"Attribute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Catholic Church and population are more entirely subject than in Ireland to the direct influence of a certain number of persons, of whom most of us know nothing, who pull the strings of the Catholic world in the city of Rome. I attribute much of this, which I think a great evil, to the existence of the Protestant Church in Ireland. You know perfectly well that the great discontent of Ireland is chiefly entertained by the Catholic population, and you ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... Davies wrote to Garrick in 1763:—'I remember that during the run of Cymbeline I had the misfortune to disconcert you in one scene of that play, for which I did immediately beg your pardon, and did attribute it to my accidentally seeing Mr. Churchill in the pit, with great truth; and that was the only time I can recollect of my being confused or unmindful of my business when that gentleman was before me. I had even then a more moderate opinion ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... occasions, and promised that no negotiations should take place, however secret and confidential, that were not laid before her Majesty. "He has the chief administration among the States," said Herle, "and to his credit and dexterity they attribute the despatch of most things. He showed unto me the state of the enemy throughout the provinces, and of the negotiation in France, whereof he had no opinion at all of success, nor any will of his own part but to please the Prince ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... for instance, who had taught himself out of his own head to growl at any person in the crowd that bid as low as sixpence! Or Pickleson the giant, with a little head and less in it. Of whom, observes Doctor Marigold, "He was a languid young man, which I attribute to the distance betwixt his extremities." About whom, when a sixpence is given to him by Doctor Marigold, the latter remarks in a preposterous parenthesis, "(for he was kept as short as he was long!)" As for Dickens's high falsetto, when speaking in the person of this same Pickleson, with a voice ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... party. Because of this I accept it the more gladly. In this country, and in any country where freedom of thought is tolerated, citizens attach themselves to political parties. It is but an ordinary degree of charity to attribute this act to the supposition that, in thus attaching themselves to the various parties, each man in his own judgment supposes he thereby best advances the interests of the whole country. And when an ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... only received him very well, but forthwith threw themselves into a headlong furor for Shakespeare and Charles Kemble, which, although they might not improbably do the same to-morrow for two dancing dogs, we are quite willing to attribute to the merits of the poet and his interpreter. The French papers have been profuse in their praises of both, and some of our own have quoted their commendations. My mother is, I think, recovering, though slowly, from her long illness. She is less deaf, and rather ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... amongst gentlemen to grow fat, and I am told I am at least fourteen pound below the fashion. However, I decrease instead of enlarging, which is extraordinary, as violent exercise in London is impracticable; but I attribute the phenomenon to our evening squeezes at public and private parties. I heard from Ridge this morning (the 14th, my letter was begun yesterday): he says the poems go on as well as can be wished; the seventy-five sent to town are circulated, and a demand for fifty ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... instance, either on monuments or in portraits, of a puisne judge being ornamented with this decoration. Can any of your correspondents produce another example? or can they account, from any other cause, for Richard Harpur receiving such a distinction? or may I not rather attribute it to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various
... detraction has vainly sought to wrest from Napoleon the honor of this victory, and to attribute it all to the flank charge made by Kellerman. Such attempts deserve no detail reply. Napoleon had secretly and suddenly called into being an army, and by its apparently miraculous creation had astounded Europe. He had effectually deceived ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... were tumbling together on the ground, and he, with contained ferocity, was striking for my head with the butt of his revolver. He had already twice wounded me on the scalp; and it is to the consequent loss of blood that I am tempted to attribute the sudden clearness ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... enjoy a good state of health, and the perfect use of all my limbs, which I attribute, under Providence, to your superior skill and judgment. And surely I have great reason to do so, for it was not till after I had tried every means in my power, and expended large sums of money to no good purpose; it was not till my life was despaired of, that I applied to you. I soon experienced ...
— Observations on the Causes, Symptoms, and Nature of Scrofula or King's Evil, Scurvy, and Cancer • John Kent
... most superstitions, hovered along the frontier, where it was fostered in the shadow of ignorance and grew in the dark halls of superstition. The author will not deny that there are many, to this day, who attribute what they do not in the light of reason understand, to supernatural agencies. In Virginia, in Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois and Missouri there existed, in their early days, strange ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... high value—the—station, the power, the prestige of a great position, with all its surroundings of deference and homage. Large as his salary is, it is the least distinctive feature of his high office. In every attribute of rank the man is a king. In his presence the wisest and the most gifted do no more than insinuate the words of their wisdom, and beauty retires curtsying, after a few commonplaces from his lips. Why, through all the employments of life, who ever attains to the like of this? His presence ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... a loud whisper, "come here! take care! keep on the grass!—don't step where the cows have been!" he added, pointing to a peninsula of dry grass, with trodden mud on each side of it; for Tom's contemptuous conception of a girl included the attribute of being unfit to walk in ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... than he had expected, and the effect produced by his interlocutress, as well as doubtless not lost on her, was shown in his suppressed start. "There has been no reason why I should attribute to you any judgement of the matter; but I've had one myself, and I don't see why I shouldn't say frankly that it's very much the one you express. It would ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... most savages the Bukaua attribute many illnesses and many deaths not to the wrath of ghosts but to the malignant arts of sorcerers; and in such cases they usually endeavour by means of divination to ascertain the culprit and to avenge the death of their friend by taking the life of his ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... arbitrary; but it is part of the beautiful consistency of Andersen's genius that it never stoops to mere amusing and fantastic trickery. The character of the darning-needle is the character which a child would naturally attribute to a darning-needle, and the whole multitude of vivid personifications which fills his tales is governed by the same consistent but dimly apprehended instinct. Of course, I do not pretend that he was conscious of any such consistency; creative ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... moved from one place to another. We know that Ptolemy deliberately adopted the view that the earth did not turn round; he had then to investigate the other question, as to whether the earth was animated by any movement of translation. He came to the conclusion that to attribute any motion to the earth would be incompatible with the truths at which he had already arrived. The earth, argued Ptolemy, lies at the centre of the celestial sphere. If the earth were to be endowed with movement, it would not lie always at this point, it must, therefore, shift to some other ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... independent authors are found after this time." This is so very different from what is ordinarily presumed to have been the case and openly proclaimed by many historians of medicine because apparently they would prefer to attribute scientific advance to the Arabs than to the Christian scholars of the time, that it is worth while noting ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... look at his personal appearance. Visionaries are usually slovens. They despise fashions, and imagine that dirtiness is an attribute of genius. To do the honourable member for Artois justice, he was above this affectation. Small and neat in person, he always appeared in public tastefully dressed, according to the fashion of the period—hair well combed back, frizzled, and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... says, "The order of this scene was carefully and ingeniously disposed, and as happily put in act (for the motions) by the king's master carpenter;" but he adds, "the painters, I must needs say (not to belie them), lent small colour to any, to attribute much of the spirit of these things to their pencil." Campion, in one of his Masques, describing where the trees were gently to sink, &c., by an engine placed under the stage, and in sinking were to open, and the masquers appear out at their tops, &c., adds this vindictive marginal note: "Either by ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... corresponding to the Second Stage—perhaps lasting only one thirtieth or fiftieth of the time of the first period; and then—if they looked forward at all to a third stage—would be inclined for obvious reasons to attribute to that ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... acceded to these observations of her husband, I cannot decide; but, without waiting to hear her particular sentiments, he thus went on:—"Should I appear more warm than usual upon this subject, you must pardon me, my dear, and attribute it to the interest I feel in the welfare of our little Tommy. I am too sensible that our mutual fondness has hitherto treated him with rather too much indulgence. While we have been over-solicitous to ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... side of one leaf, instead of being, as at first, slightly concave, now presented a strong convexity upwards. Even on the fifth day the leaves did not appear dead. Now, as sugar does not in the least excite Drosera, we may safely attribute the reflexion of the blades and tentacles of the above leaves to exosmose from the cells which were in contact with the syrup, and their consequent contraction. When drops of syrup are placed on the leaves of plants with their roots still in damp ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... to me doubtful. I do not know whether the crime you attribute to this noble cavalier was committed by him; but, admitting that to be the case, have you any right to condemn him? In accordance with the laws of our frontier, where no court may be held, it is only the nearest relatives of the victim who are entitled ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... seven o'clock on the morning of this day. I was in my bed, sir; the maid had come in with my tea and toast. 'Stop,' said I, sternly. She stopped. And in those few moments of undisturbed reflection, sir, the thought came to life, the thought which you so falsely attribute to the Chinese, a savage tribe whose sole distinction is its ability to ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... Milton's own. We feel his inmost temper in the stoical self-repression which gives its dignity to his figures. Adam utters no cry of agony when he is driven from Paradise. Satan suffers in a defiant silence. It is to this intense self-concentration that we must attribute the strange deficiency of humour which the poet shared with the Puritans generally, and which here and there breaks the sublimity of the poem with strange slips into the grotesque. But it is above all to this Puritan deficiency in human ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... Nights. It is rudely written, with great carelessness and frequent corrections, and there is a noted improvement in the subsequent vols. which Scott would attribute to another transcriber. This, however, I doubt: in vol. i. the scribe does not seem to have settled down to his work. The MS. begins abruptly and without caligraphic decoration; nor is there any red ink in vol. i. except for the terminal three words. The topothesia ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... her head a crown of twelve stars." Hence the radiance of the sun above her head, and the crescent moon beneath her feet. From inevitable association the crescent moon suggests the idea of her perpetual chastity; but in this sense it would be a pagan rather than a Christian attribute. ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... upon its real cause it is not as yet possible to frame any very well grounded hypothesis. Nevertheless, the cause of this predominance of the red and yellow tints upon the surface of ancient Pyrois is well known.[A] Some have thought to attribute this coloring to the atmosphere of Mars, through which the surface of the planet might be seen colored, as any terrestrial object becomes red when seen through red glass. But many facts are opposed to this idea, among others that the polar snows appear always of the ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... "is the most unpoetical of anything in existence, because he has no identity; he is continually in for, and filling, some other body. The sun, the moon, the stars, and men and women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute; the poet has none, no identity." [Footnote: Letter to Richard Woodhouse, October 27, 1818.] The same conviction is differently phrased by Landor. The poet is a luminous body, whose function is to reveal other objects, not himself, to us. Therefore Landor considers our scanty knowledge of Shakespeare ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... teach you. Of course you have heard your guardian quote Emerson? He is a favourite author with some who frequent the classic halls of the 'Century;' but perhaps you do not know that he has investigated 'Courage,' and thrown new light upon that ancient and rare attribute of noble souls? Now, my dear, in dealing with Erle Palma, if you desire to trim the lion's claws, and crimp his mane, adopt the ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... take advantage of people who hadn't. I had plenty of money, and I found plenty of friends to help me to spend it. I began a retrograde movement, finally severing my connection with the Sunday school, a step which gave my parents great uneasiness. I attribute my falling off entirely to the bad companionship into which I was led. They were too "old" for me, and I was rather too "soft" for them. Many were the scrapes into which they brought me, and it was in consequence of one of these that I and a female companion whose acquaintance ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... audit. If the Sonnet is addressed to the god of love it reduces him to the limitations of mortality; if it is addressed to his friend, it indicates that, though but for a little while, Nature has lifted him to an attribute of immortality. The latter interpretation makes the poet enlarge and glorify his subject; the former makes him belittle it, and bring the god of love to the audit of age and the ravage of wrinkles. This is the last sonnet ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... attribute of youth, and possibly the years bring views of marriage which are impossible to the younger generation. No girl, in her wildest moments, ever dreams of marrying a widower with three or four children, yet, when she is ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... various accounts in the Chroniclers as to the stature of William the First; some represent him as a giant, others as of just or middle height. Considering the vulgar inclination to attribute to a hero's stature the qualities of the mind (and putting out of all question the arguments that rest on the pretended size of the disburied bones—for which the authorities are really less respectable than those on which we are called ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... very important one, is to attribute the guilt of Adam and Eve to their descendants. This is the famous doctrine of imputation, which is now rejected by all the leading schools of modern Orthodoxy. That we can be guilty of Adam's sin, either by imputation or in any other way, ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... his gown in its box] Well, even so! You attribute to people of that sort susceptibilities which ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... called Hochelay was situated about forty-five miles above Stadacona, at the Richelieu rapid, between which and Hochelaga, a distance of about 135 miles, he mentions no village. This absence of settlements I attribute to the fact that the intermediate Three Rivers region was an ancient special appurtenance of the Algonquins, with whom the Hochelagans were to all appearance then on terms of friendly sufferance and trade, if not alliance. In later days ...
— Hochelagans and Mohawks • W. D. Lighthall
... commentators attribute a higher principle to the partiality of Rebekah; they imagine that it was founded upon the prophecies, choosing him whom the Lord had chosen: but I can perceive no good ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... been to see him. Father, now that the heavy load of officialdom is laid aside, delights to sit within the courtyards with these friends and play at verse-making. No man of his time is found lacking in that one great attribute of a Chinese gentleman. He has treasures of poetry that are from the hands of friends long since passed within the Vale of Longevity. These poems are from the pens of men who wrote of the longing for the spiritual life, or the ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... being part of Holy Scripture; and that those who used the LXX, or its versions, accepted them, either with or without hesitation. Under the chapters entitled "Early Christian Literature" it will be seen that those were by no means wanting who appear to attribute in practical use canonical authority to each fragment; and at least what Otto Stähelin says of Clement of Alexandria, that he "nicht geringer schätzte," may be held true of nearly all the Fathers who name them (Clem. Alex, und LXX, Nürnberg, 1901, p. 74). It is, ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... objections,' he replied. 'I will assume the initiative, and attribute your acceptance of a challenge to such causes as will excuse you to the public. Some story may easily be devised which will cover the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... well as in Sweden, have commonly bad teeth, which I attribute to the same causes. They are fond of finery, but do not pay the necessary attention to their persons, to render beauty less transient than a flower, and that interesting expression which sentiment and accomplishments ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... infirmity of our nature to mingle our interests and prejudices with the operation of our reasoning powers, and attribute to the objects of our likes and dislikes qualities they do not possess and effects they can not produce. The effects of the present tariff are doubtless over-rated, both in its evils and in its advantages. By one class of reasoners the reduced price of cotton and other agricultural products ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... instance, and with such an expression stamped upon it, it exerted a fascination which disturbed the current of the detective's thoughts whenever by any chance he allowed it to get between him and his duty. To attribute folly to a man with such a mouth and such a chin was to own one's self a poor judge of human nature. Therefore, the lamp overhead, with its electric connection and changing slides, had a meaning which at present could be sought for only in the evidences of scientific research observable in the books ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... we at length succeeded in discovering three good ponds. The foliage of the trees, with dry and naked water-worn roots, presented all the hues of an English autumn, although none of these were deciduous. This effect I was disposed to attribute to unseasonable drought, or past heat. The weather we had was delightful; for, although the thermometer in the shade rose sometimes to 90 deg. about 4 P.M., the heat of the Bogan was still fresh in ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... informal sector, accurate economic measures are difficult to obtain. A large percentage of the population, especially in rural areas, derives its living from agricultural activity, often on a subsistence basis. On a per capita basis, real income has stagnated at 1980 levels. Most observers attribute Paraguay's poor economic performance to political uncertainty, corruption, limited progress on structural reform, and deficient infrastructure. The economy rebounded between 2003 and 2007, posting modest growth each year, as growing world demand for commodities combined with high prices ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... is itself only one attribute of our real concrete self, the self which exists within time and space; and therefore we reach the conclusion that this "a priori unity," which seems outside time and space, is nothing but a necessary ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... excitant distinct from the sensations.[6] Of this we need no demonstration, and the testimony of our senses suffices. We have seen the excitant, and it is like a friend who should pass before us in disguise so well costumed and made up that we can attribute to his real self nothing of what we see of him, but yet we know that ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... reflects on the life of our Lord, the more one is convinced that the doctrine of the virgin birth is a vital essential; without it Christianity falls to pieces. Let us go at the matter the other way round. If we attribute to our Lord a natural birth, we come at once to the dilemma of having to admit that he was merely an individual human person,—in an unsurpassed relationship with God, it is true, but still a human person. That doctrine makes Christ historical, some one to go back to, instead of the ever-present, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... with the attribute of Justice. Some have regarded that as the fundamental quality of the Divine character. I am not sure that it is so. I think Love and Wisdom are equally fundamental. In a former age the idea of Divine ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... but without any patients. Seven or eight days ago, a man having received behind the Arsenal a stab with a knife, I sewed up the wound, and cured him. This made for me some reputation in the neighborhood, to which I attribute the happiness of having been last night awoke by a ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... I have at present to say, and is as much intended for yourself, as for the person to whom it is directed. I leave Madrid in about three days, and it is my intention to write frequently whilst upon my journey; but should few letters reach you, be not surprised, but attribute it to the state of the country, which is terrible indeed. I am first going to Salamanca, by the pass of the Guadarama; from thence to Burgos; then to the Asturias, Galicia, and Biscay, and along the whole ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... is blind and deaf, or runs away and hides from his fellows like a coward; for brutality, alas, is a very human attribute and slumbers more or less in each one of us, let us deny it ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... on the beauty of many butterflies, it occurred to me that some caterpillars were splendidly coloured; and as sexual selection could not possibly have here acted, it appeared rash to attribute the beauty of the mature insect to this agency, unless the bright colours of their larvae could be somehow explained. In the first place, it may be observed that the colours of caterpillars do not stand in any close correlation with those of the mature insect. Secondly, their bright colours ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... and his extreme sensitiveness to insult or contradiction. By these means they sought to prepare the judges to interpret every thing in favor of the Count, and, even if it should prove that he had inflicted the mortal blow on the usurer, to attribute it to access of ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... for you bear on your shoulders the heaviest and most dangerous burden, if you well consider it, of any men in the world to-day. We likewise beseech your lordships, with all due humility and reverence, not to attribute our coming to temerity, but to accept and judge it by the spirit that has prompted it, which is the wish to act according to God's precepts as we are ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... this disease is not positively known. The German veterinarians attribute it to irritation of the muscles by cold, and classify azoturia as a rheumatic disorder. The conditions preceding the attack are not in favor of this theory, and cold can not be considered an important causative factor. The most acceptable is the auto-poisoning ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... the approbation of a man, my inferiority to whom I am proud to acknowledge. Amongst other things, however, Moore, after giving Lord B, much good advice about public opinion, &c. seems to deprecate my influence on his mind on the subject of religion, and to attribute the tone assumed in Cain to my suggestions. Moore cautions him against any influence on this particular with the most friendly zeal, and it is plain that his motive springs from a desire of benefiting Lord B. without ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... their desires and appetites as the hyenas and tigers. And in some natures the moral sense is only kept alive by fear,—fear of offending some despotic, invisible Force that pervades the Universe, and whose chief and most terrible attribute is not so much creative as destructive power. To propitiate and pacify an unseen Supreme Destroyer is the aim of all religions,— and it is for this reason we add to our worship of the Sun that of the White Serpent, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... remain as secure and inviolable in your breast as his own, before communicated to you. I further present you with check-words two; their names are TRUTH and UNION, and are thus explained: Truth is a divine attribute, and the foundation of every virtue; to be good and true is the first lesson we are taught in Masonry; on this theme we contemplate, and by its dictates endeavor to regulate our conduct; hence, while ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... forgiveness towards the three that are good (viz., the gods, the Brahmanas, and preceptor), a Kshatriya, by doing his duties, soon wins the earth as also piety and fame and prosperity.[262] Thou, O perpetuator of thy race, art endued with every attribute of a Kshatriya. It does not, therefore, look well for thee to speak like an ignorant wight. O son of Kunti, thy prowess is like that of Sakra himself, the lord of Sachi. Thou dost not transgress the bounds of morality like the ocean that never transgresses its continents. Who ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the shrine of success. It regards it as man's greatest attribute. And whether we find it in secular affairs, substantiated by material grandeur, or in the mysterious realms of the inner life characterized by the serene consciousness of truth, it must ever be the goal ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... to blame. He was not dangerous in the ordinary sense, but he might quite well have done the thing in play—as he understood it. Only I cannot quite understand his pushing the body down after it fell. That seems to argue vindictiveness—and a logic which I can hardly attribute to the idiot. Still, who can tell what went on in the distorted mind of that poor creature? He is reported to have rescued the dead body of a rabbit from the undergrowth on one occasion, and to have blubbered when he could not bring it back ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... senses of philosophy is calm and endurance in the face of difficulty and loss; it is even supposed to be a power to bear pain without complaint. This meaning is a tribute to the influence of the Stoic philosophy rather than an attribute of philosophy in general. But in so far as it suggests that the wholeness characteristic of philosophy is a power to learn, or to extract meaning, from even the unpleasant vicissitudes of experience and to embody what is learned in an ability ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... are not as plentiful as might be desired, it appears (pp. 24-28). This acknowledged "lack of recognized evidence" is indeed the weakest feature in the case, though Mr. Spencer would fain attribute this lack of direct proof to insufficient investigation and to the inconspicuous nature of the inheritance of the modification. But there is an almost endless abundance of conspicuous examples of the effects of use and disuse in the individual. How is it that the subsequent inheritance of these ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... his own act. A childlike feeling, responsive in his heart to the divine prompting of sacred music, saves him from self-murder; but in a subsequent bitter revulsion he utters a curse upon everything in the state of man, and most of all upon that celestial attribute of patience whereby man is able to endure and to advance in the eternal process of evolution from darkness into light. And now it is, when the soul of the human being, utterly baffled by the mystery of creation, crushed by its own hopeless sorrow, and enraged by the everlasting ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... law of unexampled power for enabling them to war against the law of sin in their members and not to serve it in the lusts thereof. The book which contains this invaluable law they call the Word of God, and attribute to it, as I have said, and as, indeed, is perfectly well known, a reach and sufficiency co-extensive with all the wants of human nature. This might, no doubt, be so, if humanity were not the composite thing it is, if it had only, or ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... thinking of the writing, for I have indited it almost all in the twilight. It is now so dark that, notwithstanding the singular property of "seeing in the night-time" which the young ladies at Roe Head used to attribute to me, I can scribble no longer. All the family unite with me in wishes for your welfare. Remember me respectfully to your mother and sisters, and supply all those expressions of warm and genuine regard which the increasing darkness will ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... native abilities of the individuals and the peoples who have created them, but rather to the form which the association and interaction between those individuals and groups of individuals has taken. We sometimes attribute the difference in culture which we meet among races to the climate and physical conditions generally, but, in the long run, the difference is determined by the way in which climate and physical condition determine the contacts and ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... dear sah, if I must admit it, I did it in a most bungling mannah," admitted her husband. "Usually I am very careful in matters of importance, and I am only able to attribute the really indecent butchery to the last few sups I took from General Bannard's demijohn. My hand was ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... to secularize himself is perhaps Emerson's unique attribute. It is comparatively easy to stand on mountain-tops and to ride Pegasus; but how many of those competent to such feats could at the same time sit cheek by jowl with hucksters and teamsters without a trace of condescension, and while rubbing ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... within my province in the present work. Nor will some explanation of this word be thought impertinent by the reader, if he considers how wonderfully it hath been mistaken, even by writers who have professed it: for to what but such a mistake can we attribute the many attempts to ridicule the blackest villanies, and, what is yet worse, the most dreadful calamities? What could exceed the absurdity of an author, who should write the comedy of Nero, with the merry incident of ripping up his mother's belly? or what would give a greater shock to ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... God vivified the universe, renewing daily the work of creation, and that hence the world of everyday was as inspired as the Torah, the one throwing light on the other. The written Law must be interpreted in every age in accordance with the ruling attribute of God—for God governs in every age by a different attribute, sometimes by His Love, sometimes by His Power, sometimes by His Beauty. "It is not the number of ordinances that we obey that brings us into union with God," said the Master; "one commandment ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... shore about 2 P.M. The heat by this time was most severe, and the air so dense as to occasion pains in my ears. The Dead Sea is 1,300 feet below the Mediterranean, and without doubt the lowest part of the earth's surface. I attribute the oppression I felt to this fact and to the sultriness of the day, rather than to any exhalation from the sea itself. Francois remarked, however, that had the wind—which by this time was veering round to the north-east—blown from the south, we could scarcely have endured it. The ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... Kennedy scornfully; "extracts which often attribute to him the very sentiments which he is opposing. But it isn't worth arguing with one of your school, who have the dishonesty to condemn writers whom you are incapable of understanding, on the faith of extracts ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... in Washington without having apprised his father of his purposed visit. Count Tristan received him with ill-concealed embarrassment; but the young viscount was too ingenuous himself, and therefore too unsuspicious of others, for him to attribute his father's discomposure to any source but surprise at his unexpected appearance. If Maurice noted an absence of pleasure in the count's constrained greeting, he was too much accustomed to the formal and undemonstrative manners of the aristocracy ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... and what the Irish wanted in reply was the rhetorical eloquence which to the Father was second nature. Burke, however, had the good taste and good sense to acknowledge that Froude suffered from nothing worse than the invincible prejudice which all Catholics attribute to all Protestants. As a Protestant and an Englishman, Froude could not be expected to give such a history of Ireland as would be agreeable to Irishmen. "Yet to the honour of this learned gentleman be it said that he frankly avows the injuries which have been done, and that he comes nearer ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... had no effect to deter others from embarking in similar enterprises. As all agreed that gold and pearls were to be acquired in these parts; the thirst of gain in some, and the desire of glory in others, soon overcame the terrors of such unfortunate examples, and many attribute the miscarriage of those attempts to the imprudence or misconduct of the commanders; and as slanders always find an easy belief, so the imputations on the dead served to encourage the living, and men were easily led ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... the Indians is the great question. This is decidedly bad. They are treated more like dogs than men. A state of tutelage, extending from the cradle to the grave; a state of utter dependence, breaks down every manly attribute, and makes of human creatures, designed to ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes
... army is the strongest defence of a nation's rights, so a mercenary army is a dreadful danger to a people's liberty, a ready tool in the hand of a tyrant; as heroism with consequent glory is the noble attribute of a patriot, so a mercenary spirit is a stigma on the career of any public officer. We find no fault with an artisan, a merchant, or a common laborer if he estimate the value of his toil by the pecuniary advantages attached to it; for that is the nature of such ordinary ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... likely be filling and fattening men's bodies and gaining their approval, although the result is that they lose their original flesh in the long run, and become thinner than they were before; and yet they, in their simplicity, will not attribute their diseases and loss of flesh to their entertainers; but when in after years the unhealthy surfeit brings the attendant penalty of disease, he who happens to be near them at the time, and offers them advice, is accused and ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... I wasn't shrill. I spoke in a very ordinary voice. And I don't know why you should attribute such ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... minutes and reports and other business of kingcraft. Naturally cautious and reserved, he was dignified and princely in public. In his private life, he was orderly and extremely affectionate to his family and servants. Loyalty was Philip's best attribute. ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... is no time for dealing with such a matter. I have enough on my hands to keep the enemy at a distance, and I want every one's help. But as soon as we are relieved— if we ever are—I am bound, unless Captain Roby and the corporal retract all they have said and attribute it to delirium—I am bound, I say, to call the attention of my superiors to the matter. I shall do so unwillingly, but I must. Out of respect to your brother officers, and for your sake as well, I cannot let this matter slide. ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... Pelion upon Olympus, made Mars prisoner, and played several tricks of this kind, till Diana, by artifice, subdued them, contriving, some way or other, to make them shoot their arrows against, and destroy each other, after which Jupiter sent them down to Tartarus. Some attribute to Apollo the honour of conquering them. This story has been explained, and allegorised, and tortured so many different ways, that it is not easy to unravel the foundation ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... Battle Harbour, Cape Charles, Forteau, Red Bay, and Flowers Cove, summoning every possible witness and tracing all rumours to their source, the commissioners' findings were so favourable to the Mission that on their return to St. John's our still undaunted detractors could only attribute ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... Wherever he has really written after the old model, there is something to be deprecated: in spite of all the spirit and freshness, in spite of his happy assumption of that cheerful acceptation of things as they are, which, rightly or wrongly, we come to attribute to the ideal fabulist, there is ever a sense as of something a little out of place. A form of literature so very innocent and primitive looks a little over-written in Lord Lytton's conscious and highly-coloured ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bewildered shores. The attribute of the wanderer transferred to the shore. Cf. Nightingale, ll. ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... perhaps in view of the destination of his treatise, with a definition "relatively to us." Relatively to us, then, Matter in general is all that affects our senses in any fashion whatever; and the qualities that we attribute to different kinds of matter, are founded on the different impressions that they produce on us. (3.) "When I say that Nature produces an effect, I do not mean to personify this Nature, which is an abstraction; I mean that the effect of which I am speaking is the necessary result ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... In these myths, which attribute good fortune to the horn of the snake, that horn which pierces trees and rocks, which rises from the waters, which glitters as a gem, which descends from the ravines of the mountains, we shall not overstep ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... earth after soft showers.' Do you know, I could almost forgive the dour and detestable Milton everything for the sake of those seven words. They show that in the sense of smell he had at least one attribute of humanity." ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... my humble position I could now appreciate the philosophy and the true greatness of the Sagewoman's beautiful lessons of unselfishness. I felt that I was just beginning to get strong-strong in the grandest attribute a human being can possess-moral courage. The great Sagewoman's teachings on forbearance were beginning to take root in my nature. I was learning to understand that I must work and feel for others, regardless of ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... to withhold from Gower some acknowledgment of the share he had in producing a beneficial revolution in the English language; as it would be absurd and untrue to attribute to him any great degree of praise, as an ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... reference to the deification of sex. We have always been told, for example, that Bacchus was the god of the harvest and that the Greek Pan was the god of nature. We have not been told that these same gods were representations of the male generative attribute, and that they were worshipped as such; yet, anyone who has access to the statuettes or engravings of these various deities of antiquity, whether they be of Egypt, of India or of China, cannot fail to ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... Sibyll, thus beset with thoughts of danger, embarrassment, humiliation, disgrace, ruin, Lord Hastings recalled the words of Gloucester; and the stately image of Katherine, surrounded with every memory of early passion, every attribute of present ambition, rose before him; and he slept at last, to dream not of Sibyll and the humble orchard, but of Katherine in her maiden bloom, of the trysting-tree by the halls of Middleham, of the broken ring, of the rapture and the woe of ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... abundance of leisure to observe that the castellan's son, although he talked and smiled unceasingly, was by no means at his ease; he became pale and red by turns. The doors were finally opened, and the servants entered with the dishes. Kochanowski grew pale as a sheet; not knowing to what to attribute his emotion, I looked round me on all sides, and my eyes fell at length upon the dishes which had just been brought in. I saw a goose dressed with a certain black sauce (jusznik), which among us ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... blush of dawn are for the little butterflies. The love that endures, give me that. And it must be of the deepest divine strain,—as deep and divine as maternal love. Man is of Eternity, not of Time; and love, the highest attribute of man, must be likewise. With me it must endure throughout all worlds and immensities; else I would not raise a finger for it. Pleasure, Shakib, is for the child within us; sexual joy, for the animal; love, for the god. That is why I ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... rich mine of prophetic truth. The history of the current dispensation is there delineated in advance so perfectly that we can not but attribute its authorship to Him who knoweth the end from the beginning, and worketh all things after the counsel of his own will. It was written for the special benefit of the people of God, and we should give ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith |
