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Diffusive   Listen
adjective
Diffusive  adj.  Having the quality of diffusing; capable of spreading every way by flowing; spreading widely; widely reaching; copious; diffuse. "A plentiful and diffusive perfume."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Diffusive" Quotes from Famous Books



... suspicion that the idols they have so long worshipped and the oracles that have so long deluded them are not the true ones. There is a whisper rising in this country that Loyalty is not a phrase. Faith not a delusion, and Popular Liberty something more diffusive and substantial than the profane exercise of the sacred rights of sovereignty ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... and memorial obelisks; but the sleep, the health, the innocence, the grateful vicissitudes of seasons, reproduce themselves in fruits and products enduring for generations, and overlooked by the slanderer only because they are too diffusive to be noticed as extraordinary, and benefiting by no light of contrast, simply because our own beneficence has swept away the ancient wretchedness that could have furnished that contrast. Ceylon, of itself, can ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... Strongly diffusive as all these odorous substances are, they permeate the whole organism, and each of them contributes its share to what in the aggregate constitutes the smell of the living animal. It is altogether an excrementitious ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... presence of the diffusive life of the plant, a life which persists in a fragment? By no means: the grub is a more delicate organic structure. There is unity between the several parts; and none of them can be jeopardized without involving the ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... him: for to no man were purity and fidelity more essential elements in the idea of real love. Again, De Quincey speaks of Shelley's "fearlessness, his gracious nature, his truth, his purity from all flesh-liness of appetite, his freedom from vanity, his diffusive love and tenderness." This testimony is worth much, the more especially when we remember that it is from the pen of Thomas de Quincey, who, while truthfully acknowledging the man, hesitates not to use polished ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts

... but one, Though 'tis a train of stars, that, rolling on, Rise in their turn, and in the zodiac run: 150 Ever in motion; now 'tis faith ascends, Now hope, now charity, that upward tends, And downwards with diffusive good descends. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... admiration of mankind; yet Socrates was by no means a complete character. He died unto himself merely. He left no gospel of peace to humanity. His influence, however pure, could not, and in fact did not, become a diffusive and transforming leaven, either in his own or in any subsequent generation. The late Matthew Arnold has said, "The radical difference between Jesus and Socrates is that such a conception as Paul's (conception of faith) would, ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... treason against the common weal to reject. And yet his fear of falling into an unreasoning narrow hatred made a check for him: he apologized for the heirs of privilege; he shrank with dislike from the loser's bitterness and the denunciatory tone of the unaccepted innovator. A too reflective and diffusive sympathy was in danger of paralyzing in him that indignation against wrong and that selectness of fellowship which are the conditions of moral force; and in the last few years of confirmed manhood he had become so keenly aware of this that what he most longed for was either some ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... diffusive truth, and common form diffusive beauty; and, as this diffusion is always existing with us, externally and internally, it is no wonder that we should more easily perceive what is in opposition to it, evil, than what is ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of - our Ideas of Beauty, etc. • Frances Reynolds

... that bids the globe rejoice; Nature releas'd from devastation's flood, And peace emerging from a sea of blood. Wonders yet happier to devotion's eyes In blissful vision will now widely rise, From pure diffusive zeal in Britain sprung, Bidding the Gospel speak in every tongue; Till its effect earth's utmost bounds attest, Jesus enthron'd in every human breast, And all his subjects, as his mercy will'd, Feeling within themselves ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley

... eight or ten pound blasting cylinders, which would have had no effect on such masses as those. They were only sufficient to shatter ice-fields. He therefore had a thousand pounds of powder placed in the blasting furnace, of which the diffusive direction was carefully calculated. This mine was provided with a long wick, bound in gutta-percha, the end of which was outside. The gallery conducting to the mine was filled up with snow and lumps of ice, which ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... It would seem that there is no last end of human life, but that we proceed to infinity. For good is essentially diffusive, as Dionysius states (Div. Nom. iv). Consequently if that which proceeds from good is itself good, the latter must needs diffuse some other good: so that the diffusion of good goes on indefinitely. But good has the nature ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... of itself inspire much confidence. He had very little to say when he attempted to explain the political principles on which he intended to act. After a little he confined himself to remarks on the personal attacks made on him by the other side, and even in doing that was reiterative rather than diffusive. Let them prove it. He defied them to prove it. Englishmen were too great, too generous, too honest, too noble,—the men of Westminster especially were a great deal too highminded to pay any attention to such charges as these ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... bright orb of breezy midnight pours 200 Long threads of silver through her gaping towers, O'er mouldering tombs, and tottering columns gleams, And frosts her deserts with diffusive beams), Sad o'er the mighty wreck in silence bends, Lifts her wet eyes, her tremulous hands extends.— 205 If from lone cliffs a bursting rill expands Its transient course, and sinks into the sands; O'er the moist rock the fell Hyaena prowls, ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin

... effect of exemplary behaviour in persons of exalted rank; their course as it is nobly distinguished, so it will be happily influential; others will catch the diffusive rays, and be ambitious to resemble a pattern so commanding. Their amiable qualities will not terminate in themselves, but we shall see them reflected in ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp

... training grounds for young geologists. If students are so situated as to be brought at the beginning of study under the influence of very impressive displays of geologic phenomena—precipitous mountains, rugged cliffs, deep canyons, and the like—there is danger that their mental habits may become diffusive rather than close and keen; the emotions may be called forth in wonder rather than turned into zest in the search for evidence. If students are to be trained to diligence in inquiry and to the highest virility in inference and interpretation, it is perhaps fortunate ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... complimented with the title of Augustus. All the rest perished. Their rise, however, and local prosperity at so many different points of the empire, showed the distracted condition of the state, and its internal weakness. That again proclaimed its external peril. No other cause had called forth this diffusive spirit of insurrection than the general consciousness, so fatally warranted, of the debility which had emasculated the government, and its incompetency to deal vigorously with the public enemies. [Footnote: And this incompetency was permanently increased by rebellions that were ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... opportunities for observation with regard to this malady, have stated, that probably from one-half to three-fourths of the cases of insanity, in many places, are occasioned in the same way. Ardent spirit is a poison so diffusive and subtile that it is found, by actual experiment, to penetrate even ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... practice with success the vicious arts by which elections are too often carried; and the suffrages of the people being more free, will be more likely to centre in men who possess the most attractive merit and the most diffusive and established characters. It must be confessed that in this, as in most other cases, there is a mean, on both sides of which inconveniences will be found to lie. By enlarging too much the number of electors, you ...
— The Federalist Papers

... drenching rains, seeds, germs, and buds Start at the touch of vivifying beams. Moved by their secret force, the vital lymph Diffusive runs, and spreads o'er wood and field ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper



Words linked to "Diffusive" :   dispersive, diffusing, distributive, disseminative, diffuse



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