rain; ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... from his pudding. He was very spiritual, but he had had poor pickings in his previous boarding place, and he could not help a certain abstract enjoyment over Miss ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... the subjects under discussion—because the main ideas apply to humanity in general and not to any particular country. The paper on Divorce is of course written from an English point of view, but its suggestions may be of some use to those who are interested in the question of divorce in the abstract, and are on the alert as to the results of its facilities in America. I do not presume to offer an opinion as to its action there; and in this paper am not making the slightest criticism of the American divorce ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... however, rather than positive. He does not inspire with ideals of goodness; but he holds back from evil. He is not a being who is ever likely to enter, like the God of the Jews, into intimate and affectionate relations with men; he is too abstract and has too little history to be capable of such unbending; his religion, when it comes to be fully formed, will be one of puritans and fanatics rather than of the meek and lowly. He is the one great instance of a god without any natural basis who has come ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... from his pipe) lay amongst the books of the old English writers. His soul delighted in communion with ancient generations, more especially with men who had been unjustly forgotten. Hazlitt's mind attached itself to abstract subjects; Lamb's was more practical, and embraced men. Hunt was somewhat indifferent to persons as well as to things, except in the cases of Shelley and Keats, and his own family; yet he liked poetry and poetical subjects. Hazlitt (who was ordinarily very shy) was the best talker of the three. ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... be added, also, that Purchas printed an abstract of the Oxford tract in his "Pilgrimage," in 1613, from material furnished him by Smith. The Oxford tract was also republished by Purchas in his "Pilgrimes," extended by new matter in manuscript supplied by Smith. The "Pilgrimes" did not appear till 1625, a year after the "General Historie," ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... man than in any photograph that I have seen. His forehead is not remarkably large, but comes forward at the eyebrows; it is not the brow nor countenance of a prominently intellectual man, (not a natural student, I mean, or abstract thinker,) but of one whose office it is to handle things practically and to bring about tangible results. His face looked capable of being very stern, but wore, in its repose, when I saw it, an aspect pleasant and dignified; it is not, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... instructions to the letter. He wrote a beautiful hand. He was, as the reader knows, an admirable accountant. For several days Mr. Burns seemed disposed to ascertain his capabilities by putting a variety of matters into his hands. He gave him a contract to copy, and then asked for an abstract of it. He submitted several long accounts to him for arrangement. He sent him to the mill or factory, sometimes to deliver a message simply, sometimes to look after a matter of consequence. Mr. Burns found Hiram ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the rights even of brute matter and arbitrary symbols. If he writes the same word twice in succession, by accident, he always erases the one that stands second; has not the first-comer the prior right? This act of abstract justice, which I trust many of my readers, like myself, have often performed, is a curious anti-illustration, by the way, of the absolute wickedness of human dispositions. Why doesn't a man always strike out the first of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... to his advantage or enjoyment."[10] To him a jest is as unmeaning as the babbling of a brook; his wife is a beast of burden; and even his courting is carried on by gifts of good things to eat, sent to the parents.[11] Heaven is merely a hunting-ground; his language has no words to express abstract qualities, virtues, vices, or sentiments.[12] His idea of the Great Spirit, and the word which expresses it, may be applied with equal propriety to a formidable (though not beneficent) animal; indeed, the Indian words which we translate "spirit," ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... progress I could in the language, and in addition I pushed my explorations here and there. Either I missed some subtle point or their language was excessively simple—almost exclusively composed of concrete substantives and verbs. There seemed to be few, if any, abstract terms, or little use of figurative language. Their sentences were usually simple and of two words, and I failed to convey or understand any but the simplest propositions. I determined to put the thought of my Time Machine and ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
