"Generalize" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the man's lowest. Both were working as hard as they possibly could. The women were doing menial work, such as scrubbing, which the men refused to do. The men were properly fed at noon; the women satisfied themselves with cake and pickles. Why was this? It is of course impossible to generalize on a single factory. I can only relate the conclusions I drew from what I saw myself. The wages paid by employers, economists tell us, are fixed at the level of bare subsistence. This level and its accompanying conditions are determined by competition, by the nature and number of labourers ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... Battery, it is not for a driver in the ranks to generalize on its work. But this one can say, that after a long and trying probation on the line of communications we did at length do a good deal of work and earn the confidence of our Brigadier. We have been fortunate enough to lose no lives through wounds and only one from sickness, a fact which ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... should have withheld Max Muller from finding the grand distinctive mark of humanity in the power of speech. The merest theorist needs some range of reality for the framework of his theories, and the man of broad principles must have facts to generalize. Indeed, a good memory is the indispensable servant of large thought, and however deficient in certain directions, the great thinkers have had large stores. 'The best heads that have ever existed,' says an idealist,—'Pericles, Plato, ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... sets of personal pronouns are not used indiscriminately, but the examples of their use which I collected are too few to generalize upon. However, ngatu and the three next under it, appear to be used only with a certain class of verbs of which an example is afforded by the sentence ngatu nudu matumina I struck him; and the use of the second set of these pronouns is illustrated by ngai nue (not ngatu nudu) ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... among the Egyptians, Greeks and Aztecs, as well as in the words of Zarathustra and in the theology of Christianity, we frequently meet with the distinct recognition of the fundamental unity of all power. At core, all religions have seeds of monotheism. When we generalize the current concepts of motion or force beyond individual displays and relative measures of quantity, we recognize their qualitative identity, and appreciate the logical unity under which we must give them abstract ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... in a position to sit down and generalize about the wind. It is a tiresome thing to have it as the recurring insistent theme of our story, but to have had it as the continual obstacle to our activity, the opposing barrier to the simplest task, was ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... At times I do generalize on the attitudes of both black and white servicemen and the black and white communities at large as well. But I have permitted myself to do so only when these attitudes were clearly pertinent to changes in the services' racial policies and only when the ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... looking at their colored-ball construction as though wondering if they could add anything more without spoiling the design. "I'd say: a level of mentation qualitatively different from nonsapience in that it includes ability to symbolize ideas and store and transmit them, ability to generalize and ability to form abstract ideas. There; I didn't say a ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... however, solely to draw attention to the importance and greatness of the physical history of the universe, for in the present day these are too well understood to be contested, but likewise to prove how, without detriment to the stability of special studies, we may be enabled to generalize our ideas by concentrating them in one common focus, and thus arrive at a point of view from which all the organisms and forces of nature may be seen as one living active whole, animated by one sole impulse. "Nature," ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... Ys to exist: then if 70 Xs be Ys, and 40 Zs be Ys, it follows that 10 Xs (at least) are Zs. Hamilton, whose mind could not generalize on symbols, saw that the word most would come under this system, and admitted, as valid, such a syllogism as "most Ys are Xs; most Ys are Zs; therefore, some ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... polemical literature for that distinction on which he had fixed his steadfast heart. Patiently he plodded on through the formal drudgeries of his new profession, lighting up dulness by his own acute comprehension, weaving complexities into simple system by the grasp of an intellect inured to generalize, and learning to love even what was most distasteful, by the sense of difficulty overcome, and the clearer vision which every step through the mists and up the hill gave of the land beyond. Of what the superficial are apt to ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... any respect alike. After learning to use the hands, for example, for a certain act, the same hand movements are afterward used for other similar acts which the child finds it well to perform. He thus tends, as psychologists say, to "generalize," that is, to take up certain general attitudes which will answer for a great many details of experience. On the side of the reception of his items of knowledge this was called Assimilation, as will be remembered. This saves him ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... mistake is a special one for the conditions in which one works. When you are here and he understands really what you want, he can answer you for everything that concerns the center of France, and the general geology of the planet, if there is any opportunity to generalize. His reasoning has been this: not to make innovations, but to push to its greatest development what exists, in making use always of the method established by experience. Experience can never deceive, it may be incomplete, but never mendacious. With this ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... any hotter cheeks than young Ried's just at that moment. This was the most extraordinary person with whom he had ever talked. It was impossible to generalize with her. Not that he wanted to generalize; on the contrary, he at once saw the possibilities growing out of individual effort, and caught at the idea of undertaking something. But the question was, Why had he not thought of it before? One person to reach after, and try ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... treatment of the subject ought to be possible. Ignorance is the best of law reformers. People are glad to discuss a question on general principles, when they have forgotten the special knowledge necessary for technical reasoning. But the present willingness to generalize is founded on more than merely negative grounds. The philosophical habit of the day, the frequency of legislation, and the ease with which the law may be changed to meet the opinions and wishes of the public, all make it natural and unavoidable that judges as well as others should ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... "You generalize, and since you are laying down a rule, you are right," said Raymond. "But this is a particular case and an exception. We owe some duties to the feminine gender as well as to patriotism. The greater shouldn't always be swallowed up ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... literature by humanity, he detected the analogy between Lycidas and Annie. Only the dullard would object to the nauseous cant of the one, or to the indiscretions of the other. A sober critic might say that the man who could generalize Herbert and Laud, Donne and Herrick, Sanderson and Juxon, Hammond and Lancelot Andrewes into "our corrupted Clergy" must be either an imbecile or a scoundrel, or probably both. The judgment would be perfectly true, but as a criticism of Lycidas it ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... this book to teach boys the primary requirements—not to generalize—but to show how to prepare and how to do the work; what tools and materials to use; and in what manner the tools used may be made most serviceable, and ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... Charlotte like Sylvia? Was Charlotte even now sitting watching for him with that awful eagerness which comes from a hunger of the heart? He had seen one woman's wounded heart, and, like most men, was disposed to generalize, and think he had seen the ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... successful and unsuccessful participants. The results show that, even in some of the most successful districts, there is not a large "social surplus,"—that is, a surplus of receipts over total expenditures. It is difficult to generalize from such studies with any degree of accuracy; but it seems likely that if we could measure the vast amount of fruitless effort which has been expended in non-productive territories, the result would tend to bear out the general conclusion that the ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... type of problem peculiar to a subject is made to arise in the succession of exercises. It is wise at times to set a trap for students so that they may learn through the consequences of error. For this reason students may be permitted to leap to a conclusion, to generalize from insufficient data, to neglect controls, to overlook disturbing factors, etc. An improperly planned and poorly graded laboratory course repeats exercises that involve the same problems and omits situations that give training in attacking and ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... particular instance of kindness, which they have lately received from the person whom they prefer. "I like such a person because he mended my top." "I like such another because he took me out to walk with him and let me gather flowers." By degrees we may teach children to generalize their ideas, and to perceive that they like people for being either ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... Investigation found that many ideas and systems of ideas, supposed philosophies and sciences, were false and unsubstantial as the "baseless fabric of a vision." Things received as truths from time immemorial were shown to be untrue. The tendency of the human intellect is to generalize; and finding many previously received systems and facts to be without evidence sufficient to substantiate them, there arose the unwilled generalization that all these systems are likewise false. I do not say that man has formulated this thought into ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... nothing but the doctrine of liberty. Let every man be happy in his own way. If his sphere of action and interest impinges on that of any other man, there will have to be compromise and adjustment. Wait for the occasion. Do not attempt to generalize those interferences or to plan for them a priori. We have a body of laws and institutions which have grown up as occasion has occurred for adjusting rights. Let the same process go on. Practise the utmost reserve possible in your interferences even of this ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... the purposes of instruction, if we generalize this subject, by briefly stating a few of the most usual causes of apostacy from God; some of which are strictly applicable to ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... argument is weak just where it seeks to generalize. We are compelled to put the insane under restraint for social reasons apart from their own benefit. But their own benefit would be a fully sufficient reason if no other existed. To them, by their misfortune, liberty, as we understand ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... secession; and if the Rebel States could succeed in establishing their independence, they would find more difficulty in raising a national revenue by direct taxes than the North, and would be driven probably to a tariff more stringent than that of the present United States. If we are to generalize at all, it must be on broader and safer grounds. Prejudices and class-interests may occasion temporary disturbances in the current of human affairs, but they do not permanently change the course of the channel. That is governed by natural and lasting causes, and commerce, in spite of Southern ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... it. While I admit that happiness is the ultimate end to be contemplated, I do not admit that it should be the proximate end. The Expediency-Philosophy having concluded that happiness is a thing to be achieved, assumes that Morality has no other business than empirically to generalize the results of conduct, and to supply for the guidance of conduct nothing more than ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... upon the significance of his stepping aside, in the middle of a violent proposal, in order to make irrelevant remarks. What struck her was the man's certitude. So little did he doubt that he would have her, that he could afford to pause and generalize upon love and ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... reached further and further back through the stream of time, the task became easier in a way; but we have had to generalize more, and often, for want of time and space, to use types in lieu of individuals. For with every successive generation the number of our progenitors increased in geometrical progression (as in the problem of the nails in the horseshoe) until ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... slippery." This was an airy generalization drawn from the particular case of Captain MacWhirr's honesty, which, in itself, had the heavy obviousness of a lump of clay. On the other hand, Mr. Jukes, unable to generalize, unmarried, and unengaged, was in the habit of opening his heart after another fashion to an old chum and former shipmate, actually serving as second officer on board an ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... idiosyncracies as there are varieties of men in the great family of France. It is extremely curious and amusing to listen to the different interpretations or versions of the same thing or the same event by the various species which compose the genus Parisian,—"Parisian" is here used merely to generalize our remark. ...
— Madame Firmiani • Honore de Balzac
... upon two feet or four, or wings or fins, lack reason just in proportion to their idiocy. Lor'! why I have seen human creatures at the Idiot Asylum with less intellect than cats. And I have seen some horses with more intelligence than some legislators. You can't generalize on these subjects, grandpa," said Miss Electra, with an air ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... she said. "If our office is really such a sacred one—and I see it must be, if we take it seriously—why, then, we ought to be pretty good people; earnest, and reverent, and all that, I mean. But it doesn't seem to be our distinguishing trait," and she smiled. "Not mine, at least. I ought not to generalize too much. I am sure there are persons in our choirs who live beautiful, devoted lives; but the lot I fraternize with mostly are not likely to go to the stake just yet for their piety. What awfully jolly dances the Emmanuel church choir gave last winter! I was invited two or three times ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... have it hot-shot, but I'll have to generalize the story for you. The most decisive of all the tests have been made during the last eighteen months, and the final and most convincing of all within the year, under the direction of Lombroso, Morselli, and Bottazzi. It is safe to say that with these experiments (and the reports which accompany them) ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... mores. The tendency of the mores of a period to consistency has been noticed (sec. 5). No doubt this tendency is greatly strengthened when people are able to generalize "principles" from acts. This explains the modern belief that principles are causative. The passion for equality, the universal use of contract, and the sentiments of humanitarianism are informing elements in modern society. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... contemptible, they feel, for the public to wrap itself in the cloak of hypocrisy before casting stones. The modern poet's weakness for autobiographical revelation leaves no secret corners in his nature in which surreptitious vices may lurk. One might generalize what Keats says of Burns, "We can see horribly clear in the work of such a man his whole life, as if we were God's spies." [Footnote: Sidney Colvin, John Keats, p. 285.] The Rousseau-like nudity of the poet's soul is sometimes put forward as a plea that the public should ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... off her hand sooner than have brought the girl to harm; but she loved to generalize. It amused her to see Harmony's eyes widen with horror at one of her radical beliefs. Nothing pleased her more than to pit her individualism against the girl's rigid and conventional morality, and down her by some ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... upon duty, she let Lady Frances Arlington talk, or dance, to her heart's content, and was satisfied often to sit still and be silent. The variety of words and ideas, facts and remarks, which her lively and practised companion poured into her mind, Caroline was left to class for herself, to generalize, and to make her own conclusions. Now she had means of amusement, she took pleasure in observing all that was going on, and she knew something of the characters and motives of the actors in such different scenes. As a spectator, she was particularly struck ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... most prominent are—the proneness to suppose in nature greater order and regularity than there actually is; the tendency to support a preconceived opinion by affirmative instances, neglecting all negative or opposed cases; and the tendency to generalize from few observations, or to give reality to mere abstractions, figments of the mind. Manifold errors also result from the weakness of the senses, which affords scope for mere conjecture; from the influence exercised over the understanding by the will and passions; from the restless desire ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... eye, the star will E appear in the direction AS. Since, however, the observer is not conscious of his own translatory motion with the earth in its orbit, the star appears to have a displacement which is at all times parallel to the motion of the observer. To generalize this, let S (fig. 3) be the sun, ABCD the earth's orbit, and s the true position of a star. When the earth is at A, in consequence of aberration, the star is displaced to a point a, its displacement sa being parallel to the earth's motion at A; when the earth ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... he declared that his father's conduct towards his wife and children was based upon these ideas, she affirmed the superiority of her own father's principles and behavior. Mr. Pogis was too declared an admirer of Judge Kenton to question his motives or method in anything, and he could only generalize, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... clear to the distant view which below on the plain a thousand things would come between to intercept. But there was some morbidness about it too. Disappointment, in two or three instances, where he had given his full confidence and been obliged to take it back, had quickened him to generalize unfavourably upon human character, both in the mass and in individuals. And a restless dissatisfaction with himself and the world did not tend to a healthy view of things. Yet, truth was at the bottom; truth rarely arrived at without the help of ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... fact that in the literature of the ancient Greeks and Romans love is depicted only as a transient gratification of the senses, or a consuming heat of the blood, and not as a romantic, sentimental affection of the soul. He does not generalize, says nothing about other ancient nations,[1] and certainly never dreamt of such a thing as asserting that love had been gradually and slowly developed from the coarse and selfish passions of our savage ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... gained so much. At the beginning it was a process belonging to the sovereign and used solely for his business, or employed for the business of others only by his permission in the special case. What Henry seems to have done was to generalize this use, to establish certain classes of cases in which it might always be employed by his subjects, but in his courts only. In essence it was a process for getting local knowledge to bear on a doubtful question of fact of interest to the government. Ought A to pay a certain tax? ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... public sentiment in this country for any period knows how easy it is to generalize from a few facts, and yet, if the subject be more thoroughly investigated, it becomes apparent how unsatisfactory such generalizations are apt to be; not that they are essentially untrue, but rather because they express only a part of the truth. If a student should ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... the park-like landscape, corroborated. And yet the contrast of the clear atmosphere and the sharp air equally insisted on the mountains. It was a strange and delicious double effect, a contradiction of natural impressions, a negation of our right to generalize ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... this feeling which led William Blake to exclaim in his impulsive way, that to generalize is to be an idiot, that direct perception is all, and the slow process of the inductive reason a devil's machination. This method of intuition is to the more sober method of science as the romantic ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... sovereignty of the king, just as we idly substituted the words "God save the people" at the end of a proclamation, for "God save the king." It was a form. But, if it is desirable to affix to them any more precise signification, it will not do to generalize according to the argument of one party; but we are to take the words, in their limited and appropriate meaning and with their accompanying facts. They can only allude to the constituencies, and these constituencies existed only through the states, and were as varied as their ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... by means, which I cannot conceive, our new grammarians began to extend their ideas, and generalize their words, the ignorance of the inventors must have confined this method to very narrow bounds; and as they had at first too much multiplied the names of individuals for want of being acquainted with the distinctions ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... kind of story which I believe children of this transition period and a little older seek and for the most part seek in vain. These children are beginning to generalize, to marshal their facts and experiences along lines which in their later developments we call "laws." They like these wide-spreading conceptions which order the world for them. But they cannot always take them as bald scientific statements. Moreover there are certain general ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... "If you generalize in that mode, Miles, my dear boy, I must allow that we are. We can go up channel, and ten chances to one but we fall in with some Yankee, who will lend us ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... remarked that in returning to one's post of duty after a time of "leave," there is at first a disposition rather to generalize about what ought to be done than to set to work and do it. It is natural, indeed, that before putting on the harness once more we should take a look at the collar and buckles, and at the load to be drawn, and it may be allowable to the soldier, while on his way to rejoin the ranks, ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... with us—and I go out on a scouting expedition and look for good specimens to add to our collection of horns or to get food for the porters. Sometimes the whole party went out, either photographing charging rhinos or shooting, but this part of the daily program was usually too varied to generalize as part of the daily doings. Several porters went with each of us to bring in the game, which there is rarely ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... of truth comes to our succor, elastic, not to be surrounded. Man helps himself by larger generalizations. The lesson of life is practically to generalize; to believe what the years and the centuries say against the hours; to resist the usurpation of particulars; to penetrate to their catholic sense. Things seem to say one thing, and say the reverse. The appearance is immoral; the result is moral. Things seem to tend ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... I aim to generalize the most important facts, leaving the reader to examine at his leisure recondite authorities, in which, too often, the argument is obscured by minute details, and art is ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... intelligences Fearless in the face of authority Find most of the old beliefs alive amongst us to-day Flippant loquacity of half knowledge Follies and inanities, imposing on the credulous Futility of attempting to silence this asserted science Generalize the disease and individualize the patient Half knowledge dreads nothing but whole knowledge Half-censure divided between the parties I am too much in earnest for either humility or vanity Ignorance is a solemn and sacred fact Imperative demand of patients and their friends Invectives ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of Oliver W. Holmes, Sr. • David Widger
... not a name for a thing, we cannot argue that the thing has or has not an actual existence; or that the antitheses, parallels, conjugates, correlatives of language have anything corresponding to them in nature. There are too many words as well as too few; and they generalize the objects or ideas which they represent. The greatest lesson which the philosophical analysis of language teaches us is, that we should be above language, making words our servants, and not allowing them ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... events, it looks as if the tales, or tales from which they had been derived, had been originally believed as true, and, having ceased to be thus received, had continued to be repeated, in a shape more or less altered, for mere amusement. If we may venture to affirm this and to generalize from such cases, this is the way in which maerchen ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... and yet generalize at the same time, we will say here that the Tea plant or tree is greatly modified in hardiness, in height, in size of leaf, and in the quality of the leaf for a beverage, by soil, by moisture, tillage, and climate. Some ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... conditions and tendencies in contemporary American literature which I wish to present in this lecture, requires historical background, detailed criticism, and a study of development. I have time for reference to none of these, and can only summarize the end of the process. If, therefore, I seem to generalize unduly, I hope that my deficiencies may be charged against the exigencies of the occasion. But I generalize the more boldly because I am speaking, after all, of an English literature; not in a Roman-Greek relationship of ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... We must not generalize too much as to the merit or lack of merit of species-hybrids. Some are very good and of great economic importance. Many others of which we never hear are without merit, often being discarded, leaving only a few lines in a notebook to record ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... correspondent—I cannot formulate any theory of friendship which will cover all the conditions. I know a few things that friendship is not, and a few things that it is, but when I come to generalize upon the abstract quality I am quite at a ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... mobility of attention which the ceaseless variation of the surrounding world produces in them. Thus all the facts grouped nowadays under the name of auto-suggestion may, in my opinion, be explained. Here we shall generalize the law in this form: every idea conceived by the mind is an auto-suggestion, the selective effect of which is only counterbalanced by other ideas producing a different auto-suggestion. This is especially noticeable in the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... axiom requires large qualifications. There are no absolute rules, in fact, except such as are dictated by the plainest common sense. Aristotle himself did not so much dogmatize as analyse, classify, and generalize from, the practices of the Attic dramatists. He said, "you had better" rather than "you must." It was Horace, in an age of deep dramatic decadence, who re-stated the pseudo-Aristotelian formulas of the Alexandrians as though they were ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... objective truth. As the number of units taken diminishes, the amount of variety and inexactness of generalization increases, because individuality tells for more and more. Could you take men by the thousand billion, you could generalize about them as you do about atoms; could you take atoms singly, it may be that you would find them as individual as your aunts and cousins. That concisely is the minority ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... and there were a few others who did. But some 550 of the group, though they had inherited the potentiality of reaching the average age of 90, actually died somewhere around 60; they failed by at least one-third to live up to the promise of their inheritance. If we were to generalize from this single case, we would have to say that five-sixths of the population does not make the ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... a scientific school, except just so far as medicine itself is a science. On the natural history side, medicine is a science; on the curative side, chiefly an art. This is implied in Hufeland's aphorism: "The physician must generalize the ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of his party, and commanding a certain respect from the neutral public, by acknowledged and eminent talents in the details of business; for his quickness of penetration, and a logical habit of mind, enabled him to grapple with and generalize the minutiae of official labour or of legislative enactments with a masterly success. But as the road became clearer to his steps, his ambition became more evident and daring. Naturally dictatorial and presumptuous, his early suppleness ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... society is at the present time little more than a classifying of material. Only with great reserve should any student announce ultimate results, or generalize upon the whole problem. For this period of classifying and analyzing the material, such study of limited populations as this should have value. The author makes no apology for the smallness of his field of study. Quaker Hill is not even a civil ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... of the world. [Footnote: Cf. Wallas, Our Social Heritage, pp. 77 et seq.] I do not doubt that there are important biological differences. Since man is an animal it would be strange if there were not. But as rational beings it is worse than shallow to generalize at all about comparative behavior until there is a measurable similarity between the environments to ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... where we could see only by monads at a time,—if he and the sun and the sea were but cells or organs of some one small being in the fenceless vivarium of the Universe? Let not the ephemeron that lights on a baby's hand generalize too rashly upon the non-growing of organisms! As we thought on these things, we bared our heads to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... was entertaining three or four in the front parlor. Miss Ainsley remained chatting with Ella, who felt that the Northern girl's remarks were largely tentative, evincing a wish to draw her out. Shrewd Ella soon began to generalize to such a degree that Miss Ainsley thought, "You are no fool," and had a growing respect for the "little baker," as she had termed the ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... nerve-centres, lends itself, alone of all larvae, to the Wasp's successful enterprises. In the presence of this underground game, so greatly varied in size and shape and yet so judiciously selected to facilitate paralysis, I do not hesitate to generalize and I accept, as the ration of the other Scoliae, larvae of Lamellicorns whose species will be determined by future observation. Perhaps one of them will be found to give chase to the terrible enemy of my crops, the voracious White Worm, the grub of the Cockchafer; ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... almost synonymous with scrofulous, and to facilitate an acquaintance with a large list of very prevalent maladies, we may generalize, and classify them all under this generic term. As tubercle is frequently spoken of in works treating on medicine and surgery, playing, as it does, a conspicuous part in an important list of diseases, the reader may very ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... where it has contributed so powerfully to change the face of society. It is not because the French have changed their former opinions, and altered their former manners, that they have convulsed the world; but because they were the first to generalize and bring to light a philosophical method, by the assistance of which it became easy to attack all that was old, and to open a path ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... You generalize this by saying that any opinion, however satisfactory, can count positively and absolutely as true only so far as it agrees with a standard beyond itself; and if you then forget that this standard perpetually grows up endogenously inside the web of ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... the exercise of her right to engage in a punitive expedition against Servia, guaranteed that she would do nothing to generalize the conflict by her assurances to Russia and to the world that there would be no annexation of Servian territory or annihilation of the Servian Kingdom. Whether these assurances were genuine or not is impossible of determination. We have no ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... from life, sometimes generalizing broadly and sometimes keeping close to the single individual, but always free to modify the mere fact as he may have observed it to conform with the larger truth of the fable he shall devise. Most story-tellers tend to generalize, and their fictions lack the sharpness of outline we find in nature. Daudet prefers to retain as much of the actual individual as he dares without endangering the web of his composition; and often the transformation is very slight,—Mora, for ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... did not see nearly enough to be able to generalize even for my own private satisfaction. I observed, and expected to observe, that the most reactionary quarters were the most respected. It is the same everywhere. When a manager, having discovered ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... about men, as such, from him than ever she had learned, consciously at least, from Rodney. She'd never been able to regard her husband as a specimen. He was Rodney, sui generis, and it had never occurred to her either to generalize from him to other men, or to explain any of the facts she had noted about him, on the mere ground of his masculinity. She began doing that now a little, and the exercise opened ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... As the Scotch would say—what like is it? Does it give any signs of qualities, physical or mental, tending to distinguish it from Britons, Australians, or North Americans? The answer is not easy. Nothing is more tempting, and at the same time more risky, than to thus generalize and speculate too soon. As was said at the outset, New Zealand has taken an almost perverse delight in upsetting expectations. Nevertheless, certain points are worth noting which may, at any rate, help readers to ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... her head. "Men have changed. Nowadays they are all selfish and sordid. But—I shouldn't generalize, for I'm a notorious ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... father tells Proteus he must to Court on the morrow, instead of showing indignation or obstinate resolve to outwit tyranny, he generalizes in Shakespeare's way, exactly as Romeo and Orsino generalize in poetic numbers: ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... Sometimes these have been "self-made" men, so-called, whose best powers were evoked by rare opportunities. Oftener, they have been men of thoroughly disciplined minds, of sharpened perceptive faculties, trained to analyze and to generalize; men of well-balanced judgments and power of ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 6, June 1896 • Various
... during the time that Miss Sullivan was a pupil there she was like a mother to her. In these letters we have an almost weekly record of Miss Sullivan's work. Some of the details she had forgotten, as she grew more and more to generalize. Many people have thought that any attempt to find the principles in her method would be nothing but a later theory superimposed on Miss Sullivan's work. But it is evident that in these letters she was making a clear analysis of what she was doing. She was her own ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... of chrysalids), thanks to its head and brain which were of the worker type. The female itself is incapable of such complex actions. I cite these facts here as material for study, for we are only too prone in this domain to generalize prematurely and to draw too hasty conclusions. In reality, there is still a wide field for ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... by an indisposition to generalize," said Bernard, laughing. "On this point permit me not to generalize. I am interested in the particular case—in ascertaining whether Mrs. Vivian thinks very often of ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... Thirdly, all who are guilty of the same sins, whether the world knows them or not; whether they languish in prison, looking forward to the gallows, or walk honored among men, they also form a class. Then proceed to generalize and classify the whole world together, as none can claim utter exemption from either sorrow, sin, or disease; and if they could, yet Death, like a great parent, comes and sweeps them all through one darksome ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... supremacy of the Sun and the Dawn as when reading Mr. Cox's volumes. That Mr. Tylor, while defending the same fundamental theory, awakens no such rebellious feelings, is due to his clear perception and realization of the fact that it is impossible to generalize in a single formula such many-sided correspondences as those which primitive poetry end philosophy have discerned between the life of man and the life of outward nature. Whoso goes roaming up and down the elf-land of popular fancies, with sole intent to resolve each episode ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... politics must be Realpolitik. All politics must be based on concrete historical facts—i.e., circumscribed in time and space. Indeed, strictly considered, political philosophy is only applied history. That is why political treatises are so disappointing. The philosopher is content to generalize, and does not know the facts. On the other hand, the historian who knows the facts has not the capacity of generalization. Politics must be mainly empirical. The political thinker does not reason forward from the past ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... ground have a great liability to generalize and jump at conclusions, and the necessary exact work and detail must, to a great extent, be left to those who follow on tracks already ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... prominently forward one culminating point, which serves to determine their true character. Such is the wise economy of all revealed laws, that generally avoiding abstractions, they select as a standard one special case of the most interesting, and leave it to thy care of the human understanding to generalize, and deduce from it universal theories.[2] Consequently, on analysing the ten emanations of the Divine Will, we must transfer mentally each of them to the class of duties to which it belongs, and consider it as intended to ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... and therefore to what distinguishes men one from the other. The aesthetic communication alone unites society because it applies to what is common to all its members. We only enjoy the pleasures of sense as individuals, without the nature of the race in us sharing in it; accordingly, we cannot generalize our individual pleasures, because we cannot generalize our individuality. We enjoy the pleasures of knowledge as a race, dropping the individual in our judgment; but we cannot generalize the pleasures of the understanding, because we cannot eliminate individuality from the judgments ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the fatigue of the day before, and to-day (the 13th) I took a delightful drive of several hours attended only by Saccia. Having examined at different times, and in detail, most of the interesting objects within the compass of the ancient city, I wished to generalize what I had seen, by a kind of survey of the whole. For this purpose, making the Capitol a central point, I drove first slowly through the Forum, and made the circuit of the Palatine Hill, then by the arch of Janus (which by a late decision of the antiquarians, has no more to ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... and some bad luck, this v'y'ge, men," he said; "and, when we generalize on the subject, it will be found that good luck has usually followed the bad luck. Now, the savages, with that blackguard Smudge, knocked poor Captain Williams in the head, and threw him overboard, and got the ship from ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... this, few children remember events farther back than their third year, while many can distinctly recall events of the third and fourth years even after the lapse of a long period of time. The child at this period begins to compare, classify, and generalize in an elementary way, though his ideas are still largely of the concrete variety. His attention is almost entirely non-voluntary; he is interested in objects and activities for themselves alone, and not for the sake of an end. He is, as yet, unable to conceive remote ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... is there; but Holbein, only what he sees. And, as I have told you often before, the really scientific artist is he who not only asserts bravely what he does see, but confesses honestly what he does not. You must not draw all the hairs in an eyelash; not because it is sublime to generalize them, but because it is impossible to see them. How many hairs there are, a sign painter or anatomist may count; but how few of them you can see, it is only the utmost masters, Carpaccio, Tintoret, Reynolds, and ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... beginning to generalize—the very thing I was resolute to avoid. How silly to generalize about a country which embraces such extremes of climate as the sharp winters of Boston and New York, and the warm winds of Florida which blow through palms ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... you do have, Olive! I wish you'd come into my classes; I'd teach you how to generalize, and give you some much-needed lessons in beauty of diction. You mean well; but you certainly do talk like a housemaid, and—Good morning, Mr. Brenton. Jolly sort of morning, too!" Then Dolph digressed. "What in thunder is the matter with ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... coherent and connected story; but he has been restrained by the conviction that the thousands of opium-eaters, whose relief has been his main object in preparing the volume, will be more benefited by allowing each sufferer to tell his own story than by any attempt on his part to generalize the multifarious and often discordant phenomena attendant upon the disuse of opium. As yet the medical profession are by no means agreed as to the character or proper treatment of the opium disease. While medical science remains in this state, it would be impertinent in any but a professional person ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... hardness and greenness in apples go together with sourness. It was so in the first case, and it was confirmed by the second. True, it is a very small basis, but still it is enough to make an induction from; you generalize the facts, and you expect to find sourness in apples where you get hardness and greenness. You found upon that a general law, that all hard and green apples are sour; and that, so far as it goes, is a perfect induction. Well, having got your natural law in this way, when you are offered another ...
— The Method By Which The Causes Of The Present And Past Conditions Of Organic Nature Are To Be Discovered.—The Origination Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley
... reflect, analyze, and generalize, has an advantage over uncultured minds even of double experience. Poor as your cook is, she now knows more of her business than you do. After a very brief period of attention and experiment, you will not only know more than she does, but you will convince her that ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... know the power, and the direct influence of human relation, Gibbie's emotional joy was more stirred by storm than by anything else; and with all forms of it he was so familiar that, young as he was, he had unconsciously begun to generalize on its phases. ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... no use of words or any other general signs; which is built on this supposition—that the making use of words implies the having general ideas. From which it follows that men who use language are able to ABSTRACT or GENERALIZE their ideas. That this is the sense and arguing of the author will further appear by his answering the question he in another place puts: "Since all things that exist are only particulars, how come we by general terms?" His answer is: "Words become general by being made the signs of ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... "You generalize, Don Benito; and mournfully enough. But the past is passed; why moralize upon it? Forget it. See, yon bright sun has forgotten it all, and the blue sea, and the blue sky; these have turned over ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... occurs in St. Matt. xiii. 36 and xv. 15, we cannot generalize about the Peshitto rendering of this verb. Conversely, [Syriac letters] is used as the rendering of other Greek words besides ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... "Still, I think I should like it." Her tone was quite confident; even at that age, as I have observed, she knew very well what she liked. For my part I remembered so vividly my own early dreams and later awakenings that I would not cut short her guileless visions; moreover, to generalize from one's self is the most fatal foolishness, even while it ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... all with a woman when she begins to read stuff like that is her inability to generalize. You women take everything home to yourselves. You try to deduct conclusions from your own lives which men like Schopenhauer have scanned the centuries for. The natural course of your life could hardly have provided you with the pessimism with which—I hope you will pardon my remark, my dear—you ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... plastide particle as in a mastodon or megatherium, and if the microscope could only give back the proper response, we should see them, if not be filled with wonder at the marvellous perfection of their structure. But into whatever divisions or classifications we may distinguish or generalize the properties of matter, we can never predicate vitality of it, any more than we can predicate intellectuality. Indeed, "intellectual matter" presents no greater incongruity or invalidity of ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... homesickness that would be engendered on the way. In fact, one doubts whether the sufferer would even need to be of English strain to attach the vision of home to the essentially lovable places that Mr. Parsons depicts. They seem to generalize and typify the idea, so that every one may feel, in every case, that he has a sentimental property in the scene. The very sweetness of its reality only helps to give it that story-book quality which persuades us we have known ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... dear," she said. "I can't guess what. Yes, he is that sort of good fellow, I suppose; but don't you think you generalize too much, when you class them all together? And don't you judge harshly? Cannot a man have—to use the cant phrase—have sown his wild oats, and have done with them? Mind, I know nothing definite about those wild oats, but before now it has been ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... similar instances might be cited, but for the sake of impartiality it is preferable to allow a German to generalize: "The rage of the populace has found vent not only against foreigners, but also against good German patriots, ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... the bottom of her actions all through this crisis. Pity, if one may generalize, is at the bottom of woman. When men like us, it is for our better qualities, and however tender their liking, we dare not be unworthy of it, or they will quietly let us go. But unworthiness stimulates woman. It brings out her deeper nature, for ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... "Oh, but generalize! From what you know of women as Woman, what should you expect? Shouldn't you expect her to make you pay somehow for your privity to her disgrace, to revenge her misery upon you? Isn't there a theory that women forgive injuries, ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... the problems and to decide which process of arithmetic should be used in dealing with them. Once these decisions are made the succeeding arithmetical calculations are simple and easy. In technical terms the ability that is needed is the ability to generalize one's experiences. In every-day terms it is the ability ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... talents were, in truth, very much below mediocrity. His mind was incredibly small. A petty passion for contemptible details characterized him from his youth, and, as long as he lived, he could neither learn to generalize, nor understand that one man, however diligent, could not be minutely acquainted with all the public and private affairs of fifty millions of other men. He was a glutton of work. He was born to write despatches, and to scrawl comments upon those ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Their difference is from a difference of environment; and the Christmas story when naturalized among us becomes almost identical in motive, incident, and treatment with the Thanksgiving story. If I were to generalize a distinction between them, I should say that the one dealt more with marvels and the other more with morals; and yet the critic should beware of speaking too confidently on this point. It is certain, however, that the Christmas season is meteorologically more favorable ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Generalize as to the similarity of the places in which the pupils have seen the sparrow singing, and as to the times of day in ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education |
