"Alphabetic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... always will remain the oldest of real books, that has been preserved to us in an almost miraculous way. By book, however, as I often explained, I mean a book divided into chapters and verses, having a beginning and an end, and handed down to us in an alphabetic form of writing. China may have possessed older books in a half phonetic, half symbolic writing; Egypt certainly possessed older hieroglyphic inscriptions and papyri; Babylon had its cuneiform monuments; ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... of archaic incidents, beliefs, and practices recorded by the 12th-century writer seemed to need some other classification than a bare alphabetic index. The present plan, a subject-index practically, has been adopted with a view to the needs of the anthropologist and folk-lorist. Its details have been largely determined by the bulk and character of the entries themselves. No attempt has been made to supply full ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... Virag), deceased: 3 typewritten letters, addressee, Henry Flower, c/o. P. O. Westland Row, addresser, Martha Clifford, c/o. P. O. Dolphin's Barn: the transliterated name and address of the addresser of the 3 letters in reversed alphabetic boustrophedonic punctated quadrilinear cryptogram (vowels suppressed) N. IGS./WI. UU. OX/W. OKS. MH/Y. IM: a press cutting from an English weekly periodical Modern Society, subject corporal chastisement in girls' schools: a pink ribbon which had festooned an Easter egg in ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... king, gave himself laws, and built up great empires in Egypt, Assyria, China, and Peru. He raised him altars, Stonehenges and Karnaks. His picture-writing grew into hieroglyphs and cuneiforms, and finally emerged, by imperceptible steps, into alphabetic symbols, the raw material of the art of printing. His dug-out canoe culminates in the iron-clad and the 'Great Eastern'; his boomerang and slingstone in the Woolwich infant; his boiling pipkin and his wheeled car in the locomotive ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... writings would have been preserved, or at least the Greeks would have made acknowledgments of being indebted to them.[331] But it is only in the field of practical matters that any such acknowledgments are made. The Greeks allow themselves to have been indebted to the Phoenicians for alphabetic writing, for advances in metallurgy, for improvements in shipbuilding, and navigation, for much geographic knowledge, for exquisite dyes, and for the manufacture of glass. There can be no doubt that the Phoenicians were a people of great practical ability, with an intellect ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... Hawaiian speech which can not but have its effect in determining the lyric tone-quality of Hawaiian music; this is the predominance of vowel and labial sounds in the language. The phonics of Hawaiian speech, we must remember, lack the sounds represented by our alphabetic symbols b, c or s, d, f, g, j, q, x, and z—a poverty for which no richness in vowel sounds can make amends. The Hawaiian speech, therefore, does not call into full play the uppermost vocal cavities to modify and strengthen, or refine, the throat ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... hand was working the sending key with the speed and skill of an expert, while blue flames leaped over the gap with spiteful alphabetic spits. Hal and Bud watched him eagerly, and, with a skill indicating long and studied practice, read the message their lanky ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... is confessedly vague, and moves for the most part along the familiar lines of theophanic descriptions. It is not plain in i. (cf. ii. 8) who are the enemies to be destroyed, as i. 1 is probably a later addition. Further, as far as v. 10 the prophecy is alphabetic: this circumstance has given rise to the view that i., ii. 2 originally formed a complete alphabetic psalm whose second half has either been worked over, or displaced by i. 11-15, ii. 2, the object of the psalm being to present a general picture of the judgment into which the ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... to every one who has carefully studied these manuscripts that any attempt to decipher them on the supposition that they contain true alphabetic characters must end in failure. Although enough has been ascertained to render it more than probable that some of the characters are phonetic symbols, yet repeated trials have shown beyond any reasonable ...
— Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices • Cyrus Thomas
... the essential nature of a proposition, we should consider hieroglyphic script, which depicts the facts that it describes. And alphabetic script developed out of it without losing what was ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... cartouche; 7, that the cartouches of the Rosetta Stone stand for the name of Ptolemy alone; 8, that the presence of a female figure after such cartouches always denotes the female sex; 9, that within the cartouches the hieroglyphic symbols have an actual phonetic value, either alphabetic or syllabic; and 10, that several dissimilar characters may ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... find that for the expression of proper names, which could not be otherwise conveyed, signs having phonetic values were employed; and though it is alleged that the Egyptians never achieved complete alphabetic writing, yet it can scarcely be doubted that these phonetic symbols, occasionally used in aid of their ideographic ones, were the germs of an alphabetic system. Once having become separate from hieroglyphics, alphabetic ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... is above all things necessary. When disorder is well arranged it can be relieved and controlled— What can a debtor say when he sees his debt entered up under his number? I make the government my model. All payments are made in alphabetic order. I have not yet touched the letter A. (He ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... the disappointment of one tempted by a good morsel which he finds tasteless. "There he seems to have descended to alphabetic commonplace. No ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... 1. THE ORIGIN OF LETTERS.—Alphabetic writing is an art easy to acquire, but its invention has tasked the genius of the three most gifted nations of the ancient world. All primitive people have begun to record events and transmit messages by means of rude ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... of references gathered from the principal general and scientific libraries—Arranged in alphabetic ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... though there were glimpses, here and there, of a direct study of nature, yet most of the epithets in his earlier pieces were of the traditional kind so fatal to poetry during great part of the last century; and he indulged in that alphabetic personification which enlivens all such words as Hunger, Solitude, Freedom, by the easy magic ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... the most fickled people. The history of the Western land repeats the same story over and over again. Thus up and down with the Greeks; up and down with Rome; up and down with the Arabs. The ancient Semitic and Hametic peoples are essentially alphabetic users, and their civilizations show the same lack of solidity as the Greeks and the Romans. Certainly this phenomenon can be partially explained by the extra-fluidity of the alphabetical language which cannot be depended upon as a suitable ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... of Europe land lines use the Continental Morse alphabetic code. This code has come to be used throughout the world for wireless telegraphy and hence it is now called the International code. It is given on Page 305. [Appendix: International ...
— The Radio Amateur's Hand Book • A. Frederick Collins
... with a phonetic value, i. e. was groping toward the alphabetical stage; but how far this groping had gone must remain very doubtful until the decipherment has proceeded further. Dr. Isaac Taylor is too hasty in saying that "the Mayas employed twenty-seven characters which must be admitted to be alphabetic" (Taylor, The Alphabet, vol. i. p. 24); this statement is followed by the conclusion that the Maya system of writing was "superior in simplicity and convenience to that employed ... by the great Assyrian nation at the epoch of its greatest power and glory." Dr. Taylor ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... Sovereignty, and Their Principal Administrative Divisions (FIPS PUB 10-4) is maintained by the Office of the Geographer and Global Issues (Department of State) and published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (Department of Commerce). These two-character alphabetic codes are included in the text of the Factbook in the Data code entry under the Government category. FIPS 10-4 codes are intended for general use throughout the US Government, especially in activities ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... an alphabet. Unfortunately they never gave up their older methods of writing and learned to rely upon alphabetic signs alone. Egyptian hieroglyphics [11] are a curious jumble of object- pictures, symbols of ideas, and signs for entire words, separate syllables, and letters. The writing is a museum of all the steps in the development from the ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... to alphabetic toils, Alert I met the dame with jocund smiles; First at the form, my task for ever true, A little favourite rapidly I grew: And oft she stroked my head with fond delight, Held me a pattern to the dunce's ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White |
