"Maturity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... what condition your own nerves would have been by ten o'clock that morning if your husband (who had, in one view, a much better right to thwart your harmless desires than you had to thwart your child's, since you, in the full understanding of maturity, gave yourself into his hands) had, instead of admiring your pretty white dress, told you to be more prudent, and not put it on; had told you it would be nonsense to have breakfast out on the piazza; ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... rawest and roughest recruits in the late Civil War so straightened and dignified stooping and uncouth soldiers, and made them so manly, erect, and courteous in their bearing, that their own friends scarcely knew them. If this change is so marked in the youth who has grown to maturity, what a miracle is possible in the lad who is taken early and put under a course of drill and systematic training, both physical, mental, and moral. How many a man who is now in the penitentiary, in the poorhouse, ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... 1834, but three years later he left his slender law practice for a long period of European travel. This three years' sojourn brought him into intimate touch with the leading spirits in arts, letters, and public life in England and on the Continent, and thus ripened his talents to their full maturity. He returned to his law practice poor in pocket but rich in the possession of lifelong friendships ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... great Miltonic blank verse of Paradise Lost is not a copy of any master; it is a development and a consummation of two influences, the slow maturity of Milton's mind, deepened and broadened by the Commonwealth controversies "not without dust and heat," and the exalted sublimity of the yet unattempted theme of justifying God's management of human and divine affairs. His maturity brought ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... suggestion of his authoritative bearing. Her face was a feminized version of the Governor's, exquisitely modeled and illuminated by dark eyes that swept Archie with a hasty inquiry from under the brim of a black picture hat. She might have been younger or older than the Governor, but her maturity was not an affair of years. She was a person of distinction, a woman to challenge attention in any company. Archie was not sure whether she had been warned of a stranger's presence in the house, but if she was surprised to find him there ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... creed-bound minds, they take no root. Recognition of facts and honest deductions are not natural to the human mind. As far as religious matters are concerned, the vast majority of men have not reached a mental maturity; they are still in the infantile state where they have not as yet learned that the sequences of events are not to be interrupted by their desires. The easier path lies in the giving way to the unstable emotions. The primitive instincts are for ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... is not, indeed, absolutely certain that there was an infant in any of these five households; but it is, unquestionably, much more probable that they contained a fair proportion of little children, than that every individual in each of them had arrived at years of maturity, and that all these adults, without exception, at once participated in the faith of the head of the family, and became ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... a good pair of oxen. Try to get another pair to work with them. I will make good the deficit in my contribution. Your fences will be a great advantage to you, and I am delighted at the good appearance of your wheat. I hope it will continue to maturity. It is very probable, as you say, however, that it may fail in the grain. Should you find it so, would it not be well next year to experiment with phosphates? That must be the quality the land lacks. Have you yet heard from Mr. West about your house? What ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... to support the contention of Moore and Robinson ('05) that the "nucleolus" of the related form, Periplaneta americana, is fragmented and cast out into the cytoplasm. The spermatids all appear to develop equally well for some time, but as they approach maturity a varying proportion of them become degenerate. This can not, however, be due to absence of the accessory chromosome, as Miss Wallace supposes, in the spider; for in some follicles no degenerate spermatozoa are found, and in others more than half may be degenerate. All attempts to study fertilization ...
— Studies in Spermatogenesis (Part 1 of 2) • Nettie Maria Stevens
... Zell; or one of them might be that of his mother, the Princess Sophia. The crime of the first George could only palliate, not justify, the criminality of the second; for the second did -not punish the maturity, but the innocent. But bad precedents are always dangerous, and too likely ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Reason but their unpolish'd Homeliness of Dress. And if we were to apply our selves, instead of the Classicks, to the Study of Ballads and other ingenious Composures of that Nature, in such Periods of our Lives, when we are arriv'd to a Maturity of Judgment, it is impossible to say what Improvement might be made to Wit in general, and the Art of Poetry in particular: And certainly our Passions are describ'd in them so naturally, in such lively, tho' ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... into the world, is so ordained by the deity that we should know one another. For everyone comes into this great universe obscure and unknown casually and by degrees, but when he mixes with his fellows and grows to maturity he shines forth, and becomes well-known instead of obscure, and conspicuous instead of unknown. For knowledge is not the road to being, as some say, but being to knowledge, for being does not create ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... look at his little feet and hands with a sigh for the joys that once loitered there, but are now forever gone? Does he not rather feel a little ashamed, when you remind him of those days? Does he not feel that it trenches somewhat on his dignity? Yet the regret of maturity for its past joys amounts to nothing less than this. Such regret is regret that we cannot lie in the sunshine and play with our toes,—that we are no longer but one remove, or but few removes, from the idiot. Away with such folly! Every season of life has its distinctive ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... live, or that may die so soon after entering it as to be practically still-born. The greater number of the seeds shed, whether by plants or animals, never germinate and of those that grow few reach maturity, so the greater number of those that reach death are still-born as regards the truest life of all—I mean the life that is lived after death in the thoughts and actions of posterity. Moreover of those who are ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... is distinguished from the mature birds by the absence of the elongated tail feathers, which are a mark of maturity alone. His food is composed entirely of insects. Swallows are on the wing fully sixteen hours, and the greater part of the time making terrible havoc amongst the millions of insects which infest the air. It is said that when the Swallow is seen ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... mother's relations in Strathconon. Roderick, by all accounts, was not so immaculate in his domestic relations as one might wish, for we find him having no fewer than five bastard sons, named respectively, Tormod Uigeach, Murdoch, Neil, Donald, and Rory Og, all of whom arrived at maturity. In these circumstances it can hardly be supposed that his lady's domestic happiness was of the ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... difference between them by appealing to instances. Not (only) did I charge you face to face, But I held you by the ear [4]. And still perhaps you do not know, Although you have held a son in your arms. If people be not self-sufficient, Who comes to a late maturity after early instruction? ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... and Hope without a goal? Charity without an object? Vain is the love of emmets, or of bees and coral-insects. For the worth of love is as the worth of the lover. It is only in the soil of Paganism that Christianity can come to maturity. And Faith, Hope, Charity, are but seeds of themselves till they fall into the womb of Wisdom, Beauty, and Love. Olympus lies before us, the snow-capped mountain. Let us climb it, together, if you will, not some on the corpses of the rest; but climb at least, not fester ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... the Councils of Kuges and Daimios, was nothing but an experiment, a mere germ of a deliberative assembly, which only time and experience could bring to maturity. Still Kogisho was an advance over the council of Daimios. It had passed the stage resembling a mere deliberative meeting or quiet Quaker conference, where, for hours perhaps, nobody opens his mouth. It now bore an aspect of ...
— The Constitutional Development of Japan 1863-1881 • Toyokichi Iyenaga
... people are not generally aware of the favorable condition of our finances. The statement of the public debt laid on our tables the other day does not show fully the condition of the finances. It is accurate in amounts, but does not give dates of the maturity of our debts. But a small portion of the debt of the United States will be due prior to August, 1867, that will give the secretary any trouble. But little of the debt which he will be required to fund under the provisions of this bill matures before August, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... fire, denotes that your plans will reach satisfactory maturity. Prosperity will beam with favor ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... can not be construed into a concession to the States of the power to destroy the right to become an elector, but simply to prescribe what shall be the qualifications, such as competency of intellect, maturity of age, length of residence, that shall be deemed necessary to enable them to make an intelligent choice of candidates. If, as our opponents assert, the last clause of this section makes it the duty of the United States ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... time past, I have entertained a thought which I bring to maturity to-day; the execution of which could have been more satisfactorily settled by word of mouth than it ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... preparation for entering on his career in life. And now this person, who was about to be a pupil, this stripling, who was going to begin his education, had all the desires of a matured mind, of an experienced man, but without maturity and without experience. He was already a cunning reader of human hearts; and felt conscious that his was a tongue which was born to guide human beings. The idea of Oxford to such an ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... first thing that appeareth is the foresaid lace or string; next come the legs of the bird hanging out and as it groweth greater, it openeth the shell by degrees, till at length it is all come forth, and hangeth only by the bill. In short space after it cometh to full maturity, and falleth into the sea, where it gathereth feathers, and groweth to a fowl, bigger than a mallard, and lesser than a goose; having black legs, and a bill or beak, and feathers black and white, spotted in such manner as our ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... herself—the unawareness of an angel.... When Killigrew talked to her she answered frankly and freely, almost with the confidence of a child. She could not be more than twenty, Ishmael decided, and with all her maturity of build had a childish air. The fashions of the day were not conducive to youthfulness of appearance; but not even the long full skirts trimmed with bands of black velvet or the close-fitting bodice could make her seem other than a schoolgirl, ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... course of time, and, by the action of the sun, rain, and air, became transformed into the most fertile of soil. Why, Lane, you ought to know these things. Look there, how every root is at work breaking up the rock to which it clings, and in whose crevices the plants and trees take root, grow to maturity, die, and add their decaying matter to the soil, which is ever growing deeper ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... been pointed out, onions are of two general varieties, dried and green. Dried onions, as shown in Fig. 10, are those which have been allowed to grow to maturity and have then been cured, or dried, to a certain extent. Such onions are in demand at all seasons. Green onions, also shown in Fig. 10, are those which are pulled, or taken out of the ground, before they have matured and are ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2 - Volume 2: Milk, Butter and Cheese; Eggs; Vegetables • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... from rheumy coughs who ought to be at home; and though occasionally there is a lithe youngster in European clothes with the veneer he acquired abroad not yet completely rubbed off, the total impression is that of oldish men who have reached years of maturity and who are as representative of the country and as good as the country is in a position to-day to provide. No one who knows the real ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... chair. She now realized for the first time what the parting with her grandfather would be—the parting with the gray old man who had been the ogre of her childhood, the terror of her youth, and the autocrat of her maturity, and yet whom, by all the laws of nature, she tenderly loved, and whom by the commandment of God she ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... evolutionary idea. Growth became recognized as the fundamental law of life. Nothing in the universe without, or in man's life within, could longer be conceived as having sprung full-statured, like Minerva from the head of Jove. All things achieved maturity by gradual processes. The world itself had thus come into being, not artificially nailed together like a box, but growing like a tree, putting forth ever new branches and new leaves. When this idea had firmly grasped the human ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... and argument in rhyme, which had led Roscommon to write an Essay on Translated Verse, and Sheffield an Essay on Poetry. The Essay on Criticism is a marvellous production for a young man who had scarcely passed his maturity when it was published. To have written lines and couplets that live still in the language and are on everyone's lips is an achievement of which any poet might be proud, and there are at least twenty such lines or couplets ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... flowing sheet of water before him, for the more easy conveyance of his precious belongings. The mode of travel hitherto adopted, he saw, to be simply impossible. The delay involved might be ruinous to his hopes. With these cogitations he sat down, without bringing any plan to maturity. He gazed at the burning embers as if in a reverie, and as he gazed he thought he had seen, either by actual vision or by the 'second sight,' in which he was a firm believer, the form of a canoe with a single sable steersman coming to his rescue. He felt tempted to communicate the vision ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... whole eight sons, offspring of Lord Nelson's parents, it seems remarkable that only the present Earl ever had any issue; while, of their three daughters, one died in her infancy, and the two who reached maturity, Mrs. Bolton and Mrs. Matcham, have both several children: Mrs. Bolton, as already noticed, having five now living; and Mrs. Matcham, her amiable younger sister, the lady of George Matcham, Esq. being the mother of no less than three ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... her domestic acquirements, justice compels us to remark that Aunt Comfort was not a literary character. She could get up a shirt to perfection, and made irreproachable chowder, but she was not a woman of letters. In fact, she had arrived at maturity at a time when negroes and books seldom came in familiar contact; and if the truth must be told, she cared very little about the latter. "But jist to 'blege Miss Cass," she consented to attend her class, averring as she did so, "that she didn't 'spect she was gwine to ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... Warrenia grew to maturity as if they really were brother and sister. She was sent East to attend one of the most famous young ladies' schools in the country. Jack was on the point of entering Harvard, when he received an appointment to West Point. There under the ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... till they are ready to enter the universities. Their dress indicates their advancement in age and standing. First comes a jacket, then a little suspicion of a tail, which gradually lengthens and widens as maturity comes on, till, at last, it is a perfect tail coat. I saw specimens in these various ...
— Travellers' Tales • Eliza Lee Follen
... may gain by answering a larger or smaller number of questions, and then to place them in order before the world like so many organ pipes. They want to find out whether a man, by the work he has done during his three or four University years, has acquired that vigor of thought, that maturity of judgment, and that special knowledge, which fairly entitle him to an academic degree, with or without special honors. Such a degree confers no material advantages;(18) it does not entitle its ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... Abyssinia worth the name for ages. Then a princess of Judah, Judith, prosecuted designs upon poor Abyssinia, sought out the members of the reigning family, and would have caused each one to be slain. Fortunately, a young prince was carried off to a place of safety. Coming to maturity, he ruled in Shoa, while for nearly half a century Judith reigned in the north. In the year 1268 a.d. the true royalists were restored to power in the ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... present subjunctive in the apodosis corresponds with the same tense in the protasis, and differs very little from the future indicative. See Zumpt, S 524, note. [107] 'Although life has been taken from thee before the age of maturity, and by a person who should have done it least of all.' Unde, the more general relative, is here used for a quo homine. In like manner the Romans, in legal phraseology, called the defendant unde petitur; that is, the person of whom payment is demanded. [108] Doleo, 'I grieve ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... of curl, rushed at once to Lucy, who was standing by her mother's knee. Certainly the contrast between the cousins was conspicuous, and to superficial eyes was very much to the disadvantage of Maggie though a connoisseur might have seen "points" in her which had a higher promise for maturity than Lucy's natty completeness. It was like the contrast between a rough, dark, overgrown puppy and a white kitten. Lucy put up the neatest little rosebud mouth to be kissed; everything about her was neat,—her little round neck, with the ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... work, one that quickens the memory and stimulates the imagination. We make a particular effort to awaken the child's interest in his surroundings, to make him realize the importance of observation, investigation, and reflection, so that when the children reach maturity, they would not be deaf and blind to the things about them. Our children never accept anything in blind faith, without inquiry as to why and wherefore; nor do they feel satisfied until their questions are thoroughly answered. Thus their minds are free from doubts and fear resultant from incomplete ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... from the time Edith left him, he married Abby Wilson. She had grown into a voluptuous though coarse maturity, and was dashing in dress and manner. Her father had recently died, leaving her a fine property. She had always coveted Ben, and did not delay the nuptials from any sense of delicacy, but rather hastened the hour which should make him ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... green verdure, made a background of young summer for her own promise of early maturity. She placed the basin on the ground, and stood with her arms hanging loosely, ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the foundations of the Roman empire, exposed the provinces of Asia to the arms of Sapor. But the declining age, and perhaps the infirmities, of the monarch suggested new maxims of tranquillity and moderation. His death, which happened in the full maturity of a reign of seventy years, changed in a moment the court and councils of Persia; and their attention was most probably engaged by domestic troubles, and the distant efforts of a Carmanian war. [137] The remembrance of ancient injuries was lost in the enjoyment ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... in the days of Patricia's advent. There were strikingly few young men about, to be sure; most of them on reaching maturity had settled in more bustling regions. But many maidens remained whom memory delights to catalogue,—tall, brilliant Lizzie Allardyce, the lovely and cattish Marian Winwood, to whom Felix Kennaston wrote those wonderful ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... for the stage; the glorious achievements of his youth and maturity had come to a hopeless end. His own public had unjustly neglected him, posterity ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... varieties did not arise from the same wild stock; but how many attempts has not man made on Nature before he succeeded in getting them. How many millions of germs has he not committed to the earth, before she has rewarded him by producing them? It was only by sowing, tending, and bringing to maturity an almost infinite number of plants of the same kind that he was able to recognize some individuals with fruits sweeter and better than others; and this first discovery, which itself involves so much care, would have remained for ever fruitless if he had not made ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... cells varies greatly; sometimes there are only two or three, ordinarily there are five or six, and I have occasionally seen more than a dozen. They are not all commenced at once, for the bees do not intend that the young queens shall all arrive at maturity, at the same time. I do not consider it as fully settled, how the eggs are deposited in these cells. In some few instances, I have known the bees to transfer the eggs from common to queen cells, and this may be their general method of procedure. ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... It was not strange then that eighteen-year-old Luis should be actively interested in the building of a revolution on this side the border. It was less strange because of his youth; for Luis would have all the fiery attributes of the warrior, unhindered by the cool judgment of maturity. He would see the excitement, the glory of it. Estan would see the terrible cost of it, in lives and in patrimony. Luis loved action. Estan loved his big flocks and his acres upon acres of land, and his quiet home; had loved too his foster country, if he had spoken his true sentiments. ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... Men and Women, fifty-one poems in number, represents Browning's genius at its ripe maturity, its highest uniform level. In this central work of his career, every element of his genius is equally developed, and the whole brought into a perfection of harmony never before or since attained. There is no lack, there is no excess. I do not say that ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... "that during your absence the bond in question fell due. For many months De Vlierbeck made unavailing efforts to find money to honor it at maturity; but all his property was mortgaged, and no one would assist him. In order to escape the mortification of a forced sale, De Vlierbeck offered every thing at public auction, even down to his furniture and clothes! The sale produced about enough to pay his debts, and everybody was satisfied ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... be well fed and cared for if expected to develop in the time allowed. As they begin to show signs of maturity they should be gotten into permanent quarters. If allowed to begin laying while roosting in coops or in trees they will be liable to quit when changed to new quarters. If possible the coops should be gradually moved toward the hen-house ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... successful cleverness which sacrifices honor to gain is more easily condoned by public opinion than honest dullness which is caught in the snares laid for it by the cunning manipulators of speculation. The man who fails to deliver what he has bought, to meet his paper at maturity and make good the certifications of his banker, loses at once his business standing, and is practically excluded from business competition; but if he keeps his engagements and is successful, the public ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... the usual large family of those days, six sons and five daughters, and all grew to maturity. While they were still small children, however, the British came to Washington, causing great alarm to the citizens of George Town also. Mr. Dodge apparently sent his family out somewhere near Rockville, for this is a letter he wrote to his wife at that time. It gives ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... own, or how much it was made up. For she was one of those women who consider that it is a duty which they owe to the world not only to show themselves to the best advantage in bodily presence to the last, but so to conceal and atone for the ravages of time as to preserve a semblance of their maturity after it is long past. The performance is not altogether successful. For one thing, it is apt to call forth a spirit of contemptuous pity in the youthful spectator who is still a long way from needing to employ such laborious, ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... of peculiar order, and of a Saracenic cast. I walked miles and miles; till at last I found him residing in a very old-fashioned house in the Polygon, at Somers Town. Here was a genuine paradise of cats, carefully ministered to and guarded by a maiden lady of Portuguese birth and of advanced maturity. Each of these nine cats possessed his own stool—a mahogany stool, with a velvet cushion, and his name embroidered upon it in beautiful letters of gold. And every day they sat round the fire to digest their dinners, all nine of them, each on his proper stool, ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... first productions of every kind, out of which those who followed him have but selected some particular plants, each according to his fancy, to cultivate and beautify. If some things are too luxuriant it is owing to the richness of the soil; and if others are not arrived to perfection or maturity, it is only because they are overrun and oppressed by those ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... no reason to doubt that METHUSELAH was blessed with a tolerably vigorous constitution. The ordeal through which we pass to maturity, at present, probably did not belong to the Antediluvian Epoch. Whooping-cough, measles, scarlet fever, and croup are comparatively modern inventions. They and the doctors came in after the flood; and the gracious law of compensation, in its ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... Antony. Their acquaintance was with her when a girl, young, and ignorant of the world, but she was to meet Antony in the time of life when women's beauty is most splendid, and their intellects are in full maturity, for she was now about twenty-eight years of age. She made great preparation for her journey, of money, gifts, and ornaments of value, such as so wealthy a kingdom might afford, but she brought with her her surest hopes in her own ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... have seen, the telephone as Bell invented it, was merely a brilliant beginning in the development of the art of telephony. It was an elfin birth—an elusive and delicate sprite that had to be nurtured into maturity. It was like a soul, for which a body had to be created; and no one knew how to make such a body. Had it been born in some less energetic country, it might have remained feeble and undeveloped; but not in the United States. Here in ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... or of a fig. If then you say to me now, I desire a fig, I shall answer, It needs time: wait till it first flower, then cast its blossom, then ripen. Whereas then the fruit of the fig-tree reaches not maturity suddenly nor yet in a single hour, do you nevertheless desire so quickly, and easily to reap the fruit of the mind of man?—Nay, expect it not, even though I ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... every woe; and oft the more eccentric in his sphere, as rare abilities may gild his brow, setting form, law, and order at defiance. His glass a third decayed 'fore reason shines, and ere perfection crowns maturity, he sinks forgotten in his parent dust. Such then is man, uncertain as the wind, by nature formed the creature of caprice, and as Atropos wills, day by day, we number to our loss some mirth-enlivening soul, whose talents gave a lustre to the scene.-Serious and solemn, thoughts ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... reduced organs when rendered useless under changed habits or conditions of life; and we can understand on this view the meaning of rudimentary organs. But disuse and selection will generally act on each creature, when it has come to maturity and has to play its full part in the struggle for existence, and will thus have little power in an organ during early life; hence the organ will not be reduced or rendered rudimentary at this early age. The calf, for ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... contrary, a very showery month, putting the hay-maker to the extremity of his patience, and the farmer upon anxious thoughts for his ripening corn; generally speaking, however, it is the heart of our summer. The landscape presents an air of warmth, dryness, and maturity; the eye roams over brown pastures, corn fields "already white to harvest," dark lines of intersecting hedge-rows, and darker trees, lifting their heavy heads above them. The foliage at this period is rich, full, and vigorous; there is a fine haze cast over distant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... the juice from the veins on the one hand, and secreting honey-dew upon the other. Four times they moult their skins, these moults being in some respects analogous to the metamorphosis of the caterpillar into chrysalis and butterfly. After the fourth moult, the young aphides attain maturity; and then they give origin, parthenogenetically, to a second brood, also of imperfect females, all produced without any fathers. This second brood brings forth in like manner a third generation, asexual, as before; and the same process is repeated without intermission as ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... honourable; but he is easily tempted to a contrary behaviour when he has reason to think that his conduct will remain undiscovered. The ties of blood and friendship have no power amongst them; the son no sooner attains the years of maturity than he begins to plot against his father. Examples are not wanting of their assailing the chastity of their mothers, and towards their ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... that the Russians are addicted to this article of diet; but the very expression of his eye as he took up a fat little innocent, smoothed down its skin, squeezed its ribs, pinched its loins, and smelled it, satisfied me that a litter of pups would stand but a poor chance of ever arriving at maturity if they depended upon forbearance upon his part as a national virtue. The Chinese quarter of San Francisco affords some curious examples of the art of compounding sustenance for man out of odd materials—rats, snails, dried frogs, star-fish, polypi, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... write a new kind of book, and the enterprise is almost as chivalrous as a cavalry charge. He is making a romantic attempt to be realistic. That is almost the definition of David Copperfield. In his last book, Dombey and Son, we see a certain maturity and even a certain mild exhaustion in his earlier farcical method. He never failed to have fine things in any of his books, and Toots is a very fine thing. Still, I could never find Captain Cuttle and Mr. Sol Gills very funny, and the whole Wooden Midshipman seems to me very wooden. In David ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... Third, Henry St. John, Charles James Fox, and William Pitt the younger, all showed various powers at early periods of their lives; but not one of them was the equal of Hamilton in respect to early maturity of intellect, or in ability to command success in every department to which he turned his attention. The historical character of whom he most reminds us is the elder Africanus. In the early development of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... every liberal mind will share, to classing social pleasures, art, and religion under the head of play, and by that epithet condemning them, as a certain school seems to do, to gradual extinction as the race approaches maturity. But if all the useless ornaments of our life are to be cut off in the process of adaptation, evolution would impoverish instead of enriching our nature. Perhaps that is the tendency of evolution, and our barbarous ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... makes the spring of impulse and action pure; but it does not give maturity of judgment nor perfection of reason. If an ignorant person is sanctified, he will find keenness of perception as regards right and wrong, but ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... make so much of this little pool,' he thought. And as he smiled, he saw, very faintly, his own shadow in the water. It made him conscious of himself, seeming to look at him. He glanced at himself, at his handsome, white maturity. As he looked he felt the insidious creeping of blood down his thigh, which was marked with a long red slash. Siegmund watched the blood travel over the bright skin. It wound itself redly round the ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... upon earth. Nothing could have been farther from the purpose of Uccello and Castagno. Different as these two were from each other, they have this much in common, that in their works which remain to us, dating, it is true, from their years of maturity, there is no touch of mediaeval sentiment, no note of transition. As artists they belonged entirely to the new era, and they stand at the beginning of the Renaissance as types of two tendencies which were to prevail in Florence throughout the whole ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... result of this experience may perhaps be found in a letter to his father, in which he tells him that he has been weighing the claims of the Christian ministry as his future calling in life. He feels the force of its incomparable attractions, but doubts whether he is fitted in elevation and maturity of character to undertake so vast a responsibility. Besides, he is painfully conscious of personal awkwardness in the common affairs of life, and unfitness for the practical management of business. And so he thinks he will ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory. Not only was it the same Congress, but they were the identical same individual men who, at the same session, and at the same time within the session had under consideration, and in progress toward maturity, these Constitutional amendments, and this act prohibiting slavery in all the territory the nation then owned. The Constitutional amendments were introduced before, and passed after, the act enforcing the Ordinance of '87; so that, during the whole pendency of the act to enforce ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... have materially disturbed the serenity of his mind had he had only himself and his wife to care for; but there was his daughter gradually growing to maturity; and all the world knows when daughters begin to ripen no fruit or flower requires so much looking after. I have no talent at describing female charms, else fain would I depict the progress of this little Dutch ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... which differs from all those yet given, I may here advert to an observation published many years ago, though it seems to have escaped every author who has since written on the subject, namely, that before the maturity of the seed in Nymphaeaceae, the sacculus contains along with the embryo a (pulpy or semi-fluid) substance, which I then called Vitellus, applying at that time this name to every body interposed between the albumen and embryo.* The opinion receives some confirmation also from ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... Seeing Dathan raise his hand against Abiram, to deal him a blow, Moses exclaimed, "O thou art a villain, to lift up thy hand against an Israelite, even if he is no better than thou." Dathan replied: "Young man, who hath made thee to be a judge over us, thou that hast not yet attained to years of maturity? We know very well that thou art the son of Jochebed, though people call thee the son of the princess Bithiah, and if thou shouldst attempt to play the part of our master and judge, we will publish abroad the thing thou ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... the same ends at which these aim, but do not arrive. Why should all virtue work in one and the same way?" . . . "And why drag this dead weight of a Sunday-school over the whole of Christendom? It is natural and beautiful that childhood should inquire, and maturity should teach; but it is time enough to answer questions when they are asked. Do not shut up the young people against their will in a pew, and force the children to ask them questions for an ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... all my charges against Mr. Barlow is, that he still walks the earth in various disguises, seeking to make a Tommy of me, even in my maturity. Irrepressible, instructive monomaniac, Mr. Barlow fills my life with pitfalls, and lies hiding at the bottom to burst out upon me ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... for this in the prevalence of the custom, already alluded to, of the mother carrying her offspring on her back, which, with its not undue strain on the dorsal muscles, no doubt, promotes and conserves muscular strength. The Indian woman being commonly a wife and mother before a really full maturity has been reached, or any absolute unyieldingness of form been contracted, the figure yet admits of such-like beneficent processes being exerted upon it. In making mention of this custom, and, in a certain way, paying it honor, let me not be taken as wishing to precipitate ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... starting point, Syria another, Greece a third, Italy a fourth, and North Africa a fifth,—afterwards France and Spain. As time goes on, and as colonization and conquest work their changes, we see a great association of nations formed, of which the Roman empire is the maturity and the most intelligible expression; an association, however, not political, but mental, based on the same intellectual ideas, and advancing by common intellectual methods. And this association or social commonwealth, with whatever reverses, changes, and ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... the stamp of immortality in all he said or did;—and now what is he? When we see such men pass away and be no more—men, who seem created to display what the Creator could make his creatures, gathered into corruption, before the maturity of minds that might have been the pride of posterity, what are we to conclude? For my own part, I am bewildered. To me he was much, to Hobhouse every thing.—My poor Hobhouse doted on Matthews. For me, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... admiration and our sense of the value of this work be increased when we perceive with what earnestness of effort, and with what depth of feeling, the Fieldmarshal had revolved these thoughts in his mind till he brought them to maturity. And more than that. It was his wish to bequeath these consolatory thoughts to his family, as a sincere confession of his private convictions. This is the light in which he wished posterity to regard this manuscript, which he wrote out in the last year of his life, in wonderfully firm characters, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... his youth to the last performances of his age, they will find, that as the tyranny of rhyme never imposed on the perspicuity of sense, so a languid sense never wanted to be set off by the harmony of rhyme. And, as his early works wanted no maturity, so his latter wanted no force or spirit. The falling off of his hair had no other consequence than to make his laurels ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... girl wife had told him how the boy had come to be there, and that she had banished him; but the clash between maturity and adolescence is always inevitable; the misunderstanding between ripe experience and Northern logic, and emotional inexperience and Southern impulse was certain ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... only remains as a distant memory of something long past and gone. It has been truly observed that Tristan and Isolde are not like Romeo and Juliet, two children scarcely conscious of what they are doing. Both are in the full maturity of life and in the vigour of ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... hungered for and then also he hungered for something else. He had grown into maturity in America in the years after the Civil War and he, like all men of his time, had been touched by the deep influences that were at work in the country during those years when modern industrialism was being born. He began to buy machines that ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... in one radiant symbol of sorrow and hope that faith which is the instinctive refuge of unavailing regret, that grace of God which higher natures learn to find in the trial which passeth all understanding, and that perfect womanhood, the dream of youth and the memory of maturity, which beckons toward the forever unattainable. As a contribution to the physiology of genius, no other book is to be compared with the Vita Nuova. It is more important to the understanding of Dante as a poet than any other of his works. It shows him (and that ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... grow into them so gradually that we are scarcely conscious of their existence, unless we stop on purpose to think of them. Marriage, or the foundation of a new family, however, is a step which we take for ourselves, once for all, in the maturity of our conscious powers. To know in advance the true from the false, the real from the artificial, the genuine from the counterfeit, the blessed from the wretched basis of marriage is the most important piece of information a young man or woman can acquire. ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... temperature very soon began to take effect upon the products of the soil. The sap rose rapidly in the trees, so that in the course of a few days buds, leaves, flowers, and fruit had come to full maturity. It was the same with the cereals; wheat and maize sprouted and ripened as if by magic, and for a while a rank and luxuriant pasturage clothed the meadows. Summer and autumn seemed blended into one. If Captain Servadac had ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... and the Canaries, and at length saved himself in the West Indies. The pistachia is also here, with its five-partite sessile leaf, like a dwarf walnut; the capsule holding the nut containing at present only a white germ, which it will require four months more to bring to nutty maturity. The manna-tree is very like an alder in its general character, but thicker in its stem, and bears the cicatrices of last year's ill treatment; its wounds, however, will not bleed afresh now; but towards August the salassatore of trees will ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... throwing down the sheet of paper, "but I want this boy to learn the value of a well-protected credit. At his time of life, it's an asset. I'll pay for my half when it's convenient, but I want him to meet his first obligation on or before the day of maturity. I can speak for the boy's willingness to make such a contract. What do ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... life has a certain course, and one simple path, that of natural moral goodness; and to each part of our age there is given a season for certain things." Wherefore, as to Adolescence is given, as has been said above, that by means of which it may attain perfection and maturity, so to youth is given perfection and maturity in order that the sweetness of its perfect fruit may be profitable to the man himself and to others; for, as Aristotle says, man is a civil or polite animal, because it is required of him ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... dwell a little upon an incident which must appear of vital importance to those who seek to understand Titian's life, and, above all, to follow the development of his art during the middle period of splendid maturity reaching to the confines of old age. This incident is the meeting with Pietro Aretino at Venice in 1527, and the gradual strengthening by mutual service and mutual inclination of the bonds of a friendship which is to endure without break ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... Upon reaching maturity, the youth was enrolled in the list of citizens. But his graduation from school was his "commencement" in a much more real sense than with the average modern graduate. Never was there a people besides the Greeks whose daily life was so emphatically a discipline in liberal culture. ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... masses. A large old alligator, which had never been known to commit any depredations, was found left high and dry in the mud among the victims. The fourth year was equally unpropitious, the fall of rain being insufficient to bring the grain to maturity. Nothing could be more trying. We dug down in the bed of the river deeper and deeper as the water receded, striving to get a little to keep the fruit-trees alive for better times, but in vain. Needles lying out ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... vivid green the harvest of the coming year was already on the way. On these green fields the snowy mantle would lie soft and protecting all the long winter through and when the spring suns would shine again the fall wheat would be a month or more on the way towards maturity. ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... while it suited the existent, went far to ennoble the future, character of the Athenians. In the same spirit the children of those who perished in war were educated at the public charge—arriving at maturity, they were presented with a suit of armour, settled in their respective callings, and honoured with principal seats in all public assemblies. That is a wise principle of a state which makes us grateful ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he were a partaker of our life he would not have been moved to extol childhood at the expense of maturity, for life grows ever wider and higher ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... political, would of itself furnish occupation to an active and industrious department. The constitution of the judiciary, experimental and imperfect as it was even in the infancy of our existing Government, is yet more inadequate to the administration of national justice at our present maturity. Nine years have elapsed since a predecessor in this office, now not the last, the citizen who, perhaps, of all others throughout the Union contributed most to the formation and establishment of our Constitution, in his valedictory address ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson
... youth and beauty has passed away, two active generations have been swept from the stage of life, names so cherished are forgotten, and unsuspected candidates for fame have started from the exhaustless womb of nature. FIFTY YEARS! why should any desire to retain their affections from maturity for fifty years? It is to behold a world which they do not know, and to which they are unknown; it is to live to weep for the generations passed away, for lovers, for parents, for children, for friends, in the grave; it is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... accusation, crimes were supposed to be extinguished. The Cornelian, Pompeian, and Julian laws formed the foundation of criminal jurisprudence, which never attained the perfection that was seen in the Civil Code. It was in this that the full maturity of wisdom was seen. The emperors greatly increased the severity of punishments, as probably necessary in a corrupt state of society. After the decemviral laws fell into disuse, the Romans, in the days of the republic, passed from extreme rigor to great lenity, as is observable in the transition ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... of progress. Man himself is not exempt from this law. His first foetal form is that which is permanent in the animalcule; it next passes through ulterior stages, resembling successively a fish, a reptile, a bird, and the lower mammalia before it attains its specific maturity. The period of gestation determines the species; protract it, and the species is advanced to a higher class. This might be done by the force of certain conditions operating upon the system of the mother. Give good conditions ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... and abandoned when the larger trees had been felled. The largest stumps of these departed stems were not more than from nine to twelve inches in diameter: these were the dwarf-cypress, which would seldom attain a greater height than twenty feet at maturity. ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... girlhood which she portrays was her own, in spite of forbidding conditions. The struggle in which her cheerful nature extorted happiness from unwilling fortune, gives a dramatic interest to her youthful experiences, as her literary disappointments and successes do to the years of her maturity. ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... wholly different angle. Of the moderns, Wagner he worshipped, Tchaikovsky deeply moved him, Grieg he loved—Grieg, who was his artistic inferior in almost every respect. Yet none of these so seduced his imagination that his independence was overcome—he was always, throughout his maturity, himself; not arrogantly or insistently, but of necessity; he ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... customs, without convincing their understandings of the universal utility of these political conventions. When are we to expect this conviction? We cannot expect it from childhood, scarcely from youth; but from the maturity of the understanding we are told that we may expect it with certainty.—And of what use can it then be to us? When the habits are fixed, when the character is decided, when the manners are formed, what can be done by the bare conviction of the understanding? ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... of the Muse, where he shut himself up when his work with them was done. In there, his days and nights were as the days and nights of God. There he forecast the schemes of dramas yet to be, dramas no longer neo-classic. And as his genius foresaw the approach of its maturity, it purified and emptied itself of the personal passion that obscures the dramatist's vision of the world. This it did in a sequence of Nine and Twenty sonnets, a golden chain that bound Lucia's name to his whether she would ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... nothing that brings home to the heart so quickly the consciousness of increasing years, as to find those whom we used to look upon as children grown to maturity, taking upon themselves the care and responsibility of life. Here is Gretchen; a deeper bloom upon her cheek, and her eye sparkling ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... sultry midsummer, and its words summon the ripe autumn with its fruits up from the west; read it by the light of the blazing Yule log, and it will still recall the wild breezes and warm suns of October. And it is this growing maturity of thought, this evident tendency to a grand realization, that prove the honesty and greatness of the man. He has worked perseveringly at his problems, disdaining to be aided by criticism or crushed by opposition. His power ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... portents of the world's action upon him—of that portion of the world, in especial, of which Madame Blumenthal had constituted herself the agent. He seemed very happy, and gave me in a dozen ways an impression of increased self- confidence and maturity. His mind was admirably active, and always, after a quarter of an hour's talk with him, I asked myself what experience could really do, that innocence had not done, to make it bright and fine. I was struck with his deep enjoyment of the whole spectacle of foreign life—its novelty, its picturesqueness, ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... Widow was pleased with the costume belonging to her condition, she did not disguise from herself that under certain circumstances she might be willing to change her name again. Thus, for instance, if a gentleman not too far gone in maturity, of dignified exterior, with an ample fortune, and of unexceptionable character, should happen to set his heart upon her, and the only way to make him happy was to give up her weeds and go into those unbecoming colors again for his sake,—why, she felt that it was in her nature to make ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various |
