"Abstruse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Like the doctor, the biologist was a specialist in books no less than in science, and his hobby comprised a field till recent times untilled. Keen though he was in his pursuit, it was the sea that claimed his every day of leisure. An active mind, eager in the elucidation of the more abstruse problems of physiology, yet his alert bearing, his quickness of movement and springy step, spoke more of the quarterdeck than the laboratory. Denied the sea as a profession, his heart was for ever in ships; and when at ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... made up to a large extent of English-speaking foreigners. There were several university students—grave-faced, older men, with beards and spectacles—who looked down on the young musicians, and talked, of set purpose, on abstruse subjects. More noteworthy were two American pianists: Ford, who could not carry a single glass of beer, and played better when he had had more than one; and James, a wiry, red-haired man, with an unfaltering opinion of himself, and an iron wrist—by means of a week's practice, he could ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Theaetetus, or the Phaedrus, or the seventh book of The Republic, can doubt Plato's gift in precisely the opposite direction; that gift of sounding by words the depths of thought, a plastic power literally, moulding to term and phrase what might have seemed in its very nature too impalpable and abstruse to lend itself, in any case, to language? He gives names to the invisible acts, processes, creations, of abstract mind, as masterly, as efficiently, as Adam himself to the visible living creations ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... of learning. It may be discovered either in the choice of a subject, or in the manner of treating it. He is undoubtedly guilty of pedantry, who, when he has made himself master of some abstruse and uncultivated part of knowledge, obtrudes his remarks and discoveries upon those whom he believes unable to judge of his proficiency, and from whom, as he cannot fear contradiction, he cannot ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... into a bundle. But though men fight much more scientifically now than they did at Troy, and know much more about the taking and defending of walled towns, no poet of the present day greatly excels Homer,—no, not the Scotch schoolmaster even who wrote Wolfe's Ode, or the gentleman who sends us abstruse verses which we unluckily cannot understand, and then scolds us in perspicuous prose for not giving them a place in ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... frequently with her father on his farming walks, as he liked to have one or more of the family with him. She enjoyed these walks, for Mr. Fullerton would talk about philosophy and science, often of the most abstruse and entrancing kind. His children were devoted to him. During these expeditions, they always vied with one another to ferret out the most absurd story to tell him, he being held as conqueror who made their father laugh most heartily. Sometimes they all went in a body, ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... maiden herself interested him. But it was not so easy to go about it. Pocahontas's knowledge of English did not extend beyond the simplest expressions; and he found it necessary to translate the long and abstruse theological dogmas into familiar terms. He had almost despaired of making her comprehend until he recalled how his Master had taught in parables. So he retold the incidents of His life in stories which held the Indian maiden ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... naturally abstruse on the metaphysical side, but it is always picturesque on the dramatic; for it issues in that love of the unusual which is so striking to every reader of Mr. Browning's works; and we might characterize these in a few words, by saying that they reflect at once the extent of his general ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... fall of stones from meteors in the atmosphere, the disarming of a thunder-cloud by a metallic point, the production of fire from ice by a metal white as silver, and referring certain laws of motion of the sea to the moon,—that the physical inquirer is seldom disposed to assert, confidently, on any abstruse subjects belonging to the order of natural things, and still less so on those relating to the more mysterious relations of moral ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... recollections of his college sermons assure me, he was apt to handle, and that vigorously, the high topics of theology. He gave us not milk alone, but strong meat. Yet have I seldom known a man so remarkable for making an abstruse subject plain to ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... philosophers, men of a liberal education and curious disposition, might silently meditate, and temperately discuss in the gardens of Athens or the library of Alexandria, the abstruse questions of metaphysical science. The lofty speculations, which neither convinced the understanding, nor agitated the passions, of the Platonists themselves, were carelessly overlooked by the idle, the busy, and even the studious part of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... he can call by color at any hour of the night. It was this passion of his for the stars which showed him his work as a boy. That started him fabricating glasses to see them better. He has a supreme eye for light, circles and foci, and a brain that just plays with heavy mathematics—the most abstruse calculations. Yet, you see, he carries it all with the ease of a boy. I think men who come with a task to do are like that. It's part of them. They don't feel the weight of what they know, because it's all through ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... reigned. We was too busy, we were all too busy with our small plans and daily struggles, to take any interest in Locke or Gibbon or Hume, therefore the ageing philosopher sat forlornly among his faded, musty books, dreaming his days away on some abstruse ethical problem, or carving with his patient knife some quaintly ornate piece of furniture, while my own father (at the opposite pole of life) weeded his garden, read the daily paper or played cinch with the men at ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... voice changing to the drone of the liturgist's and his face flushing with uncaged joy. In an hour there were three priests with the boy, and he spoke in Latin to them without faltering. He discussed abstruse ecclesiastical questions and claimed incidentally to be an Italian priest dead a score of years, and, to prove his claim, described Rome and the Vatican as it was before Leo's day. Then he fell asleep and the next day was better and knew no Latin, but insisted on reading the note under ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... instinctive or automatic! It is just so in learning a foreign language, and it was just the same when in childhood we learned to walk, to talk, and to write. It is just the same, too, in learning to think about abstruse subjects. What at first strains the attention to the utmost, and often wearies us, comes at last to be done without effort and almost unconsciously. Great minds thus travel over vast fields of thought with an ease of which they are themselves unaware. Dr. Nathaniel Bowditch once ...
— The Meaning of Infancy • John Fiske
... the curb till the victoria disappeared. Of what he was thinking I don't know; but he finally muttered "James?" in an inquiring way, and made for the club, shaking his head, as if suddenly confronted by a remarkably abstruse problem. ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... lyes very Abstruse, and all the rumaging of the whole House cannot find it; nay, when all the People in the House have given it over, they very often find one thing when they are looking ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... of training he was familiar with abstruse problems; hence it may be forgiven him, if, at first blush, this form of poker appeared simplicity itself. He reasoned thus: There were fifty-two cards in the full deck; there were exactly four, neither more nor less, of each ace, deuce, trey and so forth until one got to the king; there ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... influenced by the caption, and she chose that which stands in our English version as "Job excuseth his desire of death." This she read steadily, from beginning to end, in a sweet, low and plaintive voice; hoping devoutly that the allegorical and abstruse sentences might convey to the heart of the sufferer the consolation he needed. It is another peculiarity of the comprehensive wisdom of the Bible that scarce a chapter, unless it be strictly narration, can be turned to, that does not contain some searching truth ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... with wonder, and asked the babe of many abstruse things, receiving answers beyond his understanding. So, at last convinced, he put the ...
— The Sun King • Gaston Derreaux
... his wife's feelings towards himself, whether those were cold indifference or hidden dislike, that was an abstruse and remote question which Mr. Whitelaw never took the trouble to ask himself. She was his wife. He had won her, that was the grand point; whatever disinclination she might have felt for the alliance, whatever love she might have cherished for another, ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... more in her favour, for she was my mother; but it is impossible to narrate the history without exposing her conduct. The marriage took place, and my father, having woke up as it were at the celebration, again returned to his closet, to occupy himself with abstruse studies; the results of which have been published, and have fully established his reputation as a man of superior talent and deep research. But, however much the public may appreciate the works of a man of genius, ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... mathematician, born at Turin of French parentage; had gained at the age of twenty a European reputation by his abstruse algebraical investigations; appointed director of Berlin Academy in 1766, he pursued his researches there for twenty-one years; in 1787 he removed to Paris, where be received a pension from the Court of 6000 ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... and sentiment. But to these trifling moral incongruities, both the pastor and his parishioners were alike indifferent; their subtle mental exercises having given birth to a tendency of aptly reconciling all seeming discrepancies, as well as of accommodating the most abstruse doctrines to the ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... mankind, when other things are equal, would be gross injustice and cruelty. The mass of mankind can give but little of their attention to acquiring a knowledge of the law. Their other duties in life forbid it. Of course, they cannot investigate abstruse or difficult questions. All that can rightfully be required of each of them, then, is that he exercise such a candid and conscientious judgment as it is common formankind generally to exercise in such matters. If he have done this, it ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... we are restricted, it is impossible to give any account of the multiplex and abstruse details into which the system is carried. The present volume contains an ontology constructed upon the new basis. It shows varied study, and abounds in ponderous quotations and laborious analyses. It will be profoundly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... resembled children, being sensitive and impulsive, fond of play, and very quick in their motions. Their readiness in gaining the elements of education is in accord with experience in the case of other savages. It is when studies requiring abstruse thought are reached that the facility in acquisition of the savage races comes to ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... we wise? Our abstruse calculations Are based on experience long; Are we sanguine? Our high expectations Are founded on hope that is strong; Thus we build an air-castle that crumbles And drifts till no traces remain, And the fool builds again while he grumbles, And the ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... principles of the banking trade may appear somewhat abstruse, the practice is capable of being reduced to strict rules. To depart upon any occasion from those rules, in consequence of some flattering speculation of extraordinary gain, is almost always extremely dangerous and frequently fatal to the banking company which attempts ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... occupations he had gathered amusing anecdotes, which he told with a keen pleasure in his own powers of entertainment. He had read a great deal, chiefly delighting in books which were unusual; and he poured forth his stores of abstruse knowledge with child-like enjoyment of the amazement of his hearers. Three or four years before abject poverty had driven him to take the job of press-representative to a large firm of drapers; and though he felt the work unworthy his abilities, which he rated highly, the firmness of his wife ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... history." Here, however, the resemblance between counterpoint and mathematics ends, for the simplicity of genuine contrapuntal style is a simplicity of emotion as well as of principle; and if the style has a popular reputation of being severe and abstruse, this is largely because the popular conception of emotion is conventional and dependent upon an excessive amount of external ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... him; and, what is more, there is no evidence that there existed any demand on the part of the popular mind for any such solution or illustration. The ordinary mind would seem to have been either indifferent to or satisfied with the abstruse cosmogonical and cosmological theories of the early sages for at least a thousand years. The cosmogonies of the I ching, of Lao Tzu, Confucius (such as it was), Kuan Tzu, Mencius, Chuang Tzu, were impersonal. P'an Ku and his myth must be regarded rather as an accident than as a creation ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... change the subject, asked why the public were forbidden to approach the Serapeum, her companion told her that since his return from the Circus Caesar had been devoting himself to astrology, soothsaying, and other abstruse matters, and that the noise of the city disturbed him. He was very learned in such things, and if she only had time she could have told Melissa wonderful things. Thus conversing, they crossed the square, and when it lay behind them and they were ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... should be made up by some method out of the mass, and what so good a method as that of natural selection [laughter] and the inclusion, within these walls, of the ladies? It is a little hard upon the rational instincts and experience of man that we should take up the abstruse subjects of philosophy and of evolution, of all the great topics that make up Mr. Spencer's contribution to the learning and the wisdom of his time, at ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Cats, Dogs, raise Tempests or the like is utterly denied and disproved. Wherein is also handled, The existence of Angels and Spirits, the truth of Apparitions, the Nature of Astral and Sydereal Spirits, the force of Charms and Philters; with other abstruse matters. By John Webster, Practitioner in Physick. Falsa etenim opiniones Hominum non solum surdos sed et coecos faciunt, ita ut videre nequeant quae aliis perspicua apparent. Galen. lib. 8, de Comp. Med. London: ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... other conceptions may be found, whatever inconsistencies or contradictions to this may appear, still, we believe the genuine Zoroastrian view was such as we have now stated. The opposite doctrine arose from the more abstruse lucubrations of a more modern time, and ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Susie in, and he rose with a smile to greet her. She had been in Paris for some time, and they had seen much of one another. He basked in the gentle sympathy with which she interested herself in all the abstruse, quaint matters on which he spent his time; and, divining her love for Arthur, he admired the courage with which she effaced herself. They had got into the habit of eating many of their meals together in a quiet house opposite the Cluny called La Reine Blanche, and here they had talked ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... intended to prove that the writer had a command of simple English, correct in sentence structure, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. The subject is "The Value of Organized Athletics in Schools"—not an abstruse one, ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... taken," replied Father Waite. "For, though I may know that there are very abstruse mathematical principles, yet I may be utterly unable to demonstrate or use them. But now," he went on, "we are brought to other vital questions concerning us. They are, I think, points to which the theologian has given but scant thought. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... advocate the overloading of children with verbal statements of abstruse doctrines, whether of religion or of science. Much less would I turn them into parrots, to repeat phrases to which they attach no meaning at all. But when it is demanded, on the other hand, that they shall learn nothing but what they understand, I demur. I ask for explanation ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... The old Hills, the old Brooks and Houses, are still there; but the Population has marched away, almost all; it is not there any more. I cannot enter into light talk with the survivors and successors; I withdraw into silence, and converse with the old dumb crags rather, in a melancholy and abstruse manner.—Thank God, my good old Mother is still there; old and frail, but still young of heart; as young and strong there, I think, as ever. It is beautiful to see affection survive where all else is submitting ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... that its children are but dust; even (though this is less probable) the heresies without the wives might have been ignored; but the combination was excessive. The cardinal had to go. Since then he has been living in this chteau, writing vast and abstruse works on theology and enjoying the loveliness of the scenery, the beauty of his house and garden, the amenities of such witty and scholarly society as he could collect around him, and the companionship of a lady whom he inaccurately calls his niece. His name—gentlemen, many of ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... of this little work the writer has kept one end in view, viz.: To make it serviceable for those for whom it is intended, that is, for those who have neither the time nor the opportunity, the learning nor the inclination, to peruse elaborate and abstruse treatises on Rhetoric, Grammar, and Composition. To them such works are as gold enclosed in chests of steel and locked beyond power of opening. This book has no pretension about it whatever,—it is neither ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... with equations and computations. Weirdly shaped curves were drawn, with arguments at every point—arguments hot and violent from Brandon, from Westfall cold and precise, backed by lightning calculations and with facts and diagrams culled from the many abstruse works of reference, which by this time literally covered the bench ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... Metaphysics." It had need to be copious therefor, for it is a very large subject. Mr. Pickwick himself must have been very familiar with the Encyclopedia, for he at once objected that he was not aware that so abstruse a topic was dealt with in its pages. He had perhaps consulted the book, say, at Garraway's Coffee House, for, alas! the good man was not able to have a library of his own, living, as he did, in lodgings or at the "George and Vulture." Mr. Pott, however, who also knew ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... you are doubtless aware, sir"—he was always scrupulous to assume knowledge on the part of his hearer, no matter how abstruse or technical the subject; it was a phase of his inherent courtesy—"was intended to represent not the cuckoo, but the blackbird. It had a double pipe for the hours, 'Pit-weep! Pit-weep!' and ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... have been left for me; and I have endeavoured to collect and communicate, in the clearest and most intelligible manner, the whole of the heretofore abstruse mysteries of the culinary art, which are herein, I hope, so plainly developed, that the most inexperienced student in the occult art of cookery, may work from my receipts with the ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... Mathematical theorists tell us that the only way in which the right and left sides of a solid body can be changed is by taking that body clean out of space as we know it,—taking it out of ordinary existence, that is, and turning it somewhere outside space. This is a little abstruse, no doubt, but anyone with any knowledge of mathematical theory will assure the reader of its truth. To put the thing in technical language, the curious inversion of Plattner's right and left sides is proof ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... consider love of man founded on love of God, nothing but "flat morality," must have forgotten that a Higher One than they declared, that on these two hang all the law and the commandments. By placing abstruse tenets, the handiwork of Popes and Councils, in the place of Christ's teaching, and by making a belief in these positive articles a burning question, weak mortals have driven weak mortals to ask, "Are we Christians still?" Let ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... which men thus combine, meet, and act in concert, are manifest proofs of a social proclivity so strong as to create reasons for its indulgence where such reasons do not already exist. Even in science and in the most abstruse forms of erudition, men of learning seek mutual countenance and encouragement, and readily suspend their solitary research and study for the opportunity of intercommunication on the subjects and objects of their pursuit. The cases in which society ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... allowable, and that cunning is intelligence and wickedness is wisdom. Everyone confirms his heresy. Volumes are filled with confirmations of the two heresies prevalent in Christendom. Assemble ten heresies, however abstruse, ask an ingenious man to confirm them, and he will confirm them all. If you regard them then solely from the confirmations of them, will you not be seeing falsities as truth? Since all that is false lights up in the natural man ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... that what he has done is due to nothing but industry and patient thought; and, indeed, long consideration is so necessary in such abstruse inquiries, that it is always dangerous to publish the productions of great men, which are not known to have been designed for the press, and of which it is uncertain, whether much patience and thought have been bestowed ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... brought over with her, says Winthrop, "two dangerous errors: first, that the person of the Holy Ghost dwells in a justified person; second, that no sanctification can help to evidence to us our justification." Into the merits of such abstruse doctrines it is not necessary for the historian to enter. One can hardly repress a smile as one reflects how early in the history of Boston some of its characteristic social features were developed. It is curious to read of lectures there in 1636, lectures by a lady, and transcendentalist ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... of causes or their effects; hence, if you inquire why they use such and such ceremonies, they reply, our fathers did so, and we do it; or why they believe so and so, our fathers told us it was so. [Note 86 at end of para.] They are not fond of entering upon abstruse subjects, and when they are induced to do it, it is more than possible, from our imperfect acquaintance with their language, and total ignorance of the character and bent of their thoughts upon such points, that we are very likely ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... differing little in their character from divine inspiration, were, as they expressed it, "borne in upon their minds" in answer to their earnest petitions in a crisis of difficulty. Without entering into an abstruse point of divinity, one thing is plain;—namely, that the person who lays open his doubts and distresses in prayer, with feeling and sincerity, must necessarily, in the act of doing so, purify his mind from the dross of worldly passions ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... for the year 1895 I find that it was upon Saturday, the 23rd of April, that we first heard of Miss Violet Smith. Her visit was, I remember, extremely unwelcome to Holmes, for he was immersed at the moment in a very abstruse and complicated problem concerning the peculiar persecution to which John Vincent Harden, the well-known tobacco millionaire, had been subjected. My friend, who loved above all things precision and concentration of thought, resented ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... at the lodging where he had last been heard of, and how should she obtain even workhouse hospitality, whose original parish was unknown to herself or her protector? To Charlotte these shameful experiences would have been as incomprehensible as the most abstruse theories of a metaphysician. Was it any wonder, then, if Charlotte was bright and womanly, and fond and tender—Charlotte, who had never been humiliated by the shabbiness of her clothes, and to whom the ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... which none but Abdimus, son of the captive Abdaemon, could answer. The Tale of Tawaddud offers fair specimens of such exercises, which were not disdained by the most learned of Arabian writers. See Al-Hariri's Ass. xxiv, which proposes twelve enigmas involving abstruse and technical points of Arabic, such as: "What be the word, which as ye will is a particle beloved, or the name of that which compriseth the slender-waisted milch camel!" Na'am "Yes" or "cattle," the latter word containing ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... published during those years. We see him jotting down everything that comes into his head, for his own amusement, and certainly without any thought of publication; engaging in learned controversies, writing treatises on abstruse mathematical problems, composing comedies to be acted before Count Waldstein's neighbours, practising verse-writing in two languages, indeed with more patience than success, writing philosophical dialogues in which God and himself are the speakers, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... glorious progress" would be the only way of characterising his administration. Indeed, a glance over a Mexican book or article or speech seems to show that the writer has made use of every elegant and abstruse word in the dictionary. In a dissertation upon any subject he seems called upon to begin from the very beginning of things, desde la creacion del mundo—"from the beginning of the world," as the Spanish-American himself sarcastically says at times. Perhaps this is a habit acquired from the early ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... thinking, and always imperfect adaptation of means to ends, he might have been induced to recast it into more logical and more intelligible sentences, which would have stimulated the reader's mind as much as they now oppress it. Nor had Kant the excuse of a subject too abstruse for clear presentation. The examples of Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, and Hume are enough to show how such subjects can be mastered, and the very implication of writing a book is that the writer has mastered his material and can give ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... see by the two Newspaper specimens I sent you. (Did you get those two Newspapers?) The worst enemy admits that there are piercing radiances of perverse insight in it; the highest friends, some few, go to a very high point indeed. Newspapers are busy with extracts;—much complaining that it is "abstruse," neological, hard to get the meaning of. All which is very proper. Still better,—though poor Fraser, alas, is dead, (poor Fraser!), and no help could come from industries of the Bookshop, and Books indeed ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... city is not greater than the prosperity of the largest number of its component individuals," replied the mayor, in a somewhat altruistic and economically abstruse argument on the floor of the council hall. "We ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... the recognition of the apocalyptic fact that a workman can only be known by his work, and that without examination of his method and material that work can hardly be studied to much purpose, they have yet to add the knowledge of a further truth no less recondite and abstruse than this; that as the technical work of a painter appeals to the eye, so the technical work of a poet appeals to the ear. It follows that men who have none are as likely to arrive at any profitable end by the application of metrical ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... me, and that I should never overtake Katenka. Accordingly, imagining that classical music was easier (as well as, partly, for the sake of originality), I suddenly came to the conclusion that I loved abstruse German music. I began to go into raptures whenever Lubotshka played the "Sonate Pathetique," and although (if the truth be told) that work had for years driven me to the verge of distraction, I set myself to play Beethoven, and to talk of him as "Beethoven." Yet through ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... in Newry also found no difficulty in the exercise, as applied to the abstruse and difficult sciences of anatomy and physiology. The account of that experiment, says, that they were "examined as to the uses which they ought to make of all this information, by drawing practical lessons from the several truths. Accordingly, announcements from the different branches of ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... in the somewhat rarefied atmosphere of abstruse science that international cooperation is vital to the progress of civilization. All our economic problems, all the questions of securing the rights of labor, all the hopes of freedom at home and humanity abroad, rest upon the ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... passed some time in my country, then?" said the Count with awakened interest, a little glad of a topic scarce so abstruse as sex. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... could be learned in two or three weeks, or months at farthest, as I had frequently met with persons who professed a knowledge of the business, which they had acquired in two or three months, and tho' those men were esteemed distillers, and in possession of all the necessary art, in this very abstruse science; I soon found them to be ignorant blockheads, without natural genius, and often, ...
— The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry
... grew abstruse, Mrs. Berry added briskly: "You know nothing about that yet, my dear. Only mind me and mark me: don't neglect your cookery. Kissing don't last: ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... without design. Countenances of such amazement were turned towards him, that Small, who had a keen sense of the ludicrous, could scarcely forbear smiling as he proceeded; and if we could suspect so grave a personage of waggery, we should almost think that, by way of retaliation, he had palmed some abstruse, monkish epicedium upon ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... absence and approaching end of the minister, and, as a kind of prologue to the bloody comedy of the Fronde, sharpened the malice and even fired the passions of the Parisians. This confusion was not displeasing to them. Indifferent to the causes of the quarrels which were abstruse for them, they were not so with regard to individuals, and already began to regard the party chiefs with affection or hatred, not on account of the interest which they supposed them to take in the welfare of their class, but simply because as actors they ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... Catholics were all united, the Protestants were shamefully divided upon the most trivial points of discipline, or upon abstruse questions in philosophy above the reach of mortal minds. It was as true then, as in the days of our Saviour, that "the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light." Henry IV., ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... he can think of a longer one, and never by any possible chance knows the meaning of any long word he uses or ever gets it in the right place; yet he will serenely venture an opinion on the most abstruse subject and back it up complacently with quotations from authors who never existed, and finally when cornered will slide to the other side of the question, say he has been there all the time, and come back at you with your own ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... tenderness, fire, energy, melancholy, despair, caprice, hope, delicacy and startling vigor which they imperiously exact; as thorough master of the complicated instrument to which he devoted his best powers; as an erudite and experienced possessor of that abstruse and difficult science, music; as a composer of true, deep, and highly original genius,—this dedication is ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... impossible; wrote poems and then gave them a weight of meaning they could not carry, as when Fletcher in The Purple Island designed to allegorize all that the physiology of his day knew of the human body, or Donne sought to convey abstruse scientific fact in a lyric. It gave men a passion for pure learning, set Jonson to turn himself from a bricklayer into the best equipped scholar of his day, and Fuller and Camden grubbing among English ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... regular and absorbed spectators at the Aztec Street inquiry was old Stephen Garrit. Stephen Garrit held a unique but quite inconspicuous position in the legal world at that time. He was a friend of judges, a specialist at various abstruse legal rulings, a man of remarkable memory, and yet—an amateur. He had never taken sick, never eaten the requisite dinners, never passed an examination in his life; but the law of evidence was meat and drink to him. He passed ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... only inculcated the essentials for a commercial education, but, as has already been mentioned, led his eager follower into the wider fields of astronomy and cosmography. All he knew—and that included all the ancients knew—of these abstruse sciences he imparted to Amerigo, and in the end, so far as we can judge, the young man became more proficient in them than any other person of his age and time. So it eventuated that those studies, which were intended merely as subsidiary to the more serious pursuit, became the prime ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... View of Chambers's great Dictionaries, from whence were taken the Materials of the Universal Instructor in all Arts and Sciences, which usually made the First Part of this Paper, we find that besides their containing many Things abstruse or insignificant to us, it will probably be fifty Years before the Whole can be gone thro' in this Manner of Publication. There are likewise in those Books continual References from Things under one Letter of the Alphabet to those under another, which relate to the same Subject, ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... at the intelligence. The grave young citizen, who had silently taken his part in life close by them in their daily lives—not mixing much with them, it was true, but looked up to, perhaps, all the more—the student of abstruse books on theology, fit to converse with the most learned ministers that ever came about those parts—was he the same with the man now pouring out wild words to Lois the witch, as if he and she were the only two present! A solution of it all occurred ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... has with earnest prayers besought us to send him a harper (citharoedus), our only hope of executing his commission lies in you, whom we know to be accomplished in musical learning. For it will be easy for you to choose a well-skilled man, having yourself been able to attain to that high and abstruse study". Then follow a string of reflections on the soothing power of music, a description of the five "modes" [97] (Dorian, Phrygian, Aeolian, Ionian, and Lydian) and of the diapason; instances of the power of music drawn from the Scriptures ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... department of knowledge; and they proceed in the most cautious manner from point to point, from axiom to axiom—debating at every step, and coming to no decision without unanimous conviction. Some are professors of the university, devoted to abstruse studies; some are clergymen; and some authors and artists. Now, at the meeting in question—which we take merely as an example, for all are alike—when the hour struck which terminates their proceedings for the evening, the jaded philosophers ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... already manifesting itself, far superior, however feeble it be, to the dull understanding of the animal? Has it the power to foresee an ending, an attribute which in its case would be inconvenient and useless? Before deciding, let us consult, not the abstruse theories of science, a doubtful guide, but the Turkey, ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... would anybody want to be than a yellow primrose by the river's brim?" David finished for her. "I don't know, I'm sure. I'm a mere man and such questions are too abstruse for me, as I told your Aunt Margaret the other day. Now I think of it, though, you don't look unlike a yellow ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... Daniels, seeing at last that his theme was too abstruse for his single auditor, "as you conjectured, dear madame, it is surely some honorable person worthy of that love; if she has not informed me it is because there is some obstacle, such as the man's not loving her or being bound to another woman. In any case, the obstacle must be insurmountable, ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... question he supported. He stated his matter skillfully and powerfully. He particularly excelled in a most luminous explanation and display of his subject. His style of argument was neither trite nor vulgar, nor subtle and abstruse. He hit the House between wind and water; and, not being troubled with too anxious a zeal for any matter in question, he was never more tedious nor more earnest than the preconceived opinions and present ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... consideration of almost every topic under the sun, mostly with some verse of the Pentateuch for a pretext. All of which is analyzed and explained in the minutest and keenest fashion, discussions on abstruse subjects being sometimes relieved by an anecdote or two, a bit of folklore, worldly wisdom, or small talk. Scattered through its numerous volumes are priceless gems of poetry, ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... editors have generally been men who were often over-enthusiastic. For example, Mr. Wilkinson says of the Systme de la Nature, [64:15] "No work, ancient or modern, has surpassed it in the eloquence and sublimity of its language or in the facility with which it treats the most abstruse and difficult subjects. It is without exception the boldest effort the human mind has yet produced in the investigation of Morals and Theology. The republic of letters has never produced another author whose pen was so well calculated to ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... like a retired man of affairs than the prosy recluse that he was; but he had long since ceased to take any active interest in life, and gave himself up entirely to scientific study and research of a more or less abstruse nature. A useless sort of existence, it seemed to me, as mankind was never destined, nor intended, to reap the benefits of his labor. His sister kept house for him, and had full charge of all his business matters. The doctor owned considerable property, and Miss Regina proved ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... languages, especially the dead, The sciences, and most of all the abstruse, The arts, at least all such as could be said To be the most remote from common use, In all these he was much and deeply read; But not a page of any thing that 's loose, Or hints continuation of the species, Was ever suffer'd, lest he ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... what of my thoughts? Under a semblance of ease I am in reality working out the most abstruse problems. I did not mean to be sarcastic; I inquired in all seriousness how your ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... not sparing of his ridicule in regard to his commentators, nor, alas, at times in regard to his countrymen. 'Of all nations,' he says, 'the Germans understand me least.... Such people make life a burden by their abstruse thoughts and their Ideas, which they hunt up in all directions and insist on discovering in everything.... They come and ask me what "Ideas" I have incorporated in my Faust. Just as if I myself knew!—or could describe it, even if I did know!' Of course ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... consequence of the friction produced by the tides. The investigation is one appropriate for mathematical formulae, such as those that can be found in Professor Darwin's memoirs; but nature has in this instance dealt kindly with us, for she has enabled an abstruse mathematical principle to be dealt with in a singularly clear and concise manner. We want to obtain a definite view of the alteration in the energy of the system which shall correspond to a small change in the velocity of the earth's ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... time-worn paths of beauty and success, and became young, and fresh, and whole-hearted as he; tackling abstruse problems with a childlike, vigorous air; holding him spell-bound with her own charm of conversation one moment, and leading him on to talk with ease and ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... contrasted as Persia and Sweden, has made antiquarian researches in the islands of the Mediterranean, has visited parts of America, and has won reputation as a scholar and writer by a number of works on such abstruse questions as Oriental philosophy and religion, the cuneiform inscriptions and the distinctions of race. The present book is merely a novel, yet it was clearly intended to embody the deepest and maturest thoughts of the author in regard to "the proper study of mankind," both individually ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... we cannot go deeply into the philosophy of the East regarding spiritual development, because this subject would require volumes to cover it, and then again the subject is too abstruse to interest the average reader. There are also other reasons, well known to occultists, why this knowledge should not be spread broadcast at this time. Rest assured, dear student, that when the time comes for you to take the next step, ...
— The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath • Yogi Ramacharaka
... next at Sandwich, near Detroit. These constituted the adults; there are two sons and a daughter, still in their school-days. All possess agreeable, easy manners and refinement. Mrs. Johnston is a woman of excellent judgment and good sense; she is referred to on abstruse points of the Indian ceremonies and usages, so that I have in fact stumbled, as it were, on the only family in North West America who could, in Indian lore, have acted as my "guide, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... wouldn't be quite so—so cryptic—such a very abstruse problem. Sometimes I think I understand you better than you do yourself, and sometimes I am utterly lost; now, if you were younger I could read you easily for myself, and, if you were older, you would ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... they belong generally to the more complicated relationships of society and government; they are more intellectual in the sense that they represent the operations of the brain rather than the impulses of the heart. They deal with more highly trained wills, with more abstruse problems; they reason, they argue, they consider; they are philosophical, scientific, legal, historical. Listen to a soldier relate his war experiences. What will his vocabulary be? Listen to a diplomat explaining the League of Nations. ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... but made no attempt to force her confidence, and let her talk to him of books, school discipline, parish stories, and abstruse questions as much as she pleased, always replying in a practical, sobering tone, that told upon her, and soothed her almost like Violet's mild influence, and to her great delight, she made him quite believe in Violet's goodness, and wish ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... principle has been elaborated into a large and abstruse subject; in ordinary arguments where there is no judge to make subtle discriminations, you must interpret it in the broadest way. The average man lacks both the interest and the capacity for making keen distinctions; and when you are writing for him ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... chair should always have been so placed as to allow a view of so much of his anatomy and no more is a question of too subtle and abstruse conditions to be solved here. One reason doubtless lay in the fact that, by craning forward over his knees, he could see down the passage-way, through the porch, and across the grass-plot which intervened between the house and ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... propose to be signified by these Pythagorical symbols, with assured hope, that in so doing you will at last attain to be both well-advised and valiant by the reading of them: for in the perusal of this treatise you shall find another kind of taste, and a doctrine of a more profound and abstruse consideration, which will disclose unto you the most glorious sacraments and dreadful mysteries, as well in what concerneth your religion, as matters of the public state, and ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... and laughs at them quietly. Until someone will voluntarily lift that veil of esotericism, the speculations of western scholars will go for little. Why it should be kept esoteric, one can only guess; I think if it were known, the cycles and patterns of human history would cease to be so abstruse and hidden from us: we should know too much for our present moral or spiritual status. As usual, our own savants are avid to dwarf all dates, and bring everything within the scope of a few thousand years; as for the native authorities, they simply try confusions with us; ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... Amiel is very striking. Both valetudinarians and barely understood by the friends with whom they came into contact, they took refuge in the inner shrine of introspection, and clothed the most abstruse ideas in the most beautiful forms of language and imagery that is only not poetry because it is not verse. While one wrote the story of his own intellectual development in secret and retained the record of it hidden from all eyes, the other scattered his to the winds in the shape ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... and analyzation, that intelligence and scrupulousness in collecting facts, and that boldness in deducing new inferences from them, which were characteristic of his illustrious father. The subjects he took up were so abstruse, that we could not hope to make our readers understand what he accomplished, or how far he excelled his predecessors in his grasp and comprehension of them. For instance: if we tell them that in 1820 he wrote a paper "On the Theory and Summation of Series;" communicated to the Cambridge ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... what do the philosophers do? Why, they prove to you the necessity of a Second Chamber by pointing to the fact that all civilised nations have got one—in imitation of England. Furthermore, it being their way to hunt up abstruse and recondite reasons for what is on the face of it ridiculous, they argue that a Second Chamber is a necessary wheel in the mechanism of popular representative government. A foolish phrase, which has come down to us from antiquity, represents the populace ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... career began. He went to Egypt at the time when men who knew things had their chance to do things. His information was general and discursive, but he had a real gift for science: an inheritance from a grandfather who received a peerage for abstruse political letters written to the Times and lectures before the Royal Institution. Besides, he had known well and loved inadvertently the Hon. Lucy Gray, who kept a kind of social kindergarten for confiding man, whose wisdom was as accurate as her face was fair, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... evening together. The presence of the ladies of Mr. B.'s party gave the opportunity to see Mr. Buckle again under the inspiration of ladies' society, which he especially enjoys, and in the lighter conversation suited to which he shines with not less distinction than when conversing upon abstruse topics. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... Inventions and Improvements originated in The Mirror about four years since. Our intention there was to quote an occasional page or two of novelties of popular interest in science and art, and leave more abstruse matters to the journals in which they originally appeared. This plan led us through most of the scientific records of the year, in which we began to perceive that the reduction of all subjects of importance was not compatible within a few pages, and sooner than allow many papers of value to every ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... man is not happy. As the ages roll on woman has materially elevated herself in the scale of being. Now she stops at nothing. She soars. She demands the co-education of sexes. She thinks nothing of delving into the most abstruse problems of the higher branches of analytical science. She can cipher out the exact hour of the night when her husband ought to be home, either according to the old or the recently adopted method of calculating time. I never knew of but one married man who ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... agree with you there. From the moment that I conceived the idea of the body being upon the roof, which surely was not a very abstruse one, all the rest was inevitable. If it were not for the grave interests involved the affair up to this point would be insignificant. Our difficulties are still before us. But perhaps we may find something ...
— The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in The Speaker, of London: "Everybody knows that when an important work is published in history, philosophy, or any branch of science, the editor of a respectable paper employs an expert to review it; . . . indeed, the more abstruse the subject of the book, the more careful and intelligent you will find the review. . . . It is equally well known that works of fiction and books of verse are not treated with anything like the same care. . . . A good poem, play, ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... to point out the entire unsuitableness, in their judgment, of works in learned languages, on abstruse subjects or in black letter, to the ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... "text-book," that Mars is the lord of Aries—a fiery planet in a fiery sign; but astrologers still say that Pisces is watery and Aries fiery, WHICH IS NOT THE CASE, IF THE STARS HAVE ANY INFLUENCE AT ALL. It is not necessary," say these logical thinkers, "to learn your abstruse science if we can demonstrate that the very basis upon which your conclusions rest is in every sense fundamentally false." The scientific facts of the case are as follows: The influence of the twelve signs, as described by astrologers, is a delusion, because ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... Friedrich's abstruse diplomacies, and delicate motions and handlings with the Reich, that is to say, with the Kaiser and the Kaiser's few friends in the Reich, and then again with the French,—which lasted for eight or nine months before closure ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... eye by its pomp and decorations, the ear by its harmonies, and the heart and imagination by its poetical embellishments, and heroic acts and sentiments. Influences still more mysterious are hinted at, if not directly announced. An idea seems to lurk obscurely at the bottom of certain of their abstruse and elaborate speculations, as if the stage were destined to replace some of those sublime illusions which the progress of reason is fast driving from the earth; as if its pageantry, and allegories, and figurative shadowing-forth of things, might ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... the knowledge of the first, no people can ever become adventurous—nor of the second, never will be an enterprising people. Geography, teaches a knowledge of the world, and Political Economy, a knowledge of the wealth of nations; or how to make money. These are not abstruse sciences, or learning not easily acquired or understood; but simply, common School Primer learning, that every body may get. And, although it is the very key to prosperity and success in common life, but few know any thing about it. ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... the same power of recovery. He stood with his hands in his pockets looking at Miss Klegg's back. His face was white. "It's—it's a difficult question." He appeared to be paralyzed by abstruse acoustic calculations. Then, very awkwardly, he took a stool and placed it at the end of Ann Veronica's table, and sat down. He glanced at Miss Klegg again, and spoke quickly and furtively, with eager eyes on ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... breadth and the scope which she sensed more or less vaguely in The Evolution of Sociology. Holman Sommers quoted freely, and discussed boldly and frankly, such abstruse authors as Descartes, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Comte, Gumplowicz, some of them names she had never heard of and could not even spell without following her copy letter by letter. Holman Sommers seemed to have read all of them and to have weighed all of them and to be able ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... more profoundly into the mysterious phenomena of dreams, our present lucubrations might become too abstruse; and, after all, no philosophical nor satisfactory account can be given of them. Such of our readers therefore, as may wish for a more minute inquiry into the opinions above stated, we beg leave to refer to the ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... I have acknowledged, Pyrophilus, of the Abstruse Nature of Colours in particular, you will easily believe, that I pretend not to give you a Satisfactory account of Whiteness and Blackness; Yet not wholly to frustrate your Expectation of my offering something by way of Specimen towards the Explication of some Colours in ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... not bear weight; at least, so far, but that they might be weakened, and better found in their rooms to confirm what is there said. He shewed finely whence it happens that good writers are not admired by the present age; because there are but few in any age that do mind anything that is abstruse and curious; and so longer before any body do put the true praise, and set it on foot in the world, the generality of mankind pleasing themselves in the easy delights of the world, as eating, drinking, dancing, hunting, fencing, which we see the meanest men do the best, those that profess ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... of talent, and knew the world, but he knew nothing of the navy; and when I had got him out of his depth, I served him as I did the usher: that is, I soused him and his company head over heels in the horse-pond of their own ignorance. Such is the power of local knowledge and cunning over abstruse ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and claim an intellectual superiority over the members of other persuasions, which they may once have possessed, but which has long been levelled up by the universal march of education. The richer members publish little dull books in bad English on abstruse subjects, and, like Consuelo's prebendary, have quartos in preparation which never reach ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... voting" it was from the sense that true democracy demanded not merely a chance, but a certainty, that the vote given at the poll should be effective for some one. My brother David inherited all the Conservatism of the Brodies for generations back. Greatly interested in all abstruse problems and abstract questions he had various schemes for the regeneration of mankind. Two opposing theories concerning the working of bi-cameral Legislatures supplied me with material for a Review article. One theory ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... introduction, I am reminded of a brother artist, who, although a caricaturist, was entirely devoid of guile, and, in addition, was as absent-minded as the popularly-accepted type of ardent scientist or professor of ultra-abstruse subject. Well, this curious species of satirist was setting forth on travels in foreign climes, and in order to lighten in some measure the vicissitudes inseparable from peripatetic wandering, he was provided with a letter of introduction to ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... capitalists, finding no other outlet for their savings, gave an unnatural stimulus to production, by buying up and storing immense quantities of our home manufactures. This they must have done upon some abstruse but utterly false calculation of augmented demand from abroad, making no allowance for change of season, foreign fluctuation, or any other of the occult causes which influence the markets of the world. The result, as is well known, was most disastrous. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various |
