"Negative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... money, he told them, he would be his own camera man. He could do without a "still" camera, because he would enlarge clippings from the different scenes in the negative instead. They'd have to manage the range stuff with only one camera, which would mean more work to get the various effects. But with a telephoto lens and a wide angle lens he could come pretty near putting it over the way he wanted it. "And there'll be no more blank ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... charge of occasional vulgarity. If it be true, it is not improbable that the writer caught the infection from his grandfather. With one half the world, in its judgment of literature and life, vulgarity is the opposite of gentility, and gentility is merely negative, and implies the absence of all character, and, in language, of all idiom, all bone and muscle.... You may find in Shakespeare household words and phrases from every condition and walk in life—as much coarseness as you please to look for—anything and everything except gentility ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... why each of the following Fifteen Battles has been selected will, I trust, appear when it is described. But it may be well to premise a few remarks on the negative tests which have led me to reject others, which at first sight may appear equal in magnitude and ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... government, which could inspire sufficient confidence to hazard such a stroke of pleasantry. It reached Mal Maison with great speed, but is said to have occasioned no other sensation there, than a little merriment. Carnot's bold negative was a little talked of, but as it was solitary, it was considered harmless. To the love of finery which the french still retain to a certain degree, I could alone attribute the gay appearance of the eggs in the market, ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... Mexico, though considerable in numbers, are not organized with a positive creed. Theirs is only a negative existence—unbelief; and they are generally found conforming outwardly, as a more convenient and prudent course than running a tilt with the ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... The negative ejaculation comes from his perceiving that the ostriches, instead of rushing onwards in long rapid strides, as they had started, are gradually shortening step and slackening the pace. And while he continues looking after them, ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... 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 ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... girl and three men. One of the men was elderly, with white hair and side whiskers. The other two were young and well dressed. The girl was of our best patrician type—the type that may know little, think little, say little, and generally amount to little, and yet carry its negative qualities with so used an air of polite society as to raise them by sheer force to the dignity of positive virtues. From head to foot she was faultlessly groomed. From eye to attitude she was languidly superior—the impolitic would say bored. Yet every feature of her appearance ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... still to come a long controversy before the interpretation was clearly accepted. It is now definitely established that there is a fundamental atom of electricity which we now call the electron. As we all know electrification is of two kinds—a positive and a negative. The electron is of the negative kind. There does not appear to be a corresponding positive atom of electricity, or at least not one that is so singular in its properties as the electron. Electrons go to the making of all atoms, just as atoms go ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... was blinding him, he perceived, at a short distance in front of him, a cluster of gables and of chimneys shown in relief by the snow. The reverse of a silhouette—a city painted in white on a black horizon, something like what we call nowadays a negative proof. Roofs—dwellings—shelter! He had arrived somewhere at last. He felt the ineffable encouragement of hope. The watch of a ship which has wandered from her course feels some such emotion when he ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Bordeaux, and the statement about the revolution in Paris and the firing of the French troops was indisputable. "The gentleman has seen it all without doubt, but does not wish to admit it." Desnoyers felt obliged to contradict this lordling, but his negative was ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... before the Trojan war is gone forever; that was the Paradise from which the Greek Adam has been expelled. But the new man after the restoration is the image of the complete self-conscious being, who has taken the negative period into himself and digested it. Fortunate person! he cannot now be made the subject of a poem, for ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... overview: Greenland suffered negative economic growth in the early 1990s, but since 1993 the economy has improved. Nonetheless, prospects for substantial economic growth in the near future are poor. The Greenland Home Rule Government (GHRG) has pursued ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Anglo-Saxon thinkers, if there were not peculiarities of the Anglo-Saxon mind which a Japanese could not understand, and if there were not psychological phenomena of the Japanese mind which were ignored in Anglo-Saxon psychological text-books. The very questions surprised him; to each he gave a negative reply. The mental differences that characterize races so dissimilar as the Japanese and the Anglo-Saxon, I venture to repeat, are insignificant as ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... those pictures to be taken as documents, or are they not the product of Mr. Chevalier's idealistic temperament? Does the coster actually worship his 'dona' with so fine a chivalry? Is he so sentimentally devoted to his 'old Dutch'? If you answer the question in the negative, you are in this predicament: all the love and 'the fine feelings' remain with the infinitesimal residuum of the cultured and professionally 'refined.' Does that residuum actually incarnate all the love, devotion, honour, and other noble qualities in man? One need hardly trouble ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... effects of light. Hydrogen and chlorine will stand very peacefully in the same jar for a long time, but let a strong light fall on them, and they combine with terrific violence. This is the catalytic effect of a vibration, a wave motion. Then there is such a thing as negative catalysis. In a certain reaction, if a third element or compound is introduced, all reaction is stopped. I believe that's the principle of the Nigran death ray; it's a catalyst that simply stops the chemical reactions of a living body, and these are so delicately balanced ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... into the Tanith system and hidden his ships on one of the outer uninhabitable planets. He sent Valkanhayn and Ravallo microjumping their ships from one to another to check. They returned to report in the negative. At least, Viktor of Xochitl wasn't camped inside their own system, waiting for them to ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... thicker than a cuckold's horn) or heard, (For to a vision so apparent, rumour Cannot be mute) or thought (for cogitation Resides not within man that does not think) My wife is slippery? If thou wilt, confess, Or else be impudently negative, To have nor eyes, nor ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... observed Mr. Dodge, glancing obliquely and pointedly at the rest of the party, as if he thought they were in a decided minority; "but in this instance, I feel constrained to record my vote in the negative. I believe America has as good a climate, and as good general digestion as commonly falls to the lot of mortals: more than this I do not claim for the country, and less than this I should be reluctant to maintain. I have travelled a little, gentlemen, not as ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... unseen world. The world of ether is thus regarded by our authors as in some sort the obverse or complement of the world of sensible matter, so that whatever energy is dissipated in the one is by the same act accumulated in the other. It is like the negative plate in photography, where light answers to shadow and shadow to light. Or, still better, it is like the case of an equation in which whatever quantity you take from one side is added to the other with a contrary sign, while the relation of equality ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... who was about fifteen paces ahead, suddenly turned, levelled his gun, and fired. Washington was startled for an instant, but, feeling that he was not wounded, demanded quickly of Mr. Gist if he was shot. The latter answered in the negative. The Indian in the mean time had run forward, and screened himself behind a large white oak, where he was reloading his gun. They overtook, and seized him. Gist would have put him to death on the spot, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... moral (a rather questionable moral, perhaps, but still a moral), so put his soul into it that the timbre of his voice was altogether too moving for our hostesses. Here are the ideal people: perhaps their ideal may be said not to exist and to be purely negative, but months of suffering have taught ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... said nothing more. Her life was of a negative sort just at present. Her child lay asleep on her arm, a poor little washed-out rag of humanity, but evidently dear from the way she now and then tried to look at it, which was not easy ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... soon comes to pass that parties gather round the negative and positive poles of some opinion or notion, and that the intolerant spirit of a triumphant majority will allow no deviation from the standard of orthodoxy which it has set up for itself. Freedom of opinion will be professed and pretended ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... guardians of everything admirable in human life; but their good intentions did not prevent them from actively or passively opposing positive intellectual and moral achievement, directed either towards social or individual ends. The effect of their whole state of mind was negative and fatalistic. They approved in general of everything approvable; but the things of which they actively approved were the things which everybody in general was doing. Their point of view implied that society and ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... Gleaner. Doubtless he had some reason for his reticence. Even during our walk to the police office he debated several times with Johnson, the third officer, whether he ought not to give up himself, as well as to denounce the captain. He had decided in the negative, arguing that "it would probably come to nothing; and even if there was a stink, he had plenty good friends in San Francisco." And to nothing it came; though it must have very nearly come to something, for Mr. Nares disappeared ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in which visualization was excluded; that is, the filled space seemed much larger when the judgment was made without the help of visualization. It is evident, therefore, that the tactual illusion is influenced rather in a negative direction by visualization. ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... Nadine. She is pale, and appears to be so exhausted that I momentarily expect her to faint and remain suspended by the chains that rattle as she sobs. With a negative motion of her head and a few words, she assures me that the crisis is passed, that her arms pain her very much, and that she is very thirsty. Chained a few steps away, I cannot render her the slightest ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... in this unsatisfactory state of mind, persevering yet baffled in what he had undertaken to do, a very singular thing came to pass. He strolled out one afternoon, aimlessly, wondering whether the negative result of his efforts justified his remaining in the place, and yet loath to leave it, held there as he was by the attraction of Edith Morriston. He felt he could be making but little way in her favour seeing how he ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... with great confidence, and the kite was sent up. It began to pull and tug, and lo, the wires broke, and off went the great red dragon, and poor Dr. Bell stood looking forlornly after it. After that he asked me if the strings were all right and changed them at once when I answered in the negative. ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... governor sent him to prison, where he remained a long time, suffering divers torments. At the second time of examination, the governor, after having pressed him to sacrifice, asked him if he had a wife, parents, or children, alive. The saint answered all these questions in the negative. "Who then were those that wept for you at your first examination?" Irenaeus made answer: "Our Lord Jesus Christ hath said: He that loveth father or mother, wife or children, brothers or relations more than me, is not worthy of {652} me. So, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... I did not like to give him a flat refusal, for fear mamma should be grieved and angry (for I knew she wished me to marry him), and I wanted to talk to her first about it: so I gave him what I thought was an evasive, half negative answer; but she says it was as good as an acceptance, and he would think me very capricious if I were to attempt to draw back—and indeed I was so confused and frightened at the moment, I can hardly tell what I said. And next time I saw him, he accosted ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... issue in the Deistical controversy, 75-6 Deists not properly a sect, 76 Some negative tenets of the Deists, 77 Excitement caused by the subject of Deism, 78 Toland's 'Christianity not mysterious', 79 Shaftesbury's 'Characteristics', 80-2 His protest against the Utilitarian view of Christianity, 81 Collins's 'Discourse of Freethinking', ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... A solitary negative vote against the resolve of the Legislature directing Mr. Hoar to be expelled was cast by C. S. Memmenger, afterward Secretary of the Treasury of the Southern Confederacy. He is said to have been a Union man ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... its validity when residents "elsewhere" had to allow that no traces of infanticide could be found in their neighbourhood; and so on. Luckily, still greater comfort is to be found in the following argument,—a rare example of proving a negative—from which it will be readily seen that female infanticide on any abnormal scale is quite beyond the bounds of the possible. Those who have even a bowing acquaintance with Chinese social life will grant that every boy, at about ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... of his negative character; the other was his love of extravagance, vain display, and instability of purpose. Much of the time he drifted about like a ship ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... They were even so unwise as to give tracts instead of money on visiting public buildings, etc. These persons came to me, and requested my co-operation and advice, and likewise introductions to people spiritually disposed amongst the Spaniards, to all which requests I returned a decided negative. But I foresaw all. In a day or two I was summoned before the Gefe Politico or, as he was once called, Corregidor of Seville, who I must say treated me with the utmost politeness, and indeed respect; ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... the statistics of the negroes in the United States, a large proportion of whom are of mixed blood. For taking as a basis the number of children of negro descent born during the year ending June 1, 1900 reported by the Twelfth Census, the females predominated, giving a negative masculinity of 99.8. Furthermore, the percentage of consanguineous marriage is probably high in ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... But these negative statements only safeguard against mistakes by telling us what to avoid. A real working basis must be found ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... Chancellor and the Bundesrath; the procedure followed in the shaping of revenue and military measures puts the Reichstag distinctly at a disadvantage; and, at the best, the part which the chamber can play in the public policy of the Empire is negative and subsidiary. It can block legislation and discuss at length the policy of the Government, but it is not vested by the constitution with power sufficient to make it an effective instrument of control. It is within the competence of the Bundesrath, with the assent of the Emperor, to dissolve the ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... Vil Holland flashed into her brain with startling abruptness: "Remember yer dad knew enough to play a lone hand." And again. "Did yer dad tell you about this partnership?" And the significant emphasis he placed upon the "Oh," when she had answered in the negative. ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... innocence, only perpetual assurances that he "trusted to wind himself out" of the charges brought against him; and when Lord Salisbury said—"Mr Garnet, give me but one argument that you were not consenting to it [the plot], that can hold in any indifferent man's ear or sense, besides your bare negative,"—Garnet made no answer. He persistently continued to deny any knowledge of White Webbs, until confronted with Johnson; and all acquaintance with the plot before his receipt of Digby's letter at Coughton, until shown the written confession of Hall, and the testimony ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... insinuate my intentions. One may see to what a miserable shift they are driven, when, for want of any one instance, to which I challenge them, they have only to allege, that the play SEEMS to insinuate it. I answer, it does not seem; which is a bare negative to a bare affirmative; and then we are just where we were before. Fat Falstaff was never set harder by the Prince for a reason, when he answered, "that, if reasons grew as thick as blackberries, he would not give one." Well, after long pumping, lest the lie should ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... in that very consciousness. And of what service would his privilege be to him, if this man could harass every hour of his life? The man was to be with him again in a day or two, and when the appointment had been proposed, he, Phineas, had not dared to negative it. And how was he to escape? As for paying the bill, that with him was altogether impossible. The man had told him,—and he had believed the man,—that payment by Fitzgibbon was out of the question. And yet Fitzgibbon was the son of a peer, whereas ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... all these negative whisperings; nay, he repeated them distinctly to himself. It was not the first but it was the most pressing occasion on which he had had to face this question of the family likeness among the heirs of enthusiasm, whether prophets ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... dim in that sound-proof place. Nothing happened, and thrice he repeated the rapping with like negative results. But he had learnt something: the door was a ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... boiled fish, pickled ginger, chicken entrees, young onions, together with rice enough to feed a pig, form the ingredients of a very good Chinese meal. Chop-sticks are, of course, provided; but, as yet, my dexterity in the manipulation of these articles is decidedly of the negative order, and so my pocket-knife performs the dual office of knife and fork; for the rice, one can use, after a manner, the little porcelain dipper provided for ladling an evil-smelling liquid over that staple. Bread, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... though it were yesterday. I replied that the chances were pretty even, inclining, if anything, to the negative. Well, ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... chiefs to pay him a trading visit, I started next day, leaving Mr. Lane in charge, accompanied by two men, and reached the chief's wigwam late in the evening. As soon as I was seated, he asked me if I had not met the Matawin Indians. On my replying in the negative, he informed me that they had passed his place early in the morning, loaded with furs, and that they expressed their intention of proceeding to the post before they halted. These Indians had all been supplied by myself in autumn to a large amount; so ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... Postmaster-general. King George was not to be taken in after this fashion. He asked Sunderland whether Walpole wished for such an office, or was acquainted with Sunderland's intention to make the suggestion. Sunderland had to answer both questions in the negative. "Then," said the King, "pray do not make him any such offer, or say anything about it to him. I had to part with him once, much against my will, and so long as he is willing to serve me I will never part with him again." This ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... with Thesiger for the night I had not the least doubt that my unfortunate host was really insane. All the same, I had a curious unwillingness with regard to signing the certificate. Bagwell eagerly asked me if I did not intend to sign. To his astonishment, I replied in the negative. I said that the case was a very peculiar one, and that it would be necessary for me to pay a second visit to the patient before I could take this extreme step. He was, I could see, intensely annoyed, but ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... not permit it," said Mr. Lynch, with an emphasis on the negative which sounded like ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... me at some length, as I repacked my camera, that in the Orient to shake the head means "yes," and a nod—a quick elevation of the chin accompanied by a click of the tongue—is negative. This custom is largely adopted in Montenegro, particularly amongst the peasants, but even then we never quite knew if a shake of the head was meant in the Turkish or European sense. It is a confusing and irritating habit, and takes months to ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... genuine selfishness; whereas this quality was rather less remarkable in those who had less to be selfish about. I do not say therefore that they had less of it.—I soon saw that their profanity had chiefly a negative significance; but it was long before I could get sufficiently accustomed to their vileness, their beastliness—I beg the beast's pardon!—to keep from leaving the room when a vein of that sort was opened. But I succeeded in schooling ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... beyond the negative denial of God to the construction of a new philosophy in which Truth is his guide, Truth being the nearest approximation to reality obtainable with our present knowledge. Belief in the world as it is now, and as it is going to be, is ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... succeeded in accomplishing the purpose for which they have been engaged. They received the support of a large portion of the conservative members of the storthing as well as the unanimous support of the liberal and radical parties, only twenty votes being cast in the negative. ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... boasting, the tea was the worst I ever tasted. I should have thrown it out of the window, if they had offered us such nasty stuff at Trimley Deen. When I set down my cup, he asked facetiously if I wished him to brew any more. My negative answer was a masterpiece of strong expression, ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... conceivable that their heavenly lot will be at all worse than that of those who were baptized in their infancy; or that, if they die unbaptized, without any fault of their own, they will in any wise suffer for the omission? Now if all these questions be answered in the negative, as undoubtedly they must, what becomes of the imaginary paradise of blessings and privileges to which baptism is to introduce the millions of our infants? Why should the holy Lord God, our Saviour, be represented ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... couch in very good spirits and talking away; Luttrell and Rogers walking about, ever and anon looking despairingly at the clock and making short excursions from the drawing-room; Allen surly and disputatious, poring over the newspapers, and replying in monosyllables (generally negative) to whatever is said to him. The grand topic of interest, far exceeding the Belgian or Portuguese questions, was the illness of Lady Holland's page, who has got a tumour in his thigh. This 'little creature,' as Lady Holland calls a great hulking fellow ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... person to whom she applied was German and shook his head with a forcible negative. So he, too, moved on and she stopped to think and recover some portion of that courage which had almost ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... the two in the passage. The latter no sooner beheld him than he dashed hastily into an adjoining room. After debating with himself whether he should further seek an interview, which, though, now in his power, was so sedulously shunned by the other party, he decided in the negative; and contenting himself with writing upon a slip of paper the hasty words,—"You are known by the villagers,—be upon your guard,"—he gave it to the ostler, with instructions to deliver it instantly to the owner of the horse he pointed ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... negative," said Barbicane. "In her actual state, with her certainly very slight atmosphere, her seas mostly dried up, her insufficient water, her restricted vegetation, her abrupt alternations of heat and cold, ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... decent laws of motion. You danced 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 faut avouer qu'il est ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... the providence which permits us to harvest greatness in the days of our decline! I dream of it for my youth, for then most can be made of it. There was a Greek—not of the Byzantine breed in the imperial kennel yonder"—he emphasized the negative with a contemptuous glance in the direction of Constantinople—"a Greek of the old time of real heroes, he who has the first place in history as a conqueror. Think you he was happy because he owned the world? Delight in property merely, a horse, a palace, a ship, a kingdom, is vulgar: any man ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... clapped his hands to the jacket to be quite sure that it WAS a jacket and not a skirted coat; and having satisfied himself of the safety of this, his only moveable in Bevis Marks, made answer in the negative. ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... his mind. A minute did not pass, before the young man was on the quarter-deck, closely examining the heavens and the horizon. His first question was to ask if nothing had been seen during the watch. The answer was in the negative. ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... Pietro was inclined to reply in the negative, knowing that the censure he would incur would be less. But Phil might yet be taken—he probably would be, sooner or later, Pietro thought—and then his falsehood would be found out, and he would in consequence lose the confidence of the padrone. So, difficult though it was, he thought it ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Lady of the Mantle, I will lay a wager that the sun so bedazzled thine eyes on that memorable morning, that everything thou didst look upon seemed green; and notwithstanding James Wilkinson's experience in the Fusileers, as well as his negative whistle, I will venture to hold a crown that she is but a what-shall-call-'um after all. Let not even the gold persuade you to the contrary. She may make a shift to cause you to disgorge that, and (immense spoil!) a session's ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... that would be a sad task for the most skilful of funambulists or theological tumblers, seeing that many of these varieties stand related to each other as categorical affirmative and categorical negative: it's heavy work to make yes and no pull together in the same proposition. But this, fortunately for himself, Phil. declines. You are to understand that he will not undertake the defence of Protestantism in its doctrines, but only in its ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... gathered from the tears of tortured experience, had become an obsession. She was silent, brooding over it; but she herself was there, larger, less puzzling and negative than hitherto,—an awakening force. The man lost his anchor of convention and traditional reasoning. He felt with her an excitement, a thirst for ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... seven men on it ever since this morning," Tom was saying. "We checked him from here to breakfast, and the record is absolutely negative. Same for the elevator operator. The barber is a wanderer, never stays in one shop for long. He's hunting another job right now. The machine is his, and it's the only one of its kind. We sent Mike Malone in for a treatment. He says the machine is good. Apparently ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... of a healthy, vigorous tree, set in poor soil and deriving its sustenance from the weakness of the home rulers and the primitive or defective economic conditions of foreign countries. As soon as these negative mediaeval conditions were swept away by the storms of the Reformation the tree gradually but surely fell into decay. With this later stage there is associated the historic tragedy of Juergen Wullenwever, that genial and daring democratic innovator, who, in an endeavor to conquer Denmark in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... is not in itself a sufficient reason to justify my rushing into print. But when I regard the matter from what may be termed a negative point of view, I do feel that it is not absolutely presumptuous in me to claim public attention. Suppose that Sir John Franklin had never gone to sea; what a life of adventure and discovery would have been lost to the ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... in the earlier part of the poem that appear to negative the idea of its having been written in 1800. The opening lines seem to hint at an experience somewhat distant. He speaks of being "wont" to do certain things. But, on the other hand, I find an entry in Dorothy ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... reader will remark that the argument just used is but negative: it does not positively combat the superiority claimed for the Greek organization; that superiority may be all that it is described to be; but it is submitted that perhaps the manifestation of this advantage was not made on ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... herself well to whatever society she happened to be with; neither patricians nor plebeians found any thing to criticise; but, whether this were the result of tact, or owing merely to the adoption of a negative standard, no one could say. In language she was uniformly correct, without seeming at all scholastic; she occasionally used the idioms and dialectic peculiarities of those around her, though never with the air of being ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... day on which Jesus rose from the dead, as recorded by Luke, form not only a sequence in time, but also move in logical order. The empty tomb can be explained by no other theory than that of a resurrection; but this was only negative proof. To it was added the actual appearance of Jesus to two disciples on their way to Emmaus. Yet this was not evidence enough. Some persons might believe that such an appearance had been a mere vision, a phantom, a ghost; therefore, as Luke relates the appearance ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... kicked about, they put their teams in motion, leaving little trace of the camp, except Bum's mare, standing asleep outside the fence. The ominous speck on the plain had approached much nearer, but had taken definite form as an emu; and now the negative blessing of escape seemed like a positive benefaction. "If," says Carlyle, "thou wert condemned to be hanged—which is probably less than thou deservest—thou wouldest esteem ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... genius, the same cast of mind, the same habits, his consciousness of the world around him would have been a very different affair; however obscure, however reserved, his own personal life, his sense of the life of his fellow-mortals would have been almost infinitely more various. The negative side of the spectacle on which Hawthorne looked out, in his contemplative saunterings and reveries, might, indeed, with a little ingenuity, be made almost ludicrous; one might enumerate the items of high civilization, as it exists ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... the letter was remembered... but not drawn forth. Rosalie did not attempt to analyse why not. Her repression, each time, of the suggestion that the letter should now be taken out and read again was not a deliberate repression. She merely had a negative impulse towards the action and accepted it; and so negligible was the transaction in her record of her thoughts, so mere a cypher in the petty cash of the day's ledger, that in the evening when, gone up to bed, the letter was at last drawn out and kissed and read and answered, and then ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... the earth? Shall we extinguish the brightest star in the constellation of human freedom? The united voices of Humanity, Justice, & Reason answer, No! The cries of myriad free men living, & of millions yet unborn, rend the air with a universal negative! and from the vaulted canopy of heaven there swells back the solemn echo, "God forbid!" As if augmented by the mournful strain of 10,000 angels hovering in amazement over the conflicting scene! Oh! then let ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant
... the intellectual cultivation and social dispositions of any town, I enquired of two dealers in books, whether there existed any Book-club, but was answered in the negative. A small collection of those beguilers of time, or cordials for ennui, called Novels constitute a circulating library; and, judging from the condition of the volumes, this degree of literary taste is general among the ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... expanded by gathering compunction and self-doubt. She had committed sacrilege in her passion. And even the sense that she could retract nothing of her plea, that her mind could not submit itself to Savonarola's negative, made it the more needful to her to satisfy those reverential memories. With a sudden movement towards ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... forms, is the dreamland of the saints. His political principles, roughly speaking, are England was decent once—let us apply the same recipe to the England of to-day. His suggestions, therefore, are rather negative than positive. He would dam the flood of modern legislative tendencies because it is taking England farther away from his Middle Ages. But he will not say "do this" about anything, because in the Middle Ages they made few laws, not having, ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... as good friends as such negative creatures could be; and they would be such friends all their lives, if on the one hand neither of them grew to anything better, and on the other no jealousy, or marked difference of social position through marriage, intervened. They loved each other, if not ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... the pupils are led to discover that in examples like (1) and (2) the verb agrees with its nearest subject, and that the plural subject is usually placed next to the verb; that in (3) the verb agrees with the affirmative subject, another verb being understood with the negative subject; that in (4) "bread and milk" represents one article of food; and that in (5) the individuals of the committee are thought of, while in (6) the committee as a whole is thought of. In (5) and (6) the agreement of the pronoun may also be noted. Pronouns may be introduced into many of ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... had not put himself in the way of it: but now the strangeness of the sensation overwhelmed him. He inquired of himself whether it was pleasant, but he found himself compelled to answer the question with a negative. It should have come from him, but not yet; not yet, probably, for some weeks. But it had been done, and by the doing of it she had sealed him utterly as her own. There was no getting out of it now. He did feel that he ought not to attempt to get out of it after ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... enjoyment. We had been content. That expresses our condition perfectly; and now that I can analyze my own feeling, and understand what the word implies, I am satisfied of its accuracy. "Content" has both a positive and negative meaning or antecedent condition. It implies an absence of disturbing conditions as well as of wants; also it implies something positive which has been won or achieved, or which has accrued. In our state of mind—for ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... tell you. He's just left me, an' any man which could talk like he talked to me ain't—I reckon not," he said, shaking his head with a vigorous, negative motion; "you're a heap mistaken—you ain't got ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... escaped him. As I told you, Mr. Prendergast made inquiries of all the principal bankers and Indian agents here, and altogether without success. After he had done that, I got a list of all the leading firms in Calcutta and Madras, and wrote to them, and all the replies were in the negative. It is true that does not prove anything absolutely. Eighteen years is a long time, and the chances are that during those years almost every head of a firm would have retired and come home. Such a matter would ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... national architecture would be assured. But as the fact stands, while utility, and that of a temporary and makeshift sort, is really the first consideration, we are not yet ready to acknowledge this to others or to ourselves, and so fail to get from it what negative advantage we might, but blunder on under some fancied necessity, spending what we can ill spare, to the defrauding of legitimate demands, as a sort of sin-offering for our aesthetic deficiency, or as a blind to conceal it. The falsehood, like all falsehood, defeats itself; the pains we take only ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... studied Lamarck attentively, and I had read the Vestiges with due care; but neither of them afforded me any good ground for changing my negative and critical attitude. As for the Vestiges, I confess that the book simply irritated me by the prodigious ignorance and thoroughly unscientific habit of mind manifested by the writer. If it had any influence on me at all, it set ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... terms with me. "And you must not be angry with me," continued she, "for undertaking the ; I well foresaw all the difficulties, and entertained no hopes of its success, but upon second thoughts, I considered it better I should accept the mission; for, in case of a negative being returned, it will be safe in my keeping, and I will not add to the chagrin of a failure the shame of a defeat." "It is my opinion," replied I, "that all propositions coming from these people should be rejected; they have compelled me to raise between them and myself an immense wall of ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... the world, by way of negative, that we shall engage in no quarrels, meddle with no parties, deal in no scandal, nor endeavour to make any men merry at the expense of their neighbours. In a word, we shall set nobody together by the ears. And though we have encouraged ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... manly sense and fervour of a Plunket, the impassioned appeals and flashes of wit of a Curran, and by the golden tide of wisdom, eloquence, and fancy, that flowed from the lips of a Burke. In the other, we do not sink so low in the negative series; but we get no higher in the ascending scale than a Mackintosh or a Brougham.[A] It may be suggested that the late Lord Erskine enjoyed a higher reputation as an orator than either of these: but he owed it to a dashing and graceful manner, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... selfishness had in all these years, grown unchecked and unmolested in its methods of cruel greed. From the shadows and gloom of these threatening conditions, existing so manifestly in direct violation of all progressive law, came a demand that the negative belief in the immortality of the soul, be speedily replaced by a positive knowledge of it. A knowledge sustained and supported by practical demonstrations, through the action of natural law, whose manifestations and demonstrations should be so direct and indisputable ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... Mouchy undertook to announce to Madame la Duchesse de Berry the resolution that had been taken respecting the sacraments—what she added of her own may be imagined. A negative response did not fail to be quickly delivered to M. le Duc d'Orleans through the half-opened door. Coming through such a messenger, it was just the reply he might have expected. Immediately after, he repeated it to the Cardinal, and to ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... prepossessing in itself, but to me, who had not been over and above pleased with him in our first interview, admirable and surprising. Lacking, as I have said, any distinctive quality of face or form agreeable or otherwise—being what you might call in appearance a negative sort of person, his pale, regular features, dark, well-smoothed hair and simple whiskers, all belonging to a recognized type and very commonplace—there was still visible, on this occasion at least, a certain self-possession in his carriage, ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... grant to the Chinese the privileges which they forced them to grant to others. We sometimes imagine that the Golden Rule is peculiar to Christianity. It is indeed in its highest form, but its spirit was recognized by Confucius five centuries before Christ. His expression of it was negative, but it gave the Chinese some idea of the principle. They were not, therefore, pleasantly impressed when they found the alleged Christian nations violating that principle. Even Christian America has not been an exception. ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... on a closer consideration, however, we must not only confess him to have been in individual instances substantially right, but we must also acknowledge that the national opposition in this field, more than anywhere else, went beyond the manifestly inadequate line of mere negative defence. When his younger contemporary, Aulus Postumius Albinus, who was an object of ridicule to the Hellenes themselves by his offensive Hellenizing, and who, for example, even manufactured Greek verses—when this Albinus in the preface to his historical treatise ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Inflection on the negative statements in the first three stanzas? On the entreaty in the refrain? (Introduction, ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... and manner of the boy, when he gave a half inarticulate negative, made me regret having asked the question. It was a needless one, for already knew that his mother was dead. It was meant, however, as a preliminary inquiry, and, having been made, I proceeded to question him, in order to learn something, briefly, ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... of negative knowledge I have had my suspicions that the tarantula was not altogether wholesome in his anger, and now I have proof in support of my doubts. In a cool, dark cavity under a log in the bush were two huge representatives of the race. Each had its own compartment, a smooth, worn gallery, ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... asked. Had the witness ever, on any occasion, robbed him? They repeated the question several times, and at last the rusty black wig, which was bowed over a chair, slowly shook in the negative. Perhaps he had settled a debt with the witness? The wig ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... gentlemen in his majesty's service. To turn one of his colonels into my Spanish master would be seriously to misemploy his precious time. I would feel that I was robbing my country. Is it not positive treason to aid and abet the king's enemies? Then it is negative treason, to divert from his service any of the ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... to be a dream, and deny that its practical realization is possible. To objections of this category the Zionists have a hundred times given a sufficient answer. This simple negative criticism can be passed over. Its only real refutation is in deeds, such as the Zionists have already performed and as they intend further ...
— Zionism and Anti-Semitism - Zionism by Nordau; and Anti-Semitism by Gottheil • Max Simon Nordau
... steadily at the colored paper for a half-minute, it will be found that if the colored paper is removed one sees its complementary color. If the head is not moved, this complementary color has the same size and shape as the original colored piece of paper. The negative after-image can be projected on a background at different distances, its size depending on the distance of the background. The after-image will be found to mix with an objective color in accordance with the principles of ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... is a fine field for glory, inspired him with the wish to proceed to Constantinople, and to enter the service of the Grand Seignior. What romantic plans, what stupendous projects he conceived! He asked me whether I would go with him? I replied in the negative. I looked upon him as a half-crazy young fellow, who was driven to extravagant enterprises and desperate resolutions by his restless activity of mind, joined to the irritating treatment he had experienced, and, perhaps, it may be added, his want ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... (Figs. 75, 77) are evidently modifications of the Bakatan GEROWIT design, 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 ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... a few examples of duality taken from nature. The current of electricity is polarised into a positive and a negative current. It is the same with the magnet; though you break a bar into a hundred pieces, you bring into being a hundred small magnets, each possessing its positive and negative side; you will not have destroyed the ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... critics; outside this inner ring is more or less debatable ground, and on this wider arena the battle has raged until scarcely a shred of the painter's work has emerged unscathed. The result has been to reduce the figure of Giorgione to a shadowy myth, whose very existence, at the present rate at which negative criticism progresses, will assuredly be called ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... by the stimuli of the natural forces. He found that plants respond visibly, by movements, to environmental stimuli. But the movements induced—'tropic' movements—are extremely diverse. Light, for example, induces sometimes positive curvature, sometimes negative. Gravitation, again, induces one movement in the root, and the opposition in the shoot. Dr. Bose applied himself to find out whether the movements in response to external stimuli, though apparently so diverse, could not be ultimately reduced to a fundamental unity of reaction. ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... received from their leaders—or, rather, from Lopez—was in one sense of a negative order. Rewards for valour were unknown, but punishments for defaults, on the other hand, whether real or imaginary, were abundant and terribly severe. Men were shot for having in the course of private conversation ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... luminous nature, and the black should look strange among them; never occurring except in a black object, or in small points indicative of intense shade in the very center of masses of shadow. Shadows of absolutely negative gray, however, may be beautifully used with white, or with gold; but still though the black thus, in subdued strength, becomes spacious, it should always be conspicuous; the spectator should notice this gray neutrality with some wonder, and enjoy, ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... dangerous rival than Maltravers. Now and then, it is true, a suspicion to the contrary crossed him; but it did not take root and become a serious apprehension. Still, he did not quite like the tone of voice in which Evelyn had put her abrupt negative, and said, with a ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Arnold, evidently believing he had made an impression by his harangue of the morning, resumed the subject. Hugh was a little surprised to find that he had, even of a negative sort, strong opinions ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... But negative assertions are allowable. "His manners are not impolite," which implies that his manners are in ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... concerning the freedom of slaves, and already had spoken sharply about the people of color in the province.[50] Were the terrors of San Domingo to be reenacted on the banks of Mississippi? The United States answered with a decided negative. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... he would support it, not against the crown or the aristocratic party only, but against the representatives of the people themselves. This was not a government of balances. It would be a strange thing if two hundred peers should have it in their power to defeat by their negative what had been done by the people of England. I have taken my part in political connections and political quarrels for the purpose of advancing justice and the dominion of reason, and I hope I shall never prefer the means, or any feelings growing out of the use of those means, ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... thinking produces inharmony in the mind, which, of course, disconnects man from rightful association with the Divine. A man must, therefore, think right. Yet, because of centuries of erroneous conception of God and of the world, man has been a negative instead of a positive being, and his unwisdom has reacted upon ...
— The Silence • David V. Bush
... authority to submit it as a whole, the majority against it by far exceeded the highest total of votes the pro-slavery men had ever mustered. Nevertheless, the Senate passed it, Douglas and three other Democrats voting in the negative. His following in the House was greater, and the bill was there amended so as to provide for submitting the constitution to the people. There was a conference, and in its final form the bill offered the people of Kansas a bribe of lands if they would accept the constitution, ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... any form of government may be either negative or positive. It is negatively defective if it does not concentrate in the hands of the authorities power sufficient to fulfill the necessary offices of a government, or if it does not sufficiently develop by exercise the active capacities and social feelings of the ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... to the chief magistrates to proceed with moderation against the heretics; orders which were obeyed in their most ample latitude by those to whose sympathies they were so congenial. Until then, the Protestants were satisfied to meet by stealth at night; but under this negative protection of the authorities they now boldly assembled in public. Field-preachings commenced in Flanders; and the minister who first set this example was Herman Stricker, a converted monk, a native of Overyssel, a powerful speaker, and a ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... the moral excellences of the good agnostic are the product, the fruit, of agnosticism, in the same sense in which the virtues of the Christian are the product of Christianity. The answer to that question must be unhesitatingly in the negative. There is no disputing the historical fact that the force which has been most potent in building up our Western civilisation is none other than Christianity; the ethics which have shaped and guided right conduct through all these centuries are Christian ethics. Think as we will ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... supported by Miss Grew, Lucretia Mott, Abby Kelly, Maria W. Chapman, Anne W. Weston, Sarah T. Smith, and Sarah Lewis; and opposed by Margaret Dye, Margaret Prior, Henrietta Wilcox, Martha W. Storrs, Juliana A. Tappan, Elizabeth M. Southard, and Charlotte Woolsey. Those who voted in the negative stated that they fully concurred with their sisters in the belief that slaveholders and their apologists were guilty before God, and that with the former, Northern Christians should hold no fellowship; ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and when this union shall be, is as obscure to me as the last day. Of those four members of religion we hold a slender propor- tion. There are, I confess, some new additions; yet small to those which accrue to our adversaries; and those only drawn from the revolt of pagans; men but of negative impieties; and such as deny Christ, but because they never heard of him. But the religion of the Jew is expressly against the Christian, and the Mohammedan against both; for the Turk, in the bulk he now stands, is beyond all hope of ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... that "it is indestructible by any operation to which it can be subjected in the ordinary course of circumstances observed at the surface of the globe."[1] The very utmost which any man can assert in this matter is a negative, a want of knowledge, or a want of power. He can say, "Human power can not destroy matter;" and, if he pleases, he may reason thence that human power did not create it. But to assert that matter is eternal because man can ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... eyes, and not with eyes blinded with superstition; we must perceive when his work comes short, when it drops out of the class of the very best, and we must rate it, in such cases, at its proper value. But the use of this negative criticism is not in itself, it is entirely in its enabling us to have a clearer sense and a deeper enjoyment of what is truly excellent. To trace the labour, the attempts, the weaknesses, the failures of a genuine classic, to acquaint oneself with ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... find a yokel or a tramp who thought he lost his sexual dignity by being part of a political mob. If he did not care about a vote it was solely because he did not know about a vote; he did not understand the word any better than Bimetallism. His opposition, if it existed, was merely negative. His indifference to a vote was ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... over an irregular cavalry which will avoid all serious encounters, will retreat with the speed of the Parthians and return to the combat with the same rapidity, wearing out the strength of its enemy by continual skirmishing. Lloyd has decided in the negative; and several exploits of the Cossacks when engaged with the excellent French cavalry seem to confirm his opinion. (When I speak of excellent French cavalry, I refer to its impetuous bravery, and not to its perfection; for it ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... it had picked up the buoy, but had seen no sign of the man. Doubtless he had been swept into the propellers, but if not quickly given release in their cyclopean strokes, he may have watched for a few minutes our vain attempt to negative his fate. If so, I imagine he smiled again, as when he gave me the god upon ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... as it is separate from the State, the Church will always conspire to reconquer power over it in the interest of the past dogma. If separated from all collective and avowed faith by a negative policy, such as that adopted by the atheistic and indifferent French Parliament, the State will fall a prey to the anarchical doctrine of the sovereignty of the individual, and the worship of interest; it will sink into egotism and the adoration ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... style at all. It is not only that he manifestly recognized no external canons whereto to conform the expression of his thoughts, but he had, apparently, no inclination to invent and observe—except, indeed, in the most negative of senses—any style of his own. The "style of Sterne," in short, is as though one should say "the form of Proteus." He was determined to be uniformly eccentric, regularly irregular, and that was all. His ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... is nothing in that to worry mother, and soon I shall have good news for her." (If he had seen its reception, he would have learned his mistake. The intuitions of love are keen, and this formal negative note in the constrained hand told more of his disappointment than any words could have done. While he knew it not, his mother was suffering with him. In reply she wrote a letter full of general sympathy, intending to be more specific when he ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... dismally, shaking his side-whiskers with a negative expression that might have conveyed worlds of meaning to one able to interpret it. But his eye fell upon the pine box, which had rolled to his feet, and he stooped to pick it up. Upon the smoothly planed side was his own picture, most ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... but a negative Purgatory. His Heaven is composed of a series of Kabalistic circles, divided by a cross, like the Pantacle of Ezekiel. In the centre of this cross blooms a rose, and we see the symbol of the Adepts of the Rose-Croix ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Resurrection of Christ as an argument for the Divine origin of Christianity is recognised alike by those who receive and by those who reject it. Negative criticism has assailed the doctrine and has devised ingenious theories to explain on natural grounds the testimony on which it is received. The diversity of such explanations goes far to refute them, and their ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... 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 manufacture ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various
... Neapolis, his reason for the expedition being news of Veranilda's approaching marriage, brought to him by a fisherman who said he had been paid by a person unknown. Did Petronilla, he next inquired, know that Veranilda was to be sent to the East? To this Marcian replied with a negative, adding: ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... bedroom windows. We are not surprised to learn that the coroner, before taking the verdict, asked the house surgeon, who gave evidence, whether he could say that death 'was accelerated by anything.' Our wonder is that the reply was in the negative. The cottage is in the possession of the farmer who employs the man, but his landlord is said to be liable for repairs. That landlord is a clergyman of the Church of England, a J.P., a preserver of game, and owner of three or ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... more skeptical and indifferent than before. The only way I can explain this is that I had not become a Christian, and my dominant mental attitude reasserted itself when danger was past. I practically never attended church. My position and influence, however, were not merely negative; I was positively antagonistic to Christianity, and this attitude continued up to ...
— Out of the Fog • C. K. Ober
... inquire regarding France's attitude. In answer to our definite question whether, in case of a Russo-German war, France would remain neutral, the French Government has replied that they will act as their interests dictate. (Laughter.) This was at least an evasion, if not a negative answer ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... Great Britain and the United States passed the House of Representatives by a majority of seventy-nine to forty-nine. The bill was taken to the Senate, and there it passed only by the narrow majority of six. The vote was nineteen voices in the affirmative and thirteen in the negative. Mr. Jefferson assented to the bill on the 18th of June. The grounds of war were set forth in a message of the President to Congress, on the 1st of June. The impressment of American seamen by British naval officers; the ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... hand, if Crimmins had lied—Garrison's jaw came out and his eyes snapped. Then he would scrape himself morally clean, and fight and fight for honorable recognition from the world. He would prove that a "has-been" can come back. He would brand the negative as a lie. And ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... with the sovereign; and every individual, in his separate capacity, in some measure, deliberates for his country. In whatever does not derogate from his rank, he has an arm ready to serve the community; in whatever alarms his sense of honour, he has aversions and dislikes, which amount to a negative on the will of ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... apothecary's ridiculous habits. Not talkative by nature (a negative quality seldom met with in Tarascon, and which won him this confidence of the president), his thick lips, always in the form of an O, had a habit of perpetually whistling that gave him an appearance of laughing in the nose of the world, even on the ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... brains for ever, we could not give you the reason. Nothing happened, nothing had been said or done, which could indicate its origin. Perhaps this was the origin; perhaps the Duke's conduct had become, though unexceptionable, too negative. But here we only throw up a straw. Perhaps, if we must go on ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... the difficulty of disproving a negative, and aware as I must be of the weighty grounds there are for opposing my belief, it still seems to me that the Homeric question is one that is reserved for a higher criticism than it has often obtained. We are not by nature ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... that evening, De Froilette inquired whether Lord Cloverton had arrived, and being answered in the negative, remained at the head of the stairs, speaking a few words to this acquaintance and to that, bowing a well-turned compliment to one fair lady, or meeting another's pleasantry with an answering jest. He was in ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... giving. It was said that they were married, and certain circumstances seemed to justify this rumour. As for instance, during the illness of Monseigneur, the King, as I have said, asked Madame de Maintenon if she had seen Mademoiselle Choin, and upon receiving negative reply, was displeased. Instead of driving her away from the chateau he inquired particularly after her! This, to say the least, looked as though Mademoiselle Choin was Monseigneur's Maintenon—but the matter remained incomprehensible ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... added to the fresh-water drenching bestowed by the clouds. Can you fancy the discomfort of such a situation? Then you were never at sea, or at least you left your imagination ashore; for I defy any person not well inured to it, to look on such a scene with so negative a feeling as discomfort; it will excite either terror or delight sufficient to ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... wide, but his teeth are perfect. His English has a very slight accent, and he impresses one with scholarly ways at once. Arthur Delancy, a very good-looking young man, seems rather insignificant beside him. Violet experiences a thrill of negative preference; she is glad it was not her fate to become ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... curtains before you could not have been made opaque, without being so thick and suffocating; why it would not be as well to sit up all night half asleep in an ordinary passenger-car as to lie awake all night in a Pullman. But the snoring of my fellow-passengers answered this question in the negative. ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... illustrate some laws of the kingdom of heaven; but this is done by analogy. Analogy is not identity; the very essence of it lies in coincidence in some points, with diversity in others; if the two were identical, there were no longer an analogy. Take two pictures of a person printed from the same negative photograph; you do not say they are like each other, they are the same. It is most dangerous to fasten on any point of the depicted human procedure, and found on it the affirmation that the divine must be ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... is the only possible solution; and I know that several similar instances have been recorded. It is like the negative of a common photograph, brought out by a dark background; and do you notice the figures are invisible at certain angles? It is very evident the storm came up during the altercation that night, and electricity printed the whole scene on this door; stamping ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... in a higher sense: for what is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance? What we call knowledge is often our positive ignorance; ignorance our negative knowledge. By long years of patient industry and reading of the newspapers,—for what are the libraries of science but files of newspapers?—a man accumulates a myriad facts, lays them up in his memory, and then when in some spring of his life he saunters abroad into the Great Fields of thought, ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... very seriously of retiring altogether, as they had already amassed a large sum, when McShane received the letter from O'Donahue, announcing that in a few months he would arrive in England. Major McShane, who was very far from being satisfied with his negative position in society, pressed the matter more earnestly to his wife, who, although she was perfectly content with her own position, did not oppose his entreaties. McShane found that after disposing of the goodwill of the business, ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... a gradual manner at that point of the pyritous mass most subject to the current until a continuous film of some size appears. This being formed the pyrites and gold are to a certain extent polarised, the film or irregular but connected mass of gold forming the negative, and the pyrites the positive end of a voltaic pair; and so according as the polarisation is advanced to completion the further deposition of gold is changed in its manner from an indiscriminate to an ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... question Henrietta ran her eye down over the announcements in the Court Circular. Marshall replied in the negative. She made no comment, hardly appearing to notice his answer. But, as she stepped lightly and delicately away down the airy corridor to the door of the sick-room, over her blue gauze draped shoulder she ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... seen; not that there is now less light under the table but the light above has to our sense of sight created or made manifest a greater darkness. Thus, throughout the Universe, as interpreted by our Physical Ego, we find phenomena ranging themselves under the form of positive and negative, the apparently ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... account for his nervousness, reconstituted as he might, just as he had also reconstituted the promptness with which Chad had corrected his uncertainty. An extraordinarily short time had been required for the correction, and there had ceased to be anything negative in his companion's face and air as soon as it was made. "Your engagement to my mother has become then what they call here a fait accompli?"—it had consisted, the determinant touch, ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James |
