SELECTIVE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Selective

"Selective" Quotes from Famous Books

... definite substances and leaves the unnecessary ones in solution, there is soon a cessation of the inward movement of the unimportant constituents of the soil solution. This process is often spoken of as selective absorption; that is, the plant, because of its vital activity, appears to have the power of selecting from the soil certain ...

— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe

... disciplined and experienced editors. So far as I have known these they are men of aesthetic conscience, and of generous sympathy. They have their preferences in the different kinds, and they have their theory of what kind will be most acceptable to their readers; but they exercise their selective function with the wish to give them the best things they can. I do not know one of them—and it has been my good fortune to know them nearly all—who would print a wholly inferior thing for the sake of an inferior class of readers, though they may sometimes decline a good thing because for ...

— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... cut and dry rules must go to their Scriptures for them, and even then, as the rules in the Scriptures are contradictory—both as between Scriptures and within any given Scripture—they must call in the help of Intuition and Utility in the making of their code, in their selective process. This selective process will be largely moulded by the public opinion of their country and age, emphasising some precepts and ignoring others, and the code will be the expression of the average morality of the time. If this clumsy and uncertain fashion of finding a rule of conduct ...

— The Basis of Morality • Annie Besant

... the first human beings. We have come into a great heritage of interesting things, collected and piled all about us by the curiousity of past generations. And so our interest is selective. Our education consists in learning intelligent choice. Our energies do not clash or compete: each is free to take his own path to knowledge. Each has that choice, which is man's alone, of the life he shall live, and finds ...

— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson

... no particular point of view, one feels it necessary to reexamine it in order to know how it treats some particular topic! The former reading was too defective to meet a special need, because the very general aim caused the attitude to be general or non-selective. How often do young people who have been taught to have no particular aim in their reading, have no aim at all, beyond intellectual dissipation, the momentary tickle of the thought. Thus all particular needs are in danger of being left unsatisfied when no particular need ...

— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry

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