"Attainable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... get some editorship that will answer my purpose. Frank Pierce, who was with us at college, offered me his influence to obtain an office in the Exploring Expedition; but I believe that he was mistaken in supposing that a vacancy existed. If such a post were attainable, I should certainly accept it; for, though fixed so long to one spot, I have always had a desire to run round the world.... I intend in a week or two to come out of my owl's nest, and not return till late in the ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... ministry, his practical mind, more clear-sighted than foreseeing, was alarmed at the absence of all influences for the government of Ireland. The tranquillity which might result from a reformed tenure of the soil, must, if attainable, be a distant blessing, and at present he saw only the obstacles to its fulfilment—prejudiced landlords, and the claims and necessities of pauper millions. He shrank from a theory which might be an illusion. He ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... are matters affecting the happiness of the homes of England, and we, who are the representatives and guardians of those homes, when the grand question of war is before us, should know at least that we have a case—that success is probable—and that an object is attainable, which may be commensurate with ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... a means of bettering their own condition, and prospectively that of their posterity, but also, as an end for its own sake, conferring on them privileges, and a social estimation not otherwise attainable. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... how far St. Francis himself adopted it from others; but a conviction that holiness of life had deteriorated in the Church and the cloister by reason of the excessive wealth of monks and ecclesiastics was prevalent everywhere, and a belief was growing that sanctity was attainable only by those who were ready to part with all their worldly possessions and give to such as needed. Even before St. Francis had applied to Innocent the Third, the poor men of Lyons had come to Rome begging for papal sanction ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... of education dawned upon me. I saw other white boys going to school; I saw the difference between them and myself that education was rapidly making and I realized that I was growing up as ignorant and uncultured as the slave boys who were my only attainable companions. ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... 'Uncertainty of the Second Degree,' 'Molecular Uncertainty.' Then I added more power, and reduced the field, and got 'Uncertainty of the Third Degree'—'Atomic Uncertainty.' There is 'Uncertainty of the Fourth Degree.' It is barely attainable with ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... reveries of fancy, and to practice them is but a visionary dream. No, my friends, wealth supplies our animal wants, and if virtue be wanting, it leaves our minds in wretched starvation and our brightest joys in night! Happiness is equally attainable by the rich and the poor. It consists in a union of heart among mankind, in a union of action in the pursuit of virtue, and in the kindlier feelings of our nature. In fine, it consists in a willing obedience to the ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... have detained our fleet in the West Indies until the hurricane of September, 1898, swept over the Caribbean. We had then no reserve to replace armored ships lost or damaged. But, for such persistence of action, there is needed in each unit of the "fleet in being" an efficiency rarely attainable, and liable to be lost by unforeseen accident at a critical moment. Where effect, nay, safety, depends upon mere celerity of movement, as in retreat, a crippled ship means a lost ship; or a lost fleet, if the body sticks to its disabled member. Such efficiency it is probable Cervera's ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... the setting up of a nominally independent Irish Parliament had always seemed but a poor achievement when compared with the change which their national ambition longed for and which the conditions of the hour to all appearance conspired to render attainable. These young men were now filled with all the passion of the French Revolution; they had always longed for the creation of an independent Ireland; they insisted that Grattan's compromise had already proved a failure, and in France, the enemy of England, ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... their relation to the motions of planets, satellites, or other solar bodies? On the present conception of the Aether such a result is an absolute impossibility. With the theory of the Aether, however, to be submitted to the reader in this work, the result is possible and attainable. If, therefore, such a result is philosophically proved, as I submit will be done, then we shall have greater evidence still that the theory so propounded is a more perfect theory than the one at present ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... they know not whither); but also secure Protestants, who, abusing the description of old given of faith, say that it implies an assured knowledge in the person who believes of the love of God in Christ to him in particular: this assurance is no doubt attainable, and many believers do comfortably enjoy the same, as our divines prove unanswerably against the Popish doctors who maintain the necessity of perpetual doubting, and miscall comfortable assurance the Protestant's presumption. But notwithstanding that comfortable assurance doth ordinarily accompany ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... she loved her cousin too sincerely to be angry, A secret suspicion that Eve was right, too, came in aid of her affection, and while her little foot moved, she maintained her good- nature, a task not always attainable for those who believe that their own "superlatives" scarcely reach to other people's "positives." At this critical moment, when there was so much danger of a jar in the feelings of these two young ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... them. He thought of abolishing the distinction between Romans and Italians, and enfranchising the entire peninsula. These measures were good in themselves—essential, indeed, if the Roman conquests were to form a compact and permanent dominion. But the object was not attainable on the road on which Gracchus had entered. The vagabond part of the constituency was well contented with what it had obtained—a life in the city, supported at the public expense, with politics and games for its amusements. It had not the least inclination to ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... interesting, if it were possible, to learn how much out of their own pockets the propagandists of unbelief have expended during this same decade upon the irreligious education of the children of their countrymen! Were the truth attainable, the amount expended by them would be found to bear to the amount received by them from their propaganda of unbelief much less than the proportion of Falstaff's 'pennyworth of bread' to his 'intolerable deal of sack!' While the Catholics of France have ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... Wellington. On the 14th of November, 1809, he wrote from his army in Spain to Lord Liverpool, then at the head of the British Government,—"In all times and places the sick-list of the army amounts to ten per cent of all."[17] He seemed to consider this the lowest attainable rate of sickness, and he hoped to be able to reduce that of his own army to it: this is more than five times as great as the rate of sickness among male civilians of the army-ages. The sickness in Lord Wellington's army, at the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... equally sturdy specimens of Saxon descent, and both worked for the masses. Canon Kingsley, as he would admit to-day, was before his time, and in aiding the Chartist movement made a fatal mistake. Canon Kingsley, as shown in Alton Locke, endeavoured to raise the masses to heights attainable only by men of education and men of thought, and to-day the recoil of that pernicious doctrine is ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... after an interval of ten years, we have thought it well, not only to carry on our story of the Sovereign and her realm to the latest attainable point, but also to give some account of the advance made and the work accomplished by the Methodist Church, which, youngest of the greater Nonconformist denominations, has acted more powerfully than any other among them on the religious and social ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... they lived," every feature distinct, every attitude preserved, even the slight accidents of costume and circumstance placed before the eye with almost living accuracy. Plutarch's Lives is by far the most important work of ancient literature; from this exhibition of the force, dignity, and energy attainable by human character. No man of intelligence can read its pages without forming a higher conception of the capabilities of human nature; and thus, to a certain extent, kindling in himself a spirit ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... by Arabic authors. In philosophy, as in medicine, he had studied the teachings of the various schools of thought, and did not bind himself to any sect in particular. He disagreed with the Sceptics in their belief that no such thing as certainty was attainable, and it was his custom in cases of extreme difficulty to suspend his judgment; for instance, in reference to the nature of the soul, he wrote that he had not been able to come to a ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... the project of a partition may at first blind the eyes of the confederacy, or however each of them may hope to outwit the other in the progress or in the end, the embarrassments that will arise are insurmountable. But even were the object attainable, it would not be of such general advantage to the parties as the neutrality of France, which costs them nothing, and to obtain which they would formerly have gone ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... this water, (salt was not even hinted at, the market price of that article being four dollars a pound at Andersonville,) it was placed on a strip of wood before the fire, to bake up to the half-raw point, that being the highest perfection attainable in Drake's kitchen: for a range and a steady heat find the baking of meal, so mixed, no easy matter. Eight ounces of meal make a cake six inches long, five broad, and half an inch thick: that is to say, Drake's dinner and supper for that day, and his breakfast and dinner for the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... the table with his finger, and a noble portrait too; certainly not delicate in outline, nor representing any of the qualities of the face dependent on rich outline, but getting as much of the face as in that manner was attainable. That is noble conventionalism, and Egyptian work on granite, or illuminator's work in glass, is all conventional in the same sense, but not conventionally false. The two noblest and truest carved lions I have ever seen, are the two granite ones in the ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... his battles and acts of prowess, stirred up Patroclus and nine others to single combat with Hector. For the exhortation that adds deed to word and example and proper emulation is animating and moving and stimulating, and with its impulse and resolution inspires hope that the things we aim at are attainable and not impossible. That is why in the choruses at Lacedaemon the old ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... laborers as such. The young man who today may be hired as a laborer at monthly wages, may in five years from now be himself a proprietor, owning the soil he cultivates and paying wages to laborers. The upward road is open to all, and its highest elevation is attainable by ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... Brighton on the day, as he notes, upon which one Mister was hanged for attempting murder—being almost the last man in England hanged for anything short of actual murder. He entered Eton on April 15, 1842, and was placed in the 'Remove,' the highest class attainable ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the apparent consequence; and yet the wearer of this was the smiling and even-tempered man of the new uniform—going back to-morrow! The world has not lost all its heroes yet; and some of them have the same fancy for a clean shirt and spotless broadcloth, when attainable, as Murat displayed for a velvet cloak, or white plume and plenty of gold embroidery on his trousers, when making the most reckless of charges at the head of the most dashing cavalry in the world. "That," said the Captain, closing up ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... France to participate in an international exposition to be held at Paris, from April 15 to November 15, 1900, and authorized the President to appoint a special commissioner with a view to securing all attainable information necessary to a full and complete understanding by Congress in regard to the participation of this Government ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... debris of a whirlwind and not have looked worse. As a natural consequence of all this slatternly disorder, fire is no uncommon occurrence; and when a fire begins, it seldom stops till it has licked the whole place clean—a condition not attainable by any ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... sure of thee, sure of thy capacity, sure to match my mood with thine, I should never think again of trifles, in relation to thy comings and goings. I am not very wise; my moods are quite attainable; and I respect thy genius; it is to me as yet unfathomed; yet dare I not presume in thee a perfect intelligence of me, and so thou art to me a delicious torment. Thine ever, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... confirmed their apprehensions: Wolsey had chastised them with whips; Sir Thomas More would chastise them with scorpions; and the philosopher of the Utopia, the friend of Erasmus, whose life was of blameless beauty, whose genius was cultivated to the highest attainable perfection, was to prove to the world that the spirit of persecution is no peculiar attribute of the pedant, the bigot, or the fanatic, but may coexist with the fairest graces of the human character. The lives of remarkable men usually illustrate some ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... is excellence more appreciated than in that of frying. A dish of filets de sole or cutlets, crisp and golden brown, is an ornament to any table, and is seldom disdained by any one. Apropos of filets de sole; it is very high-sounding yet very attainable, as I shall show. I was staying with a friend early in spring, a lady always anxious for table novelties. "Oh, do tell me what fish to order, I should like something fried, now that you are here to tell cook how to do it; she hasn't the wildest idea, although she would be astounded to ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen
... my dear, and have been foolish enough to be constant all my life to a single idea; and yet I would not part with this shadow for any attainable reality. ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... admit its truthfulness as applied to a large majority of our women of culture and leisure, those who should have availed themselves of the privileges already theirs and labored for what the devotion of Mrs. Nichols made attainable. They have neither done this, nor tried to enlighten their less favored sisters throughout the State, the great mass of whom are obliged to exert every energy of body and mind to furnish food, clothes and shelter for themselves ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... putting it out of the enemy's power to use effectually the common communications or materially to interfere with our use of them. We find the means employed were two: decision by battle, and blockade. Of the two, the first was the less frequently attainable, but it was the one the British service always preferred. It was only natural that it should be so, seeing that our normal position was one of preponderance over our enemy, and so long as the policy of preponderance is ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... the endurance of hardships, and soon felt the benefit he reaped from it. The fastidiousness of his nature was being conquered, his reluctance to rebuke forced out of being a hindrance, and no doubt the long-sought grace of humility was rendered far more attainable by the obedient ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... husband's death, (he was the younger son of a well-connected Irish family, born in Ireland, in or near Coleraine, we believe, and a major in the Enniskillen Dragoons,) sought a residence for her family in Edinburgh, where education and good society are attainable to persons of moderate fortunes, if they are "well-born;" but the extraordinary artistic skill of her son Robert required a wider field, and she brought her children to London sooner than she had intended, that his promising talents might be cultivated. We believe the greater part of "Thaddeus ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... glance of admiration for the young man who could look two comely women in the face and serenely own that he was poor. Mrs. Carroll tried to appear at ease, and, gliding out of personalities, expatiated on the comfort of "living in a land where fame and fortune were attainable by all who chose to earn them," and the contempt she felt for those "who had no sympathy with the humbler classes, no interest in the welfare of the race," and many more moral reflections as new and original as the Multiplication-Table or the Westminster Catechism. To all of which Mr. ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... grave wrong unto thee, recollecting his former service, shouldst thou forgive that offender. Those also that have become offenders from ignorance and folly should be forgiven for learning and wisdom are not always easily attainable by man. They that having offended thee knowingly, plead ignorance should be punished, even if their offences be trivial. Such crooked men should never be pardoned. The first offence of every creature should be forgiven. The second offence, however, ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... court, upon all Europe. In that complex but wholly Teutonic genealogy lately under research, lay a much-prized thread of descent from the fifth Emperor Charles, and Carl, under direction, read with much readiness to be impressed all that was attainable concerning the great ancestor, finding there in truth little enough to reward his pains. One hint he took, however. He determined to assist at ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... pure of envy and greed, and therefore all mankind will be without malice, and there will be nothing to divorce the heart from reason. Then life will be one great service to man! His figure will be raised to lofty heights—for to free men all heights are attainable. Then we shall live in truth and freedom and in beauty, and those will be accounted the best who will the more widely embrace the world with their hearts, and whose love of it will be the profoundest; those will be the best who will be the freest; for in them is the greatest ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... imparts the greatest efficacy to the imagination. Thus art always represents divinity, and the human relationship to art constitutes religion. Whatever we acquire through art comes from God; it is a divine inspiration, which sets up an attainable goal for ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... bustle that made the days pass so swiftly. The daily drives in the low, comfortable carriage soon began to tell favorably on her health, and she did not find it at all hard to enter into the amusements planned for her benefit; but among all the pleasures that were attainable, one alone stood out above all others, one that neither Elsie nor Dexie ever cared to miss, and that was—to ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... busy world; your immediate object is the affairs, the interests, and the history, the constitutions, the customs, and the manners of the several parts of Europe. In this, any man of common sense may, by common application, be sure to excel. Ancient and modern history are, by attention, easily attainable. Geography and chronology the same, none of them requiring any uncommon share of genius or invention. Speaking and Writing, clearly, correctly, and with ease and grace, are certainly to be acquired, by reading the best authors with care, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... all. These incidents must be probable, must be such as are consistent with the observed sequences of the world. The view of man, therefore, which we attain through them, can only be that which is attainable by observation of outward actions and events; or, in other words, according to the distinction which we have attempted to establish, it is the natural view, not the ideal. Its character corresponds to its origin. Observation shows us man not as self-determined, but as the ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... conceptions are the growth of ages, the creations of a nation's spirit; and artist and poet, filled full with the power of that spirit, have but given them form, and nothing more than form. Nor would the form itself have been attainable by any isolated talent. No genius can dispense with experience; the aberrations of power, unguided or ill-guided, are ever in proportion to its intensity, and life is not long enough to recover from inevitable mistakes. Noble conceptions already existing, and a noble school of ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... British shores, equally in peace and in war. It invites to its aid the humane and the brave, urging them to the rescue of their fellow-creatures, by supplying them with every means, that their attempts may be made with all attainable safety to themselves—conferring honorary and pecuniary rewards for their generous efforts—rendering every practicable relief to the destitute widows and families of those who unfortunately may perish in their attempts to save the lives of others, and for those who happily may be thus preserved. ...
— An Appeal to the British Nation on the Humanity and Policy of Forming a National Institution for the Preservation of Lives and Property from Shipwreck (1825) • William Hillary
... vague or unconscious, tendency. Even when we speak of a strong or decided inclination we do not express the intensity of desire. Desire has a wide range, from the highest objects to the lowest; desire is for an object near at hand, or near in thought, and viewed as attainable; a wish may be for what is remote or uncertain, or even for what is recognized as impossible. Craving is stronger than hankering; hankering may be the result of a fitful and capricious appetite; craving may be ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... artificial means, fermenting manure being relied upon for the purpose; and the loss of this heat has to be checked more carefully by straw matting, and, in the far North, by shutters also. In constructing it, horse-manure, with plenty of litter, and about a quarter its bulk in leaves, if attainable, all having been well mixed together, is thrown into a pile, and left for a few days until steam escapes, when the mass is again thrown over and left for two or three days more, after which it is thrown into the pit (or it may be placed directly on the surface) ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory
... even some past, generations, of the curators of any library, whether cathedral or private. It is, at all events, desirable to trace the pedigree of existing MSS. of important works, where such information is attainable. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... with less artificial, cadavre, fastidious touch; but Mr. Shorthouse, speaking strictly, as to temper and tempo is a trifle more rugged; and never a shadow of suspense suffered he to stir a hand's breadth, that is, rest 'twixt poetic certainty and doubt, lest the ultimate end should all-attainable be or not. For freedom from this, and other literary ambiguity, yet never manifesting anxiety of freeing himself in prose from its insidious and arbitrary restraint, I attribute his tragical, subtle, gentle power of "connection," liaison; feeling for time; planetary ...
— Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes • J. Atwood.Slater
... Happiness, Philosophical and Popular, answered from v.19 to 77. II. It is the End of all Men, and attainable by all, v.30. God intends Happiness to be equal; and to be so, it must be social, since all particular Happiness depends on general, and since He governs by general, not particular Laws, v.37. As it is necessary for Order, and the peace and welfare of Society, that external ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... and has been doing good work there ever since. Mr. Chalmers was a very valuable missionary, and his labours among the Quop and Merdang Dyaks bore much fruit in after years; but he also fell ill from the climate, and the food which was attainable up country. In 1860, he also made up his mind to follow Mr. Glover to Australia. There are no doubt many difficulties for Englishmen living in Sarawak jungles. Some become acclimatized to them, others cannot bear the low diet, the loneliness, the apathy and indifference of the ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... and to attract those of matter according to the same law. Those of matter are supposed to repel each other and attract those of electricity. This theory requires us, however, to suppose the mass of the electric fluid so small that no attainable positive or negative electrification has yet perceptibly increased or diminished the mass or the weight of a body, and it has not yet been able to assign sufficient reasons why the positive rather than the negative electrification should be ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... the fruitful fields, but from the darkness of the deep mines. Power and independence come with the digging and working of the baser metals; full civilization waits upon the production of enough of the royal metals to give to the people wealth in a form that enables them to command the best attainable talent and forces to serve them, and enough of leisure to enable them to ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... final cause, our admiration and hopes—all these in truth are no more than our feeble cry as, in the depths of the unknown, we clash against what is more unknowable still; and this feeble cry declares the highest degree of individual existence attainable for us on this mute and impenetrable surface, even as the flight of the condor, the song of the nightingale, reveal to them the highest degree of existence their species allows. But the evocation of this feeble cry, whenever opportunity offers, is none the less one of our most ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... two o'clock in the morning, and I had to walk home, not a vehicle being attainable. I did not know my way to my headquarters, and I had no friend to go with me, but I fastened on a stray gentleman, who proved to be an ex-member of the House, and who accompanied me to 17 Dover Street, where I sought my bed with a satisfying ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... to discard spiritual things, but to teach us, while in the flesh, not to attempt to break through present limitations, not to seek to know more than has been made known of the unseen and invisible, but to keep the inquiries of our minds and the action of society within the bounds of knowledge now attainable, and extend our curious researches and speculations only as far as we can here have solid ground ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... had gone insane. It was the unanimous conviction among business men that no sane man could possibly behave in such fashion. On the other hand, neither his prolonged steady drinking nor his affair with Dede became public, so the only conclusion attainable was that the wild financier from Alaska had gone lunatic. And Daylight had grinned and confirmed the suspicion by refusing to ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... absolutely and always Sisyphists. Very certainly they are not such in their personal transactions; very certainly each one of them will procure for himself by barter, what by direct production would be attainable only at a higher price. But I maintain that they are Sisyphists when they prevent the country from acting ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... therefore, originality consists only in the classification of the principles into a systematic, progressive whole, and in arranging a simpler and more practical method of applying them, thus making the desired results much more quickly attainable. ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... a little alarmed by all this, and designed a conference with the old housekeeper, Mrs. Stubbs, to inquire into her master's health, but this was not attainable that night, and she could only go to bed in the friendly old wainscoted room, whose white and gold carved monsters on the mantelpiece were well-nigh as familiar as the dove in Woolstone-lane; but, oh! how it made her long for the mother whom ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... no longer except in semi-barbarous countries, we must consider feather work as a relic of a past higher civilization which has died out, rather than simply as the effort of the savage to deck himself in the brightest colours attainable. ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... DE LARGE was born at Aiken, South Carolina, March 15, 1842; received such an education as was then attainable; was a farmer; was an agent of the Freedmen's Bureau from May, 1867, to April, 1868, when he was elected a member of the State Constitutional Convention; was a member of the House of Representatives of the State Legislature ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... heartily that he joined in with her, though he did not know what had caused her amusement. He took pleasure in watching her when she laughed. Her statuesque beauty yielded then to a warm, pulsating life, which transformed her and made her seem to him more human, more attainable. For he had never shaken off the belief that she and a divine agency were closely ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... the great discomfiture of wretched digestive organs, at South America, and thank all the fates, I have done three-fourths of it. Writing plain English grows with me more and more difficult, and never attainable. As for your pretending that you will read anything so dull as my pure geological descriptions, lay not such a flattering unction on my soul (On the same subject he wrote to Fitz-Roy: "I have sent my 'South American Geology' to Dover Street, and you will get it, no doubt, in the ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... arrogant, and self-satisfied by those who do not understand the distress that has gone before, nor the disillusionment which will follow soon enough, when the hand is at rest and cool judgment marks the distance between a perfect ideal and an attainable reality. Moreover, the less the lack of perfection seems to others, the more formidable it generally looks ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... to his physical defect, was not a great climber, and we are informed, on the authority of his nurse, that he never even scaled the easily attainable summit of the "steep frowning" hill of which he has made such effective use. But the impression of it from a distance was none the less genuine. In the midst of a generous address, in Don Juan, to Jeffrey, he again refers to the same associations with the ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... from operations based upon a state of insecurity. Powerful as these interests are, there is no reason why they should be permitted to stand in the way of the realization of a better condition of affairs, should that prove attainable. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... not without a dysgenic after-effect. The very fact that recognition is attainable by all, means that democracy leads to social ambition; and social ambition leads to smaller families. This influence is manifested mainly in the women, whose desire to climb the social ladder is increased by the ease of ascent which is due to lack ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... the date and the name of the informant, in order that those who use the collection may know exactly what it is that they are handling. In all such matters, absolute accuracy, absolute literalness, wherever attainable, is surely the one thing necessary. Not all the charm of diction, not all the ingenious theories in the world, can for a moment be set in the balance against rigid exactness, even if some of the concomitants of rigid exactness are such as to spoil the ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... He suggested a scheme continuing a President and Senate during good behaviour, and giving the federal government power to appoint governors of States and to veto state legislation. In the notes of a speech presenting this plan, he disclaimed the belief that it was "attainable," but thought it "a model which we ought to approach as near as possible."[33] After the Madison plan had been preferred, however, Hamilton gave it earnest support, and although he could not cast New York's vote, since a majority of the State's representatives had withdrawn, he was privileged ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... understand that, it is all over with philosophy in the present sense of the word. In this way one discards the absolute truth, unattainable for the individual, and follows instead the relative truths attainable by way of the positive sciences, and the collection of their results by means of the dialectic mode of thought. With Hegel universal philosophy comes to an end, on the one hand, because he comprehended in his system its entire ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... gases, the passage in of food materials and out of enzymes and products of metabolism, and thus each unit of protoplasm obtains opportunities of immediate action, the results of which are removed with equal rapidity, not attainable in more complex multi-cellular organisms. To put the matter in another way, if we could imagine all the living cells of a large oak or of a horse, having given up the specializations of function impressed on them during evolution and simply ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... a branch that doubles the attainable height. The bustling crowd hastily scrambles up it, reaches the tip of the topmost twigs and thence sends out threads that attach themselves to every surrounding object. These form so many suspension-bridges; and my beasties nimbly run along them, incessantly passing to and ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... an admiral's powers of control cease when the battle joins. Under the circumstances, it is probable that Nelson, being so far incapacitated as he thought himself, should have transferred the direction of affairs, formally, to the next senior officer, with general orders to secure the best results attainable. ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... applicant before he gains acceptance; his condition when he is duly installed in his office; and the closing scene of his life's drama. You may perhaps suppose that his situation, whatever its drawbacks, is at least attainable without much trouble; that you have but to will it, and the thing is done in a trice. Far from it. Much tramping about is in store for you, much kicking of heels. You will rise early, and stand long before your patron's closed door; ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... consequences if AEnone had been free to pursue the investigation as far as she wished—to send for other books to aid her—to consult more learned teachers, who, though perhaps hiding in secret shelter, were yet attainable with proper search, cannot be known. It is not improbable that, in the end, one more might have been added to the list of those few Roman women of high degree who even then gave up all their rank and state ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... seal of the Abbey of Shapp (anciently Hepp), said not to be attainable by the editors of the late splendid edition of the Monasticon, are preserved in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 73, March 22, 1851 • Various
... Female College in that city, his son Sidney had sailed recently from Charleston to France, and expected to travel through Sicily, Italy, and other parts of Europe on account of his health. He was giving his younger sons the best education then attainable in Georgia. ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... of the versification. Homer (as has been said) is perpetually applying the sound to the sense, and varying it on every new subject. This is indeed one of the most exquisite beauties of poetry, and attainable by very few: I only know of Homer eminent for it in the Greek, and Virgil in the Latin. I am sensible it is what may sometimes happen by chance, when a writer is warm, and fully possessed of his image: however, it ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... himself as they could be. This is in the truest sense the origin of creation and of the world, as we shall do well in believing on the testimony of wise men: God desired that all things should be good and nothing bad, so far as this was attainable.' This is the leading thought in the Timaeus, just as the IDEA of Good is the leading thought of the Republic, the one expression describing the personal, the other the impersonal Good or God, differing in form rather than in substance, and both equally implying ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... damsel of 20 carats was estimated at 13s. 4d.! This is sad nonsense; but Marsden would not have made the mistake had he not been fortunate enough to live before the introduction of Competitive Examinations. This Kungurat business was in fact a competitive examination in beauty; total marks attainable 24; no candidate to pass who did not get 20 or 21. Carat expresses n / 24, not ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... which the Historical interest goes on diminishing; and only the Biographical, were anything of Biography attainable, is left. Friedrich's industrial, economic and other Royal activities are as beautiful as ever; but cannot to our readers, in our limits, be described with advantage. Events of world-interest, after the Partition of Poland, do not fall out, or Friedrich ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... things as the subject of this chapter that special enactments of Congress are demanded. Health and comfort—so far as duly attainable under the circumstances—should be legally guaranteed to the man-of-war's-men; and not left to the discretion ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... to inquire whenever I was ignorant, would have protracted the undertaking without end and perhaps without much improvement"; and instead of attempting the impossible and achieving nothing, he was wise enough and modest enough, by attempting only the attainable, to place himself in a position to achieve all that ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... advantage of reduced resistance in this form, there is another of nearly, if not quite, equal importance, in the facility it affords of directing its course; an object scarcely, if at all, attainable with a Balloon of the usual description however powerfully invested with the means of motion; as any one will readily perceive who has ever noticed or experienced the difficulty, or rather the impossibility, of guiding a tub afloat in the water, compared ...
— A Project for Flying - In Earnest at Last! • Robert Hardley
... Boheme, ii. 146-148, 136, &c.] This quite disgusted D'Harcourt with the Passau speculation and these grim Khevenhuller outposts. He straightway took to collecting Magazines; lodging himself in the attainable Towns thereabouts, Deggendorf the chief strength for him; and gave up fighting till perhaps better times might arrive." We will wish him good success in the victualling department, hope to hear no more of him in this History;—and shall say only ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... doubted. But it is to be remembered withal, that always on the back of these compulsory adventures there followed English bishops, priests and preachers; whereby to the open-minded, conviction, to all degrees of it, was attainable, while silence and passivity became the duty or necessity of the ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... ascended the river, passing Johnson on the way in the Mohave Valley, a few miles above the Needles. The latter had gone to ferry Lieutenant Beale and his outfit across the river. So in reality he was ahead of Ives, for he entered the Black Canyon to the highest point attainable by steamers before Ives did, and thus got the better of the man who had refused to hire him and ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... seen, and where little could be heard, in preference to mixing with the spirit-stirring confusion in the streets, or observing the Gothic encampment from such positions on the ramparts as were easily attainable to all. In addition to the secresy offered by the loneliness of this patch of ground to whatever employments were undertaken on it, was the further advantage afforded by the trees and thickets which covered its lower end, and which would effectually screen an ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... fairies, or the fiends. To be sure, we should have been glad if we could have got "light, more light" thrown on our steps, but, failing that, we tried to find our way as best we could in the mist. We loved that never-attainable Will-o'-the-Wisp, "Truth," for its own dear Bohemian sake; so, guided by Fancy and Fantasy, we made frequent inroads into the boundless land where unknown forces pick up our poor dear little conception of the Impossible, ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... superabundance and not poverty. That he was overlanguaged at first there can be no doubt, and in this was implied the possibility of falling back to the perfect mean of diction. It is only by the rich that the costly plainness, which at once satisfies the taste and the imagination, is attainable. ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... while in pursuit of objects which are attainable only by the pleasure of another. The truly independent are those who not only do not solicit favours, but those who do not want them: and there is seen too often, among needy and struggling men of merit, an irritable pride, a "fiert," arising not from a sense of independence, but a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... the moment the owner's back was turned. When Gray said "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise," he forgot that it is godlike to be wise; and since nobody wants bliss particularly, or could stand more than a very brief taste of it if it were attainable, and since everybody, by the deepest law of the Life Force, desires to be godlike, it is stupid, and indeed blasphemous and despairing, to hope that the thirst for knowledge will either diminish or consent to be subordinated to any other end whatsoever. ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... which border on the unattainable. For the transcendentalist in politics and philanthropy, he had only contempt. The propulsive force of an idea in his own mind depended wholly upon its appeal to his practical judgment. His was the philosophy of the attainable. Results that were approximately just and fair satisfied him. He was not disposed to sacrifice immediate advantage to future gain. His Celtic temperament made him think rapidly; and what imagination failed to supply, ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... afford little Ned every advantage to these natural gifts, Doctor Grim nevertheless failed not to provide the best attainable instructor for such positive points of a polite education as his own fierce criticism, being destructive rather than generative, would not suffice for. There was a Frenchman in the town—a M. Le Grand, secretly calling himself a Count—who ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... The God Brahma, while on earth, was set to fill up a valley, but he had only a basket given him in which to fetch earth for this purpose; so is it with us all. No leaps, no starts will avail us, by patient crystallization alone the equal temper of wisdom is attainable. Sit at home and the spirit-world will look in at your window with moonlit eyes; run out to find it, and rainbow and golden cup will have vanished and left you the beggarly child you were. The better part of wisdom is a sublime prudence, a pure and patient ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... press can no more be free to publish anything whatsoever, however offensive it may be, than persons are free to perform such acts as necessarily subject them, even in states where there is the greatest attainable degree of liberty, to condemnation and punishment. If every organized community possesses, as it certainly does possess, the right so to stigmatize an offending citizen, and that without any violation ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... in her responded to these ideas. Hopelessly defeated in the one way of aspiration which promised a large life, her being, rebellious against the martyrdom it had suffered, went forth eagerly towards the only happiness which was any longer attainable. Her beauty was a dead thing; never by that means could she command homage. But there is love, ay, and passionate love, which can be independent of mere charm of face. In one man only could she hope to inspire it; successful in that, she would taste ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... ambitions of a novelist are not easily attainable. To combine incident, character, and romance in a uniform whole, to alternate telling dramatic situation with effects of poetry and suggestion, to breathe into the entire conception a profound wisdom, construct it with absolute ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... pernicious when it is purchased at an excessive price, or when it stands in the way of advantages greater and more attainable. The worse a government is, the more effect does it produce upon the manners and habits of its subjects. The influence of a government of favourites and minions over the community, is as prodigious as it is baneful. Every innocent pleasure is a blessing. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... attitude of certain portions of the general public toward this class of phenomena is akin to that of a community of blind and deaf persons, satisfied that their own "three sense" standard is the highest possible one attainable by living creatures and that all variation therefrom must be considered as "abnormal." In such a community there would occasionally be born certain individuals possessed of the senses of sight and hearing, in addition ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... to be. This at least was greatly enjoyed by the brothers. There was a constant and lively correspondence between them, on all matters of interest, past, present, and future, and on all matters of speculation attainable by either mind; and though judgments and likings were often much at variance, and the issues, to the same argument, were not always the same with each; on one point, the delight of communication, they ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... endeavour to put to shame the vices and follies of those licentious times, as much as he perhaps exasperated conviction rather than excited contrition, he would have carried satire to the highest possible pitch, both of literary excellence and moral utility. With every abatement of attainable perfection, we hesitate not to place him at the head of this arduous department ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... and loss. There is probably not a crop of any kind grown in the great West that would not be immensely benefited if it could be irrigated once or twice a year; and probably anywhere that water is attainable the cost of irrigation would be abundantly paid in the yield from year to year. Farming in the West with even a little irrigation would not be the game of hazard that it is. And it may further be ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... Crooked Lane, where the entrance was. It gave him a sense that she had her part in this squalor, which was not altogether distressful in that it also localised her in the warm, living, habitable world, and helped to make her thinkable and attainable. Then he went to his room at the club and found there a note from Miss Howe, written apparently to forgive him in advance, to say that she had not expected him. "Friendly creature!" he said as he turned out the lamp, and smiled in the dark to think that already ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... fitted for success elsewhere, can succeed in the wrong field, or in rendering services for which he is not qualified. Nor is complete success attainable by a man unless he develops the best that is in him. Even if he brings to the right market his utmost ability, he may fail miserably by making a false impression that he is unfitted for the opportunity he wants. ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... life. A weak and sickly child. Body white as milk, curly white hair; big, queer blue eyes, queer by reason of their deep, serious expression. Very intelligent and ugly. She will be one of the riddles; she will suffer, she will seek and find nothing, will always be seeking what is least attainable. ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... classification. We recognise such generalities as pleasure, pain, love, anger, through the property of mental or intellectual discrimination that accompanies in our mind the fact of emotion. A certain degree of precision is attainable by this mode of mental comparison and analysis; the farther we can carry such precision the better; but that is no reason why it should stand alone to the neglect of the corporeal embodiments through which one mind reveals itself to others. The companionship ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... toward inclusion of the privilege against self-incrimination within the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In all but a few of the forced confession cases, however, the results achieved by application of the Fair Trial doctrine differ scarcely at all from those attainable by incorporation of the privilege ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... easy to prove that it is attainable. In one sense it is not attainable, at least under the conditions of human life which fall within our experience, from which alone we have a right to speak. For, as I shall strive to show in a succeeding chapter, the essence ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... that to execute this scheme demanded time, application, and money, none of which my present situation would permit me to devote to it. At first it appeared that an attainable degree of skill and circumspection would enable me to arrive, by means of counterfeit bills, to the pinnacle of affluence and honour. My error was detected by a closer scrutiny, and I finally saw nothing in this path but enormous perils and ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... the Author seems to have such a conception of the subject as were well worth a better setting forth; and if this is all he has yet written of his Book, I could almost advise him to start afresh, and remodel all this second chapter. This is a high demand; but the excellence attainable by him seems also high. The rule throughout is, that events should speak. Commentary ought to be sparing; clear insight, definite conviction, brought about with a minimum of Commentary; that is always the ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... because it is an obvious rule of Art that effects should be made to spring as directly as possible from their causes:—no one as yet having been weak enough to deny that the peculiar elevation in question is at least most readily attainable in the poem. It by no means follows, however, that the incitements of Passion, or the precepts of Duty, or even the lessons of Truth, may not be introduced into a poem, and with advantage; for they may subserve incidentally, ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... manner or with the same effect among the various members as before. If the scheme according to which the life process of the group was carried on under the earlier conditions gave approximately the highest attainable result—under the circumstances—in the way of efficiency or facility of the life process of the group; then the same scheme of life unaltered will not yield the highest result attainable in this respect under the altered conditions. Under ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... literature, and most people think they have it." But this would be a little short-sighted, and only excusable because of the way in which the word "genius" is too commonly bandied about. As a matter of fact, there is not so very much genius in the world; and a great deal of more than fair performance is attainable and attained by more or less decent allowances or exhibitions of talent. In prose, more especially, it is possible to gain a very high place, and to deserve it, without any genius at all: though it is difficult, if not impossible, to do so in verse. But what ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... four of these questions, while fully developed mysticism seems to me mistaken, I yet believe that, by sufficient restraint, there is an element of wisdom to be learned from the mystical way of feeling, which does not seem to be attainable in any other manner. If this is the truth, mysticism is to be commended as an attitude towards life, not as a creed about the world. The meta-physical creed, I shall maintain, is a mistaken outcome of the emotion, although this emotion, as colouring ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... combination of intellectual and physical qualities without which no particular gift would justify his pretensions—intensity of emotion, subtlety of perception, a power of impersonation implying of itself the union of all the natural requirements with a mastery in their display attainable only by consummate art—it is hard to believe that he can ever have been excelled; though doubtless the mingled fire and pathos of Kean transcended in their effect any like exhibition ever witnessed on the stage. Except for the few—if any still survive—who can remember the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... soon after this took his leave. Hugh sate long pondering, as the evening faded into dusk. Was there no certainty, then, attainable? And the answer of his own spirit was that no ready-made certainty was of avail; that a man must begin from the beginning, and construct his own faith from the foundation; that reason must play its part, lead the soul as far as it could, and set it in the right way; but that the spirit ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... nothing, however, to prevent man's becoming as long lived as the oak if he will persevere for many generations in the steps which can alone lead to this result. Another interesting achievement which should be more quickly attainable, though still not in our own time, is the earlier maturity of those animals whose rapid maturity is an advantage to us, but whose longevity is ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... centuries,—not to the aspiring condition which she once held, but to an immunity from annual carnage, and in other respects to a condition of prosperity which, if less than during her popular state, was greater than any else attainable after that popular state had become impossible, from changes in ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... its centrality. Be it remembered that the truly simple life is not gained by meagreness of possessions and interests, but by singleness of aim controlling a seemingly infinite number of detailed means. But this unity dominating a multiplicity of interests is attainable only through the entire mechanism of external government. And again, as the man resides in all the organs of the body, but is himself no organ, and as by the central unity of his life-energy is able to rush the white corpuscles ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... verse; even elegancy itself, though that comes nearest, are one thing. True native poetry is another; in which there is a certain air and spirit which perhaps the most learned and judicious in other arts do not perfectly apprehend, much less is it attainable by any study or industry. Nay, though all the laws of heroic poem, all the laws of tragedy were exactly observed, yet still this tour entrejeant—this poetic energy, if I may so call it, would be required to give life to all the rest; which shines through the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... do not, we believe, militate against the propositions laid down. The qualifications here and there demanded would not, if made, affect the inferences. Though in one instance, where sufficient evidence is not attainable, we have been unable to show that the law of Progress applies; yet there is high probability that the same generalisation holds which holds throughout the rest of creation. Though, in tracing the genesis of Progress, we have frequently ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... which could hardly be said to indicate his rank with certainty, for it was such as young gentlemen sometimes wore while on active exercise in the morning, and which, therefore, was imitated by those of the inferior ranks, as young clerks and tradesmen, because its cheapness rendered it attainable, while it approached more nearly to the apparel of youths of fashion than any other which the manners of the times permitted them to wear. If his air and manner could be trusted, however, this person seemed rather to be ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of them containing five thousand gallons of the still unvexed Catawba. It was there that we made acquaintance with the "Golden Wedding" champagne, the boast of the late proprietor,—an acquaintance which we trust will ripen into an enduring friendship. If there is any better wine than this attainable in the present state of existence, it ought, in consideration of human weakness, to be all poured into the briny deep. It is a very honest cellar, this. Except a little rock candy to aid fermentation, no foreign ingredient is employed, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... sending in their lists to a central bureau. As many as one hundred and twenty different kinds of birds have been counted in a single day by one energetic band of bird-lovers. Such a list is, however, attainable only under exceptionally favorable circumstances and by skilled observers who know their country thoroughly. For most scouts, thirty to forty species on a summer day, and fifty to sixty during the spring migration, would be regarded as ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... for "Free Education." Here then is your opportunity. And it is a magnificent one. Your surplus will enable a wise and paternal Government to give not merely education, free of cost, to every child in the three kingdoms, but will supply it with ample means to infuse the very highest culture attainable into the very dregs of the population. Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, French, Chinese, together with riding, dancing, painting in oil colours, hydrostatics, and the elements of Court etiquette, will, henceforth, comprise the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... among the educated peoples of the world. I always get back to the ideal of the "Golden Ladder," reaching from the Elementary Schools, by Scholarships or "free places," to the Secondary Schools, and from them again to the Universities. This ideal is, unlike some ideals, attainable, and has in repeated instances been attained. Again and again the highest mathematical honours of Cambridge have been won by Elementary Schoolboys, and what is true of mathematics might also be ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... remark that, "the finest landscape is spoiled without a good inn in the foreground"? Time also in our case meant not merely money, but life, and we were therefore compelled to push on day after day, week after week, at the highest rate of speed attainable by our miserable teams, which, to do them justice, did their best. The poor beasts seemed to be instinctively aware that our food would only last for a limited period. When the coast was visible we steered ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... she threw her little arms round her father, and kissed his large, weather-beaten visage all over—eyes, mouth, nose, chin, whiskers, and, in fact, every attainable spot. She did it so vigorously, too, that an observer would have been justified in expecting that her soft, delicate cheeks would be lacerated by the rough contact; but they were not. The result was a heightening of the colour, nothing more. Having ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... hell and of death;" and this same being said once before: "He that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him and will manifest myself unto him." This is a promise direct and personal; not confined to the first apostles, but stated in the most general way as attainable by any one who loves and does the will of Jesus. It seems given to us as some comfort for the unavoidable heart-breaking separations of death that there should be, in that dread unknown, one all-powerful Friend with whom it is possible to commune, and from whose ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... self contemplation of the Eternal, we should have the bliss associated by long habit with the words of the Psalmist: "I shall be satisfied when I awake, with thy likeness." Such bliss, however, is only approximately attainable in moments of mystic transport. And when, as in so many experiences, we see only in part, and have inadequate ideas, faith in the Eternal Whole is needed to ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... perfect greed for our tracts, and the friends say they do more missionary work than we ourselves. If our suffrage advocates only would go into the new settlements at the very beginning, they could mould public sentiment, but they wait until the comforts of life are attainable and then find the ground ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... science asks, Are absolute principles attainable? What are the limits of knowledge? The answer he receives from science itself is not ambiguous. What the moralist asks is, Shall we gain or lose by surrendering human life to the relative spirit? Experience answers that the dominant ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... speedily as possible. I am anxious that you should become not only a first-rate seaman and thorough navigator, but also a polished gentleman, in order that you may be fitted to fill the highest posts attainable in the profession which you have chosen. When I was your age if a man knew enough to enable him to safely navigate his ship from place to place that was about all that was required of him. But times have changed since then; the English have become a nation of ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... mast carrying a square sail. His boat was full of boxes and bales and had a crew of four men. A small skiff was towed astern and another alongside. These Manjour merchants are quite enterprising, and engage in traffic for small profits and large risks when better terms are not attainable. Before the Russian occupation all the trade of the lower Amoor was in Manjour hands. Boats annually descended from San-Sin and Igoon bringing supplies for native use. Sometimes a merchant would spend five or six months making ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... personality. They will enable you to live fully, joyously. They will help you to feel, enjoy, suffer, every moment of each day. It is only when you are thus thrilled with the eternal force of life that you reach the highest pinnacle of attainable capacities and powers. Hidden forces, sometimes marvelous and mysterious, lie within nearly every human soul. Develop, expand and bring out these latent powers. Make your body splendid, your mind supreme; for then you become your real self, you ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... to be met, a monster not of mortal mould, hardly attainable by the senses. Still she was present somehow, and made herself valid. The whirling waters roared and seethed, all were intent upon the maelstrom, Charybdis, the other side; "we looked at her, fearing destruction," and destruction came just from the direction in which they were not looking. ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... discernible results, comfortably placed in a near future. There are other aims, reaching on into the far, slow modes of psychological growth, which must equally determine the choice of the story-teller's material and inform the spirit of her work. These other, less immediately attainable ends, I wish now to consider in relation to the different types of story by which they are ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... or he was an atom, a nonentity, a very worm, and no man. No lawyer at Gray's Inn, no galley slave at the oar, ever worked so hard at his task as Sir Lionel Garrett at his. Ton, to a single man, is a thing attainable enough. Sir Lionel was just gaining the envied distinction, when he saw, courted, and married Lady ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... awful passing away materially signified by the rendering up of that breath or ghost, we cannot at present know, and need not at any time dispute. What we assuredly know is that the states of life and death are different, and the first more desirable than the other, and by effort attainable, whether we understand being "born of the spirit" to signify having the breath of heaven in our flesh, or its power ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... have used it as such. These pages were written to demonstrate, that the bread of government has not been eaten in idleness by its different officers; and that if the honour of having deserved well of one's country be attainable by sacrificing good name, domestic comforts, and dearest connections in her service, the officers of this settlement have ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... took him with me, and with another to carry some breakfast, off we started at about five A.M. The ascent at first was so abrupt, that, although in pretty good walking condition by this time, I found myself halting very frequently to admire the prospect. Having attained the greatest height actually attainable, we spied quietly grazing, about half a mile off, some half dozen little animals, which my "sportsman" declared to be Ibex, and down Aye went again, best pace, with a view to making a circumbendibus, to get behind them. ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... ever attempt to look more than a dozen years ahead. The ordinary politician steers the ship by keeping a look-out for rocks and squalls, and does not trouble to make for any distant landmark. Only the Socialist looks ahead to a harbour attainable perhaps in a hundred years, from which a happier voyage may be begun. Only the Socialist seems to realise that in the world conceived, as modern thought must conceive it, as a continuous process, Government ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... almost impossible to estimate the ruin and the destruction which it has wrought! If the millions of lives and the billions of treasure spent in the world's wars, had been employed in protecting the people, in generating, rearing, sustaining and developing them to the highest attainable point, this earth would now witness a social millennium; where peace and prosperity, high culture and ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... revolve this sentence, and look at it from every attainable standpoint. No use to try to shut it off, back it came. All the clatter with which she had amused herself during the interval between meetings had not banished it. No sooner was she seated under those trees ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... Refuge," and the place described well deserved the name. It is impossible for me to impress upon the readers of this volume with sufficient force and clearness the splendid success that is easily attainable in encouraging the return of the birds. The story of the Mosca "Haven of Refuge" was so well told by Mr. Charles C. Townsend in the publication referred to above, that I take ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... some trace of irony in this curious passage, which forms the concluding portion of the Dialogue. But Plato certainly does not mean to intimate that the supernatural or divine is the true basis of human life. To him knowledge, if only attainable in this world, is of all things the most divine. Yet, like other philosophers, he is willing to admit that 'probability is the guide of life (Butler's Analogy.);' and he is at the same time desirous of contrasting the wisdom which governs the world with a higher ...
— Meno • Plato
... new point of view on life, a thing scarce enough in this day when all existence is either sordid or vicious. I had reached a Slough of Despond, Mr. Canby, weary of the attainable, not strong enough or clever enough or courageous enough to defy criticism and obey the small voice that urged. I was sick with self-analysis, filled to the ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... continued illness two negotiators, one of whom, Lord Holland, was a near relative of his, were appointed to confer with the American envoys, and to frame an agreement, if attainable. The first formal meeting was on August 27, the second on September 1.[159] As the satisfactory arrangement of the impressment difficulty was a sine qua non to the ratification of any treaty, and ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... knowledge. They offer as a whole a diversified miscellany of literary, artistic, and political history, of critical disquisition and biographic anecdote, such as it is believed cannot be elsewhere found gathered together in a form so agreeable and so attainable. To this edition is appended a Life of the Author by his son, also original notes, which serve to illustrate or to correct the text, where more recent discoveries have brought to light facts unknown when these volumes were ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... never, either in theory or practice, be separated. Only the act of recollection, the constantly renewed retreat to the quiet centre of the spirit, gives that assurance of a Reality, a calmer and more valid life attainable by us, which supports the stress and pain of self-simplification and permits us to hope on, even in the teeth of the world's cruelty, indifference, degeneracy; whilst diligent character-building alone, with ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... was tired of the War, and supposed an honorable peace attainable. Mr. Lincoln knew it was not—that any peace at that time would be only disunion. Speaking of it, he said: 'I have faith in the people. They will not consent to disunion. The danger is, they are misled. Let them know the truth, and the country ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... is the formation and fixing of names for these numbers, which must have been originally more or less arbitrary, because numbers only subordinate themselves with difficulty to one of those general ideas which are expressed in the Aryan roots. Besides these words are, even in their oldest attainable forms, already so weather-beaten, that in most cases it is impossible even to guess their etymology and original meaning. We see that the names for two and eight are dual, while those for three and four clearly have plural endings. ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... himself as multiple. The struggle within him between impulses good and evil he explains as a conflict between the various ghostly wills that make up his Ego; and his spiritual hope is to disengage his better self or selves from his worse selves,—Nirvana, or the supreme bliss, being attainable only through the survival of the best within him. Thus his religion appears to be founded upon a natural perception of psychical evolution not nearly so remote from scientific thought as are those conventional notions of soul held by our common people at home. Of course his ideas on these abstract ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn |
