"Verbal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... utterance it can have. Alas, he that speaks must use English, French, or some language which is partly conventional; and that pre-Adamite or Saturnian vernacular in which we are all trying to speak has no verbal sign. Poets, indeed, contrive to catch it, one knows not how, in the meshes of ordinary language, and only therefore are poets; but to frame in it any question or answer suited to the wants of the understanding is a feat beyond man's power. It is true that Mr. Herbert Spencer, having, by diligent, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... fraternal hatred. They eagerly disputed the friendship, or rather the gifts, of the emperor; and the distinctions which nature had fixed between the faithful dog and the rapacious wolf was applied by an ambassador who received only verbal instructions from the mouth of his illiterate prince. [12] The Bulgarians, of whatsoever species, were equally attracted by Roman wealth: they assumed a vague dominion over the Sclavonian name, and their rapid marches could only be stopped by the Baltic ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... may occasionally convey a specific meaning, indicative of some object or some action. In other words, they may advance from the interjection toward the noun or the verb, and approach in value the verbal root, a sound which embraces a complete proposition. Thus a cry of warning may be so modulated as to indicate to the hearer, "Beware, a lion is coming!" or to convey some other specific warning. We know that accent or tone plays a great part in Chinese speech, the most primitive of ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... receiving an answer from Capt. Preston at the time we proposed, we sent him a message desiring to be informed whether we might expect his answer to which he replied by a Verbal Message as ours was that he had nothing further to add to what he had said to us the day before, as you'l please to ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... this to the footman with the accuracy which all who send verbal messages deserve and may count on. ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... friends—"Yours very sincerely, H. Bullinger." This literary effort he carefully dispatched by a Guinea-pig to its destination, and awaited a reply with the utmost impatience. The reply was laconic, but highly satisfactory. It was a verbal one, given by Oliver himself in class that afternoon, who volunteered the information to the delighted Bullinger that ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... dreadful route round almost the half of a circle, ever mounting upward. When night fell we camped without fires in a hollow among crags, and about midnight when the moon rose there was a challenge, and a short parley, and a Kurd rode in with a message from his chief for Ranjoor Singh. The message was verbal, and had to be translated by Abraham, but I did not get to hear the wording of it. ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... generally called "Lean Jimmy Jones," was the only Democrat who ever tried to meet Mr. John P. Hale with his own weapons—ridicule and sarcasm. One day, after having been worsted in a verbal tilt, Mr. Jones sought revenge by telling a story as illustrating his opponent's adroitness. There was a Kentuckian, he said, whose name was Sam Wilson, who settled on the margin of the Mississippi River. He had to settle upon high lands, near swamps from ten to twenty ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... which Mrs. Parker has read and approved. I introduced a reference to Mr. Howitt's theory of the 'All Father,' and I added some references to other authorities on the Australian tribes. Except for this, and for a very few purely verbal changes in matter of style, Mrs. Parker's original manuscript is untouched by me. It seems necessary to mention these details, as I have, in other works, expressed my own opinions on Australian religion and customary law. [MAKING OF RELIGION, second edition; MYTH, ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... fault of being perpetually translateable; he creates an impression of cleverness by never saying any thing in a common way. The best specimen of this manner is in Junius, because his antithesis is less merely verbal than Johnson's. Gibbon's manner is the worst of all; it has every fault of which this peculiar style is capable. Tacitus is an example of it in Latin; in coming from Cicero you ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... in word only, and the faith of such stands but in a verbal sound; but the apostle was resolved not to know or take notice of such a faith. (1 Thess. 1:4, 5) 'For the kingdom of God, saith he, 'is not in word, but in power.' (1 Cor. 1:18-20)' He whose faith stands only in a saying, I believe, has his works in bare words also, and as ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Tourgueneff, can believe; but the comic journals themselves have fallen far too much into the hands of the Imperial University, whose literary style is a combination of the humor of the cider-cellars with the verbal fluency of Billingsgate. Under such auspices the ill-starred periodicals naturally oscillate between insipid propriety and labored coarseness. For a month or two the talented contributors go smoothly on in their career ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... simplicity of Deism, and the pathos of Catholicism; where he can sip elegances and spiritualities from flowerets of every faith!' Fancy my crass ignorance, when I assure you that I actually laughed over that verbal syllabub, thinking it intended as a famous bit ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... should discount a trade bill without ascertaining whether the payment of that particular piece of paper had been provided for. This amounts to saying that the discussion of philosophical problems takes especially a verbal aspect; and the more complex the phenomena a concept thus handled, contains, the more dangerous it is. A concept of the colour red has but a very simple content, and by using it, this content can be very clearly ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... mail a paper to you, containing the Hon. Samuel A. Foote's report on our petitions. I hardly expected any report this winter. I am glad he made one; am only sorry it was verbal. There ought to have been a large number printed for circulation. I hope you won't get discouraged; remember the good work goes bravely on, the Honorable Legislature to the contrary notwithstanding. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... condemned a third as being no longer true for him as when it was written, and he sanctioned a fourth with his hearty approval. The reader may like a few specimens from this early edition, now a rarity. He shall have them, with Master Gridley's verbal comments. The book, as its name implied, contained "Thoughts" rather than consecutive trains of reasoning or continuous disquisitions. What he read and remarked upon were a few of the more pointed statements which stood ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and wife, is explained "Separation;" or, like a ship when in distress, the "Union" is reversed! In respect of his union, Spriggins would have most relished the reading of the former! But there are paradoxes—a species of verbal puzzle—which, in the course of this ride, our amiable family of the Spriggins's experienced ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... I have reviewed the evidence in support of the allegation that the Navigation Section believed, by reason of a mistaken verbal communication, that the altered McMurdo waypoint only involved a change of 2.1 nautical miles. I am obliged to say that I do not accept that explanation. There were certainly grave deficiencies in communication within the Navigation Section, but the ...
— Judgments of the Court of Appeal of New Zealand on Proceedings to Review Aspects of the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Mount Erebus Aircraft Disaster • Sir Owen Woodhouse, R. B. Cooke, Ivor L. M. Richardson, Duncan
... all sorts of places. Verbal inspiration may enter the berth of a mariner on board a ship frozen fast in a river in the middle of a town; and since saints are supposed to look benignantly on humble believers, I indulge in the pleasant ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... Burgh, Hutchinson, and Gardiner, though all holding offices of honour and emolument under government, would vote for it. Flood suggested to substitute the simple term "free trade," and with this and one other verbal alteration suggested by Burgh, the amendment passed with a single ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... causes him to doubt his sanity. Not merely is his mind vacant when the spirit of poetry is about to come upon him, but he is deprived of his judgment, so that he does not understand his own experiences during ecstasy. The idea of verbal inspiration, which used to be so popular in Biblical criticism, has been applied to the works of all poets. [Footnote: See Kathrina, by J. G. Holland, where the heroine maintains that the inspiration of modern poets is ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... if the Italian mind, with a head to be chopped off by a despot for a joke, discovered the colourless and impregnable word 'load,' the French gamin, on his own responsibility, hit upon the identical word in French, namely, 'charge'—une charge meaning both a pictorial or verbal goak or caricature, and a load. When did the word 'caricature' first obtain in the Italian language, and how? When did the word 'charge' acquire a similar meaning in France, and was it or not suggested by the Italian word? But the ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... no language more eloquent or more easily understood than the language of facial expression. No verbal question or answer is necessary. I interpret the winsome smiles of the Nautchnees aright, and they interpret very quickly the permission to go ahead that reveals itself in the smile they force from me. Eight of the twelve are commonplace ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... obstructions through which the fleet must pass, decided that the risk of collision with the hulks on either side, or between the columns themselves, would be too great if he adhered to his written programme; and he accordingly gave a verbal order that the right column should weigh first, and be followed closely by the other under his own guidance. To facilitate the departure and avoid confusion, the ships of the right shifted their berth after dark to the east side of the river, anchoring ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... the same ceremony over and over again, in a short time no notice was taken of it. The Turks, perceiving this negligence, substituted for their prayers and hymns cries of revolt, and by this sort of verbal telegraph, insurrectionary excitement was transmitted to the northern and southern extremities of Egypt. By this means, and by the aid of secret emissaries, who eluded our feeble police, and circulated real or forged firmans of the Sultan disavowing the concord between France ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... my visit to Richmond during the month of August, 1864, on which occasion, at the General's request, I called upon the Secretary of War to lay before him some papers entrusted to my care, and also to make some verbal explanations regarding them. The excited, I may say the exasperated manner in which the Honorable Secretary commented upon the documents, left but one impression upon my mind, and that was, that the War Department had made up its mind that the party was guilty and that its conviction ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... little, and often not; some hints we had from the French, but not very many; besides we had considerable helps from other Persons far above our selves, for whose Care and Pains we shall ever acknowledge our Gratitude. A meer Verbal Translation is not to be expected, that wou'd sound so horribly, and be more obscure than the Original; but we have been faithful Observers of his Sence, and even of his Words too, not slipping any of ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... feels heavy. He cannot find a reply in two words that cover more varieties than (1) very heavy, (2) rather heavy, (3) moderate, (4) rather light, (5) very light. I once took considerable pains in the attempt to draw up verbal scales of more than five orders of magnitude, using those expressions only that every cultivated person would understand in the same sense; but I did not succeed. A series that satisfied one person was not interpreted in the same ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... the first consideration in that place, above twenty in number, to be taken into custody, as strongly attached to the royal cause, and known enemies to the ruling powers. These gentlemen had repeatedly refused to give any written or verbal acknowledgment of allegiance or submission to the American Government, or promise of holding no correspondence with its enemies. Notwithstanding the evident danger their persons were in, they had even the resolution to refuse confining themselves ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... tell them any word they do not know; and we have a simple system of emulation, by which the one who recollects first a word we have previously had, receives a mark; and the one who first reaches a total of a hundred marks gets sixpence. The adorable nature of women! Maggie, whose verbal memory is excellent, went rapidly ahead, and spent her sixpence on a present to console Alec for the indignity of having been beaten. Then, too, they write letters in French to their mother, which are solemnly sent by post. It is not very idiomatic ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... replied Colonel Steigentesch, with a significant smile; "I am only the bearer of a verbal reply. I believe the king thought a written answer too dangerous, or he was afraid lest he should thereby compromise himself. But after every interview I had with the king or the queen, I noted down every word their majesties spoke to me; and if your majesty permits, I shall avail myself ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... remarks that precision in the use of terms, though sometimes pedantic, is sometimes necessary. Here he makes the opposite reflection, that there may be a philosophical disregard of words. The evil of mere verbal oppositions, the requirement of an impossible accuracy in the use of terms, the error of supposing that philosophy was to be found in language, the danger of word-catching, have frequently been discussed by him in the previous dialogues, but nowhere has the spirit of modern inductive philosophy ...
— Statesman • Plato
... brought against an alleged offender; indeed, where some minor offenses were concerned officers could even conclude that a given infraction was not a serious matter at all and simply dismiss the soldier with a verbal reprimand and a warning not to repeat his offense. Whereas one commander might decide that a case called for a charge of aggravated assault, another, faced with the same set of facts, might settle for ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... permission to carry any letter, and that he must return along with the Moor, as the people of Calicut had threatened to put all their Portuguese prisoners to death in case he did not return. On this account, the admiral gave the boy a verbal message for the prisoners; saying that he would very soon come to Calicut, where he would anchor as near as possible to the shore; and as the captives were allowed to go about the city without irons, they might find ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... non-committal "indeed?" to every word addrest to them. This is apt to be our American vice of conversation, where, for lack of courage in taking up discussion, talk often falls into a series of anecdotes. In Germany the tendency is to be swept away in discussion to the point of a verbal dispute. ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... delineating the whole northeastern part of the continent, executed with great care and labor by his own hand, together with numerous local drawings, picturing not only bays and harbors, Indian canoes, wigwams, and fortresses, but several battle scenes, conveying a clear idea, not possible by a mere verbal description, of the savage implements and mode of warfare. [120] His works include, likewise, a treatise on navigation, full of excellent suggestions to the practical seaman of that day, drawn from his own experience, ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... he tells them that if they propose to judge the case they may. This wrings from them the humiliating reminder that the power of capital punishment is withheld from them by their Roman rulers, and nothing less will satisfy them here. Then they begin a series of verbal charges. They are all of a political nature, for only such would this Roman recognize. This man had been perverting the nation, forbidding tribute to Caesar and calling ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... made no verbal reply to the warning of the Norseman, but his right arm which held the steering oar grew rigid, and he did not ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... animated by his many debates. Indeed, "he sought the storms." Otherwise he would not, could not, have participated in these many verbal contests. Throughout them all, his basic strategy—that of provocation—was determined by the very real fact that he had many more enemies than allies, among them, for instance, such formidable antagonists as Swift and Richard ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... as a fountain from which to draw the elements of his new verbal compounds, assigning to those elements arbitrarily new volumes of meaning, and constructing from them, with no other governing principle than his own judgment of what seemed best, a totally new Language, as it were, adequate to the wants of the new Science. Still, despite ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Teutonic poetry, with its treble system of accent, alliteration, and parallelism, was wholly different from the Romance poetry, with its double system of rime and metre. But, from an early date, the English themselves were fond of verbal jingles, such as "Scot and lot," "sac and soc," "frith and grith," "eorl and ceorl," or "might and right." Even in the alliterative poems we find many occasional rimes, such as "hlynede and dynede," "wide and side," "Dryht-guman ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... manner convinced me that they were cut-and-dried; but I was left perhaps deservedly in the dark as to the details. I merely gathered that he had brought down some document for Levy to sign in execution of the verbal agreement made between them in town; not until that agreement was completed by his signature was the harpy to receive the precious epistle he pretended never to have written. Raffles, in fine, had the air of a man who has the game in his hands, who is none the less prepared for foul ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... I endeavour to make absolute, that I may sequester that only corner from all, whether wife, children, or acquaintances. For elsewhere I have but a verbal and qualified authority, and miserable to my mind is he who in his own home has ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... some verbal criticism which need not be transcribed. Going on to the seventh stanza he says, "In the third line of it, she loses her antithesis. She must spoil her man, as well as make a poet out of him—spoil him as the reed is spoilt. Should we not read the ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... devised this method for the express purpose of preserving his text, or not, it has at least had that effect,—for while there are scarcely two MSS. extant which agree in the verbal record of the day and hours, the physical circumstances remain, and afford at all times independent data for the recovery or correction of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... these days. I shall come to see this period more and more distinctly as a pause, as a waiting interlude, and the idea of an encounter with my double, which came at first as if it were a witticism, as something verbal and surprising, begins to take substance. The idea grows in my mind that after all this is the "someone" I am seeking, this Utopian self of mine. I had at first an idea of a grotesque encounter, as of something happening in a looking glass, but presently it dawns on me that ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... connected with giving away a girl in marriage have to be transacted for one's self or another person, the money to be delivered over should not be settled by verbal agreement, but only by a written contract attested ...
— The Siksha-Patri of the Swami-Narayana Sect • Professor Monier Williams (Trans.)
... with slow and painstaking effort, making slight erasures and corrections with loving care, poor, trustful, unsuspecting Pete mapped out, with true creative joy, a district that never was on land or sea, accompanying each stroke of his handiwork with verbal comments, explaining each original mountain chain or newly invented valley with a wealth of descriptive detail that would ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... streets. He had been overthrown into gutters; bespattered with mud; violently flattened against posts. Entire strangers to his person had lifted his yellow cap off his head, and cast it to the winds. His legs had not only undergone verbal criticisms and revilings, but had been handled and pinched. That very morning, he had received a perfectly unsolicited black eye on his way to the Grinders' establishment, and had been punished for it by ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... wide lines, and bore in conspicuous characters the words, "Western Union Telegraph Company." Immediately below this interesting legend was much other printed matter, the purport of which was that the company did not hold itself responsible for the verbal accuracy of "the following message," and did not consider itself either morally or legally bound to forward or deliver it, nor, in short, to render any kind of service for the money paid ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... "Mere verbal sugar-plums, sweet, cloying, and often poisonous. My expressions of honest opinion are, like Mr. Burleigh's toast you are so fond of, made of the finest wheat of truth, leavened by my irrepressible admiration, ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... imperfect rhetoric; yet we have a right to ask some attention to the details of style in a literary critic. Professor Henry Reed has a delicate appreciation in poetry, but his remarks are nearly always marred by verbal infelicities incompatible with a knowledge of literary art. Thus, within a few pages of his Memoir of Gray, just published, he says of Jacob Bryant, who has been dead a century, that "he has ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... be sure to get clear of all controversies PURELY VERBAL—the springing up of which weeds in almost all the sciences has been a main hindrance to the growth of true and sound knowledge. SECONDLY, this seems to be a sure way to extricate myself out of that fine and subtle net of ABSTRACT IDEAS which has so miserably perplexed and entangled the ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... It was past midnight, but when a servant informed him that Isaac T. Hopper had been ringing at the door, and wished to see him, he ordered him to be shown up into his chamber. After apologizing for the unseasonableness of the hour, he briefly stated the urgency of the case, and asked for a verbal order to put the captain and cook in prison to await their trial the next morning. The magistrate replied, "It is a matter of too much importance to be disposed of in that way. I will come down and hear the case." A large hickory log, which had been ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... declares, "Without language, no understanding"! Subtile distinctions between understanding and reason have limited the statement to the latter term. But even in the restricted form, "Without verbal language, no reason," ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... to act beside the law; namely, in a case where the law fails; yet the act will not be evil. And when such cases are multiplied, by reason of some change in man, then custom shows that the law is no longer useful: just as it might be declared by the verbal promulgation of a law to the contrary. If, however, the same reason remains, for which the law was useful hitherto, then it is not the custom that prevails against the law, but the law that overcomes the custom: ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... where my guests were assembled, I found Mr. Pless and the Baron Umovitch engaged in an acrimonious dispute over a question of bridge etiquette. The former had resented a sharp criticism coming from the latter, and they were waging a verbal battle in what I took to be five or six different tongues, none of which appeared to bear the slightest relationship to the English language. Suddenly Mr. Pless threw his cards down and left the table, without a word of apology to the two ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... banker answered in the affirmative. In spite of wordy explanations, the magistrate always brought him back to a "Yes" or "No." When the questions and answers alike had been resumed in the proces-verbal, the examining magistrate ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... was a log structure measuring nine by ten feet, with posts only three feet high, was the only building which could be emptied of its contents for my accommodation. Our contract or lease was a verbal one, Cuffy's terms being "whateber de white man likes to gib an ole nigger." Cuffy cut a big switch, and sent in his "darter," a girl of about fourteen years, to clean out the shanty. When she did not move fast enough to suit the old man's wishes, he switched her over the shoulders till ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... think that men who did not go upon the surest grounds would presume to give. But then these assurances were general, and the authority seldom satisfactory. Those which came from the best hands were verbal, and often conveyed by very doubtful messengers; others came from men whose fortunes were as desperate as their counsels; and others came from persons whose situation in the world gave little reason to attend to their judgment in matters of ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... great measure, to the fantastic character of his performances. But the fervid facility of his impromptus could not be so accounted for. They must have been, and were, in the notes, as well as in the words of his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently accompanied himself with rhymed verbal improvisations), the result of that intense mental collectedness and concentration to which I have previously alluded as observable only in particular moments of the highest artificial excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the more forcibly ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... curt verbal answer. Dino might come to the cloisters on the following morning after early mass. The Prior would meet him there as he ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... florid school of Harrison Millard's once so popular rhapsody, "Waiting." Five songs are grouped into opus 12, and they reach a much higher finish and a better tendency to make excursions into other keys. They also show two of Harris' mannerisms, a constant repetition of verbal phrases and a fondness for writing close, unbroken chords, in triplets or quartoles. "A Melody" is beautiful; "Butterflies and Buttercups" is the perfection of grace; "I Know not if Moonlight or Starlight" is a fine rapture, and "A Disappointment" is a dire tragedy, ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... then, (I shall be asked,) that you maintain the theory of Verbal Inspiration?—I answer, I refuse to accept any theory whatsoever[376]. But I believe that the Bible is the Word of GOD—and I believe that GOD'S Word must be absolutely infallible. I shall therefore believe ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... the point where it began, but it is no less true that around every circle another can be drawn.... Emerson followed his own counsel; he always keeps a reserve of power. His theory of Circles reappears without the least verbal indebtedness to himself in the splendid ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... effect which can be distinguished from its cause. It is not brought about by the presence of antecedent realities. It is positively the FIRST, with no forerunner. The perception-of-matter is one mental word, of which the verbal words are mere syllables. We impose upon ourselves, and we also falsify the fact, if we take any other view of it than this. Thus speaks metaphysic, though perhaps not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... who had taken up fresh places on European farms under verbal contracts, which needed no registration, actually founded new homes in spite of the law, neither the white farmer nor the native tenant being aware of the serious penalties they were exposed to ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... of the Arms' bill. Any thing like it, in pettiness of malignity, has not been witnessed during this century: any thing like it, in impotence of effect, probably will not be witnessed again during our times. Thirteen divisions in one night—all without hope, and without even a verbal gain! This conduct the nation will not forget at the next election. But in the mean time the peaceful friends of this yet peaceful empire rejoice to know, that without war, without rigour, without an effort that could disturb or agitate—by mere silent precautions, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... fellow Christians:—the result of a discussion conducted on this plan, would most assuredly be, to convince all Christians, that the essential articles of religious credence, in which there is, a real difference among Christians, are not so numerous, as the verbal disputes, and extraneous matter, in which controversy is too often involved, make ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... materials—physical, mental and spiritual—we have no occasion to urge its acceptance of so-called dialect, for dialect IS in Literature, and HAS been there since the beginning of all written thought and utterance. Strictly speaking, as well as paradoxically, all verbal expression is more or less dialectic, however grammatical. While usage establishes grammar, it no less establishes so-called dialect. Therefore we may as ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... instrument is equally capable of service and entertainment. It can be used as a stenograph, or shorthand-writer. A business man, for instance, can dictate his letters or instructions into it, and they can be copied out by his secretary. Callers can leave a verbal message in the phonograph instead of a note. An editor or journalist can dictate articles, which may be written out or composed by the printer, word by word, as they are spoken by the reproducer ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... Brussels, Ghent, and Ostend is now regularly employed for transmission by telegraph of the ordinary messages and of the telemeteorographic signals between the two observatories at those places, and by telephone of verbal simultaneous correspondence, for one of the Ghent newspapers. A still more interesting arrangement is possible, and is indicated in Fig. 4. Here a separating condenser is introduced at the intermediate station at Ghent between earth and the line, which is thereby ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... your message had been verbal, boy. It's so difficult to read ladies' hands; they're so abominably angular, and—where are my specs? I've a mind to have 'em screw-nailed to my nose. ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... tool attached to the motor, the whole executing tasks of a delicacy and complication new to industrial art. On an electric railroad an identical current propels the train, directs it by telegraph, operates its signals, provides it with light and heat, while it stands ready to give constant verbal communication with any station on the line, ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... with Spain, it was thought proper to prepare our representative at that Court to avail us of it. A confidential person was therefore dispatched to be the bearer of instructions to him, and to supply, by verbal communications, any additional information of which he might find himself in need. The Government of France was at the same time applied to for its aid and influence in this negotiation. Events, however, took a turn which did not present the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... and linguistic skills are not, as Auden rightly points out, a matter of indifference to children, who are in the very business of learning language, as well as other facts of life, and who are particularly sensitive to verbal rhythms, as Iona and Peter Opie have splendidly demonstrated in The Lore and Language ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... "It's a verbal one," returned the detective, in a voice soft and smooth, not at all in keeping with his disguise, "and from Mr. Lamotte. I am the officer chosen by him to investigate for you, Miss Wardour, and as much time has been lost, I only wait your sanction and acceptance ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... as a verbal utterance, or, as Robert Louis Stevenson puts it, with "the first men who told their stories round ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... feel ashamed of my hesitations. I went back into the hall, told the Mexican in Spanish, yes, that I would come quickly. He seemed satisfied with this verbal message, and I watched him shuffle down the steps, in spite of his loose-hung gait, with admirable quickness. Then I told Lee that I was going out; dinner at half-past two, all as simply and usually as if I had been intending merely ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... perfect scientific deduction we might be brought into conversational alliance with these singular and orderly creations, and actually look upon their scenes and lives and history, and bring to ourselves in verbal pictures a presentation of ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... embrace this opportunity of introducing two verbal remarks, which have not conveniently offered themselves to my notice. 1. As often as I use the definitions of beyond the Alps, the Rhine, the Danube, &c., I generally suppose myself at Rome, and afterwards ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... our superiors there. Well, they may give the king of Great Britain a verbal satisfaction, and with submissive fawning promises, make shew to punish us; but interest is their god as well as ours. To that almighty, they will sacrifice a thousand English lives, and break a hundred thousand oaths, ere they will punish those that ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... speed. He pointed, as it were, the lesson, giving the supreme right accent or final exquisite turn to the immense magnificent phrase; which from those moments on, and on and on, resembled doubtless nothing so much as a page written, by a consummate verbal economist and master of style, in the noblest of all tongues. Our splendid human plant by the wayside had flowered thus into style—and there wasn't to be, all day, a lapse of eloquence, a wasted word or a ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... half of Emerson, but only half; for genius, as he said, is insatiate for expression, and truth has to be clad in the right verbal garment. The form of the garment was so vital with Emerson that it is impossible to separate it from the matter. They form a chemical combination—thoughts which would be trivial expressed otherwise, are important through the nouns and verbs to which he married them. The ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... that already this morning, while you supposed I was sleeping, I have had an interview with Gabriel Nietzel, my mother's court painter. Ah! now start back and be amazed. Yes, Gabriel Nietzel sat by my bed for more than an hour, and brought me a verbal message from my mother. She had also intrusted him with a letter for me, but on his journey here he has been robbed and the letter taken from him. Oh, I imagine the robbers took much more interest in the letters than in the effects of the painter, and Count Schwarzenberg and yourself both well ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... the crowd that filled the doors and windows. The yarns they spun and the stories they told would not bear repetition here, but many of them had morals which, while exposing the weakness of mankind, stung like a whiplash. Some were, no doubt, a thousand years old, with just enough of verbal varnish and alterations of names and date to make them new and crisp. By virtue of the last named application, Lincoln was enabled to draw from Balzac a 'droll story' and locating it 'in Egypt' (Southern Illinois) or in Indiana, pass it off for a purely original conception. . ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... were about him in his last moments is proved to be entirely unfounded. But, on the other hand, we cannot think that the biographer (or rather Keble, who speaks for himself in this matter) will be successful in convincing many people that the alteration was merely verbal. The mental interpolation of "only" after "not" in the words "not in the Hands," is surely a tour de force, and it must be remembered that the passage occurs in the lines on the "Gunpowder Treason," and is evidently pointed ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... is of the essence of this knowledge, or this knack of mind, to be largely incommunicable. "It cannot be imparted to another," says my father. The verbal casting-net is thrown in vain over these evanescent, inferential relations. Hence the insignificance of much engineering literature. So far as the science can be reduced to formulas or diagrams, the book is to the point; so far as the art depends on intimate study of the ways of nature, the author's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... masters in London, Cecil and Leicester, must have thought of the simplicity of this good man, it is impossible to say. They condescended to return no answer to his more than straightforward communication, save the short verbal reply concerning O'Neill: "We have given forth speach of his extermination by ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... Independence. Jefferson was placed at the head of this committee, his colleagues consisting of Adams, Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston. The declaration was prepared by Jefferson, and when submitted to Dr. Franklin and John Adams for criticism, some verbal amendments suggested by them were made. It was then reported to Congress on June 28th, and after debate and other slight amendments by the body itself, it was adopted and signed on July ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... rummaging an old trunk—it seems a century ago that I did it—caused me to smile sympathetically at Toddie, to his apparent great delight. How delightful it is to strike a sympathetic chord in child-nature, thought I; how quickly the infant eye comprehends the look which precedes the verbal expression of an idea! Dear Toddie! for years we might sit at one table, careless of each other's words, but the casual mention of one of thy delights has suddenly brought our souls into that sweetest of all human communions—that one ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... Extension's golden vantage! the decree Each way exclusive, scorn, and re-enthrone The obsolete, if strength, or grace of tone Or imagery await it, with a free, And liberal daring!—For the Critic Train, Whose eyes severe our verbal stores review, Let the firm Bard require that they explain Their cause of censure; then in balance true Weigh it; but smile at the objections vain Of sickly Spirits, hating ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... frequently illustrated in malingering. It is sufficient for the type of individual who malingers to merely say the word, and the most fantastic creation of his fancy immediately becomes a reality and is apperceived by him as such. A mere verbal denial of guilt on his part is sufficient to make him believe fully in his innocence and act accordingly. When we inquire into the origin of this facility in transforming fantasy into reality, for this omnipotence of the mere word or thought, we find it in the totally unreasonable ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... each other with curse and abuse. They were in no way embarrassed by the presence of Susan. Her "record" made her of no account either as a woman or as a witness. Soon each was so well pleased with the verbal wounds he had dealt the other that their anger evaporated. The upshot of the hideous controversy was that Black ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... deeply attached to Hilda, who was just fifteen, The attachment was evidently likely to turn into love when both should be three or four years older. If Frau von Sigmundskron would consent, a preliminary, verbal agreement might be made, subject to the will of the two children when the right time should come, it being essentially necessary, as Greifenstein remarked in his stiffest manner, that two young people should love each other sincerely if ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... the day, they found that many companies were decimated, some nearly annihilated; numbers of their officers were dead in the breach, "Those who are not mortally wounded rejoice at this great success," said an officer to the Duke; and it was a significant sentence. [Footnote: Verbal report of Colonel Combes to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... twenty-five doti each as their hire to Unyanyembe, begging immediate payment in money. Words fail to express the astonishment I naturally felt, that this sharp-looking young man should so soon have forgotten the verbal contract entered into between him and myself the morning previous, which was to the effect that out of the three thousand doti stored in my tent, and bought expressly for pagazi hire, each and every man hired for me as carriers from Bagamoyo ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... what I found him. He was several times interrupted by the little bell, and had to read off messages, and send replies. Once he had to stand without the door, and display a flag as a train passed, and make some verbal communication to the driver. In the discharge of his duties, I observed him to be remarkably exact and vigilant, breaking off his discourse at a syllable, and remaining silent until what he had ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... anxious progress from New York, as I have chronicled in the June "Atlantic." We had marched from Annapolis, while "rumors to right of us, rumors to left of us, volleyed and thundered." We had not expected that the attack upon us would be merely verbal. The truculent citizens of Maryland notified us that we were to find every barn a Concord and every hedge a Lexington. Our Southern brethren at present repudiate their debts; but we fancied they would keep their warlike promises. At least, everybody thought, "They ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... of time, place, and manner seems as necessary as that of matter, the writer has taken not a little pains, through all the usual means, to remember, and will endeavor to state, the conversations, always with logical, and nearly always, he believes, with verbal accuracy, in order that the conclusions to be drawn from them by the reader may have the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... boat to have this inconvenient appendage removed, in order that it may enjoy its limited repast, considering that "half a loaf is better than no bread." My uncle showed me on our return a sketch, which will explain the mode of proceeding even better than my verbal description. ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... in the sixth book only in which anything more than a verbal similarity is traceable. According to Mr. Gosse, who has given an analysis, with some translated extracts, of Vondel's Lucifer, the resemblances are too close and too numerous to be mere coincidences. Vondel is more human than Milton, just where human attributes are unnatural, so that heaven ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... speech ought always to be free from the nine verbal faults and the nine faults of judgment. It should also, while setting forth the meaning with perspicuity, be possessed of the eighteen well-known merits.[1688] Ambiguity, ascertainment of the faults and merits of premises and conclusions, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... to the living king and now to the dead king, while taking saltatory and musical forms, took also verbal forms, originally spontaneous and irregular, but presently studied and measured; whence, first, the unrhythmical speech of the orator, which under higher emotional excitement grew into the rhythmical speech of the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... attempt to deliver a note. It would be simpler, less dangerous for all concerned, to be at work in a corridor through which the English senorita must pass; to murmur a few words which would attract her attention; to receive a verbal message in return; and to bring it to me when she could—not to-day; that would be impossible; but to-morrow evening about nine, at which time she had already permission to ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... that there was no verbal agreement in existence between Mr. Moore and me, at the time I made a verbal agreement with you to deliver the Memoirs to be destroyed. Mr. Moore might undoubtedly, during Lord Byron's life, have obtained possession of the Memoirs, if he had pleased to do so; ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... returns. The doings of children, of the rich, and of all men on a holiday illustrate this. Compare, for example, the speech of trade, where one says the brief and needful thing only, with the talk of excursionists, where verbal expression, having no end beyond itself, develops at length and at leisure; where brevity is no virtue and abundant play takes the place of a ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... way is made for the soul to come to God with suitable arguments, sometimes in a way of expostulation, as Jacob (Gen 32:9). Sometimes in way of supplication, yet not in a verbal way only, but even from the heart there is forced by the Spirit, through the understanding, such effectual arguments as moveth the heart of God. When Ephraim gets a right understanding of his own unseemly carriages towards the Lord, then he begins to bemoan ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... out of my comprehension, or indeed I think of any man's, into a labyrinth of abstraction and subtilty, and then suddenly return with some verbal conceit or turn of wit. The mind is known to attain, in certain conditions of trance, a quickness so extraordinary that we are compelled at times to imagine a condition of unendurable intellectual intensity, from which we are saved by the merciful ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... verbal ones on the subject of foreign messes, and having mounted one of her pet hobbies, was in full gallop when Emil was seen strolling about on the roof of the old house, that being his favourite promenade; for there he could fancy himself walking the deck, with only blue ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... man named Mollett, who had lately made repeated visits at Castle Richmond, was he who had formerly taken the house in Dorsetshire under the name of Talbot. In his packet Mr. Prendergast sent copies of documents and of verbal evidence which he had managed to obtain; but with the actual details of these it is not necessary that I should trouble those who are following me in this story. In this letter Mr. Prendergast also recommended that ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... But, as Mr Harris points out (though he does not use this particular illustration) Paul Veronese is an anchorite compared to Shakespear. The language of the sonnets addressed to Pembroke, extravagant as it now seems, is the language of compliment and fashion, transfigured no doubt by Shakespear's verbal magic, and hyperbolical, as Shakespear always seems to people who cannot conceive so vividly as he, but still unmistakable for anything else than the expression of a friendship delicate enough to be wounded, and a manly loyalty deep enough to be outraged. But the language ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw |
