"Potency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Oriental mind amulets symbolize the bond between a protective power and dependent mundane creatures; they are prophylactics against the forces of evil, and may be properly characterized as objects superstitiously worn, whose alleged magical potency is derived from the faith and imagination ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... very little way. Constitute Government how you please, infinitely the greater part of it must depend upon the exercise of the powers which are left at large to the prudence and uprightness of Ministers of State. Even all the use and potency of the laws depends upon them. Without them, your Commonwealth is no better than a scheme upon paper; and not a living, active, effective constitution. It is possible, that through negligence, or ignorance, or design artfully ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... cold-blooded thirst for plunder, and respects rules and usages only fitfully, and with small attention to the possible effect of its disregard of them on the general welfare. The man or the woman and, let us say, "the mother"—since that is supposed to be, in this discussion, a term of peculiar potency—who tries to exert a good influence on public opinion on all these points, to teach the brotherhood of man as an economical as well as a moral and religious truth; to spread the belief that war between any two nations is a general calamity to the civilized ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... thou hast nam'd, and what of them is made, Are by created virtue' inform'd: create Their substance, and create the' informing virtue In these bright stars, that round them circling move The soul of every brute and of each plant, The ray and motion of the sacred lights, With complex potency attract and turn. But this our life the' eternal good inspires Immediate, and enamours of itself; So that our wishes rest ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... always behind the scenes, coming no man knows whence, and dying, or pretending to die, obscurely—you never find authentic evidence of his decease. In other later times, at other courts, such an one reappears and runs the same course of luxury, marvel, and hidden potency. ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... remnants of the crab—the bony bud of a tail—stood erect and firm. Then the pitying spectators seized Dilly Boy, and, holding him, unlocked the pinchers. He rolled over—it was the only easeful attitude—as he cursed all gins, crabs, and dynamiters with wondrous fluency. And may the potency of those coloured curses rest upon ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... very well see," was the reply, "that one reared as you were should fail to understand at once the potency of the system which has always been to you as much a matter of course as the atmosphere by which you are surrounded. It was not until Harvey's time—indeed, it was not until a much later period—that we knew in what way and manner animal life was maintained by the inhalation of atmospheric air. ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... such terrific potency to the power we use from our puranium," Hitler Number Three says, "that we purify the air every few seconds with formula XYB and Three-fifth. The basis of the gas ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald
... upon her; his arm was extended across the table, and she knew the potency of that arm, as well as something about the strength and fund of resource of ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... the circumstances which contribute to form the character, should exercise their principal influence during the period of growth. As years advance, example and imitation become custom, and gradually consolidate into habit, which is of so much potency that, almost before we know it, we have in a measure yielded up to it ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... constantly reminded of duties and responsibilities from which an angel might shrink. The world is to be saved by her prayers, her quiet and gentle efforts. Man, she is told, is ruled by her smiles; his whole nature subdued by the potency of her tears. Priests, politicians, and poets assure her with flattering tongue, that on her depend the progress and destiny of the race. On the other hand, she is told that she must lovingly confide in the strength and skill of man, who has been endowed ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... message, discussed, ably enough, the right of secession as a mere constitutional or legal right. Others have done the same before and since. The opinion of the lawyer is all very well, but it has no special potency to restrain the nocturnal activities of the burglar. All such discussions are, for the present behalf, utterly puerile. Secession, revolution, the bloody destruction and extinction of the whole nation, were ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the purpose, construction, and representation of the lyric drama which did not obtain validity in America until the German artists at the Metropolitan had completed their missionary labors. Indeed, there are aspects of the case in which Weber's opera, with all its affluence of melody and all its potency of romantic and chivalric expression, is yet further removed from popular appreciation than the dramas of Wagner. In these there is so much orchestral pomp, so much external splendor, so much scenic embellishment, so much that is attractive to both eye and ear, that delight ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... in part metaphysical, is founded on the difficulty of ascribing any ultimate reality or potency to forces diminishing through eternal time. Thus, against the assumption that our universe is the result of material aggregation progressing over eternal time, which involves the primitive infinite separation of the particles, we may ask, what force can have acted between ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... doubt but that the witches of the olden time observed all the formalities of these ridiculous and disgusting ceremonies to the very letter. In later times, however, though the formalities were quite simple, yet the hag of the sixteenth century exercised her vocation with all its ancient potency. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... have," said the old woman, "and those of wondrous potency. We are a favored race, Myra. Descended from the old Egyptians, we inherit their mysterious learning. To a few among us, the queens and magi of our tribes, there has come down a knowledge of charms and medicine, and some of the secrets of astrology. Go, Myra; leave me. I will provide for your peace. ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... warmed, the electric light upon his table was softly shaded. The steward who waited upon him was swift-footed and obsequious, and seemed entirely oblivious of Philip's shabby, half-soaked clothes. He ordered champagne a little vaguely, and the wine ran through his veins with a curious potency. He ate and drank now and then mechanically, now and then with the keenest appetite. Afterwards he smoked a cigar, drank coffee, and sipped a liqueur with the appreciation of a connoisseur. A fellow passenger passed him an evening paper, which ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... she found herself breathing an atmosphere of penetrating fragrance, the gentle potency of which had recalled her from her deathlike faintness. The scene around her looked like enchantment. Aylmer had converted those smoky, dingy, sombre rooms, where he had spent his brightest years ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... have been saved had Rita permitted him to make the settlement with Sukey, but she did not. The infinite potency of little things is one ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... the senses sufficed to make of Helen Keller a woman of exceptional culture and a writer, who better than she proves the potency of that method of education which builds on the senses? If Helen Keller attained through exquisite natural gifts to an elevated conception of the world, who better than she proves that in the inmost self of man lies the spirit ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... hecastotheism. As the primitive believer assigns special potency or mystery to the strong and the swift, he gradually comes to give exceptional rank to self-moving animals; as his experience of the strength, alertness, swiftness, and courage of his animate enemy or prey increases, these animals are invested with successively higher and higher attributes, each ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... Sir John; not an empire's worth, Nor wealth of Ind could buy The like, for never was jewel seen Of such wondrous potency. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... practice; and hence one advantage, at least, of Hahnemann's methods. Stated briefly, his theory was that if a tincture be reduced to one-fiftieth in strength, and this again reduced to one-fiftieth, and this process repeated up to thirty such dilutions, the potency of such a medicine will be increased by each dilution, Hahnemann himself preferring the weakest, or, as he would call it, the strongest dilution. The absurdity of such a theory is apparent when it is understood that long before any drug has been raised to its thirtieth dilution ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... unbounded, magnificent wilderness." Accustomed to camp life and scenes of exciting interest, the humdrum days at the old homestead became distasteful. The West was the hunter's paradise. The toil held beneath it the potency of harvests of extraordinary richness, and the soldier who had faced the disciplined battalions of Great Britain recked little of ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... of the moment; it crystallized the sentiment for human liberty and human rights which has saved American idealism from the demoralization of narrow selfishness, and has given to American democracy its true world power in the virile potency of a great example. It responded to the instinct of self-preservation in an intensely practical people. It was the result of conference with Jefferson and Madison and John Quincy Adams and John C. Calhoun and William Wirt—a combination of political ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... that all the power and potency of the universe was stored up in that primordial cell, and that all things have been worked out without any superintending agency other than the forces resident in matter. Every operation of God is ruled out, or deemed unnecessary. This is ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... race. The germ of the evil requires a second, perhaps a third, generation to bring it to maturity. And then it may appear in the form of mania, or idiocy, or intemperance. As a cause of idiocy, its potency has been placed beyond a doubt. Dr. S.G. Howe, whose thorough investigations entitle his conclusions to great weight, says, that, "directly or indirectly, alcohol is productive of a great proportion of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... the eyes of all, in terror-stricken vision or in nightmares of uneasy conscience, leap the inextinguishable flames of hell. Salvation, meanwhile, is being sought through amulets, relics, pilgrimages to holy places, fetishes of divers sorts and different degrees of potency. The faculties of the heart and head, defrauded of wholesome sustenance, have recourse to delirious debauches of the fancy, dreams of magic, compacts with the evil one, insanities of desire, ineptitudes of discipline. Sexual passion, ignoring the true ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... vapors rise. Even, it seemed to me, I could note a faint, clear odor of innocent potency. I saw the table laid, not with gleam of snow and silver, but with plain vessels which, nevertheless, seemed now to have a radiance of their own. I knew all this. It was as though there actually lay at hand these pleasant scenes, as though there actually arose the appealing fragrance ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... was right—the creed of his church, as of all others, in a lesser degree perhaps, is too crass, too mechanical, too childish to tally the ideals of a generation which is each day awakening to some new potency of matter, some wider ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... referred only to the dispersion of poisonous exhalations, as if the best and most necessary thing the atmosphere can do for us were to dilute the dose to a comparatively harmless potency. But this is now known to be not the true remedial process with respect to the zymotic germs. The most wonderful achievement of recent investigation reveals a philosophy of both bane and antidote that astonishes ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... alarming plan. In this gentleman's somewhat feeble intellect there floats a sort of hazy reverence for a mysterious force denominated by him "kimustry." And to this occult power he appears to ascribe a magical potency, that recalls ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... sitting opposite Raven at the table, demure, self-contained, yet playing her wildest. It was a game she knew she was to have entirely alone. The game was that she and Rookie were living here in this house in some such potency of possessive bliss that nothing could separate them. She was careless over the terms of it. She was a child, she was a woman, she was everything Rookie wanted her to be. Here they were together, and the universe, finding the combination, Nan and Rookie, too strong to fight against, ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... other crisis at one end and the perception representing the person affected by the crisis at the other end, point out that such hallucinations, or other effects on the percipient, exist in a regular rising scale of potency and perceptibility. Suppose that 'A's' death in Yorkshire is to affect the consciousness of 'B' in Surrey before he knows anything about the fact (suppose it for the sake of argument), then the effect may take place (1) on 'B's' emotions, producing a vague malaise ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... should not, in fact, leave the hands of the physician. Invaluable for the detection of diseases of the throat which impair the voice and which have to be cured either by treatment or operation before the voice can be restored to its original potency or charm, its value in studying the physiology of voice-production and the functions of the vocal organs is doubtful. In fact, it is its use by amateur laryngoscopists that has resulted in the promulgation of all kinds of absurd theories of voice-study and in those innumerable ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... said the emir. "Put it inside the sweat-band of the front of your hat and no one will perceive it and yet it will have all its potency." ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... concernment in the Church and Commonwealth to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves as well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors: for books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragons' ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... barbaric and ceremonious, a flirring of learned and venerable conceits and witticisms; something German in the best and worst sense of the word, something in the German style, manifold, formless, and inexhaustible; a certain German potency and super-plenitude of soul, which is not afraid to hide itself under the RAFFINEMENTS of decadence—which, perhaps, feels itself most at ease there; a real, genuine token of the German soul, which is at the same time young and aged, too ripe and yet still too rich ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... somewhat shy and wraithlike civilization, but yet a thing made in the image and containing in itself the germ of that spirit which is the antithesis of barbarism, based on force, being itself the visible expression of the potency of ideas. The Bad Lands Cowboy brought the first tenuous foreshadowing of democratic government to the banks of the Little Missouri, inasmuch as it was an organ which could mould public opinion and through which public opinion might find articulation. It was thus that a youngster, not a year ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... begun or completed and where no grass grows, no shadow falls; like an open wound which does not heal until it has been avenged, like an empty grave which does not close until it has received its denizen. If only the gap were closed the charm would lose its potency. He might authorize a workman to do the job, but the thought of leaving his neglected work to another brought a flush of shame to his pale cheeks. The sheet of lead nailed by another would be certain to fall; the gap cried out for him, and he alone could close ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... in what we have, in what we can do, in what people think of us, in the thought of the friends we have at our back, or in anything whatever but the living, outgoing power of the self-alive—the one causing potency in the heart of our souls, and in every clothing of those souls, from nerve, muscle, and skin to atmosphere and farthest space. The living life is the one power, the only that can, and he who puts his trust or hope in anything else whatever is a worshipper of idols. He who does not believe ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... injured in the concussion; many tossed into the water; twenty perished. The survivors crept again on board their ship, as it now lay, and as it still remains, keel to the waves, a monument of the sea's potency. In still weather, under a cloudless sky, in those seasons when that ill-named ocean, the Pacific, suffers its vexed shores to rest, she lies high and dry, the spray scarce touching her—the hugest structure ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... must ask much. The immense moral progress which we owe to the Gospel is the result of its exaggerations. It is thus that it has been, like stoicism, but with infinitely greater fulness, a living argument for the divine powers in man, an exalted monument of the potency of ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... to Offa, and stands by his bedside with eyes that gleam in the dim light of the lamp that burns in the chamber, and wakes him, but not easily. On him the potency of that Frankish wine lingers yet, and he does not rouse quickly, but stares at her with ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... small box of nard from the stores of Sulpicius[2] A cask shall elicit, of potency rare To endow with fresh hopes, dewy-bright and delicious, And wash from our hearts every cobweb ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... spirit of a man's life, more than his special actions and peculiar theories, is that by which other men are moved and admonished. I have extreme faith in the potency of this species of influence, and comparatively less in the effect of example, in special cases and particular details of conduct. Christ's teaching was always aimed at the spirit which should govern us, not at its mere application to isolated instances; and to those who sought advice ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... could burst in and occupy the space up to the foot of the cliff in a moment. It will not do so, I know; but there is an infinite possibility about the sea; it may do what it is not recorded to have done. It is not to be ordered, it may overleap the bounds human observation has fixed for it. It has a potency unfathomable. There is still something in it not quite grasped and understood—something still to be ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... vial of little red pills about the size of beet seeds, with explicit directions as to how to take them. If I exceeded the dosage prescribed I endangered my life, for these pellets were of a high potency. They were little two-edged swords which might ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... most marvelous of all, her soul was so filled with poetry that her verses were sung from Valencia to Cadiz. It was said that she could move men to laughter, to tears, to deeds of heroism—that she could even lull them to sleep by the potency of her magic. She had once played before the ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... he is unable to perpetuate his species without the aid of the impelling madness. Nay, men will not have it otherwise; and when an individual urges that his reason has placed him above the beast, and that, without the impelling madness, he can mate with greater wisdom and potency, then the poets and singers rise up and fling potsherds at him. To improve upon nature by draining a malarial swamp is permitted him; to improve upon nature's methods and breed swifter carrier-pigeons and finer horses than she has ever bred is also permitted; but to improve ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... sprinkling holy water because in pre-Christian times it had been supposed to have effect against the powers of evil. The early Christians were thus just endeavouring to combine the old charm of rue with the new potency of holy water. ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... correlated. Comes the man with the scalpel. He dissects the human brain, and is disgusted at finding no clew to the secret cause and source of life. He never suspects, he does not conceive of the fact that there is in everyone, an immutable, invisible power—a spirit germ—nor would he believe in its potency if he knew it were true. Then there is the man with the retorts and the scales, and the "residues." He announces to the world that he can create life without any help from the "Great Spirit" people talk so much about. There is also the man ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... the bugler of Destiny sounded the "Halt!" to the retreat of the armies of the Allies from the Belgian frontier. The marvelous fighting machine of the German armies, perhaps the most superb organization of military potency that has been conceived by the mind of man, seemed to reach its limit of range. Success had perched upon the German eagles, and for two weeks there had been a steady succession of victories. Nevertheless the British and French armies were not crushed. They were overwhelmed, they ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... paralyzed the organ of memory. When such paralysis would cease, if ever, no one could tell. The power to recall everything might return at any moment or it might be delayed indefinitely. A shock, a familiar face, might supply the potency required, or restoration come through the slow, unseen processes of nature. Martine believed that Helen's face ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... rhyming of "breezes" and "trees is" can hardly be deemed suitable in a serious poem. "When the Sea Calls", a poem by Winifred Virginia Jordan, is possibly the most striking feature of the magazine. Mrs. Jordan's style in dealing with the wilder aspects of Nature has a grim potency all its own, and we can endorse without qualification the judgment of Mr. Moe when he calls this poem "positively magnificent in dynamic effect". To Mrs. Jordan is granted a natural poetic genius which few other amateurs can hope to parallel. Not many of our literary artists can so aptly fit words ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... was on the top. It seemed an abominable episode, a piece of bad faith on the part of fate. I ought to have been exempt from these sordid haps, but the man's hot leathery hand on my throat was like a foretaste of the other collar. And I was horribly afraid—horribly—of the sort of mysterious potency of the laws that these men represented, and I could ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... repeat that not to make proper provision for the high education of the talented tenth man of the colored people is a prodigious mistake. It is to dwarf the tree that has in it the potency of a grand oak. Industrial education is good for the nine; the common English branches are good for the nine; but that tenth man ought to have the best opportunities for making the most of himself for humanity ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 6, June 1896 • Various
... the passage of the stars? Who can prevail against the thunder-sound? The wire that flashes lightning to the ground Diverts, but not its potency debars. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... himself another tower of strength chosen from among the people. What might he not hope, now that he possessed the services of Lord Brittleback and Mr. Harold Smith! Renovated in a Medea's cauldron of such potency, all his effete limbs—and it must be acknowledged that some of them had become very effete—would come forth young and round and robust. A new energy would diffuse itself through every department; India would be saved and quieted; the ambition ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... demonstrated the invaluable assistance that electrolysis could render to the isolator of elements; and the adoption of this method by Sir Humphry Davy for the analysis of the hydrates of the metals of the alkalis and alkaline earths, and the results which he thus achieved, established its potency. In 1808 Davy isolated sodium and potassium; he then turned his attention to the preparation of metallic calcium, barium, strontium and magnesium. Here he met with greater difficulty, and it is to be questioned whether he obtained any of these metals even in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... with Herr Salomon, and heard from him, amid clouds of Latakia, of wars and rumours of wars, distress of nations, and perplexity, seen by the light, not of the Gospel, but of the stock-exchange; while the storm fell without in lightning, hail, rain, of right Rhenish potency. ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... wished to hold him in reserve to put him in the place of her actual lover should the latter give her any offence—said to him, with a countenance that showed neither anger nor content—"Elisor, I will not feign ignorance of the potency of love, and say aught to you concerning your foolishness in aiming at so high and hard a thing as the love of me; for I know that man's heart is so little under his own control, that he cannot love or hate at will. But, since you have concealed your feelings so well, I would ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the potency of a spell—the huge antique pannels to which the speaker pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust—but then without those doors there did stand the lofty and enshrouded ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... incessantly through her restless dreams. It was the man who was beside the Princess, who had fought desperately for her whether he loved her cause or not, who was hourly under the spell of her enchantment. The potency of that spell seemed to grow the more she thought of it, and all the charm which some had professed to find in herself seemed to sink into insignificance. It was not sufficient to win the love of this man. And those waiting hours, too, are hours of danger. Troubles or desires, or whatever ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... and there were few soldiers in the regiment who would accept the theory that any one of the three had connived at the escape. As for the sergeant—he had served four enlistments in the —teenth, and without a flaw in his record beyond an occasional aberration in the now distant past, due to the potency of the poteen distilled by certain Hibernian experts not far from an old-time "plains fort," where the regiment had rested on its march 'cross continent. As for the officers—but who would suppose an officer guilty of anything of the kind—a flagrant military crime? ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... stood quite still, and scrutinized Mrs. Morrison with the questioning expression she used to find so effective in Kunitz days when confronted by a person inclined to forget which, exactly, was his proper place. But Mrs. Morrison knew nothing of Kunitz, and the look lost half its potency without its impressive background. Besides, the lady was not one to notice things so slight as looks; to keep her in her proper place you would have needed sledge-hammers. She came in without thinking it necessary to wait to be asked to, nodded something that might ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... He Sing, who had never been ten miles from home in his life before, lying sick on a bamboo couch in a private china closet of his own (where he is now perpetually writing autographs for inquisitive barbarians), ever began to doubt the potency of the Goddess of the Sea, whose counterfeit presentment, like a flowery monthly nurse, occupies the sailors' joss-house in the second gallery? Whether it is possible that the said Mandarin, or the artist of the ship, Sam Sing, Esquire, R.A. of Canton, can ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... affinity, aiding in it and resulting from it, there are those strange negative and positive, attractive and repellant polar forces which appear in the phenomena of electricity and magnetism, agencies of such potency and universal ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... few things in this wide world that can be mentioned in the same breath with them, but toffy also has its potency upon the spirit." ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... from which all manner of old-time things slip out as I open its pages. The eager enthusiasm of the first dawning appreciation of the undying beauty of the old poet, faintly discerned in the language which embalms it, comes back like a whiff of fragrance from some by-gone summer. The potency of college memories lies in the fact that in those years we made the most memorable discoveries of our lives; the unknown river may widen and deepen beyond our thought, but the most noteworthy moment in all our wanderings with it will always be the ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... struggle for existence," and "Natural selection," have become household words and every-day conceptions. The reality and the importance of the natural processes on which Darwin founds his deductions are no more doubted than those of growth and multiplication; and, whether the full potency attributed to them is admitted or not, no one doubts their vast and far-reaching significance. Wherever the biological sciences are studied, the 'Origin of Species' lights the paths of the investigator; wherever they are taught it permeates the course of instruction. ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... genius and the rapture of virtue, when rightly revealed, are diffused and shared among unnumbered minds. When eloquence and poetry speak; when those glorious arts, statuary, painting, and music, take audible or visible shape; when patriotism, charity, and virtue speak with a thrilling potency, the hearts of thousands glow with kindred joy and ecstasy. If it were not so, there would be no eloquence; for eloquence is that to which other hearts respond; it is the faculty and power of making other hearts respond. No one is so low or degraded, as not sometimes ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... perspiring humility; to his equals how calmly aloof, how blandly dignified; and to those a misguided fate had set above him, how demurely deferential, how obligingly obsequious! Indeed, Mr. Brimberly's whiskers were all things to all men, and therein lay their potency. ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... midst of the night in front of them the voice of breakers. Each sprang to his feet and stared and listened. The sound was continuous, like the passing of a train; no rise or fall could be distinguished; minute by minute the ocean heaved with an equal potency against the invisible isle; and as time passed, and Herrick waited in vain for any vicissitude in the volume of that roaring, a sense of the eternal weighed upon his mind. To the expert eye the isle itself was to be inferred from a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... appears in Table 9/F. But had I thus acted, there would have been greater liability to error, as pollen applied to the stigma at the wrong time fails to produce any effect, independently of its greater or less potency. A good illustration of the great difference in the results which sometimes follows, if the number of capsules produced relatively to the number of flowers fertilised be included in the calculation, was afforded by Nolana prostrata. Thirty flowers on some plants of this species ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... grew so spiritless that he could offer no retort. He slid to a despondent sitting posture upon the door sill and gazed wretchedly upon the ground, while his companion went to replenish the licorice water at the hydrant—enfeebling the potency of the liquor no doubt, but making up for ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... customs relative to the naming of things are all founded on the same idea of the potency and mysticism inherent in a name, which may be found in the legends of the old Egyptians, wherein the power of the great king and god Ra depended on the fact that no one knew his real name, until Isis by stratagem got it from him; and ...
— Folk-lore in Borneo - A Sketch • William Henry Furness
... great demagogue himself, when obliged to discard the mask of democratic hypocrisy that still partly hid the subtle and venal traitor of his party, would have lost, like Strafford, many of the elements of his potency; and despoiled, especially, of the miraculous resources of his eloquence, must have contented himself with that lucid, common-sense, consecutive daring, and power of strategic combination, which his new friends were so ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... mere receptivity, like the capacity of a quart measure. We may mean by potentiality a merely dormant or quiescent state—a capacity to become something different under external influences. But we also mean by capacity an ability, a power; and by potentiality potency, force. Now when we say that immaturity means the possibility of growth, we are not referring to absence of powers which may exist at a later time; we express a force positively ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... potency it has in France, the more so at that time, perhaps, for America had placed herself definitely upon the side of the Allies only a short time before. I enjoyed that moment. I might have had the village for the asking. I willingly accepted the role of ambassador ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... Top-mounter in a nomad Arab tumbling troupe. I was Christian, that is white and Infidel, So old Abdullah took me in his tent And stripping off my white man's clothes Painted me with dye made from the chestnut hulls, Laughing the while about the potency of juice That would prove armour 'gainst some zealot's scimitar. Four camels made our caravan And these we also used for "props." When we played a Morocco town The chieftain met us at the hamlet's edge Asked of Abdullah what his mission there, Then let us enter He leading our caravan ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... the bar-keeper silently swung a decanter and glass before him, he took a cracker from a dish, and mumbled it with affected unconcern. He lingered over his liquor until its potency stiffened his relaxed sinews, and dulled the nervous edge of his apprehension, and then he suddenly faced around. "It don't look as if we were goin' to hev any rain much afore Christmas," he said with ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... I have urged the beauty of forgiveness, the duty of devout submission? He had no religion, for he was no saintly "Uncle Tom," and Slavery's black shadow seemed to darken all the world to him and shut out God. Should I have warned him of penalties, of judgments, and the potency of law? What did he know of justice, or the mercy that should temper that stern virtue, when every law, human and divine, had been broken on his hearthstone? Should I have tried to touch him by appeals to filial duty, to brotherly love? How had his appeals ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... my head. It is curious when a new subject of trouble or anxiety has been suggested to the mind in an unexpected way, how often a second advertisement follows immediately after the first, and gives to that a potency which in ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... way to put all things allusively, using strange figures and metaphors. Yet, when one was used to him and to them, their potency seemed greater than polished speech ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the supernatural potency of these gimcracks? No, and yes. Not to be foolhardy, he quietly slipped down every day to the levee, had a slave-boy row him across the river in a skiff, landed, re-embarked, and in the middle of the stream surreptitiously cast a picayune over his shoulder into the river. ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... the eye sends its image to the eye, the eye, on the other hand, sends its image to the object, and no portion whatever of the object is lost in the images it throws off, for any reason either in the eye or the object. Therefore we may rather believe it to be the nature and potency of our luminous atmosphere which absorbs the images of the objects existing in it, than the nature of the objects, to send their images through the air. If the object opposite to the eye were to send its image ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... observed that before I could say anything further I must gather plants, make decoctions, and consult the stars, and that my black colleague should prepare a charm which would greatly increase the potency of my remedies and the chances of ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... difference which exists between the cultivated man of to-day and the debased savage who probably preceded him, and whose counterpart still exists. This has undoubtedly been due to influences of the highest potency. If we can show that influences of equal potency acted upon man's ancestor, we shall have done much toward indicating how the ape brain may have grown into the ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... a mighty breath of patriotism, filled her heart to overflowing. It seemed as though she had heard it for the first time; had never before felt its potency. All the tragedy of war swept before her; all that inspiring, strange affection for country, kith and ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... facts of history show us the important position of London during the period which witnessed the departure of the Celtic Bretons to their continental home,[34] the facts of tradition show us the Celtic tribesmen deeming it a way to wealth through the magic potency of dreamland. The Celtic tribesmen stood outside Roman Lundinium. Its life was not their life, and their conversion of its position into a mythic treasure house or a mythic road to treasure, and their association of it with the bloody rites of the foundation ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... Lucian has drawn his picture, at least in part, from the known circumstances of Ignatius' history." [10:1] The bishop returns again and again to the parallelism between Ignatius and Peregrinus, and appears to think it furnishes an argument of singular potency in favour of the disputed Epistles. "Second only," says he, to certain other vouchers, which he produces, "stands this testimony." [11:1] From such a sample the judicious reader may form some idea of the conclusiveness of the bishop's reasoning. Peregrinus ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... interposition, or to express it more fully, the right of a State to interpose her sovereign voice, as one of the parties to our constitutional compact, against the encroachments of this government, is the only means of sufficient potency to effect all this; and I am therefore its advocate. I rejoiced to hear the Senators from North Carolina [Mr. Brown], and from Pennsylvania [Mr. Buchanan], do us the justice to distinguish between nullification and the anarchical and revolutionary movements in Maryland ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... pace with other improvements—inoculation and antiseptics, as already seen, rendering most of the germ diseases and formerly dreaded epidemics impotent; while through the potency of electrical affinity we form wholesome food-products rapidly, instead of having to wait for their production by Nature's ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... the student most. He chose as a foundation for his work those laments of Bion for Adonis, and of Moschus for Bion, which are the most pathetic products of Greek idyllic poetry; and the transmutation of their material into the substance of highly spiritualized modern thought, reveals the potency of a Prospero's wand. It is a metamorphosis whereby the art of excellent but positive poets has been translated into the sphere of metaphysical imagination. Urania takes the place of Aphrodite; the thoughts and fancies and desires of the dead singer ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... The potency of the Emancipation Act was so patent to the least politician that, long before 1863, when its announcement opened the memorable year for freedom, not only had its demonstration been implored by his friends, but some ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... suddenness. Just now I am speaking only of content and exhilaration; but I may soon see another side of the picture. The afternoon glides by like the morning; no churlish houses and chimney-pots hide the sun, and we see him describe his magnificent curve, while, with mysterious potency, he influences the wind. Dull! Why, on shore we should gaze out on the same streets or fields or trees; but here our residence is driven along like a flying cloud, and we gain a fresh view with every mile! I confess that I like sailing in populous waters, for indeed the lonely ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... him, in my thoughts, as a man of commanding presence, with keen, dark eyes set in a stern countenance; crisp, curling locks—such as Melinza's—but silvered lightly on the temples; an air of potency, of fire, as though his bold spirit defied ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... The sincere, or perfect man of Confucius, is he who satisfies completely all the requirements of duty in the various relations of society, and in the exercise of government; but the sincere man of Tsze-sze is a potency in the universe. 'Able to give its full development to his own nature, he can do the same to the nature of other men. Able to give its full development to the nature of other men, he can give their full development ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... low. At the very nethermost point of his downward swoop Solon Denney was raised to a height so dizzy that even the erstwhile sceptic spirit of Westley Keyts abased itself before him, frankly conceding that diplomacy's innocent and mush-like surface might conceal springs of a terrible potency. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... now that the rumor of Jack's death began to settle into belief, she was appalled by a sudden sense of complicity in a murderous plot. Not that she believed her father capable of murder or its procuration, but, knowing his potency with the authorities, she saw that there were many ways in which Jack might be sacrificed in the natural course of military duties. She had heard things of the sort discussed—how inconvenient men had been sent into pitfalls ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... are in the Solar System, at the center, or, better, at the focus of which burns the immense and dazzling orb. We have appreciated the grandeur and potency of the solar globe, whose rays spread out in active waves that bear a fecundating illumination to the worlds that gravitate round him; we have appreciated the distance that separates the Sun from the Earth, the third of the planets retained within his domain, or at least I trust that ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... success in politics is always important and this accounted for the cooling of the zeal of a certain number of enthusiasts who had vociferously supported Roosevelt in 1912. The falling-off in the vote measured further the potency of Roosevelt's personal magnetism; thousands voted for him who would not vote for other candidates professing his principles. Finally, other issues—the imbroglio with Mexico, for instance—were looming up, and exciting a different interest among the American people. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... or two away; the water is supposed to possess rare medicinal virtues, and invalids still come to test its potency, but there is no life, no gayety; the Springs and ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... caught my attention. The day had been a hot, languorous Sunday on which all things had seemed to be exhibiting their better side, and telling the sun that it was not in vain that he was pouring out his brilliant potency, and diffusing his living gold; while the man of whom I speak had, dressed in a new suit of blue serge, a new cap cocked awry, and a pair of brilliantly polished boots, been standing at the edge of the wharf, and gazing at the brown waters of the Kama, the emerald expanse beyond them and the silver-scaled ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... supposed to confer great additional power on the Devil, as well as on his new subject; for the doctrine seems to have prevailed, that, for him to act with effect upon men, the intervention, instrumentality, and co-operation of human beings was necessary; and almost unlimited potency was ascribed to the combined exertions of Satan and those persons in league with him. A witch was believed to have the power, through her compact with the Devil, of afflicting, distressing, and rending whomsoever she would. She could cause them to pine ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... determination to avoid the altar. Still further, he would escape the social odium which now attaches to his celibacy, for whatever a man pays for is regarded as his right. As things stand, that odium is of definite potency, and undoubtedly has its influence upon a certain number of men in the lower ranks of bachelors. They stand, so to speak, in the twilight zone of bachelorhood, with one leg furtively over the altar rail; it needs only an extra pull to bring them to the sacrifice. But if they ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... are almost complementary, are the chemically active rays the same? The general relation of colour to chemical action is worthy of the application of the method by which Dr. Draper proved so conclusively the chemical potency of the yellow rays of ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... at most (1798—1818), Wordsworth possessed this gift of melody. During those years he wrote works which profoundly influenced mankind. The gift then left him; he continued as wise and as earnest as ever, but his poems had no longer any potency, nor his ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... by this lucky meal, attained by its inward working to the highest pitch of human wisdom. For the potency of the meal bred in him the fulness of all kinds of knowledge to an incredible degree, so that he had cunning to interpret even the utterances of wild beasts and cattle. For he was not only well versed in all the affairs of men, but he ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... for her—he knew her! Whether he did or not, he knew the potency of his physic. He knew that osiers can be made to bend. With a frightful noise of hammering, he himself nailed up the window-shutters of the room she was locked in hard and fast, and he left her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Perhaps there is no more fatal combination in politics than the deductive method worked by passion. When applied to the delicate and complex affairs of society, such machinery with such motive force is of ruinous potency. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... the cost of investigating, for this age, the methods and power of error. While the ways, means, [30] and potency of Truth had flowed into my consciousness as easily as dawns the morning light ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... time, and Milton's the England of his time. But where Homer and Beowulf together differ from Tasso and Milton is in the way the surrounding folk-spirit contains the poet's mind. It would be a very idle piece of work, to choose between the potency of Homer's genius and of Milton's; but it is clear that the immediate circumstance of the poet's life presses much more insistently on the Iliad and the Odyssey than on Paradise Lost. It is the difference between the contracted, precise, but vigorous tradition of an heroic age, and the diffused, ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... improve the functioning of human organs, and more certainly as time passed he drew to the conclusion that in the goat, and in the goat alone, was to be found that gland-tissue which, because of its rapid maturity, potency, and freedom from those diseases to which humanity is liable, was most sure under right conditions of implantation to feed, nourish, grow into and become a part of, ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... daughters of men of this stamp—and not half their effeminacy and baseness, as the honest rough old soldier Ammianus Marcellinus describes it, has been told here—the news brought from Egypt worked with wondrous potency. ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... comfortably in a corner most remote from the fire: and Mr. Chainmail very soon found his head swimming with two or three horns of ale, of a potency to which even he was unaccustomed. After dinner Ap-Llymry made him finish a bottle of mead, which he willingly accepted, both as an excuse to remain and as a drink of the dark ages, which he had no doubt was a ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... enter hangs a stenciled, uneven, unpunctuated sign, "NO CREDIT CASH OR BARTER." But that sign has lost its potency. It is yellow with age and no longer is there anyone who believes in it. It was hung when John Marion first opened his store, and before he knew his people and wanted cash or barter for ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... again, in his old attic; it was spring, and his beloved city as beautiful as ever. He had expected a return of his old-time gaiety, but somehow the charm lacked potency. He wanted to paint, but his ideas were turgid and fragmentary. He wanted excitement, but the city only seemed to offer memories. The lapse of a short eighteen months had scattered his friends surprisingly. Adolph remained, ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... but an item in the duplex potency of the mystery, and behind the proudest consciousness that ever reigned, Reason and Wonder blushed face to face. The legend sinks to burlesque if in that great argument which antedates man and his mutterings, Lucifer had not a fighting chance. ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... home, of quiet, of certain green places and a lilac hedge; there is about them the taste and odor of the ideal. They are for the future as well as for the past. Perhaps in some subtle way they do after all have potency for beauty. I fancy that some day I too shall stow away bags of them amid my worthless precious junk, and when prying hands disturb the dust the nostrils of a youngster now unborn will be greeted by a frail yet pungent aroma. ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... ranchman's dinner-table; such profanity as I never expect to hear again; singing and yarns and hints of the tragedy of prairie women; and, at the height of a barbecue, the appalling intrusion of death. I have felt in all its potency the spell which the "short-grass country" cast over Theodore Roosevelt; and I cannot hear the word Dakota without feeling a ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... its healing potency in its own place, the same master craftsman's counsel to the whole restless, uneasy, sedentary brood ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... evil of it is that it assails so many different parts of the body. It hardly seems credible at first sight that the same agent can give rise to the many different kinds of diseases it does give rise to. In fact, the universality of its action has blinded even learned men as to its potency for destruction. ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... and that shall lend a hand of easiness to the next abstinence; the next more easy; for use almost can change the stamp of nature, and either curb the devil, or throw him out with wondrous potency.—Shakespeare. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... distinguished appearance, humiliated and in tears before the nervous little man who humbly styled himself the "servant of the servants of God," has always been regarded as most completely typifying the power of the Church and the potency of her curses, against which even the most exalted of the earth found no weapon of defense ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... justices. The first parliament assembled in Dublin for twenty years, contained an overwhelming majority of undertakers, adventurers, and Puritan representatives of boroughs, from which all the Catholic electors had been excluded. 'The Protestant interest,' a phrase of tremendous potency in the subsequent history of Ireland, counted 198 members against 64 Catholics in the Commons, and in the Lords 72 against 21 peers. A court was established under an act of parliament in Dublin, to try the claims of 'nocent' and 'innocent' proprietors. The judges, who were Englishmen, declared in ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... "it is marvellous, perfectly marvellous; and if I did not know you to be an absolutely truthful man I do not think I could bring myself to believe it. Now I can understand what you meant when you spoke of the potency of hypnotism for good or for evil, and why, as I understand, you have never yet dared to pass on the secret of your power to anyone else. But I swear to you, Doctor, that, if you will entrust it to me, I will never, under any circumstances whatsoever, use it except for a good purpose, nor ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... Thusandi who lived in the Nat tank on the Mongok hills and who laid three eggs, from one of which was born the ancestor of the Palaung Sawbwa. Here we see how the Palaung regards the egg, and it is noteworthy that the Khasis lay great stress on its potency in divination for the purposes of religious sacrifices, and that at death it is placed on the stomach of the deceased and is afterwards broken at the funeral pyre. Amongst some of the tribes of the Malay Archipelago also the Gaji-Guru or medicine-man "can see from the yolk of an egg, broken whilst ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... also discussed, not merely from the point of view of the form and dimensions of the ultimate fibres, but their capacity for 'colloidal hydration.' This is complementary to the action of rosin, i.e. resin acids, in the engine-sizing of papers; and the proof of the potency of this factor is seen in the superior effects obtained in sizing jointly with solutions of cellulose and, more particularly, viscose and rosin. Wurster's much-cited monograph of the subject of rosin-sizing ['Le Collage des Papiers,' Bull. ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross
... Fairy Tale Era of the human race, sputum has been employed to give potency to charms and to curses. It was anciently used as anathema and that use is still in force to this day. Let the incredulous critic spit in some one's face if he doubts ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... was a quick-witted soldier, and the elixir was coloured water sold by order of the commander. Its potency was due to the faith of all, who persuaded each other they were getting better, and an epidemic of infectious wellness followed ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... chiefly relates) was a more vulgar pursuit, and is a more difficult matter to determine. The true magician was a master over both the seen and the unseen world. His art could compel spirits or demons to obey him, however much against their will. It seems a question whether a spell of sufficient potency could not control Satan himself. The witch or wizard was a vulgar being, a mere slave of the Evil One, with no original power, very limited in derived power, and, it would appear, with no means of acting directly except upon the elements. The facts relating to witchcraft, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... So much for one error, now for the second like unto it; what I meant by charging you with seeing, (not, not 'looking for')—seeing undue 'security' in that, in the form,—I meant to say 'you talk about me being 'free' now, free till then, and I am rather jealous of the potency attributed to the form, with all its solemnity, because it is a form, and no more—yet you frankly agree with me that that form complied with, there is no redemption; yours I am then sure enough, to repent at leisure &c. &c.' So I meant to ask, 'then, all now said, all short ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... That its potency extended to those who married into the Ueberhell house was proved by its effect upon Frau Rosalie. As it had also once vanquished Frau Schimmel, they argued that the Court apothecary must have used other blood beside his own, for he certainly ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... understanding, from the potency given to it by love or the will, can be elevated, and can receive such things as are of light out ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... expected from the two hundredth or hundredth part of the millionth of the millionth of the millionth of the millionth of the millionth of the millionth of the millionth of the millionth of the millionth of the millionth of a grain of oyster-shell. This is only the tenth degree of potency, but some of his disciples profess to have obtained palpable ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... yet in truth we've had Strange thunders from the potency of song; Mingled indeed with what is sweet and strong, From majesty: but in clear truth the themes Are ugly clubs, the Poets Polyphemes Disturbing the grand sea. A drainless shower Of light is poesy; 'tis the supreme of power; 'Tis might ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... collar, forcing him out over the lip of the overhang. They were unevenly matched, Kirkwood far the slighter, but strength came to him in the crisis, physical strength and address such as he had not dreamed was at his command. And the surprise of his onslaught proved an ally of unguessed potency. Before he himself knew it he was standing on the overhang and had shifted his hold to seize the fellow about the waist; then, lifting him clear of the deck, and aided by a lurch of the cat-boat, he cast him ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... fair and good He likewise gives a frock, or livery, That aptly is put on: Refrain to-night: And that shall lend a kind of easiness To the next abstinence: the next more easy: For use almost can change the stamp of nature, And either curb the devil, or throw him out With wondrous potency. ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... sophistries, Unlawful magic, and enticing lies. Corinthians! look upon that gray-beard wretch! Mark how, possess'd, his lashless eyelids stretch Around his demon eyes! Corinthians, see! My sweet bride withers at their potency." 290 "Fool!" said the sophist, in an under-tone Gruff with contempt; which a death-nighing moan From Lycius answer'd, as heart-struck and lost, He sank supine beside the aching ghost. "Fool! Fool!" repeated he, while his eyes still Relented not, nor mov'd; "from ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... evil, which was destined to bear fruit, precious perhaps as well as bitter. God knows, it has hung on the tree long enough. Sour and harsh from the first, it has been many a year in ripening. But the sweetness of the apple, the potency of the grape, as the chemists tell us, are born out of acidity—a developed sourness. Will it be so with my thoughts? Dare I assert, as I sit writing here, with the wild waters slipping past the cabin windows, backwards and backwards ever, every plunge of ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... germ, almost harmless on Earth, among a population habituated to it for countless generations, had assumed the potency of a plague here, where no colds had ever been known—among the Moon men, and even among the guards, after their lifetime in the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... anguish of her disobedience to her lover, which was soothed by a feeling she had known before—a gentle flood of penetrating sweetness. She was not automatically obeying a momentary suggestion, she was under influences more deliberate, more vague, and of greater potency. She had been prompted, not by her will, but by a force that was outside of her and more worthy. She reckoned upon nothing definite; she had calculated nothing. She saw only her purpose of capturing death—savage, sudden, irresponsible death, prowling round the man who possessed her, death embodied ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... consolidated and developed the power which they had gained from the dissensions of his father's reign. The need of continual grants brought about an assembly of Parliament year by year, and the subsidies that were accorded to the king showed the potency of the financial engine which the Crown could now bring into play. In a single year the Parliament granted twenty thousand sacks, or half the wool of the realm. Two years later the Commons voted an aid of thirty thousand sacks. In 1339 the barons granted the tenth sheep ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... indefinable charm—no one, studying her physiognomy, would have accredited her with genius, power, and the large conceptions of a Murillo or a Raphael;—yet within the small head lay a marvellous brain—and the delicate body was possessed by a spirit of amazing potency to conjure with. While she watched for the first glimpse of the carriage which was to bring her uncle the Cardinal, whom she loved with a rare and tender devotion, her thoughts were occupied with a letter she had received that morning from Rome,—a letter "writ in ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... that orb without being satiated with the beauty of the morning Sun. And she suddenly became gifted with celestial sight. And then she beheld that god of divine form accoutred in mail and adorned with ear-rings. And at sight of the god, O lord of men, she became curious as to the (potency of the) mantras. And thereupon that maiden resolved to invoke him. And having recourse to Pranayama, she invoked the Maker of day. And thus invoked by her, O king, the Maker of day speedily presented himself. And he was of a yellowish hue like ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli |
