"Negative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... change, still more must he weep at the dulness of men's ears to that continuous strain of melody throughout it. In truth, what was sympathetic with the hour and the scene in the Heraclitean doctrine, was the boldly aggressive, the paradoxical and negative tendency there, in natural collusion, as it was, with the destructiveness of undisciplined youth; that sense of rapid dissolution, which, according to one's temperament and one's luck in things, might extinguish, or kindle all the more eagerly, an interest in the mere phenomena ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... to be organically related, and so combined into one world. He himself inclines to regard them as all dependent upon one supreme Being. But it is to be carefully observed that he does not negative the pluralist hypothesis as inconceivable or impracticable. Indeed, a little later in the same context, he allows that "a multiplicity of beings who share with each other in the creation and control of ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... manure as to which I can give no distinct information, or, at least, only information of a negative kind. I once sent out a small quantity of the muriate of potash, but my manager could perceive no effects from it whatever, and I have been informed of an instance of its having been applied to an estate in Coorg at the rate of one quarter of a pound a tree, or at the rate of between 3 and ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... negative idea clothed with a positive name. It supposes in that to which it is applied a present existence; and is the negation of a beginning or of an ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... this negative measure was the creation of the right to transmit together, and for an indefinite time, a title and the realty on which its dignity reposed. Though the restoration of this institution was slightly ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... is always something about him which suggests that in a sweeter and more solid civilisation he would have been a great saint. He would have been a saint of a sternly ascetic, perhaps of a sternly negative type. But he has this strange note of the saint in him: that he is literally unworldly. Worldliness has no human magic for him; he is not bewitched by rank nor drawn on by conviviality at all. He could not understand the intellectual surrender ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... soul. How well I remember her laugh; it had in it the same sudden recognition that flashed into her eyes, was a burst of humor, short and intelligent. Her rapid footsteps shook her own floors, and she routed lassitude and indifference wherever she came. She could not be negative or perfunctory about anything. Her enthusiasm, and her violent likes and dislikes, asserted themselves in all the every-day occupations of life. Wash-day was interesting, never dreary, at the Harlings'. Preserving-time was a prolonged festival, ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... never happy in his choice of language, and his method of argiment is such that when he is up on the affirmative of a question, the negative is delighted, for they know he will bring victery to their side of the question. Now, he didn't mean to speak right out about men's usual way of bossin' wimmen round. It was only his unfortunate ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... points of peculiar interest to the author. For instance, "Negative Gravity" was composed in Switzerland when the author was temporarily confined to the house in full ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... not going to shock anybody else, for Bob's sake. Bob, of course, must be considered; after all, it was his father. None of us, even the freest, can be a free agent altogether; I understand that. I shall hold my tongue. The blessed thing is that that will be sufficient—a negative attitude, with the mouth shut; one is not driven any longer to positive deceit, without even being able to say that you can't help it. Oh, Debbie, you have been a free woman—why, why didn't you keep so?—but with all your freedom, and all your money, ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... the Inflection on the negative statements in the first three stanzas? On the entreaty in ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... of culture, I do not think that any other than negative rules can be laid down. For positive rules, for suggestion, nature alone inspires it. Who dare assume to guide a youth, a maid, to perfect manners?—the golden mean is so delicate, difficult,—say frankly ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... mother was just the same. A sweet woman, but with no diplomacy, no notion of handling a situation. I remember her as a child giving me away hopelessly on one occasion after we had been at the jam-cupboard. She did not mean any harm, but she was constitutionally incapable of a tactful negative at the right time." Uncle Chris brooded for a moment on the past. "Oh, well, it's a very fine trait, no doubt, though inconvenient. I don't blame you for leaving Brookport if you weren't happy there. But I wish you had consulted me before going on ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... First, negative individuality. Second, the imperfect form of a verb. Third, the ablative form of a noun signifying a portion of the ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the same drag on a society that a brake would be to a coach going up hill. They are the "eternal negative" and would extinguish, if they could, any light stronger than that to which their weak eyes have been accustomed. They look with astonishment and distrust at any one trying to break away from their tiresome old ways and habits, and wonder ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... far given for the encouragement of leisure-time interests are mainly negative. In order to realise to the full the importance of this side of education, we must look rather at their positive value. From whichever point of view one looks at it, physical, intellectual, or social, this value ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... C, which plate forms the positive electrode, and with this plate the positive wire of the electric circuit is connected. The outer end of the retort is closed by means of an inverted graphite crucible, D, to which the negative wire of the electric circuit is attached. The graphite crucible serves as a plug for closing the end of the retort. It also forms a condensing chamber for the zinc fumes, and it also constitutes the negative electrode. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... machine tools Agriculture: dominated by stock breeding (sheep and cattle) and dairy farming; main crops are potatoes, hops, hemp, and flax; although self-sufficient and having an export surplus in these commodities, Slovenia must import many other agricultural products and has a negative overall trade balance in this sector Illicit drugs: NA Economic aid: NA Currency: Slovene Tolar (plural - Tolars); 1 Tolar (SLT) 100 NA Exchange rates: Tolars (SLT) per US$1 - 28 (January 1992) Fiscal year: ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... following quotation from Mr. Eliot as illuminative of his method of work: "The contemplation of the horrid or sordid by the artist is the necessary and negative aspect of ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
... quickly up to the spot and bending over the blood stains asks the spirit of the deer if it has heard the prayer of the hunter for pardon. If the reply be "Yes" all is well and the Little Deer goes on his way, but if the reply be in the negative he follows on the trail of the hunter, guided by the drops of blood on the ground, until he arrives at the cabin in the settlement, when the Little Deer enters invisibly and strikes the neglectful hunter with rheumatism, ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... of the mind through clairvoyance, and others from mere excitation of the nervous sensibilities, the truth of that theory is possibly implied in the wants of the soul; for a want proves the existence of an antidote as effectually as a positive and negative interchangeably bear witness to each other's existence. But if you will have patience to listen to a story of my own life, I can better explain how my convictions have been beguiled into the credence which appears to you unphilosophical, if ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... merely in this negative way that the acceptance of Christianity from Constantinople has affected the fate of Russia. The Greek Church, whilst excluding Roman Catholic civilisation, exerted at the same time a powerful positive influence on the historical ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... pronounced, and to see some description of carriage waiting to convey me to Thornfield. Nothing of the sort was visible; and when I asked a waiter if any one had been to inquire after a Miss Eyre, I was answered in the negative: so I had no resource but to request to be shown into a private room: and here I am waiting, while all sorts of doubts and ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... his assent to the diminishing thinness where a suspicion of the negative begins to wind upon ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Cleigh made a negative sign. It was less an answer to Cunningham than an acknowledgment that he could not understand why the bullet clip should ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... But when one has to make one's choice between Pantheism and Christianity, then the question arises, Are Kierkegaard's teachings really historic Christianity, and not rather a rational adaptation? And this question must be answered in the negative, since it is possible to assimilate it without touching upon the question of the revelation of the Holy Ghost in the shape of a dove, to the Voice from the clouds, and the whole string of ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... (curved jewels) and kudatama (cylindrical jewels). It is generally supposed that the magatama represented a tiger's claw, which is known to have been regarded by the Koreans as an amulet. But the ornament may also have taken its comma-like shape from the Yo and the Yin, the positive and the negative principles which by Chinese cosmographists were accounted the great primordial factors, and which occupy a prominent place in Japanese decorative art as the tomoye.* The cylindrical jewels evidently owed their shape ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... knowledge of the resemblance borne by this person to the murdered prince, which was sufficiently close to make personation possible. Cambyses was thus enabled to appreciate the gravity of the crisis, and to consider whether he could successfully contend with it or no. Apparently, he decided in the negative. Believing that he could not triumph over the conspiracy which had decreed his downfall, and unwilling to descend to a private station—perhaps even uncertain whether his enemies would spare his life—he resolved to fly to the last refuge of a dethroned king, and ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... thick-necked English gentleman, but he was just not a subject; he might have been a farmer and he might have been a banker: you could scarcely paint him in characters. His wife did not make up the amount; she was a large, bright, negative woman, who had the same air as her husband of being somehow tremendously new; a sort of appearance of fresh varnish (Lyon could scarcely tell whether it came from her complexion or from her clothes), so that one felt she ought to sit in a gilt frame, suggesting ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... conversation began with some sprightliness. Politics, however, was the subject on which our entertainer chiefly expatiated; for he asserted that liberty was at once his boast and his terror. After the cloth was removed, he asked me if I had seen the last Monitor, to which replying in the negative, 'What, nor the Auditor, I suppose?' cried he. 'Neither, Sir,' returned I. 'That's strange, very strange,' replied my entertainer. 'Now, I read all the politics that come out. The Daily, the Public, the Ledger, the Chronicle, the London Evening, the Whitehall Evening, the seventeen ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... are danger signals. A long protestation might have meant nothing: in this short, sufficient negative Mrs. Mortimer recognized the boy's sincerity. A little thrill of pride and shame, and perhaps something else, ran through her. The night was hot and she unfastened the clasp of her cloak, breathing a trifle quickly. To relieve the silence, she ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... voice of a man who emphasises a negative in the hope of eliciting a stronger argument on the other side. But Richard allowed the negative finality in ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... by elective affinity, or of an electric light at once the immediate object and the ultimate organ of inward vision, which rises to the brain like an Aurora Borealis, and there, disporting in various shapes,—as the balance of plus and minus, or negative and positive, is destroyed or re-established,— images out both past and present. Aristotle delivers a just theory without pretending to an hypothesis; or in other words a comprehensive survey of the different facts, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... remind his victim of some dead or absent woman. It was at this point that I asked Gregson whether he had enquired in his telegram to Cleveland as to any particular point in Mr. Drebber's former career. He answered, you remember, in the negative. ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of matter in the ordinary state are attracted, and it is probable that those emitted from the sun immediately pick up loads in this manner and so grow in bulk. If they grow large enough the gravitation of the sun draws them back, and they produce a negative charge in the solar atmosphere. But it is probable that many of the particles do not attain the critical size which, according to the principles before explained, would enable the gravitation of the sun to retain them in opposition to the pressure of the waves ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... about to answer in the negative, when Simon, who had listened with a scared face, suggested ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... is for each who sees the truth to tell his fellow, and that fellow his fellow, until presently all will know the truth, and the truth shall make them free; free from industrial tyranny at home, and free from military tyranny from abroad. The work of the peace advocate is not negative. It is not enough for him to cry peace, peace! He must first lay the foundation for peace. To cry peace while the people writhe under injustice is like trying to heal the carbuncle without cleansing ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... that that emboldens me to be so sudden. Not but what my heart has been yours and yours only all along, before the old lady so much as mentioned it." Clara would give him no assistance, not even the aid of a negative, but stood there quite passive, with her hand on the door. "Since I first had the pleasure of seeing you I have always said to myself, 'Augustus Musselboro, that is the woman for you, if you can only win her.' ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... is it that, in spite of the trouble we daily take, we cannot teach you to speak with congruity? In putting not with no, you have spoken redundantly, and it is, as you have been told, a negative too many. ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... wet, and the thought of my fireless room depressed me. So I was ushered into the long low dining-room, with its old hunting prints and black oak furniture, and, best of all, with its huge log fire. Mrs. Moyat greeted me with her usual negative courtesy. I do not think that I was a favourite of hers, but whatever her welcome lacked in impressiveness Blanche's made up for. She kept looking at me as though anxious that I should remember our common secret. More than once I was ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... has, at bottom, two sides. It is, in the first place, achieved by a narrow definition of the purpose of the state. To Locke the State is little more than a negative institution, a kind of gigantic limited liability company; and if we are inclined to cavil at such restraint, we may perhaps remember that even to neo-Hegelians like Green and Bosanquet this negative sense is rarely ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... strong on "the methodical filing of State and other documents." He stayed two days. On the first night (after inquiring whether we were expecting guests that evening, and receiving an answer in the negative) he came down to dinner in a sort of alpaca smoking-jacket and a tartan tie. On the second, having evidently decided to treat us to all the resources of his wardrobe as soon as possible, he appeared in more or less ordinary evening attire. He wore a small white satin bow-tie, attached to ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... She made a negative sign. He drew his camp-stool beside her. Suddenly she asked him what time it was. The haggard nobleness of her pale face amid the folds of black veil, the absent passion of the eye, thrilled to his heart. ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to your petitioner. Your petitioner suggests that the only question involved in her case is—Does being a woman disqualify her under the laws of Illinois from receiving a license to practice law?—and claims that the Legislature has answered this question in the negative. The first section of chapter eleven of the Revised Statutes, in regard to the admission of attorneys, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... given up trying to smoke. He sought to detain her by talking about the boy's curls; but she went away, taking the child with her. As she closed the door he groaned heavily, and she reopened it to ask if he felt unwell. He answered in the negative, and she left him. The last person to see Mr. Pettigrew alive was Eliza Day, the housemaid. She took a letter to him between twelve and one o'clock. Usually he disliked being disturbed at his writing; but this time, in answer to her knock, he cried eagerly, ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... calling for scripture to prove it lawful thus to exclude them; blame me for it no more; verily I still must do it; and had you but one to give, I had had it long before this. But you wonder I should ask for a scripture to prove a negative. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... pretty well here, and ought to dance very well before you come home; for what one is obliged to do sometimes, one ought to be able to do well. Besides, 'la belle danse donne du brillant a un jeune homme'. And you should endeavor to shine. A calm serenity, negative merit and graces, do not become your age. You should be 'alerte, adroit, vif'; be wanted, talked of, impatiently expected, and unwillingly parted with in company. I should be glad to hear half a dozen women of fashion say, 'Ou est donc le petit Stanhope? due ne vient-il? Il ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... whether Clarence had been with his brother on these occasions, there was a most decided negative. He had never gone out with Griffith except once to the theatre, and to dine at the Castlefords, and at first he had sat up for his return, 'but it led to words between the young gentlemen,' said Peter, whose ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hands in cruel desperation. Even to her own problem she had found no solution, though she had wrestled with it all last night, and all through the day; no solution save the negative one of clinging to this one refuge that remained to her, such as it was, temporarily. She had found no solution to that; what solution was there to this! She had thought of leaving the city as Gypsy Nan, and then somewhere far ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... last negative thought of the day. It came to him then and there with cruel, biting plainness, that no one else in the house felt as he did toward his chief treasure. Allan didn't. He had spent hardly a moment with it. Clytie didn't; he had seen her pick it up when she dusted the ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... urged by his relative Count William of Nassau. This need of constant urging extends to religious as well as other matters, and is inconsistent with M. Groen van Prinsterer's assertion that the question was for Maurice above all religious, and for Barneveld above all political. Whether its negative evidence can be considered as neutralizing that which is adduced by Mr. Motley to show the Stadholder's hatred of the Advocate may be left to the reader who has just risen from the account of the mock trial and the swift execution of the great ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... botanical classification divides plants into flowering and not flowering. A zoological classification divides animals into vertebrate and not vertebrate. By continuing the process of division in the same manner, the division is obviously exhaustive of the subject, there being always a negative subdivision to receive any subsequently created or discovered species. Although bifurcate division has been ridiculed by some, it is agreed by highest authority that it is the only plan of division by which one ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office
... the Council on Foreign Relations was to create (and condition the American people to accept) what House called a "positive" foreign policy for America—to replace the traditional "negative" foreign policy which had kept America out of the endless turmoil of old-world politics and had permitted the American people to develop their great nation in freedom and independence from the rest ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... impediment arose Lord Bute's administration, from causes unnecessary here to enter upon, was become so unpleasing to the multitude, that anything confessedly Scotch awakened the embers of discussion, and fed the flame of party. Mr. Garrick therefore put a direct negative at once upon my appearance in 'Douglas;' 'Oroonoko' was substituted in its place; for even to have performed the play of 'Douglas' would have been hazardous, and to have exhibited the Highland dress upon the ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... slightly modified form the same system was applied to the fore-and-aft balance. The main aeroplane was set at a positive angle, and a horizontal tail at a negative angle, while the center of gravity was placed far forward. As in the case of lateral control, there was a tendency to constant undulation, and the very forces which caused a restoration of balance in calms caused a disturbance of the balance in winds. Notwithstanding ...
— The Early History of the Airplane • Orville Wright
... his answer ready. "They are only human ways of thinking, chiquita. The plus sign always represents something positive; the minus, something negative. The one is the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... is a necessity; but there is in it a vicious extreme; that in which it is rendered so principal as, by want of subordination, to overlay the subject. There is also a negative excellence which consists in not always employing pleasing tints, but of sometimes taking advantage of the effects to be derived from impure hues, as Poussin did in his "Deluge." In this work, neither black nor white, blue, red, nor yellow appears; the whole mass being, ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... She could not let him go: that negative was a clutch. She seemed to herself to be, after all, only drifted toward the tremendous decision—but drifting depends on something besides the currents when the sails have been ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... was a decided negative, and adjusting her little slipper, Rosamond stood up while her companion put over her head the satin dress. It fitted admirably, and nothing could have been fairer than the round, chubby arms and plump, well-shaped ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... for him in her presence? If he asked himself this question nowadays, he was able to answer boldly in the negative. There might have been a time of peril, just one perilous interval when he was in some danger of stumbling; but he had pulled himself up in time, with an admirable discretion, he thought, and now felt as bold as a lion. After that morning with Lady Geraldine ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... but here they are represented with the tatu pigment, whilst with the Bakatans the design is in the natural colour of the skin against a background of pigment, I.E. the Dayak design is the positive of the Bakatan negative. Furness figures two examples of the throat design, one with a transverse row of stars cutting across it; the same authority also figures a design for the ribs known as TALI SABIT, waist chains, consisting of two stars joined by a double zigzag line. The same design is sometimes ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... William has offered to the Emperor of Russia the prospect of a general disarmament; even though, with his present mania for speech-making he may have suggested a Congress for the settlement of Europe's disputes, his success must have been of the negative kind. ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... once sowed, at my suggestion, some sulphate of ammonia and superphosphate on part of a block of nursery trees, and he could not perceive that these manures did any good. Ellwanger & Barry also tried them, and reported the same negative result. This was several years ago, and I do not think any similar ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... an inquiry on the behalf of a client of mine, who wishes to prove a certain event in the past connected remotely with the H. family. If asked whether your business relates to the property left by the rev. intestate, you must reply decisively in the negative. But I must remind you that extreme caution is required in every move you make. Wherever you can do your work without any reference to the name of Haygarth, avoid such reference. Always remember that there may be other ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... another way of regarding the saints; the purely material view, which denies the immediate action of supernatural power upon the details of natural daily life, mental or physical. This view—or rather, this abstention from seeing—is futile; because, without a particle of actual proof to sustain its negative, it refuses to admit possibilities of truth to which the really comprehensive and perceptive mind must always hold ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... to know Fitch as a friend. And to be taken into the magic circle was to be given freely of that personal equation which made his plays so personal. This association was begun over a negative criticism of a play. An invitation followed to come and talk it over in his Fortieth Street study, the same room which—decorations, furniture, books and all—was bequeathed to Amherst College, and practically ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The Moth and the Flame • Clyde Fitch
... circumstances. During the administration of our first President, his cabinet of four members was equally divided, by as marked an opposition of principle, as monarchism and republicanism could bring into conflict. Had that cabinet been a directory, like positive and negative quantities in Algebra, the opposing wills would have balanced each other, and produced a state of absolute inaction. But the President heard with calmness the opinions and reasons of each, decided the course to be pursued, and kept ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... and music, in this connexion. A letter from Keats has been published showing that at one time he expected to meet Moore personally (see p. 45). Whether he did so or not I cannot say for certain, but I apprehend not: the published Diary of Moore, of about the same date, suggests the negative. ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... law inviolate is perfection—right—negative happiness. The result of law violate is imperfection, wrong, positive pain. Through the impediments afforded by the number, complexity, and substantiality of the laws of organic life and matter, the violation of law is rendered, to a certain extent, practicable. Thus pain, which in the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... "I am a natural reader, and only a writer in the absence of natural writers. In a true time I should never have written." We must set this statement down to one of those fits of dissatisfaction with himself, those negative moods that often came upon him. What he meant by a true time is very obscure. In an earlier age he would doubtless have remained a preacher, like his father and grandfather, but coming under the influence of Goethe, Carlyle, and Wordsworth, ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... accused of being a negative and destructive creed. In art no creed is healthy that is anything else. You cannot give men genius; you can only give them freedom—freedom from superstition. Post-Impressionism can no more make good artists ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... disarraying himself of the cast-off clothing which he had assumed for the occasion, thrust them into the fire, and watched until the whole was entirely consumed. Having thus guarded against direct evidence, he made some artful dispositions of negative disproof, that he might be provided with full armor against all suspicions; and then retiring to his homely bed with a feelingless heart, and unmurmuring conscience, he ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... was, that we had come from Nukuheva, a place, be it remembered, with which they were at open war. This intelligence appeared to affect them with the most lively emotions. 'Nukuheva motarkee?' they asked. Of course we replied most energetically in the negative. ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... constitutional regime in his state. Schwarzenberg replied with the artful suggestion that he should hear what the Dukes of Modena and Parma, the Pope, and King Ferdinand had to say on the subject. Their advice was unanimously negative: Cardinal Antonelli going so far as to declare that Constitutionalism in Tuscany would be regarded as a constant menace and danger to the States of the Church. The different counsels of Piedmont, conveyed by Count Balbo, weighed little against so imposing ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... forbade the Nation to interfere, because such interference trespassed on the rights of the States; sometimes they forbade the States to interfere (and often they were wise in this), because to do so would trespass on the rights of the Nation; but always, or well-nigh always, their action was negative action against the interests of the people, ingeniously devised to limit their power against wrong, instead of affirmative action giving to the people power to right wrong. They had rendered these decisions sometimes as upholders ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... one she had learned by rote in early childhood: "All life moves in cycles. Creation and progress must be preceded by destruction. In ancient times that meant we had to destroy each other; but for the past century our inherent need for negative moments has been sublimated—that's the word the news broadcasts use—into proper destruction." His wife smiled. "I'm only giving the moral reason, of course. The ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner
... at Sssuri's negative answer. "Within days they have been here. But they have gone once more. It will be wise for us to learn what ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... 1797 the same organization decided that slavery was a moral evil but on the question of whether those persons holding slaves were guilty of a moral evil they decided in the negative. As to what persons were guilty they were unable to decide and the matter was ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... perpetuated in ideal creation. It is an Apollo who embodies the permanent ideal of manhood—not a cripple or a hunchback. Still further: art should not only refuse to embody the defective, which is a mere negative; it should not only give form to the utmost perfection it beholds in nature or in humanity, but beyond this the responsibility is upon the artist to penetrate into loftier realms, to catch the vision ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... reticent over the authorship of the Reflections. Hugh Macdonald, in his useful John Dryden: a Bibliography (1939), was wise to follow their example, and it seems rash, therefore, to propose any new candidate in the face of such negative evidence. The poem exists in two states, apparently differing only in the ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... Rousseau. In 1749 the Academy at Dijon offered a prize for the best essay on the subject: Has the progress of the sciences and arts contributed to corrupt or to purify morals? Rousseau took the negative side and won the prize. His essay attracted widespread attention. In 1753 he competed for a second prize on The Origin of Inequality among Men, in which he took the same negative attitude. In 1762 appeared both his Social ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... the fellow who was unconsciously retarding good fellowship among the members of the team was no longer a silent negative individual, but was soon urging us on in ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... were made for each other. In fact, I ain't going to take 'no' for an answer, my dear. I've never asked a female to marry me until this hour; and I have not waited into greyness and ripeness to hear a negative. I'm sure of myself, naturally, and I well know that you'd only be a thought less fortunate than ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... advantage of worldly circumstance, and the ties of happy social and domestic relations,—it cannot be that anybody ought to have all this, and yet do nothing for it; nor do I believe that any one's duties are bounded by the half-animal instincts of loving husband, wife, or children, and the negative virtue of wronging no man: besides we are villainously wronging many men.... What would I not give to be able to awaken in others my own ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... small room, where I remained some little time, thinking how true were Madame Bathurst's observations as to what I might expect in the position of a governess, when a servant came in, and in a condescending manner asked if I did not wish to have some lunch. I replied in the negative. ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... ch. 1. sect. 1, and in the Antiquities as now quoted, said that this temple was like to that at Jerusalem, and here that it was not like it, but like a tower, sect. 3, there is some reason to suspect the reading here, and that either the negative particle is here to be blotted out, ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... to write on Prudence, whereof I have little, and that of the negative sort? My prudence consists in avoiding and going without, not in the inventing of means and methods, not in adroit steering, not in gentle repairing. I have no skill to make money spend well, no genius in my economy, and whoever sees my garden discovers that ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... antedated his meridian. He was like those ancients, spoken of with such disapproval by Cicero, who began to be old men early that they might continue to be old men for a long time. His value to the institution he had served so long, and his safety in his position, lay in the possession of negative qualities. His silence was interpreted as an indication of wisdom, and the firmly cut features of his inscrutable face would have served an artist as a personification of discipline. As he exchanged the conventional ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... over which numerous ants were running apparently without any definite aim. The second pupa ant was not buried in any sense, and was covered merely with a sprinkling of sand. The result in both cases was negative. No attempt was made to disinter the chrysalis from the beaten track, although numberless ants walked directly over it; and I extricated the chrysalis five hours after its interment, and when the busy scene of the morning had been replaced by a dull prospect, over which ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... commander; and having signed the treaty of 1795, at Greenville, he continued faithful to his stipulations during the remainder of his life. From that day he ceased to be the enemy of the white man; and as he was not one who could act a negative part, he became the firm ally and friend of those against whom his tomahawk had been so long raised in vindictive animosity. He was their friend, not from sympathy or conviction, but in obedience to a necessity which left no middle course, and under a belief that submission alone could ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... His eyes, sometimes too restless and sympathetic in town, had grown steadier and clearer in the open air. His short curly beard and yellow hair had reddened in the sun and wind. The pleasant vigor of his person was always delightful to her, something to signal to and laugh with in a world of negative people. With Fred she was never becalmed. There was always life in the air, always something coming and going, a rhythm of feeling and action,—stronger than the natural accord of youth. As she looked at him, leaning against the sunny wall, she felt a desire to be frank with him. She was ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... the repertory of the Metropolitan Opera House, it seemed for the purpose of giving Mme. Eames an opportunity to contend with Miss Geraldine Farrar in the field of Japanese opera; but the opera calls for some comment. Why "Iris"? It might be easier to answer the question if it were put in the negative: Why not "Iris"? The name is pretty. It suggests roseate skies, bows of promise, flowery fields, messages swiftly borne and full of portent. The name invites to music and to radiant raiment, and it serves ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... receive baptism on conforming if they had not previously been baptized within the Church? Was baptism outside the unity of the Church valid? Rome answered in the affirmative, admitting conforming schismatics without distinguishing as to where they had been baptized; North Africa answered in the negative and required not, indeed, a second baptism, but claimed that the Church's baptism was alone valid, and that if the person conforming had been baptized in schism he had not been baptized at all. This view was shared by at least some churches in Asia Minor (cf. 51, b), and possibly ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... children asked Mrs. Perkins if they could call at just a few houses coming and going, and sell a little soap for the Simpsons, she at first replied decidedly in the negative. She was an indulgent parent, however, and really had little objection to Emma Jane amusing herself in this unusual way; it was only for Rebecca, as the niece of the difficult Miranda Sawyer, that she raised scruples; but when fully persuaded that the enterprise was a charitable one, ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... incorporeity of God divide the Arabic philosophers into two schools. Maimonides naturally espoused the view permitting the most exalted conception of God, that is, the conception of God free from human attributes. He recognizes none but negative attributes; in other words, he defines God by means of negations only. For instance, asserting that the Supreme Being is omniscient or omnipotent, is not investing Him with a positive attribute, it is simply denying imperfection. The student knows that in the history ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... prosecutions, he never evinced the slightest sensibility, and never seemed to be aware that anybody else had any. It was not absolute cruelty, but the absence of what may be regarded as a natural sense. It was not a positive wickedness, but a negative defect. He seemed to be surprised that other people had sentiments, and could not understand why Tarbell and Nurse felt so badly about the execution of their mother. He told them to their faces, without dreaming of giving them offence, that, while they thought she was innocent, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... stronger—a conjunction of forces often detrimental to a literary career in an age of intellectual predominance. His temper was good and bad; his pride was humility; his humility was pride; his vanity, in being negative, was of the most positive kind. He was reticent and candid, measured in speech, with an emphasis that makes trifles significant. Borrow was essentially hypochondriacal. Society he loved and hated alike; he loved it that he might be pointed out and talked of; he hated it ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... that the king had perverted his high office into a "detestable and insupportable tyranny, by ... prompting our negroes to rise in arms among us, those very negroes whom, by an inhuman use of his negative, he hath refused us permission to exclude by law."[33] Two years later, in 1778, an "Act to prevent the further importation of Slaves" stopped definitively the legal ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... there had been a Teacher Quan, a statesman-philosopher of the seventh century, who had also taught the Tao. The immemorial Chinese idea had been that the Universe is made of the interplay of two forces, Yang and Yin, positive and negative;—or simply the Higher and the Lower natures. To the Yang, the Higher, belong the Shen or gods,—all conscious beneficent forces within and without man. To the Yin or lower belong the kwei, the opposite of gods: fan ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... make out," said the anarchist, "the negative is still undeveloped. Pether took it to Palma, and he has it there now, not daring to trust it in a photographer's hands, and not being able to develop it himself. Senores, I believe it will be for us to unlock that tremendous mine of potential ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... its present character as that is unlike the papyrus roll. But because the element of invention is so uncertain we can only recognize it, we cannot take it into account. Our advantage in considering the book of to-day in connection with the book of to-morrow will be chiefly a negative one, in making the book as it is, so far as we find it defective, our point of departure in seeking the book as it ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... advanced the fluid theory of electricity, recognizing clearly the dual nature of the varieties commonly called positive and negative from the mathematical ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... Elizabethan times, to set up separate churches. While it is quite true that the great principle for which English Nonconformity has stood is now almost universally accepted, and that what may be called the negative witness of the Free Churches is much less necessary than it used to be, there is still room for their positive contribution to the religious life of the country, for their witness to freedom, spirituality, and the rights of the people in the Church. ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... a polite interest. I knew the answer would be an indignant negative. You're an Englishwoman, and you're nice. Oh, one can see with half an eye that you're nice. But that a nice Englishwoman should have a lover is as inconceivable as that she should have side-whiskers. It's only the reg'lar bad-uns in England who have lovers. There's nothing between the family ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... seemed to be pondering sadly. From time to time, he made a negative sign with his head, as though replying to some question which he had inwardly ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... student is of course aware that in most languages a question is frequently equivalent to a negative, as in this sentence. A sapient critic, to whom I have more than once alluded, was pleased to honour me with the following profound remark on the reading given in the original, viz.—"There is a slip here in Forbes's edition, as well ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... becomes known throughout the country." She then commenced to pack up her wardrobe and valuables. Her plan was soon arranged. She then descended to the drawing room and rang for old Reynolds, who answered the summons. "Has Mr. Russell left the house?" she enquired, and on receiving an answer in the negative, desired that he might be informed that she wished to speak to him, "and return yourself, Reynolds, for I have something of importance to communicate to ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... application blank to be filled out by boys applying for a position reads: 'Do you use tobacco or cigarettes?' A negative answer is expected, and is favourable to ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... enter into correspondence with the principal booksellers and other persons favourable to the dissemination of the Scriptures. In a covering letter {194a} Mr Brandram very pertinently enquired, "Can the people in these wilds read?" Whilst not wishing to put a final negative to the proposal, the Secretary asked if there were no middle course. Could Borrow not establish a depot at some principal place, and from it make excursions occupying two or three days each, "instead of devoting yourself wholly to the ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... either road or trail, a Delaware, by the name of "Black Beaver," who was in my party, on arriving at a particular point, suddenly halted, and, turning to me, asked if I recognized the country before us. Seeing no familiar objects, I replied in the negative. He put the same question to the other white men of the party, all of whom gave the same answers, whereupon he smiled, and in his quaint vernacular said, "Injun he don't know nothing. Injun big fool. White man mighty smart; he know heap." At the same time he pointed to a tree about two ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... and the face of the other give him a right to claim relationship with both of them. They propose to take the Statesman after the Sophist; his path they must determine, and part off all other ways, stamping upon them a single negative ...
— Statesman • Plato
... COLLODION.—J. B. HOCKIN & CO., Chemists, 289. Strand, have, by an improved mode of Iodizing, succeeded in producing a Collodion equal, they may say superior, in sensitiveness and density of Negative, to any other hitherto published; without diminishing the keeping properties and appreciation of half-tint for which their ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 236, May 6, 1854 • Various |
