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Diffusion   Listen
noun
Diffusion  n.  
1.
The act of diffusing, or the state of being diffused; a spreading; extension; dissemination; circulation; dispersion. "A diffusion of knowledge which has undermined superstition."
2.
(Physiol.) The act of passing by osmosis through animal membranes, as in the distribution of poisons, gases, etc., through the body. Unlike absorption, diffusion may go on after death, that is, after the blood ceases to circulate.
Synonyms: Extension; spread; propagation; circulation; expansion; dispersion.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Diffusion" Quotes from Famous Books



... enactment of which he had in vain protested, Massachusetts became a manufacturing State, Mr. Webster naturally and inevitably became a protectionist. Mr. Calhoun began as a protectionist when he hoped for the diffusion and growth of manufactures throughout all sections alike. He became a free-trader when he realized that the destiny of the South was to be purely agricultural, devoted to products whose market was not, in his judgment, to be enlarged by the tariff, and whose production was enhanced in ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... had reached maturity within ere they directed their energies outwards. The Germans, on the contrary, began with self-diffusion, deluging the world, and breaking down in their course the hollow political fabrics of the civilised nations. Only then did their development begin, kindled by a foreign culture, a foreign religion, polity, and legislation. The process of culture they underwent consisted ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... placed in a position to criticise the history of Elijah, and to reach a result which is very instructive for the history of the tradition, namely that the influence of the mighty prophet on his age has after all been appraised much too highly. His reputation could not be what it is but for the wide diffusion of Baal worship in Israel: and this is not a little exaggerated. Anything like a suppression of the national religion at the time of Elijah is quite out of the question, and there is no truth in the statement that the prophets ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... among the mass of material. It has arranged with publisher, with authors, and with translators, for the immediate undertaking and rapid progress of the task. It realizes the necessity of educating the professions and the public by the wide diffusion of information on this subject. It desires here to explain the considerations which have moved it in seeking to select the treatises best ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... in the evening: Mrs. Grant and the Crawfords were engaged to return for that purpose as soon as they could after dinner; and every one concerned was looking forward with eagerness. There seemed a general diffusion of cheerfulness on the occasion. Tom was enjoying such an advance towards the end; Edmund was in spirits from the morning's rehearsal, and little vexations seemed everywhere smoothed away. All were ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... distribution of power among the several parts of the State is the most efficient restraint on monarchy, the distribution of power among several States is the best check on democracy. By multiplying centres of government and discussion it promotes the diffusion of political knowledge and the maintenance of healthy and independent opinion. It is the protectorate of minorities, and the consecration of self-government. But although it must be enumerated among the better achievements of practical genius in antiquity, it arose from necessity, ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... (Roem. Gesch. v. 92) ascribes the final extinction of Celtic in northern Gaul to the influence of the Church. But the Church was not in itself averse to native dialects, and its insistence on Latin in the west may well be due rather to the previous diffusion of ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield

... doctrine: Jupiter sounded better in a sermon than Jehovah; the immortality of the soul was an open topic for debate. At the same time he was extravagantly munificent to men of culture, and hearty in his zeal for the diffusion of liberal knowledge. But what was reasonable in the man was ridiculous in the pontiff. There remained an irreconcilable incongruity between his profession of the Primacy of Christianity and his easy ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... drape an unchanged being. Writing in 1823 about the encouragement of education and the teaching of English and the translation of English books, the Governor of Bombay, Mountstuart Elphinstone, declared too confidently that "the conversion of the natives must result from the diffusion of knowledge among them." Macaulay, similarly, writing from India in 1836 to his father, the well-known philanthropist, declares: "It is my firm belief that if our plans of[English] education are followed up, there will ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison

... fragrant pines. In a score or two of hours they are among the tobacco-fields and the slave-pens of Virginia. The war passion burned like scattered coals of fire in the households of Revolutionary times; now it rushes all through the land like a flame over the prairie. And this instant diffusion of every fact and feeling produces another singular effect in the equalizing and steadying of public opinion. We may not be able to see a month ahead of us; but as to what has passed a week afterwards it is as thoroughly talked out and judged as it would have been in a whole season before ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... the lighting is doubtful. This rotten little theater is hard to count on for any kind of unusual lighting, and we must have that diffusion for the dinner scene so as to make the candle effect seem real," Mr. Vandeford was saying with great animation to Miss Adair and with a total lack of sentiment under the same young moon that had baffled him Friday night out ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess

... beneficial or pernicious. If socialism consists in recognizing the importance of social institutions, in cherishing ideas of progress and hopes of reform, I trust that we are all socialists. Do we desire progress by the ever wider diffusion of justice and love? From the moment that, across the conscience whereon divine rays are falling, we have descried the eternal centre of light, we understand that God is the most implacable enemy of abuses. How is it then that atheism sometimes manifests itself in attempts at ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... the boy, "which accounts for the rise of the democratic movement and the idea of human equality during the same period—that is to say, the diffusion of intelligence among the masses, which, for the first time becoming somewhat general, multiplied ten-thousandfold the thinking force of mankind, and, in the political aspect of the matter, changed the purpose of that thinking ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... fast fading away in England, owing to the general diffusion of knowledge, and the bustling intercourse kept up throughout the country; still they have their strong-holds and lingering places, and a retired neighbourhood like this is apt to be one of them. The parson tells ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... diffusion of intelligence promote general morality? Is ignorance productive of crime? Matson, p. ...
— Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Debate Index - Second Edition • Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh

... exterior." It is certainly a matter entitled to reflection that, at almost all the periods of history when art flourished and taste held sway, humanity is found in a state of decline; nor can a single instance be cited of the union of a large diffusion of aesthetic culture with political liberty and social virtue, of fine manners associated with good morals, and of politeness fraternizing with truth and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... point would be difficult to settle, and unprofitable to discuss. There is no doubt as to the superior advantage which the modern world derives in consequence of the invention of printing, and the consequent diffusion of knowledge. But the question is in reference to the height which was attained by the ancient pagan intellect, unaided by Christianity. I simply wish to show that the ancients were distinguished in all departments of literature, and that some of the masterpieces ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... the checks were in the hands of a class of superior wisdom and virtue. But in practice such a government, instead of being better than those for whom it exists, is almost invariably worse. The complex and confusing system of checks, with the consequent diffusion of power and absence of direct and definite responsibility, is much better adapted to the purposes of a self-seeking, corrupt minority than to the ends of good government. The evils of such a system which are mainly those of minority domination must be carefully distinguished ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith

... injure or destroy an enemy by injuring or destroying an image of him, in the belief that, just as the image suffers, so does the man, and that when it perishes he must die. A few instances out of many may be given to prove at once the wide diffusion of the practice over the world and its remarkable persistence through the ages. For thousands of years ago it was known to the sorcerers of ancient India, Babylon, and Egypt, as well as of Greece and Rome, and at this day it is still resorted to by cunning and malignant savages in Australia, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... some the resemblances seem remarkable considering the size of the vocabulary. Closer examination shows however that they are not of a kind to indicate a special relationship. They are almost exclusively confined to a few pronominal bases of very wide diffusion, and the following: 1. ata, tata. 2. papa, each meaning father; 1. ana, nana; 2. ma, mama, each meaning mother. As an example I take the base ata, tata. Dakota, ate (dialect ata); Minnetaree, ate, tata, tatish; Mandan, tata; ...
— The Dakotan Languages, and Their Relations to Other Languages • Andrew Woods Williamson

... observer did not present the brilliant and vivid green tint which characterized that which is seen in the shallow portions of the Lake, where the bottom is white. But this is not surprising, when we consider the small amount of diffused light which can reach the eye from so limited a surface of diffusion. ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... an occasional revolutionary facet and despite a revolutionary clamor especially on its fringes, is a conservative social force. Trade unionism seems to have the same moderating effect upon society as a wide diffusion of private property. In fact the gains of trade unionism are to the worker on a par with private property to its owner. The owner regards his property as a protective dyke between himself and a ruthless biological struggle for existence; his property means liberty and opportunity to escape dictation ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman

... belonged to the prevailing tradition in the kingdom of Israel, the latter to that which was current in Judah. This view confirms the conclusion which may be drawn from the Egyptian monuments as to the power of expansion and the diffusion ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... flour and good yeast being supposed, with a temperature favorable to the development of fermentation, the whole success of the process depends on the thorough diffusion of the proper proportion of yeast through the whole mass, and on stopping the subsequent fermentation at the precise and fortunate point. The true housewife makes her bread the sovereign of her kitchen,—its behests must be attended to in all ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... Italians proverbially observe that one half of fame depends on that cause. In dark periods, when talents appear they shine like the sun through a small hole in the window-shutter. The strong beam dazzles amid the surrounding gloom. Open the shutter, and the general diffusion of light attracts ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... truly tells us, "Money is general purchasing power, and is sought as a means to all kinds of ends, high as well as low, spiritual as well as material." According to this definition, money may as readily become a source of mischief as an instrument for good; its wider diffusion among the community has, therefore, a mixed effect, and it works for evil or for good, according to the character of the individual. It is only when the character is disciplined by the habitual exercise of ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison

... though he elicited no vivacities from the cat, did nothing to it, indeed, beyond occasionally coaxing it from the stool to his knee, and there letting it purr, climb to his shoulder, and rub its head against his cheek; though there was no ear-splitting cracking off of firearms, no diffusion of sulphurous gunpowder perfume, no noise, no boasting during his stay—that still Caroline sat in the room, and seemed to find wondrous content in the stitching of Jew-basket pin-cushions and the knitting of ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... for our domestic concerns; the preservation of the general government in its whole constitutional vigor, as a sheet anchor of peace at home and safety abroad.... The supremacy of civil over military authority; economy in public expense, honest payment of public debts; the diffusion of information; freedom of religion; freedom of the press and freedom of the person, under the protection of the habeas corpus and trial by jury." When Jefferson's second term as President came to an end he retired from the White House poorer than he had entered ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... with the previous article, the investigation has been based on the assumption that the temperatures produced by radiant heat at given distances from its source are inversely as the diffusion of the rays at those distances. In other words, the temperature produced by solar radiation is as ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various

... nobles, and the result is a thorough diffusion of the proper feeling. But in America, the coins current being the sole arms of the aristocracy, their display may be said, in general, to be the sole means of the aristocratic distinction; and the populace, looking always upward for models, are insensibly led to confound ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... which, after having turned the earth topsy-turvy, was now disturbing the very universe? For himself (others might do as they pleased), but he stuck to the venerable Partridge,[659] and the Stationers' Company, and trusted that they would outlive infidels and anarchists, whether of Astronomical or Diffusion of Knowledge Societies. ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... drunkenness, gambling, or fighting. They were no useless Schools to some of our very celebrated Speakers at the Bar and in Parliament: and, what is of infinitely more importance, they contributed to the diffusion of Political Knowledge and Public Sentiment. L.] at Coachmaker's-hall, but not often; and a few times to Covent-garden Theatre. These are all the opportunities he ever had to learn from Public Speakers. As to Books, ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield

... well-earned reputations they enjoyed, the homage they received, (and it has its charm,) and even the blessed consciousness of having contributed to the healthful recreation, the improved morality, the diffusion of the best sort of knowledge—the woman would have been happier had she continued enshrined in the privacy of domestic love and domestic duty. She may not think this at the commencement of her career; and at its termination, ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various

... industrial, and reformatory schools, all concerned with primary and secondary education in its administrative aspect, while the Board of Works is occupied with the erection of school buildings. The extravagance and inefficiency which results from this diffusion and consequent overlapping of power and duties on the part of officials scattered about in Tyrone House, in Hume Street, in Merrion Place, and three or four other parts of Dublin, is well illustrated by the fact that out of every 20s. given as ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... velle atque idem nolle[535]— the same likings and the same aversions. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, you must shun the subject as to which you disagree. For instance, I can live very well with Burke: I love his knowledge, his genius, his diffusion, and affluence of conversation; but I would not talk to him of the Rockingham party.' GOLDSMITH. 'But, Sir, when people live together who have something as to which they disagree, and which they want to shun, they will be in the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... sprightliness of fancy, copiousness of language, and fertility of sentiment. In other exertions of genius, the greater part of the praise is unknown and unenjoyed; the writer, indeed, spreads his reputation to a wider extent, but receives little pleasure or advantage from the diffusion of his name, and only obtains a kind of nominal sovereignty over regions which pay no tribute. The colloquial wit has always his own radiance reflected on himself, and enjoys all the pleasure which he bestows; he finds his power confessed by every one that approaches him, ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey

... success in France, Germany, and Switzerland, and the Education Committee are disposed to assist in giving it a trial here. These plans, which are founded in benevolence and a sincere desire for the diffusion of good among the people, merit every encouragement, and will in the end get it, for there is, in the midst of much indifference and prejudice, a growing disposition to ameliorate the condition of the masses, both morally ...
— 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

... all the provinces of the Roman empire, they still maintained firmly the religion of their fathers; and their synagogues everywhere constituted central points for the introduction of the gospel, and its diffusion through the Gentile world. Such are some of the many ways in which the world was prepared for the Redeemer's advent. This is a vast theme, on which volumes could be written. The plan of the present work will only admit of the ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... succession to unmixed real property, if such were left, cases of that nature seldom or never occur. And, as between the two provinces, not only is that of Canterbury much more important and extensive, but since the introduction of the funding system, and the extensive diffusion of such property, nearly all wills of importance belonging even to the Province of York are also proved in Doctors' Commons, on account of the rule of the Bank of England to acknowledge no probate of wills but from thence. To this cause, amongst others, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... Institution at Washington was founded for the increase and diffusion of knowledge. Guided by the contracted notions prevalent among scientists, it has not accomplished much for either object. The theory of Lester F. Ward of this institution was paraphrased as follows ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various

... is so named from resemblance to the moline, or crossed iron, in the center of the upper millstone. Its ends are divided and curved backward. As they are turned in all directions, they are said to express the universal diffusion of the blessings of the Cross; or, as they decline both to the right and the left, they express willingness to do exact justice and give ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester

... we find in Tennyson; a greater intellectual grip in Browning; a more haunting magic in Rossetti; but for easy mastery over his material and general diffusion of beauty ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... establishment of the Museum, Ptolemy Soter and his son Philadelphus had three objects in view: 1. The perpetuation of such knowledge as was then in the world; 2. Its increase; 3. Its diffusion. ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... Traill, and went out to Canada, and wrote there a book called 'The Backwoods of Canada,' which was certainly one of the most popular of the four-and-sixpenny volumes published under the auspices of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge. Our friend was Susanna, who wrote a volume of poems on Enthusiasm, and who seemed to me, with her dark eyes and hair, a very enthusiastic personage indeed. The reason of her friendship with our family was her deeply religious ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie

... band of pilgrims who daily walked up and down the street, waiting and watching the outgoing and incoming of "Sir Roger." They are rewarded by the polite upraising of "Sir Roger's" hat, and a further diffusion of the sweet and gracious smile; and having seen the door shut upon the portly form, and having watched the brougham drive off, they, too, go their way, and the drama is over for ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy

... inveighed against the ministry in the House of Commons for not sending Government advertisements to The Times, instead of to other journals, which did not enjoy a tithe of its circulation. The arrangements of the post office were a great hinderance to the diffusion of newspapers, since the charge for the carriage of a daily journal was L12 14s., and for a weekly L2 4s. a year. The number, therefore, that was sent abroad by this channel, either to the Continent ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... support; but it is a wretched substitute for it. Its worth, as a moral good, is by no means in proportion to its value as a social advantage. These observations are not irrelevant: for to the want of reflection that this diffusion of gentlemanly feeling among us is not the growth of our moral excellence, but the effect of various accidental advantages peculiar to England; to our not considering that it is unreasonable and uncharitable to expect the same consequences, ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... the most part it was equally distributed, there being few paupers and still fewer very rich individuals. The twenty years following 1840 have been called the "golden age" of American history, and as far as concerns the diffusion of material comforts they certainly ...
— Outline of the development of the internal commerce of the United States - 1789-1900 • T.W. van Mettre

... suggested by Vision, though the slower rate of transmission of sound would detract from the practical simultaneity in the effect which, as we have seen, largely accounts for the perception of visual extensity. The universal diffusion of sunlight is also ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip

... account of its extreme distance no motion is perceptible among its component stars. The laws by which those stellar aggregations are produced and governed are wrapped in obscurity, and the nature of the motions of their stars, whether towards concentration or diffusion, cannot at present be ascertained. If those globular clusters could be observed sufficiently near, they would most probably expand into vast systems of suns occupying ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... and far-spreading species, which already have invaded to a certain extent the territories of other species, should be those which would have the best chance of spreading still further, and of giving rise in new countries to new varieties and species. The process of diffusion may often be very slow, being dependent on climatal and geographical changes, or on strange accidents, but in the long run the dominant forms will generally succeed in spreading. The diffusion would, it ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... seemed rich and deep in which Mrs. Farrinder said to her, "Then contribute that!" She was so good as to develop this idea, and her picture of the part Miss Chancellor might play by making liberal donations to a fund for the diffusion among the women of America of a more adequate conception of their public and private rights—a fund her adviser had herself lately inaugurated—this bold, rapid sketch had the vividness which characterised the speaker's most successful public efforts. ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James

... considerable trade in the Indian Archipelago, which is, with the exception of the few vessels that sometimes bring ponies to the Isle of France and the British settlements, almost wholly in the hands of the Americans. Indeed no fact which I have met with has so much surprised me as the extraordinary diffusion of the American commerce, and the great spirit of enterprise exhibited by them. For in many places where the British merchants can find no commerce apparently worth their attention the Americans carry ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... doubt whether Cardinal Wiseman and his doings, eighteen hundred and fifty years hence, could be as much the subject of doubt and controversy (if remembered at all) as the events which Strauss has shown to be unhistorical. I think the press alone, with its diffusion and multiplication 'of the sources of knowledge, will alone prevent in the future the doubts which gather over the past. There will never again be the same dearth ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... the task, and we might have them of any size demanded. But, unhappily, in proportion to the increase of size in the lens, and consequently of space-penetrating power, is the diminution of light from the object, by diffusion of its rays. And for this evil there is no remedy within human ability; for an object is seen by means of that light alone which proceeds from itself, whether direct or reflected. Thus the only "artificial" light which could avail Mr. Locke, would be some artificial light which he should be ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... years. In 1840 Carlyle still speaks of himself as a man foiled; but at the close of that year all fear of penury was over, and in the following he was able to refuse a Chair of History at Edinburgh, as later another at St. Andrews. Meanwhile his practical power and genuine zeal for the diffusion of knowledge appeared in his foundation of the London Library, which brought him into more or less close contact with Tennyson, Milman, Forster, Helps, Spedding, Gladstone, and other leaders of the thought and action of ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... and taciturn each year, mellowed into some resemblance to his former benevolent, though stately, self. He had not yet heard of Ned's treason. His lady, still graceful and slender, resumed her youth. Fanny, who had ever forced herself to the diffusion of merriment when there was cheerlessness to be dispelled, reflected with happy eyes the old-time jocundity now reawakened. My mother, always a cheerful, self-reliant, outspoken soul, imparted the cordiality of her presence to the household, and both Tom and I rejoiced to find the old state ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens

... Continent. Wherever they went there was the same disturbance round them as round Fox himself, and they had the same hard treatment—imprisonment, duckings, whippings. It is necessary that the reader should remember that in 1654 Quakerism was still in this first stage of its diffusion by a vehement propagandism carried on by some sixty itinerant preachers at war with established habits and customs, and had not settled down into mere individual Quietism, with associations of those who had ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... expected that the savage habit of thought, acting independently in different parts of the world, would lead to an infinite number of divergent and inconsistent views of the nature of things and of man's place in the world. But this is not found to be the case. Mr. Lang accounts as follows for the diffusion of the same stories all over the world: "An ancient identity of mental status, and the working of similar mental forces at the attempt to explain the same phenomena, will account without any theory of borrowing, or of transmission of myth, or of original unity of race, for the world-wide ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... he was near the close of an honorable career, one of measureless benefit to mankind. He was the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and the originator of the plan by which was carried into practical effect the splendid bequest for "the increase and diffusion of ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... and to encourage the hopes of those who wish for its overthrow. These occurrences, however, have been far less frequent in our country than in any other of equal population on the globe, and with the diffusion of intelligence it may well be hoped that they will constantly diminish in frequency and violence. The generous patriotism and sound common sense of the great mass of our fellow-citizens will assuredly ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson

... added to our scanty meal of dried fish a dish of smoking potatoes fresh out of the moist earth. After enjoying sufficiently my wonder at their appearance, and delight at their agreeable taste, she informed me of their first introduction into Europe, and their gradual diffusion over the more civilised portions ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat

... advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding among the people of the United States by aiding technical schools, institutions of higher learning, libraries, scientific research, hero funds, useful publications and by such other agencies ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie

... no effort untried which might in any manner promote the interests of the cause, regarded as one important means to this end the diffusion of knowledge concerning that unknown and mysterious region. He had therefore procured from Africa specimens of some of the actual products of the country, to which he called the attention of the Premier. The specimens of ivory and gold, of ebony and mahogany, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... to explain this passage unless it be a garbled allustion to the steel-plate of the diamond-cutter. Nor can we account for the wide diffusion of this tale of perils unless to enhance the value of the gem. Diamonds occur in alluvial lands mostly open and comparatively level, as in India, the Brazil and the Cape. Archbishop Epiphanius of Salamis (ob. A.D. 403) tells this story about the jacinth or ruby ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... present year appears to bring into play all the advantages of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. The majority of the papers are of permanent value,—as the Division of the Day—a Table of the difference between London and Country Time—the continuation of the "Natural History of the Weather," commenced in last year's Companion—Chronological Table of Political ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various

... systems and means of Education, and the truth has at length been generally recognized that the stability and glory of nations must depend upon the intelligence and virtue of their inhabitants. In our own country, which is most of all interested in the diffusion of knowledge, unexampled efforts are being made not only for the general improvement of the culture offered in the seminaries, but for that elevation of the laboring classes which, whatever may be said by ambitious feeble-minds, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... flowers burst forth as the spring brings them on the walls of a ruin; even in the caverns there droop from the vaulted roof faintly colored tufts of green vegetation. The sun of education permeates all. Since this vast development of thought, this even and fruitful diffusion of light, we have scarcely any men of superiority, because every single man represents the whole education of his age. We are surrounded by living encyclopaedias who walk about, think, act and wish to be immortalized. ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac

... have universally found it to be the case, that although the penalty of a breach may be exacted from strangers, no farmer will differ with a neighbor, as they call it, for the sake of a bird. Whether time, and a greater diffusion of sporting propensities, and sporting feelings, may alter this for the better or no, I leave to sager and more politic pates than mine. And now I say, Harry, you surely do not intend to trundle us off to Tom Draw's to-night without a drink at starting? I see Timothy has got the drag up to the ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)

... born within its jurisdiction. In ignorance, the Puritans maintained, lay the principal strength of popery in religion as well as of despotism in politics; and so, to the best of their lights, they cultivated knowledge with might and main. But in this energetic diffusion of knowledge they were unwittingly preparing the complete and irreparable destruction of the theocratic ideal of society which they had sought to realize by crossing the ocean and settling in New England. This universal education, and this perpetual ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske

... obligations. She determined to profit by her newly-acquired independence, to live thenceforward conformably to her notions of right, to preserve and improve, by schemes of economy, the remains of her fortune, and to employ it in the diffusion of good. Her plans made it necessary to visit her estates in ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown

... disqualifications stand in his way;—his lack of political intelligence, and his consequent inability to make quick decisions in a political atmosphere. His present diffusion of his energies springs, I think, from indecision; for in politics he can not make up his mind, as he can in business, where the greatest ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... things. Voltaire[3108] is among the first to explain the optical and astronomical theories of Newton, and again to make calculations, observations and experiments of his own. He writes memoirs for the Academy of Sciences "On the Measure of Motive Forces," and "On the Nature and Diffusion of Heat." He handles Reamur's thermometer, Newton's prism, and Muschenbrock's pyrometer. In his laboratory at Cirey he has all the known apparatus for physics and chemistry. He experiments with his own hand on the reflection of light in space, on the increase of weight ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... Defeats, the Three, 312-335. See also Isaac Williams, Macmullen, and Pusey Dickinson, Dr., "Pastoral Epistle from his Holiness the Pope" Diffusion of Useful Knowledge Society Dissenters and the Articles. See also Thirty-nine Articles Dodsworth, Mr. Dominic, Father, receives Newman into Church of Rome Donkin, Mr. Doyle, ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church

... only among the dust and cobwebs of old libraries, listlessly thumbed by the exploring reader or occasionally consulted by the curious antiquary. His place is occupied by those who, in the multiplication of books, the diffusion of information, and the general alteration of public taste, manners, and habits, though revolving in a similar orbit, move in quite another plane,—who have found in the pages of the periodical a theatre of special activity, a way to the entertainment and instruction of the many; and though ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... list to a vast extent. I might bring into view the verdure of the earth as being the most agreeable of all colors to the eye; the general diffusion of the indispensibles and necessaries of life, such as air, light, water, food, clothing, fuel, while less necessary things, such as spices, gold, silver, tin, lead, zinc, are less diffused; also, the infinite variety in things—in men, for instance—by which ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880

... form their notions of the present generation from the writings of the past, and are not very early informed of those changes which the gradual diffusion of knowledge, or the sudden caprice of fashion, produces in the world. Whatever might be the state of female literature in the last century, there is now no longer any danger lest the scholar should want an adequate audience at the tea-table; ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... "Promote them as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinions ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg

... extending into the base. In almost all fractures of the vault the inner table splinters over a wider area than the outer, partly because it is more brittle and is not supported from within, but also because the diffusion of the force as it passes inwards affects a wider area. If a bullet traverses the cranial cavity the inner table is more widely shattered at the aperture of entrance, and the outer table at the aperture of exit. Von Bergmann ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... regulations, are obviously made to prevent insurrections; but it is plain that they must materially interfere with the slave's opportunities for religious instruction. The fact is, there are inconveniences attending a general diffusion of Christianity in a slaveholding State—light must follow its path, and that light would reveal the surrounding darkness,—slaves might begin to think whether slavery could be reconciled with religious precepts,—and then the system is quite too republican—it ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child

... a philanthropic and progressive journal is to assist in the diffusion of liberal literature, and to keep an eye upon the prolific press of to-day, for the benefit of its readers, calling their attention to the meritorious works, which are often neglected, and warning against pretentious folly and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various

... activity set in, which has gone on increasing up to the present time. If it be true that never before in our history has so much attention been given to education as now; that never before did so many men devote themselves to the diffusion of knowledge, it is no less true that never was astronomical work so energetically pursued among us as at ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... European populations in bulk, without regard to the production of genius (for men of genius are always a very minute fraction of a nation), the European populations which they are accustomed to regard as standing at the head in the general diffusion of character, intelligence, education, and well-being, are all included in the first twelve or thirteen nations, which are the same in both lists though they do not follow the same order. These peoples, ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... compound animals, such as corals, the gemmules do not spread from bud to bud, but only through the tissues developed from each separate bud. We are led to this conclusion from the stock being rarely affected by the insertion of a bud or graft from a distinct variety. This non-diffusion of the gemmules is still more plainly shown in the case of ferns; for Mr. Bridgman[908] has proved that, when spores (which it should be remembered are of the nature of buds) are taken from a monstrous part of a frond, and others from an ordinary part, {380} each reproduces the form ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... devised to strengthen men in their struggle for goodness and holiness by the association and mutual help of fellow-believers. To the evangelical it was hardly more than a collection of congregations commended in the Bible for the diffusion of the knowledge and right interpretation of the Scriptures, the commemoration of gospel events, and the linking of gospel truths to a well-ordered life. To the high anglican as to the Roman catholic, the church was something very ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... cheapening of his works in America, induced by the absence of international copyright, accounts of course in some degree for their wider diffusion, and hence earlier ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... Pacific world had an important ancient history, and these multiply as our knowledge of that world increases. The wide diffusion of Malay dialects in the Pacific islands suggests the controlling influence by which that ancient history was directed. The ancient remains at Easter Island are known; two of the "great images" found there are now in the British Museum. All who have examined ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin

... devoted to the cause of a radical, organic social reform, as essential to the highest development of man's nature, to the production of those elevated and beautiful forms of character of which he is capable, and to the diffusion of happiness, excellence and universal harmony upon the earth. The principles of universal unity as taught by Charles Fourier, in their application to society, we believe are at the foundation of all genuine social progress, and it will ever ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... sanguine hope of speedy triumph, cooling into more remote expectation, and in the finer spirits transforming into a present spiritual communion; a growing elaboration of organization, priesthood, ritual, mythology; a diffusion through vast masses of people of the new religion, and a corresponding depreciation of its quality,—this was the early stage of Christianity. It vanquished and destroyed the Greek-Roman mythology, already half dead. Philosophy ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... to those who consider the commercial interests of nations, but also to all who favor the progress of knowledge and the diffusion of religion, to see a community emerge from a savage state and attain such a degree of civilization in those ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson

... fertile than her own, sentiments of poesy. In the application of her talents she was influenced by another incentive. A loose ribaldry tainted the songs and ballads which circulated among the peasantry, and she was convinced that the diffusion of a more wholesome minstrelsy would essentially elevate the moral tone of the community. Thus, while still young, she commenced to purify the older melodies, and to compose new songs, which were ultimately destined to occupy an ample share of the national ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... welfare of distant and unknown people, were it not that the indulgence of them might tend to prevent the very object which they regard from being attained. Does not the well-meaning editor anticipate too much from the diffusion of foreign knowledge among the tribes of whom he speaks? Is he not somewhat inattentive to the mass of inseparable evil which every such accession brings along with it? Does he not seem to confound ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... striking allusions, a wilderness of thought, in which the fertility of fancy scatters flowers of every hue and of every odour. This is one of the few poems in which blank verse could not be changed for rhyme but with disadvantage. The wild diffusion of the sentiments and the digressive sallies of imagination would have been compressed and restrained by confinement to rhyme. The excellence of this work is not exactness but copiousness; particular lines are ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson

... The diffusion of knowledge is greater than in any other part of the globe of equal dimensions. Such are the excellent provisions of our laws, and the virtuous habits of our citizens, that schools of instruction in all useful knowledge ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast

... American public does not go hungry. American life is crowded with facts, to which the newspaper gives daily record and diffusion. Ideas, motives, thoughts, these are always in demand. Men wish for nothing more than to know how to classify their facts, what to do with them, how to govern them, and how far to be governed by them; and the man who takes the facts with which the popular life has come into contact and association, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... war and accident all work together to keep down the population, but we are overcoming these. Plagues and pestilences are rare. The number who die of starvation in California is very small, while war has played but a small part. Through the diffusion of the laws of sanitation, improved dietary, and advanced therapeutics, the longevity of man is increasing, but the American woman's aversion to child-bearing is blighting our civilization, and can be well named the twentieth-century ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens

... me not to be nearly so capable of so much variety and diffusion as ours is. Add to this, in their Parliamentary speeches, in sermons in the pulpit, in the dialogues on the stage; nay, even in common conversation, their periods at the end of a sentence are always ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz

... enquiry, indeed, has gone abroad in the world. It is spreading in Europe: and though we devoutly wish it may not prove the occasion of bloody contests, we shall rejoice to trace its fruits in the gradual destruction of old despotic systems, and in the general diffusion of knowledge among the people, and the enjoyment of those equal and just rights, which mild governments are calculated ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette

... of transmission. It would carry me far beyond my bounds to produce instances of this community of fable, among nations who never borrowed from each other anything intrinsically worth learning. Indeed, the wide diffusion of popular fictions may be compared to the facility with which straws and feathers are dispersed abroad by the wind, while valuable metals cannot be transported ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various

... aim of God's help of Israel,—the universal diffusion of His name among all the peoples of the earth. Solomon understood the divine vocation of Israel, and had risen above desiring blessings only for his own or his subjects' sake. Later ages fell from ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... between labour and capital; the great London strike of dock labourers, lasting five weeks, and keeping 2,500 men out of work, may yet be keenly remembered. There seems an imperative need for the wide diffusion of a true, practical Christianity among employers and employed; some signs point to the growth of that healing spirit: and we may note with delight that while never was there so much wealth and never such ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling

... water-cleaned birds. [Footnote: The American publication, "Science," points out that the addition of salt to the water cleanses blood from feathers, by preventing the solution of the blood-globules, and diffusion to the colouring matter, or red haemoglobin. I have found this "wrinkle" of great benefit in cleansing white-plumaged birds.] Sometimes, in very old skins, successive applications of water, turpentine, benzoline, and plaster, carefully ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... we discuss a mode of inducing hallucinations which has for anthropologists the interest of universal diffusion. The width of its range in savage races has not, we believe, been previously observed. We then add facts of modern experience, about the authenticity of which we, personally, entertain no doubt; and the provisional conclusion ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... these writings have been in some sense published. But publication is a great idea never even approximated by the utmost anxieties of man. Not the Bible, not the little book which, in past times, came next to the Bible in European diffusion and currency, [1] viz., the treatise "De Imitatione Christi," has yet in any generation been really published. Where is the printed book of which, in Coleridge's words, it may not be said that, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... traditional democratic demand for equality, consists precisely in that of bestowing a share of the responsibility and the benefits, derived from political and economic association, upon the whole community. Democracies have assumed and have been right in assuming that a proper diffusion of effective responsibility and substantial benefits is the one means whereby a community can be supplied with an ultimate and sufficient bond of union. The American democracy has attempted to manufacture a sufficient bond out of the equalization of rights: but ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... work on America we lately noticed, has commenced at Bremen a periodical called Das Westland, devoted exclusively to the diffusion of information respecting the new world. The idea is an excellent one, especially in view of the great numbers of Germans who are already established on this side the Atlantic, and the still greater numbers that desire to come here. No man in Europe ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... of the Institution is, the circulation of such publications as may be beneficial, with the blessing of God, to benefit both believers and unbelievers. As it respects tracts for unbelievers, I seek especially to aim after the diffusion of such as contain the truths of the Gospel clearly and simply expressed; and as it respects publications for believers, I aim after the circulation of such as may be instrumental in directing their minds to those truths which in these last days are more especially needed, ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller

... Cold, the diffusion from Cold Bodies be made more strongly downwards, contrary to that of Hot Bodies: Where is delivered a way of freezing Liquors without danger of breaking the Vessel, by making them begin to freeze at the bottom, not ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... an angle which might be expected to catch the first movement of the trade winds sweeping, together with night, from the sea, practically the whole of the batey was laid out before Lee. The sun was still apparent in a rayless diffusion above a horizon obliterated in smoke, a stationary cloud-like opacity only thinning where the buildings began: the objects in the foreground were sharp; but, as the distance increased, they were blurred as though seen through ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... switchboard the DIFFUSION switch would not be safe to tamper with. It would be near the SOLUTION switch, and almost as dangerous. For if you were to make diffusion cease in the world, the dissolved food and oxygen in your blood would do no good; it could ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne

... conclusion that it was something immensely greater than what we call a star—a kind of monster sun. So with the prodigious birth men call 'Festus.' Our gifted young friend Yendys is more likely than any, if he live and avoid certain tendencies to diffusion and over-subtlety, to write ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... insulated England? A living nucleus, that will attract and grow, does at length appear there also; and under curious phasis; properly as the inconsiderable fag-end, and so far in the rear of the others as to fancy itself the van. Our European Mechanizers are a sect of boundless diffusion, activity, and co-operative spirit: has not Utilitarianism flourished in high places of Thought, here among ourselves, and in every European country, at some time or other, within the last fifty years? If now in all countries, except perhaps ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... districts of the country where the deficiency of employment Iras been most injurious to the labourers in husbandry. That the improvements made of late years in the education of the people, as well as its more general diffusion, have been seen with satisfaction by this house. That this house will be ready to give its support to measures founded on liberal and comprehensive principles, which may be conducive to the further extension of religious and moral instruction. That a humble address ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... the visit gracefully, but without loss of time. The Evangelical Alliance needed a man of personality and power to carry on its work in the slums of South Chicago among the iron-workers. The church cared nothing about creeds or methods—applied no gauge but results; the best result was a diffusion of human kindness. The salary was twenty-five hundred a year, with one week vacation at Christmas and one month at midsummer. He, John Hopkins, as President of the Board of Deacons, was empowered to select a man, and now made formal offer of the post to the Rev. ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... wider sweep than mercantilism is the spirit of intolerance; for, while the diffusion of knowledge and of grace has in a measure repressed this spirit, it lacks much of being subdued. I do not wonder that Lanier "fled in tears from men's ungodly quarrel about God," and that, in his poem entitled 'Remonstrance', he denounces intolerance ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... after weaning, and medical specialists for their ailments; in short, an entirely new world, clean, intelligent, and full of amenity. The baby has become the new man who has conquered his own right to live, and thus has caused a sphere to be created for him. And in direct proportion to the diffusion of the laws of infantile hygiene, infant ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... affirm that toleration has its origin in the weakening of faith; and, drawing the consequence of their affirmation, they recommend the diffusion of the spirit of doubt as the best means of promoting liberty of conscience. We have here the old argument which would suppress the use to get rid of the abuse. Persecutions are made in the name of religion; let us get rid of faith, and we ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... voice. The blasting fact of those returned machines had been all he could cope with; he had been tongue-tied when it came to speaking about it—the whirl and counter-whirl in his brain demanded concentration, not diffusion and easy words to interpret. But now that he had begun to see his way clear again, he had a sudden deep craving for ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various

... social advance, in my country at least, during the last generation none is more marked than the change in the position of women, in respect of rights of property, of education, of access to new callings. As for the improvement of material well-being, and its diffusion among those whose labor is a prime factor in its creation, we might grow sated with the jubilant monotony of its figures, if we did not take good care to remember, in the excellent words of the President of Harvard, that those gains, like ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... of metals. Traces of it are found in practically all igneous and most sedimentary rocks. It occurs in sea-water, and quite frequently in beach-sands. Traces of it are also usually to be found in alluvial deposits and in the soils of most mountain-folds. In spite of its wide diffusion, however, all the gold that has been mined could be stored readily in the vaults of ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway

... books, letters, etc.; all very acceptable. We also received a number of old newspapers by post, for which we had to pay eighteen dollars! Each sheet costs a real and a half—a mistaken source of profit in a republic, where the general diffusion of knowledge is of so much importance, for this not only applies to the introduction of French and English, but also of Spanish newspapers. Seors Gutierrez Estrada and Canedo used every effort to reduce this duty on newspapers, but in ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... both countries in the humanist movement of the fifteenth century were especially rich. Italy, on the contrary, preserved few manuscripts of her poet, and none that is really ancient. Italy began the great monastery movement, but disorder and change were against the diffusion of culture. Charlemagne's efforts probably had little to do with Italy. The Church seems to have had no care to preserve the ancient culture of her ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman

... is well known to the gardener, and is the most troublesome of all the aerial pests of the farm, and one with which it is most difficult to cope, not only because of its general diffusion and numbers, but because it produces a succession of broods throughout the summer, and is therefore always in force, ready to devour the crop immediately it appears. The so-called 'Fly' is a small beetle named Haltica (Phyllotreta) nemorum, strongly made, and decidedly ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons

... has faithfully performed the ever-thankless task of translation; and, in preparing Madame Lenormant's work for the American public, has somewhat restrained the author's tendency to confusion and diffusion. Here and there, as editor, she has added slight but useful notes, and has accompanied the Memoirs with a very pleasantly written introduction, giving a skilful and independent analysis of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... proportionate share of the power now monopolised by Paris. All this system of centralisation, equally tyrannical and corrupt, must be eradicated. Talk of examples from America, of which I know little—from England, of which I know much,—what can we more advantageously borrow from England than that diffusion of all her moral and social power which forbids the congestion of blood in one vital part? Decentralise! decentralise! decentralise! will be my incessant cry, if ever the time comes when my cry will be heard. ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... are in use, the Mandya and the Manbo. The diffusion of the former is limited to the district south of the 8 latitude, not including the Ihawn and Babo River district; the latter, to the rest of the Agsan Valley with the exception of the portion where Banuon influence is prevalent,[19] such as the ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... Daniel Donnelly, better known among his admiring followers, by the sounding title of "Sir Dan Dann'ly, the Irish haroe." Of course if you know any thing of the glorious science of self-defence, a necessary accomplishment which I hope you have not neglected amidst the general diffusion of knowledge which distinguishes this happy age, of course if you have cultivated that noble art which teaches us the superiority of practical demonstration over theoretical induction, the recollection of that celebrated champion must fill your mind with reverence ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various

... became inflected, some of the solution must have been absorbed by all; for drops of pure water, applied in the same manner, never produced any effect. I was able to hold the drop in steady contact with the secretion only for ten to fifteen seconds; and this was not time enough for the diffusion of all the salt in solution, as was evident, from three or four tentacles treated successively with the same drop, often becoming inflected. All the matter in solution was even then probably ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin

... sensuality. The ineradicable spirit of hatred against every thing British, vented itself harmlessly in the bravadoes of the tyrant; but was more dangerously inflamed among many of the native powers of India, by the secret diffusion of a project for a general and simultaneous insurrection. A double mystery of villany saved us, probably, at that time from the shocks and horrors of war in which we have been recently involved. The deposed Kurruck Singh suddenly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... are well aware of their own weakness. It is scarcely necessary to remark that every country which has been long subjected to the sway of popery is in a state of great and deplorable ignorance. Spain, as might have been expected, has not escaped this common fate, and the greatest obstacle to the diffusion of the Gospel light amongst the Spaniards would proceed from the great want of education amongst them. Perhaps there are no people in the world to whom nature has been, as far as regards mental endowments, more bounteously liberal than the Spaniards. They are generally acute and intelligent ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow

... altogether so peculiar to the Middle Ages, and which, happily for mankind, has yielded to an improved state of civilisation and the diffusion of popular instruction, accounts for the origin and long duration of this extraordinary mental disorder. The good sense of the people recoiled with horror and aversion from this heavy plague, which, whenever ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker

... and never in the fetal organs. In poisoning by lead and copper the accumulation of the poison in the fetal tissues is greater than in the maternal, perhaps from differences in assimilation and disassimilation or from greater diffusion. Whilst it is not an impermeable barrier to the passage of poisons, the placenta offers a varying degree of obstruction: it allows copper and lead to pass easily, arsenic with greater difficulty. The accumulation of ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... the nuclear defense of the West is not a matter for the present nuclear powers alone—that France will be such a power in the future—and that ways must be found without increasing the hazards of nuclear diffusion, to increase the role of our other partners in planning, manning, and directing a truly multilateral nuclear force within an increasingly intimate NATO alliance. Finally, the Nassau agreement recognizes that nuclear ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. It is said that knowledge is power; and the like. Methinks there is equal need of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance, what we will call Beautiful Knowledge, a knowledge useful in a higher sense: for what is most of our boasted so-called knowledge ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... Still, I should not have dwelt so long on the doings of the Musical Ressource were it not that it was the germ of, or at least gave the impulse to, even more influential associations and institutions that were subsequently founded with a view to the wider diffusion and better cultivation of the musical art in Poland. After the battle of Jena the French were not long in making their appearance in Warsaw, whereby an end was put to Prussia's rule there, and her officials were sent about, or rather sent out of, their business. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... this sort of thing lies in the atmosphere, don't you think it would be a good thing for the whole Society to come down here next summer? A generous diffusion of masculine energy into the course might be a desirable change. For my part, I don't mean to leave this place till frost comes. I believe this thing is going to be an epidemic at the Branch, and when contagions rage I ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... "incident" is said not to have been circulated in any publication by the family; but "it was one of the secrets which obtain a wider circulation from the reserve with which one relator invariably retails it to another." That is exactly my view. Secrecy contributes to diffusion, but not to accuracy. At the risk of being thought tedious, I must copy ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various

... broad expanse of civilization over the earth. To cotton, more than to any other one thing, is due the railroad, steamboat, and steamship, the increase of commerce, the rapid accumulation of fortunes, and consequently the diffusion ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... finally sucked the life out of them and disintegrated them. The Jew contributed the morality and monotheism of the Old Testament; the Greek, culture and the perfected language that should contain the treasure, the fresh wine-skin for the new wine; the Roman made the diffusion of the kingdom possible by the pax Romana, and at first sheltered the young plant. All three, no doubt, marred as well as helped the development of Christianity, and infused into it deleterious elements, which cling to it to-day, but the prophecy of the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... cypresses, tipped with fire by the setting sun, stood up tall and motionless like votive candles. The sea was the colour of aloe leaves, dashed here and there with liquid turquoise; there was an indescribable delicacy of varying pallor—a diffusion of angelic light, in which each sail looked like an angel's wing upon the waters. And the harmony of faint and mingled perfumes seemed like the ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... distributed much more evenly than now. Land does not go on increasing in value for ever; after two or three seasons it attains its maximum fertility. That which is added by the agricultural art results rather from the progress of science and the diffusion of knowledge, than from the skill of the cultivator. Consequently, the addition of a few laborers to the mass of proprietors would be ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... that would astonish that respectable statesman, quite as much as it must have amused every man of the world who saw it. I have been much puzzled to account for this peculiarity—unquestionably one that exists in the country—but have supposed it must be owing to the diffusion of information which carries intelligence sufficiently far to acquaint the mass with leading social features, without going far enough to compensate for a provincial position and provincial habits. Perhaps ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... while a minority is making or taking part in the intellectual process itself, there is an atmosphere, a diffusion, produced around them, which affects many thousands who have but little share—but little conscious share, at any ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... an indisputable authority when I say that, what with the rental of lands I purchased in my poor boy's lifetime and the interest on my much more lucrative moneyed capital, you may safely whisper to all ladies likely to feel interest in that diffusion of knowledge, 'Thirty-five thousand a year, and ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... to be given to Miss Winthrop, of Boston, and was to include Miss Winthrop's niece, Miss Grace Winthrop, also of Boston. These ladies, as she knew, belonged to clubs which, while modestly named after the days of the week, were devoted wholly to the diffusion of the most exalted mental culture. Moreover, they both were on terms of intimacy with Mr. Henry James. On the other hand, it was her desire that the dinner should be perfect materially, because among her guests was to be Miss Grace Winthrop's ...
— A Border Ruffian - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier

... was made in Paris, and was provided with a rudder sail and an arrangement whereby the hang of the trail rope could be readily shifted to different positions on the ring. Further, to obviate unnecessary diffusion and loss of gas at the mouth, the balloon was fitted with a lower valve, which would only open at a moderate pressure, namely, that ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon

... near him, and probably also the means necessary for the publication of his works. Not only did the monks of Monte Cassino itself devote themselves to the copying of his many books, but other Benedictine monasteries in various parts of the world made it a point to give wide diffusion to his writings. ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... on the objections to the reality and immutability of moral distinctions and to the universal diffusion of the moral faculty. The reference is, in the first instance, to Locke, and then to what he terms, after Adam Smith, the licentious moralists—La Rochefoucauld and Mandeville. The replies to these writers contain ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... l. 235. The matter of heat is an ethereal fluid, in which all things are immersed, and which constitutes the general power of repulsion; as appears in explosions which are produced by the sudden evolution of combined heat, and by the expansion of all bodies by the slower diffusion of it in its uncombined state. Without heat all the matter of the world would be condensed into a point by the power of attraction; and neither fluidity nor life could exist. There are also particular powers ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... had seen the plant at Oak Ridge where uranium was extracted by the gas diffusion method. The plant covered acres. Only a government could ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin

... with shrill cries, and the utterance of a word that had no distinct purport to their own minds, but was none the less terrible to her, as proceeding from lips that babbled it unconsciously. It seemed to argue so wide a diffusion of her shame, that all nature knew of it; it could have caused her no deeper pang, had the leaves of the trees whispered the dark story among themselves,—had the summer breeze murmured about it,—had the wintry blast shrieked it aloud! Another ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... usually spent sixteen hours of the twenty-four in study. In 1822 he came to Boston as editor of "The New England Farmer," a weekly journal, the first established, and devoted principally to the diffusion of agricultural knowledge. ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... our day has led many into a readiness to appreciate more really the minute imitation of a satin dress, or a red herring, than the noblest figure in the best of Raffaelle's cartoons. Much good should come of the diffusion of this wise ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds

... for the Diffusion of Fashionable Knowledge' was announced; the Millionaires looked triumphantly mysterious, the aristocrats quizzed. The object of the society is intimated by its title; and the method by which its ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli

... the recollection of a privileged oligarchy. It must not for a moment be supposed that the refined considerations now urged in favour of what is called codification had any part or place in the change I have described. The ancient codes were doubtless originally suggested by the discovery and diffusion of the art of writing. It is true that the aristocracies seem to have abused their monopoly of legal knowledge; and at all events their exclusive possession of the law was a formidable impediment to the success of those popular movements which began to be universal in the western world. ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... said Paresi, "there'd be diffusion. And convection. If it were poisonous, we'd all be dead. If not, the chances are we'd smell it. And the counter's not saying a thing—so it's ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn

... Spanish translation of the Arcadia. It must be remembered that Sannazzaro was himself of Spanish extraction, and that he may have had relations with the land of his fathers of a nature to facilitate the diffusion of his works. ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg



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