Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Multifarious   Listen
adjective
Multifarious  adj.  
1.
Having multiplicity; having great diversity or variety; of various kinds; diversified; made up of many differing parts; manifold. "There is a multifarious artifice in the structure of the meanest animal."
2.
(Bot.) Having parts, as leaves, arranged in many vertical rows.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Multifarious" Quotes from Famous Books



... of Maouna in every particular, and quickly surrounded the two frigates, offering the multifarious productions of their island. It appeared that the French must have been the first to trade with them, for they were quite unacquainted with the use or value of iron, and preferred a single coloured bead to a hatchet, or ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... appearance; but I shall say more about him when I talk of my mother again. Old Nanny went on much as usual, but on the whole she improved. I used to pick up for her anything I could, and put it in a large bag which I occasionally brought to Greenwich, and this bag, with its multifarious contents, would give her more pleasure than if I had brought her any single object more valuable. Old Anderson used to call upon her occasionally, but he did not do her much good. She appeared to think of hardly anything but getting money. She was always glad to see me, ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... before the reader a mere sketch of the works achieved at Paris; for were it requisite to give a catalogue of all the monuments erected during his reign, throughout the French empire, a series of volumes would be required to commemorate those multifarious labors."—Ireland. ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner

... magistrate, he had often to punish some idler or evil-doer, by ordering him to be set in the stocks or scourged at the whipping-post. Often, too, as was the custom of the times, he and Mr. Higginson, the minister of Salem, held long religious talks together. Thus John Endicott was a man of multifarious business, and had no time to look back regretfully to his native land. He felt himself fit for the new world, and for the work that he had to do, and set ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... he had taken root where he came ashore, and vegetated, as floating weeds will do. He picked up rather a precarious livelihood by acting as a species of factotum to his countrymen in the season, ministering, not injudiciously, to their myriad whims and necessities. Among his multifarious functions, perhaps the most respectable and permanent was that of clerk to the English chapel. He was by no means a very religious man, nor were his morals quite unexceptionable, but he had completely ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... the weather has been fine, have set all the clocks by the sun and adjusted them so closely that the clock in the dining-room is the only one which ever gives a sound after the others have struck. Charles V. was a stupid fellow. You will understand that with so multifarious an occupation I have little time left to call on the clergymen; as they have no vote for the ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... miles, and containing from 3,000,000 to 250,000 population. The average population of a District is 800,000. Nothing impresses the careful observer more than the large amount of responsibility and the multifarious duties which devolve upon these District officers. During recent years, however, authority has been withheld increasingly from Collectors and centralized in the Provincial Governments; for at the head of every Province also there is a government patterned somewhat after the ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... surely bad management when a man does not make a large part of his self-sacrifices subservient to the welfare of his fellow-men. In active life nothing avails more than self-denial; and there its trials are varying and multifarious: but ascetics, by placing their favourite virtue in retirement, made it dwindle down into ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps

... suitable sizes being employed for rigging. When completed, they made a beautiful toy. Desks, work-boxes, etc., were also made here; violins, some of which were of excellent tone, were likewise constructed. But it would be useless to enumerate the endless variety of queer things made at this multifarious manufactory. Some organized a music-society, with various instruments, and used occasionally to give concerts; others got up a theatre, screening it off with bed covering. I recollect some pretty good performances among them. In short, all were ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various

... reluctantly produced scraps of dirty newspaper, or of ledgers scrawled over with queer accounts. I soon grew wise, and hoarded up the splint strawberry baskets provided by the male venders, which are put to multifarious uses in Russia. ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... which to discern coming scenes and persons; and communed with spiritualists and mediums. The fruit of these mystic studies is seen in "Zanoni" and "A strange Story," romances which were a labour of love to the author, and into which he threw all the power he possessed,—power re-enforced by multifarious reading and an instinctive appreciation of Oriental thought. These weird stories, in which the author has formulated his theory of magic, are of a wholly different type from his previous fictions, and, in place of ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... wondered, apart from the principle, how her cousins, and even Miss Morley, could venture to disregard orders given in that decided manner; but she soon perceived that they trusted to Mrs. Lyddell's multifarious occupations, which kept her from knowing all their proceedings with exactness, and left them a good deal ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... part of the mythology, her own comparative deficiency, as she felt it, in this part of learning, would be made up; and that taking her stand on the works of art, which were the final development in Greece of these multifarious fables, the whole subject might be swept from zenith to nadir. But all that depended on others entirely failed. Mr. W. contributed some isolated facts,—told the etymology of names, and cited a few fables not so commonly known as most; but, even in the ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... related, that he translated Tully on Old Age; and that, besides his books of poetry and criticism, he read Temple's Essays and Locke on Human Understanding. His reading, though his favourite authors are not known, appears to have been sufficiently extensive and multifarious; for his early pieces show, with sufficient evidence, his ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... hands that trembled over the unwonted task. And ever and anon the master turned to his book, as he laid bare the mysteries of the hidden organs; to his precious Vesalius, it might be, or his figures repeated in the multifarious volume of Ambroise Pare; to the Aldine octavo in which Fallopius recorded his fresh observations; or that giant folio of Spigelius just issued from the press of Amsterdam, in which lovely ladies display their viscera with a coquettish grace implying that it is rather a pleasure than ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... love-letter ever was or ever will be, as may readily be supposed, a brilliant effort of the mind. In all young men not tainted by corruption such a letter is written with gushings from the heart, too overflowing, too multifarious not to be the essence, the elixir of many other ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... Novel? what is the Great English Novel? And if neither of these nations has produced a single book which embodies their national life, why should we expect that our life, so much more diverse in its elements, so multifarious in its aspects, could ever be summed up within the covers of ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various

... best evidence of one common origin. Disagreement in a similar case, accompanied with a great variety of terms of considerable dissonance, will be equally conclusive as to the object being indigenous or of a multifarious origin. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... were now drawing to an end. His father, though engaged as the shepherd at Dunglass, had other duties of a very multifarious kind to discharge, and part of his shepherd work had been done for him for some time by his eldest son, Thomas. But Thomas was now old enough to earn a higher wage by other work on the home-farm or in the woods, and so it came ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns

... noblest present", says a modern writer, "ever made by parent to a child".[1] Written in a far higher tone than Lord Chesterfield's letters, though treating of the same subject, it proposes and answers multifarious questions which must occur continually to the modern Christian as well as to the ancient philosopher. "What makes an action right or wrong? What is a duty? What is expediency? How shall I learn to choose between my ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins

... quite thin,—a little gray. The epidemic had burthened him with responsibilities too multifarious and ponderous for his slender strength to bear. The continual nervous strain of abnormally protracted duty, the perpetual interruption of sleep, had almost prostrated even his will. Now he only hoped that, during this brief absence from the city, ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn

... before him; such a vast expenditure of time on books of plates in libraries—and weeks and months to be devoted to sketches, to compositions, to colour-schemes of this sort and that; such a tremendous outlay for models, for costumes, for multifarious accessories! But as Daffingdon gradually pulled himself together, a comforting little sense of flattery came to soothe his bruises and to clear his eyes. Yes, she believed in him. This brilliant and learned young woman had impetuously placed ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... other side of the street from morning until night. The one servant which their finances enabled them with difficulty to retain, and whom they engaged as a maid of all work (and certainly she was not permitted by Mrs Forster to be idle in her multifarious duty), seldom remained above her month; and nothing but the prospect of immediate starvation could induce any one to ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... who has been a very distinguished servant of the East India Company, has publicly expressed his views upon this question. I have been very much struck with a note attached to the published report of his speech, referring to the multifarious duties discharged by the Directors of the East India ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright

... policy had been evident in France and Italy, but toward the last decade of the century it was seen by the more clear-sighted supporters of the older Church in those countries that the multifarious "refutations" and explosive attacks upon Renan and his teachings had accomplished nothing; that even special services of atonement for his sin, like the famous "Triduo" at Florence, only drew a few women, and provoked ridicule among the public at large; that throwing him out of his professorship ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... and launch upon the wide sea of railroad enterprise. His wife is said, by a happy inspiration, to have decided him in favour of the more important and ambitious sphere. She did so at the sacrifice of her domestic comfort; for in the prosecution of her husband's multifarious enterprises they changed their residence eleven times in the next thirteen years, several times to places abroad; and little during those years did his wife and family see of ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... Bennett, and desire him to write to you himself. He is, as you say, an "excellent youth," although it is very generous in me to say so, for I do believe that you came to see me since he has been. Dear Mr. Bennoch, with all his multifarious business, has been again and again. God bless him! ...To return to Mr Bennett. He has been engaged in a grand battle with the trustees of an old charity school, principally the vicar. His two brothers helped in the fight. They won a notable ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... in his pilgrimage; always preoccupied with his last literary project, and yet finding time for innumerable intrigues; for carrying out schemes of vengeance for wounded vanity, and for introducing himself into every quarrel that was going on around him. In all his multifarious schemes and occupations he found it convenient to cover himself by elaborate mystifications, and was as anxious (it would seem) to deceive posterity as to impose upon contemporaries; and hence it is as difficult clearly to disentangle the ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... that, judging of the whole by parts, I am alternately affected by one and the other as either presses on my memory or fancy? We differ from ourselves just as we differ from each other when we see only part of the question, as in the multifarious relations of politics and morality, but when we perceive the whole at once, as in numerical computations, all agree in one judgment, and none ever varies in ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson

... certain sphere, that bids fair to last for a generation or two, at least, even in this book-making age. Such an earnest devotedness of research; such a gigantic capacity of appropriation, such a kingly faculty of comprehension, will rarely be found united in one individual. The multifarious truths which the noble industry of such a spirit either evolved wisely or happily disposed, will long continue to be received as a welcome legacy by our studious youth; and as for his errors in a literary point of view, and with reference ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... these lamentations the famous registered letter came to my door, with healing under its seals. It bore the postmark of San Francisco, where Pinkerton was already struggling to the neck in multifarious affairs: it renewed the offer of an allowance, which his improved estate permitted him to announce at the figure of two hundred francs a month; and in case I was in some immediate pinch, it enclosed an ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... the four long flights of stone stairs, past the many doors of the multifarious business premises, and out into the market. A little crowd had gathered, and a large policeman was just rowing into the centre of the interest. Lilly, always a hoverer on the edge of public commotions, hung now hesitating on the outskirts ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence

... dialect of political science, and might have bestowed on his conception of political society more of the features of reality. We see no room for the free play of divergent forces, the active rivalry of hostile interests, the regulated conflict of multifarious personal aims, which can never be extinguished, except in moments of driving crisis, by the most sincere attachment to the common causes of the land. Thus the modern question which is of such vital ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... remissness alluded to still more unaccountable. The cocoa-palm is as an example; a tree by far the most important production of Nature in the Tropics. To the Polynesians it is emphatically the Tree of Life; transcending even the bread-fruit in the multifarious uses to which it ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... probably, would hesitate to admit that in a condition in which our experience was a complete blank we should be unable to acquire any knowledge of Time; but it may not be quite so evident that in a condition in which experience consisted of a multifarious but never repeated succession of impressions the Knowledge of Time would be equally awanting.[12:1] Yet so it is. The operation of the Law of Periodicity is necessary to the measurement of Time. It is by means, and only by means, of periodic pulsative movements that we ever do or can ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip

... the promotion of that curious enterprise, the "Universal- Register-Office," so often advertised in the Covent-Garden Journal. It appears to have been an Estate Office, Lost Property Office, Servants' Registry, Curiosity Shop, and multifarious General Agency. As a magistrate, in spite of his blindness, John Fielding was remarkably energetic, and is reported to have known more than 3000 thieves by their voices alone, and could recognise them when brought into Court. A description ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... passionate, practical, designed for affairs and prospering in them far beyond the average. He founded a solid business in lamps and oils, and was the sole proprietor of a concern called the Greenside Company's Works—"a multifarious concern it was," writes my cousin, Professor Swan, "of tinsmiths, coppersmiths, brassfounders, blacksmiths, and japanners." He was also, it seems, a shipowner and underwriter. He built himself "a land"—Nos. 1 and 2 Baxter's Place, then no such unfashionable neighbourhood—and died, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the wildest passions—Italy, among all the European countries, remained the freest from this change. But to a romantic people, whom a warm and lovely sky, a luxurious, ever young and ever smiling nature, and the multifarious witcheries of art, rendered keenly susceptible of sensuous enjoyment, that form of religion must naturally have been better adapted, which by its splendid pomp captivates the senses, by its mysterious enigmas opens an unbounded range to the fancy; and which, through ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... either to a Book Club, to a Lending Library, or to any other channel of circulation amongst persons of inquiry and intelligence. By such introductions scholars help themselves as well as us, for there is no inquirer throughout the kingdom who is not occasionally able to throw light upon some of the multifarious objects which ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 53. Saturday, November 2, 1850 • Various

... marks the afternoon of Sunday on board a man-of-war, even more than on land, is the absence of all the usual stir caused by the multifarious occupations of the artificers and crew. Indeed, the lower deck of a man-of-war on Sunday afternoon, between dinner time and the hour of tea, or evening grog, a cast of idleness is the most characteristic feature. Groups of men may be seen ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... the annual rally day performance, Mary Truesdell and Lorraine Long, dressed as sailors, with the accompaniment of the Mandolin Club, clogged for us in multifarious rhythms, ways, and manners—or however one does clog—to the astonishment of all of us, who never before dreamed that professional talent actually existed ...
— The 1926 Tatler • Various

... on the terrace on a certain hot afternoon early in August, greeted Dot, whose multifarious duties did not permit her to be a very frequent visitor. He smiled at her with that cordiality which even on his worst days was never absent, but she thought ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell

... to cover up her late awkwardness, upon a glowing history of their employer's multifarious kindness. There was Miss Brown, the stenographer, rescued from the department store where she had been "dying on her feet," sent to a commercial school and given a position she never could fill. And Blake, the collector, ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller

... talking upon various subjects, amidst the provoking interruptions of continual questions and answers, and in the broad glare of a hot sun, can command and abstract their attention so far as to calculate yards, ells, and nails, to cast up long sums in addition right to a farthing, and to make out multifarious bills with quick and unerring precision. In almost all the dining houses at Vienna, as a late traveller[27] informs us "a bill of fare containing a vast collection of dishes is written out, and the prices are affixed to each article. As the people of ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... precious pair of individuals? Without the least expense of drinking, the secrets they were pumping out of each other are now accessible enough,—if it were of importance now. One glance I may perhaps commend to the reader, out of these multifarious ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... good fortune, and allowing the killing-coat to take its chance in the world. How the thing happened, I have bothered and beat my brains to no purpose to make out, and it remains a wonderful mystery to me to this blessed day; but, by long thought on the subject, both when awake and in my bed, and by multifarious cross-questionings at Tammie's self concerning the paper measurings, I am devoutly inclined to think, that he mistook the nicking of the side-seams and the shoulder-strap for the girth ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... our mutual satisfaction at again meeting, so multifarious were his duties that we had but little time for private conversation. I was able, however, to ascertain that John's heart was in his work, and that he infinitely preferred being a missionary in the South-Seas to holding the highest secular ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston

... Times, which his duties had prevented him from reading at large in the morning. He wandered with a sense of ease among its multifarious pages, and, in full leisure, brought his information up to date concerning the state of the war and of the country. Air-raids by Zeppelins were frequent, and some authorities talked magniloquently about the "defence of London." Hundreds of people had paid immense ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... contains among them many excellent, kind-hearted women, it also contains some very rough specimens of the feminine gender, and to some of these it occasionally falls to give our maid-of-all-work her first lessons in her multifarious occupations: the mistress's commands are the measure of the maid-of-all-work's duties. By the time she has become a tolerable servant, she is probably engaged in some respectable tradesman's house, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... settlement of the foreign question so completely overshadows every other event during Taoukwang's reign that it is difficult to extract anything of interest from the records of the government of the country, although the difficult and multifarious task of ruling three hundred millions of people had to be performed. More than one fact went to show that the bonds of constituted authority were loosened in China, and that men paid only a qualified respect to the imperial edict. Bands of robbers prowled ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... printed, but paid for. My motives were of a decidedly mercenary description. "Hic scribit fama ductus, at ille fame." I belonged emphatically to the latter category, and little indeed of my multifarious productions ever found its final resting place in the waste-paper basket. They were rejected often, but re-despatched a second and a third time, if necessary, to some other "organ," and eventually swallowed by ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... of his multifarious stores of learning. He related at length stories of wrecks and sufferings at sea; which, though they had long been in print, were most of them new to these poor fellows. He told them, among the rest, what the men of the Bona Dea, waterlogged ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... scattered about the great entrance-hall, none of whom, however, interfered with us; so we took whatever way we chose, and wandered about at will. It is a hopeless, and to me, generally, a depressing business to go through an immense multifarious show like this, glancing at a thousand things, and conscious of some little titillation of mind from them, but really taking in nothing, and getting no good from anything. One need not go beyond the limits of the British ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... which is perceptible by sensation, and is measurable by their expansion or contraction. It is the key to the theory of the winds, of rain, of aerial and oceanic currents, of vegetation and climate with all their multifarious and important differences. While the inclined position of the earth on its axis and its movement in its elliptical orbit influence the general amount of heat, it is rather to the consequences of these in detail that we are called when we speak of temperature. If the sun shone on a uniformly ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... loftily, as if casting in his mind what would be the proper occupation of a person of such multifarious interests ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... as unfelt the woes; Where sainted hierophants, with well taught mimes, Play'd first the role for all succeeding times; Which, vamp'd and varied as the clime required, More trist or splendid, open or retired, Forms local creeds, with multifarious lore, Creates the God and ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... object we assert literally nothing about the object, it has become unfit for the purposes either of thought or of the communication of thought; and can only be made serviceable by stripping it of some part of its multifarious denotation, and confining it to objects possessed of some attributes in common, which it may be made to connote. Such are the inconveniences of a language which "is not made, but grows." Like the governments ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... Crown on the recommendation of the Home Secretary, and has wide, almost autocratic powers. It is an Imperial force which has duties apart from the care of London. It has divisions at the great dockyards; it is the adviser and helper of multifarious smaller zones in case of difficulty. It has charge of the river from Dartford Creek to Teddington, and its confines extend far beyond the boundaries ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot

... an empty compliment of sound, but to reach through sensation to the mental faculties within. And again we read "the art of the composer is in a sense the discovery and exposition of the INTELLIGIBLE relations in the multifarious material ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... Wuertemberger, or Rheinlander felt not less deeply. The Revolution of 1848, the blood spilt at the barricades in the streets of Vienna and Berlin, did not end this; but it roused the better spirits amongst the opposition to deeper perception of the aspiration of all Germany. Which of the multifarious kingdoms and duchies could form the centre of a new union, federal or imperial? Austria, with her long line of Hapsburg monarchs, her tyranny, her obscurantism, her tenacious hold upon the past, had been the enemy or the oppressor of every State in ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... together with a young writer's abundance of conceits. Sonnets, stanzas of Tennysonian sweetness, tales imbued with German mysticism, versions from Jean Paul, criticisms of the old English poets, and essays smacking of Dialistic philosophy, were among his multifarious productions. The editors of the fashionable periodicals were familiar with his autograph, and inscribed his name in those brilliant bead-rolls of ink-stained celebrity, which illustrate the first page of their covers. ...
— Other Tales and Sketches - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... seven in the morning, when I returned to my lodging. When I went to bed, my heaviness was so great that I seemed as if I could have slept for centuries; and, so multifarious and torturing were the images that haunted me, that, the time actually appeared indefinitely protracted: a month, a year, an age: yet it was little more than two hours. The moment struggling nature had cast off her horrible night-mares, and I had ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... beheld; "Twice six save me beneath Alcides' arm, "There dy'd. With ease were conquer'd all but one; "Strange was of Periclymenos the death; "Whom Neptune, founder of our line, had given, "What form he will'd to take; that form thrown off. "His own again resume. When vainly chang'd "To multifarious shapes; he to the bird "Most dear to heaven's high sovereign, whose curv'd claws "The thunders bear, himself transform'd; the strength "That bird possesses, using, with bow'd wings, "His crooked beak and talons pounc'd ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... Had he the opportunity of stating it in a court of justice to-morrow, he could only enter into a narrative which would decide his lot as an insane being. The magical rites had been so gradual, so subtle, so multifarious, all in appearance independent of each other, though in reality scientifically combined, that, while the conspirators had probably effected his ruin both in body and in soul, the only charges he could make against them would be acts of exquisite charity, tenderness, self-sacrifice, ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli

... as a divine element in Scripture,' and adds, 'that this should modify our judgment in considering perplexing discrepancies and minor objections. There are spots in the sun; there are bogs on the earth; and why should the perplexities in a book, which is a multifarious collection of poetico-theological and historical tracts, written in various ages, and subject, in their history, to many human vicissitudes, bewilder and appal us? The candid inquirer will be satisfied if, from ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... gold chain round the Prioress's neck, the multifarious rings on her fingers, and the costly jewels in her girdle, and rather doubted her testimony as to the utter absence of vanity in a veiled nun; but she contented herself with saying, "I trow, holy mother, that ye carry with you evil hearts into your cloister, as have all men without; and an ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt

... times, together o' nights when the hour had come for whisky-toddy; but it might have been noticed (had there been any one to pay heed) that they were rarely so much together by day. Archie had Hermiston to attend to, multifarious activities in the hills, in which he did not require, and had even refused, Frank's escort. He would be off sometimes in the morning and leave only a note on the breakfast table to announce the fact; and sometimes, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... grief, and how quickly we forget, I think we ought to be ashamed of ourselves and our fickle-heartedness. For, after all, what business has time to bring us consolation? I have not, perhaps, in the course of my multifarious adventures and experience, hit upon the right woman; and have forgotten, after a little, every single creature I adored; but I think, if I could but have lighted on the right one, I would have ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... and where shall we begin this great and multifarious battle, in which such various points are at issue? Shall ...
— Philebus • Plato

... hollows about her shoulders and bosom for the heads of tired babies; Meg thin, rickety, and sneak-eyed, with a broken tail that hung at an angle, and but one ear (a black-and-tan had ruined the other)—a sandy-colored, rough-haired, good-for-nothing cur of multifarious lineage, who was either crouching at her feet or in full cry for some hole in a fence or rift in a wood-pile where he could flatten out and sulk ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... insight into the world at large through the medium of the public press. The newspapers of to-day are full of incipient plots, needing only the skillful pen to make them literature. Reporters go everywhere and see everything, and they place the result of their multifarious labors in your hands every morning. They recount actual happenings accurately enough for literary purposes, they strain for the unusual side of things, and their purpose is too different from yours to make you liable to the charge ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett

... His great difficulty was to give that superintendence to the education of his children which he felt they required, without at the same time neglecting the multifarious duties of his position. His parishioners gained what his family lost. But the strict discipline by which he endeavoured to make amends for the want of that constant watchfulness so important in training the youthful mind did not answer the same purpose. Yet after all he could do, he knew ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston

... the public that "The —— typewriter is founded on an idea." When I saw this phrase I secured it for my collection, for I felt that, without jest, it contained the kernel of a true philosophy of Nature. The forms, the phainomena, of Nature are innumerable, multifarious, interwoven, and infinitely perplexing, and you may spend a happy life in unravelling their relations and devising their evolutions; but until you have looked through them and seen the ideas that are behind them you are a mere materialist and a blind worker. The soul of ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... rights; but still it was, in theory, only a sort of expansion of the king, as if to make a kind of artificial being, with one soul, but many heads and hands, because no natural human being could possibly have capacities and powers extensive and multifarious enough for the exigencies of reigning. Charles thus had a council who took charge of every thing, except so far as he chose to interpose. The members were generally able and experienced men. And yet Buckingham was among them. He had ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... that is constantly yearning for the sublime and beautiful - rest in gladsome reflection on some beautiful object without at the same time being reminded of " corns," and " biliousness," and all the multifarious evils that ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... are so multifarious. Note, all Cabbages have a higher relish that grow on new unmatured grounds; if grown in an old town and on old gardens, they have a rankness, which at times, may be perceived by a fresh air traveller. This observation has been experienced for ...
— American Cookery - The Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry, and Vegetables • Amelia Simmons

... comedy, and the culture of the salon, to the Jews for finance, and to other nations for those town amusements which we are so slow to invent for ourselves, we shall still not have exhausted or even adequately illustrated the multifarious influences shed on every department of Roman life by the newly transplanted genius of Hellas. It was not that she merely lent an impulse or gave a direction to elements already existing. She did this; but she did far more. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... less prevalent than in Europe and even the Veda, though it is the eternal word, is admitted to exist in several recensions. Hinduism is possible as a creed only to those who select. In its literal sense it means simply all the beliefs and rites recognized in India, too multifarious and inconsistent for the most hospitable and addled brain to hold. But the Hindus, who are as loth to abolish queer beliefs and practices as they are to take animal life, are also the most determined seekers after a satisfying form of religion. Brahmanic ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... still clean but is no longer a "yacht," for her purpose is strictly utilitarian. She performs the multifarious duties of a depot ship, and as such attends to the ailments, aches and pains of, caters for the needs of, and generally acts as a well-conducted mother to a large number of destroyers. You have only to ask these latter what they think of their parent, and there ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling

... Manifesto. By Socialists, in 1847, were understood, on the one hand, the adherents of the various Utopian systems: Owenites in England, Fourierists in France, both of them already reduced to the position of mere sects, and gradually dying out; on the other hand, the most multifarious social quacks, who, by all manners of tinkering, professed to redress, without any danger to capital and profit, all sorts of social grievances; in both cases men outside the working class movement and looking rather to the ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx

... point of being acquainted with every thing connected with his subject, find his situation at all a sinecure. Slight as are the duties of the Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society, it might have been supposed that Mr. Brande would scarcely, amongst his multifarious avocations, have found time even for them. But it may be a consolation to him to know, that from the progress the Society is making, those duties must become shortly, if they are ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage

... whom this masterpiece of illustrative incident was delivered, must have taken to themselves its personal application. They were typified by the elder son, laboriously attentive to routine, methodically plodding by rule and rote in the multifarious labors of the field, without interest except that of self, and all unwilling to welcome a repentant publican or a returned sinner. From all such they were estranged; such a one might be to the indulgent and forgiving Father, "this ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... which would elsewhere belong to an administrative hierarchy, Gneist observes that the power of the justices of the peace represents the centre of gravity of the whole administrative system.[12] Their duties had become so multifarious and perplexed that Burn could only arrange them under alphabetical heads. Gneist works out a systematic account, filling many pages of elaborate detail, and showing how large a part they played in the whole social structure. An intense jealousy of central power was one correlative characteristic. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... discharge by Britain of her duty to the victims of the Turk. As soon as an operation for cataract had enabled him to read or write for seven hours a day, he devoted himself with his old ardor to the preparation of an edition of Bishop Butler's works, resumed his multifarious reading, and filled up the interstices of his working- time with studies on Homer which he had been previously unable to complete. No trace of the moroseness of old age appeared in his manners or his conversation, nor did he, though profoundly grieved at some of the events ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce

... characteristics of all branches of Indo-Aryan origin would resolve themselves. A new type would emerge,—the American. These theories were also in their consequences far-reaching. Practically, 1853 antedates all our present industrial organizations so loudly in evidence,—the multifarious trades-unions which now divide the population of the United States into what are known as the "masses" and the "classes." As recently as a century ago, it used to be said of the French army under the Empire, that every soldier carried the baton ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams

... they will offer prayers and Masses for him as one of their own body; thus Alcuin calls upon his former scholars at York to remember him in their prayers when it shall please God to withdraw him from this world; and thus in the multifarious correspondence of St. Boniface, the apostle of Germany, and of Lullus, his successor in the See of Mentz, both of them Anglo-Saxons, with their countrymen, prelates, abbots, thanes, and princes, we meet with letters ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... Among its multifarious contents, the Weimar Box failed not to include a long letter—considerable portion of which, as it virtually belongs to yourself, you will now allow me to transcribe. Perhaps it were thriftier in me to reserve this for another occasion; but considering how seldom such a ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... mutual conceptions, different aspects of the same thing. We may view a person abstractly, fixing attention on his single centre of consciousness; or we may view him conjunctly, attending to his multifarious ties. ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer

... without interruption. Because the work of recruiting in the city of the enemy was a failure, it was decreed that the city of Philadelphia, as the most Tory of the American cities, be called upon for the requisite number. Of the progress here, you already know. Of the multifarious means employed, you yourselves can bear excellent witness. Of the ultimate success of the venture you are now ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... received a letter from a Mr. M'Gregory of Derby, in your State; it is written with such a degree of good sense and appearance of candor, as entitles it to an answer. Yet the writer being entirely unknown to me, and the stratagems of the times very multifarious, I have thought it best to avail myself of your friendship, and enclose the answer to you. You will see its nature. If you find from the character of the person to whom it is addressed, that no improper use would probably be made of it, be so good as to seal and send ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... Kursaal, where, in the season, as much money is won and lost as at Monte Carlo. It was striking ten o'clock as they entered the rooms. There was a large company present—a company which included some of the most notorious persons in Europe. In that multifarious assemblage all were equal. The electric light shone coldly and impartially on the just and on the unjust, on the fool and the knave, on the European and the Asiatic. As usual, women monopolized the best places at ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett

... Shandy combined in one person. To the exquisite kindliness and simplicity of Uncle Toby he unites the omnivorous intellectual appetite and the humorous pedantry of the head of the family. The resemblance, indeed, may not be quite fortuitous. Though it does not appear that Sterne, amidst his multifarious pilferings, laid hands upon Sir Thomas Browne, one may fancy that he took a general hint or two from so ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... lead pencils, a box of steel pens, a slate pencil to a school-boy, were all its sales. Almost the last regular customer had seceded to the "Hendrik Book Bazaar and Periodical Emporium,"—a pert rival, that, with multifarious new-fangled tricks of attractiveness, flashed its plate-glass eyes and turned up its gilded nose at Miss Wimple from the other side ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... treaty and appeal. He was Europe's factotum. A complete biography of the man would be an epitome of the history of his time. The number and variety of his public engagements were such as would have crazed any ordinary brain. And to these were added private studies not less multifarious. "I am distracted beyond all account," he writes to Vincent Placcius. "I am making extracts from archives, inspecting ancient documents, hunting up unpublished manuscripts; all this to illustrate the history of Brunswick. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... multifarious inhabitants to which the forest affords at once a home and provender is the tree rat[1], which forms its nest on the branches, and by turns makes its visits to the dwellings of the natives, frequenting the ceilings in preference to the lower parts of houses. Here it is incessantly followed ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... rear wall; but the result was hardly successful. The same material had been utilized to cover the shelves which were littered with a bewildering assortment of make-up tins, cold-cream cans, rouge and powder boxes, whitening bottles, wig-blocks, and the multifarious disordered accumulations of a dressing-room. The walls were half hidden behind photographs, impaled upon pins, like entomological specimens; photographs were thrust into the mirror frames, they were propped against the heaps of tins and boxes or hidden ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... Canadian settler are certainly of a very multifarious character, and he may be said to combine, in his own person, several professions, if not trades. A man of education will always possess an influence, even in bush society: he may be poor, but his value will not be ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland

... for the losses we occasionally incur through impostors, shiftless creatures, or those whom misfortunes have rendered stupid. Through such persons we often obtain invaluable help in our investigations. Our work has now become so vast, its details are so multifarious, that we no longer suffice of ourselves to carry it on. So, for the last year we have a physician of our own in every arrondissement in Paris. Each of us takes general charge of four arrondissements. We pay ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac

... attending to the multifarious duties imposed on him. Though he was as active as ever, his task appeared to give him more trouble ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston

... Old Norse title. Thus Robert Lord Lytton's Poems Historical and Characteristic (London, 1877) reveals among the poems on European, Oriental, classic and mediaeval subjects, "The Death of Earl Hacon," a strong piece inspired by an incident in Heimskringla. In Robert Buchanan's multifarious versifying occurs this title: "Balder the Beautiful, A Song of Divine Death," but only the title is Old Norse; nothing in the poem suggests that origin except a notion or two of the end of all things. "Hakon" is the title of a short virile piece more ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby

... to the various modes of action, and arrangements of human affairs, which are classed, by universal or widely spread opinion, as Just or as Unjust. The things well known to excite the sentiments associated with those names, are of a very multifarious character. I shall pass them rapidly in review, without studying any ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill

... history of a hero so active as Lord Nelson, the mind can scarcely be allowed a moment's pause. His multifarious transactions, indeed, frequently arise in such rapid successions, that they become far too much involved with each other to admit of any precise chronological arrangement. Operations are commenced, which cannot always be soon ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison

... the instrumentalities by which he has won fame and victories, are almost too multifarious for enumeration. All the merry imps which beset Leigh Hunt, when about to compile selections from the comic poets, belong to Punch's retinue. Doubles of Similes, Buffooneries of Burlesques, Stalkings of Mock ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... in one of those profound abstractions into which he was apt to fall when under the sway of a strong impression, pressed it with increasing cordiality, while he endeavored to find fitting answers to Arnfinn's multifarious questions. ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... forborne to throw contempt, even on grammar as such, and on men of letters indiscriminately, by supposing the true principles of every language to be best observed and kept by the illiterate. What marvel then, that all his multifarious grammars of the English language are despised? Having suggested that the learned must follow the practice of the populace, because they cannot control it, he adds: "Men of letters may revolt at this suggestion, but if they will attend to ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... you, Cousin Sabina, to assort these forks and spoons for me. It will be something of a task, as they have to go to half a dozen different places. When you have got through I will look over them to see that all is right;" and she was hurrying off to commence some of the multifarious duties of the day. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... to distinction. He died at forty-seven, too early to accomplish any work of solid utility, but not too early to spread his reputation through Europe, for an extraordinary proficiency in the languages of India. Later scholars speak lightly of this multifarious knowledge, and nothing can be more probable, than that attainment of many languages, with any approach to their fluent use, is beyond the power of man. But his diligence was exemplary, his memory retentive, and his understanding accomplished by classical knowledge; with those qualities, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... discarded by the women, and converted, first into money, and eventually into articles of modern use or embellishment, to an extent that now renders travellers more and more suspicious of the Brummagem origin of the objects that remain for sale. And it is the same with old furniture and with the multifarious knicknacks which travellers less recent delighted to find in ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... occur, he yielded so readily to her suggestion that to him seemed an easy task. The habits of years, however, are not so easily broken, and by the time Saratoga was reached, Richard's patience began to give way beneath Ethelyn's multifarious exactions and the ennui consequent upon his traveling about so long. Still he did pretty well for him, growing very red in the face with his efforts to draw on gloves a size too small, and feeling excessively ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... our two travelers advanced—looking out on each side of them at the comfortable animation of the sidewalks, the high-colored, heterogeneous architecture, the huge white marble facades glittering in the strong, crude light, and bedizened with gilded lettering, the multifarious awnings, banners, and streamers, the extraordinary number of omnibuses, horsecars, and other democratic vehicles, the vendors of cooling fluids, the white trousers and big straw hats of the policemen, the tripping gait of the modish young persons on the pavement, the general brightness, newness, ...
— An International Episode • Henry James

... demonstrated under very unfavorable conditions. Yet, during the five years of my attendance upon his lectures, they were seldom illustrated otherwise than by his ready and graphic blackboard drawings. The simple fact was that the intervals between his lectures were so crowded with multifarious, pressing, and never-ending demands upon his time and strength that he could seldom determine upon the precise subject long enough in advance for him, or any one else, to bring together the desirable specimens or even ...
— Louis Agassiz as a Teacher • Lane Cooper

... one side, and I at the other, took a careful survey of the multifarious contents of the shop; of all that hung from the ceiling; and all that was piled on the shelves; and all that lay huddled in corners, or ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... figure with short, plump legs, but I thought him formidable enough and felt the old nauseating fear growing upon me as I watched the determined manner in which he prepared for the approaching combat. Having removed his pack and the multifarious articles that draped his person, he took off his coat, folded it neatly and laid it by, which done, he slowly rolled up his shirt sleeves, eyeing me fiercely and scowling portentously the while. Now as I watched him, my sweating palms tight-clenched, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... (said he) a crowning instance: (2) with regard to ordinary possessions, however multifarious these may be, most people are at least acquainted with their number, but if you ask a man to enumerate his friends, who are not so very many after all perhaps, he cannot; or if, to oblige the inquirer, he essays to make a list, he will presently retract the names of some whom he had ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon

... of figures and names occur, with wonderful accuracy. Particulars of every vessel, with name, armament, tonnage, &c., and details of the internal revenue system, are placed before us. We cannot offer even an outline of the contents of this volume, because the details are so multifarious that we could compress their index into no reasonable space. A copy of this book should be in the hands of every reader, thinker, and business man in the country. It is indeed a 'little library,' a 'photograph of the world' for the last two years of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... right. But look at us now! We've got a constitution and a Confession of Faith, prize rings and Parisian gowns, sent missionaries to Madagascar and measured Mars' two moons. Of course we've made some mendicants, but please admire the multifarious beauty of our millionaires! Who can doubt that we've triumphed over the world, the flesh and the devil? Have not the Spanish inquisition and the English Court of High Commission gone glimmering? Do we bore the tongues of Quakers or amputate the ears of non-conformists as ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... of her voyage to Jerusalem in 1898, published on her return to Germany, goes to show. Following the traditions and example of the queens and empresses who have preceded her, she has always given liberally of her time and care, as she still does, to the most multifarious forms of charity. She has a great and intelligible pride in her clever and energetic husband, while her interest in her children is proverbial. She appears to have no ambition to exercise any influence on politics or to shine ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... ratiocination, nay, Intellect it self. Pros de au to agathon ou gnoseos eti kai sunergeias dei tois sunaphthenai speudousin, all' hidruseos kai monimou katastaseos kai eremias. But to them that endeavour to be joyned with the first Good, there is no need of knowledge or multifarious cooperation, but settlednesse, steddinesse, and rest. lib. 1. cap. 24. Theolog. Platon. And in the next chapter; Dei gar ou gnostikos oud' atelos to agathon epizetein, all' epidontas heautous toi theioi photi kai musantas, houtos enidruesthai ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More

... Hobday, R.A., was most energetic and indefatigable in assisting Colonel A.J.F. Reid and me in carrying out the multifarious work which had to be done at the Malakand, and in the Swat Valley on the ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill

... occasion to notice the multifarious means employed by Bonaparte to arrive at the possession of supreme power, and to prepare men's minds for so great change. Those who have observed his life must have so remarked how entirely he was ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... of a Catholic hierarchy and of a sincere belief in the Catholic religion.) The Irish character must be considered, therefore, as an unfavourable case: yet, whenever the circumstances of the individual have been at all favourable, what people have shown greater capacity for the most varied and multifarious individual eminence? Like the French compared with the English, the Irish with the Swiss, the Greeks or Italians compared with the German races, so women compared with men may be found, on the average, to do the same things with some variety in the particular kind of excellence. ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill

... accomplishment of this last alliance the post-office was transferred from the decaying knot of cabins at the 'Corner' to the rising settlement of Cedar Creek. Andy's new store had a letter-box fixed in its window, and his wife added to her multifarious ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... cannot suppose nature to be guided in her operations by the infinite divisibleness of human pursuits in civilised society. But it is not the less true that one man is by his structure best fitted to excel in some one in particular of these multifarious pursuits, however fortuitously his individual structure and that pursuit may be brought into contact. Thus a certain calmness and steadiness of purpose, much flexibility, and a very accurate proportion of the various limbs ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... Negro returned, panting, with Ban Wilson, it was to discover Carse in the control room of the asteroid. He was studying the multifarious devices and instruments: and they, seeing his face so set in concentration, did not disturb him, but went over to where Dr. Ku Sui sat in a chair, and posted themselves ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore



Words linked to "Multifarious" :   varied, many-sided, miscellaneous, multifaceted



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com