"Definition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... claimed by as good a tenure as any other sort of property. In this doctrine no doubt the Chancellor was perfectly right; and only wrong in supposing that any denial of that doctrine is implied by the Political Economists in calling Tithes a Tax; which, on the true definition of a Tax (as I shall show hereafter), they certainly are.] inclusively, the twenty- second, twenty-third, and twenty-ninth; and these may be entirely omitted by the student, and ought at any rate to be omitted on his first examination of the work. For, though Mr. Ricardo has ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... devil!" I said to my friend, after satisfactory definition of the Pine Rat; "what fiend may ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... all it could, without a grain of waste—his assimilations being neither loose nor literal, and he came back to England as promiscuously qualified, as variously quickened, as his best friends could wish for fine production and fine illustration in some order still awaiting sharp definition. Never certainly had the free poetic sense in him more rejoiced in an ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... a new definition for the German equivalent of the English word "impregnable" was furnished by men who went up to battle swearfully or prayerfully, as the case might be, a-swearing and a-praying as they went in more tongues than were babbled at Babel Tower; in other words, on the day when the never-to-be-broken ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... to satisfy the most Gargantuan hunger, and we feel sure that our volumes will never be crowded off the shelf which has once made room for them. If we have, now and then, a little transcended the strict definition of the class of fiction which our title would promise, we shall nevertheless not anticipate any serious quarrel with our readers; if there be room to question the right of any given story to appear in this company, there will be all the more reason for accepting it on its own merits; ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... to the definition!" said Mrs. Merryweather. "In case of a false definition, the falsifier takes up the thread. ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... vessels to those concerned in hunting and collecting; from the simple, definite, uniform knee-jerk, which is very similar in all people and open to very little modification, to the capacity for scholarship, which is extremely complex, vague as to definition, variable both as to manifestation in one individual and amounts amongst people in general, and is open to almost endless modification. This fund of unlearned tendencies is the capital with which each child starts, the capital which makes education and ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... Aunt Sophy you would have to coin a term or fall back on the dictionary definition of a spinster. "An unmarried woman," states that worthy work, baldly, "especially when no longer young." That, to the world, was Sophy Decker. Unmarried, certainly. And most certainly no longer young. In figure she was, at fifty, what is known in the corset ads ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... whose common Vocation is staining of Paper, and spending his whole Time in a Coffee-house or in a Garret, give a just Definition of a Prince, a Courtier, or a fine Lady? He never sees those Persons but as he walks the Streets; and I can scarce think that the Mud with which he is often dash'd by their Equipages, communicates to him any Share of their Sentiments. ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... define pleasure in its highest sense; the definition involving a number of apparent paradoxes. For, from an inexplicable defect of harmony in the constitution of human nature, the pain of the inferior is frequently connected with the pleasures of the superior portions of our being. Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself, are often the chosen expressions ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... a minister, then widely known throughout the country, say in a public address, "Prayer is the power that moves the arm that moves the world." Can we accept that to-day as a definition of a rational view of the relation in which we stand to God? Many of you will remember that not long ago the churches and the scientific men of England and America were much stirred and roused over a discussion concerning ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... come over our pulpits," Arthur remarked, "since the time when Paley gave that utterly selfish definition of virtue, 'the doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will of God, and for the ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... as nearly as a human being may to Euclid's definition of a straight line. He was length without breadth. From boyhood's early day he had sprouted like a weed, till now in the middle twenties he gave startled strangers the conviction that it only required ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... Cove Campbell & Sons, Messrs. Camping "Cannonading," Canterbury Museum, Christchurch Cape Town Carbohydrates, definition of the term (note) Cardiff to Hobart, the journey Carnegie Institute Carnley Harbour Caroline Cove, Macquarie Island Carr, Cape Caruso, dog Castor, dog Cat, wild Catch Me Cave Cathedral Grotto, the 'Challenger' expedition Charcot, Jean .........Land Chetwynd, Captain Chocolate as barter ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... entire day and most of the night; indeed, sometimes all night through. On a warm spring morning, when the sunshine pours upon the willows, and even the white dust of the road is brighter, bringing out the shadows in clear definition, their lively notes and quick motions make a pleasant commentary on the low sound of the ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... things adjusted into a regular whole, or a whole plan or scheme consisting of many parts connected in such a manner as to create a chain of mutual dependencies." It is not at all strange that Protestantism should protest against this definition, and should establish its own instead: An assemblage of things so adjusted and built up as that they may easily be rearranged or completely demolished as occasion may require, or a whole plan or scheme consisting of many parts so connected as to create ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... have indeed not scrupled to affirm that those of whom we speak are really Manicheans without knowing it; and build their systems upon assumptions secretly borrowed from the disciples of Zoroaster, without ever stating those assumptions openly in the form of postulates or definition. ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... pause so far further over the description of faith here as to point out that it is precisely this, a description, not a definition. To quote Heb. xi. 1 as a good definition of faith is to mistake its import altogether. I have often recalled, in speech or writing, a story told me forty years ago by an Oxford friend when we were masters together at a public school. He had attended a Greek Testament lecture ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... system and can be modified without a detailed understanding of the internal operation. This is achieved by means of a recursive definition facility based on a skeleton compiler with a small set of logical capabilities. The skeleton compiler acts as a bootstrap for ...
— Preliminary Specifications: Programmed Data Processor Model Three (PDP-3) - October, 1960 • Digital Equipment Corporation
... understood that this was equivalent to the declaration that the doctrine in question had been revealed to the Apostles, and had come down to us from them, either by Scripture or tradition. And as the acts of all the Councils, and the history of every definition of faith evidently show, it was never contended that a new revelation had been made, but every inquiry was directed to this one point—whether the doctrine in question was contained in the Sacred Scriptures or ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... he was a pupil of Titian, but for some unknown reason he soon left him, and struck out for himself. In the studio which he occupied in his youth he had inscribed, as a definition of the style he professed, "The drawing of Michelangelo, the colouring of Titian." He copied the works of the latter, and also designed from casts of Florentine and antique sculpture, particularly by lamplight—as ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... to the use of the book and the system of its construction may be given here. Each title or subject is defined once in the text. Where a title is synonymous with one or more others the definition is only given under one title, and the others appear at the foot of the article as synonyms. It may be that the reader is seeking the definition of one of these synonyms. If so a reference to the index shows him at once what page contains the information sought for. The use of an index ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... in which punishment is 'unprofitable'; upon such offences as drunkenness and sexual immorality, where the law could only be enforced by a mischievous or impossible system of minute supervision, and such offences as ingratitude or rudeness, where the definition is so vague that the judge could not safely be entrusted with the power to punish.'[410] He endeavours to give a rather more precise distinction by subdividing 'ethics in general' into three classes. Duty may be to oneself, that is 'prudence'; or to one's neighbour ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... a principle of which a limited definition is only current in this country,' said Sidonia, quitting the room with him. 'People may be represented without periodical elections of neighbours who are incapable to maintain their interests, and strangers ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... rise of Allegory. Lyric. The Romance and the Pastourelle. The Fabliaux. Their origin. Their licence. Their wit. Definition and subjects. Effect of the fabliaux on language. And on narrative. Conditions of fabliau-writing. The appearance of irony. Fables proper. Reynard the Fox. Order of texts. Place of origin. The French form. Its complications. Unity of spirit. The Rise of Allegory. The satire of Renart. ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... worldly prosperity, you cannot easily conceive that it would have produced more good than when it fell full on him, and was forthwith radiated to all around him. You may say that this was partly the result of genius. Be it so. Genius is, by the definition of it, one of the highest gifts. If, with humble means, we can produce some of its effects, it is great gain. Without, however, wishing to depreciate the attaching influence of genius, we must, I ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... as he had yearned for great thoughts and great achievements, but his spiritual capacity was as scanty and obscure as his intelligence. And where unkind Nature thus unequally yokes lofty objects in a man with a short mental reach, she stamps him with the very definition ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... prescribing penalties for its infringement. It was not the first time that Otasite had heard unfavorably of the influences of "nawohti," which, by the way, with the Cherokees signified physic, as well as spirituous liquor, a synonymous definition which more civilized people have sought to apply. He was content that he and the old chief were once more in affectionate accord, and he did not seek to interpret the flash of triumph ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... brings us back to the author himself. It is like a family resemblance between widely separated relatives, which suggests in the most opposite quarters the original type of feature of some strong, far-back progenitor. These characters, with far more vivid presence and clear definition than those of the other two writers, are at the same time based on large and elementary forces, like theirs. They are for the most part embodied moods, or emotions expanded to the stature of an entire human being, and made to endure unchanged for years ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... fourth edition of his Dictionary, published in 1773, Johnson introduced a second definition of patriot:—'It is sometimes used for a factious disturber of the government.' Gibbon (Misc. Works, ii. 77) wrote on Feb. 21, 1772:—'Charles Fox is commenced patriot, and is already attempting to pronounce the words, country, liberty, corruption, &c.; with ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... of slave quality and careerist quality. As we are all caught in the net, as the unconscious memories of our slave and careerist ancestors flow in our blood and echo in our cells, all we can do is accept it and work with it. Human nature is an incurable disease. Like Jehovah's definition of Himself, it is, it has been, and ever will be. Everywhere the same, always the same, forever the same, there ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... things: first, the gathering of knowledge through observation; second, the classification of such knowledge, and through this classification, the elaboration of general ideas or principles. In the familiar definition of Herbert Spencer, science ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... be willing to write it down for me?" asked Bok, fearful that he should not remember Doctor Briggs's definition even ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... to study is one life; based on experience of one Reality, and manifested in the diversity of gifts and graces which men have been willing to call true, holy, beautiful and good. For the moment at least we may accept the definition of it given by Dr. Bosanquet, as "oneness with the Supreme Good in every facet of the heart and will."[6] And since without derogation of its transcendent character, its vigour, wonder and worth, it is in human experience rather than in speculation that we ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... most of us cannot grasp for very dizziness. He could write music as impalpable as that of the middle section of "Iberia," in which the very silence of the night, the caresses of the breeze, seem to have taken musical flesh. Before the body of his work, so clear and lucid in its definition, so perfect in its organization, one thinks perforce of a world created out of the flying chaos beneath him by a god. We are given to know precisely of what stuff the soul of Debussy was made, what its pilgrimages were, in what adventure it sought itself ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... challenges the sublime Epithets of Royal, Artificial, Manly, and Warlike, for its Stateliness, Cunning, and Indurance, claims above all other Sports the Precedency; and therefore I was induced to place it at the Head to usher in the rest; and of which take this concise Definition, viz. That since Nature has equally imparted unto every Beast a wonderful Knowledge of Offence and Security, herein we may observe, The curious Search and Conquest of one Creature over another, hurried on by an innate natural Antipathy, and performed or ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... means all who, consciously or unconsciously, are forwarding God's kingdom on earth. In the broad definition of the Master it means "all those who are not against us." The way in which men associate for worship, or in which they consider it most remunerative to invest their efforts to forward the kingdom, gives them no right to arrogate to themselves the title of God's ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... definition of the true purpose of comedy which I know is that it is to "chastise manners with a smile" (Ridendo castigat mores); and it has no better exemplification in the literature of opera than Wagner's "Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg." Wagner's mind ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... later Tokugawa Shogun—during the period immediately preceding the modern regime—that Japanese civilization reached the limit of its development. No further evolution was possible, except through social reconstruction. The conditions of this integration chiefly represented the reinforcement and definition of conditions preexisting,—scarcely anything in the way of fundamental change. More than ever before the old compulsory systems of cooperation were strengthened; more than ever before all details of ceremonial convention were ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... S'ENTEND; but there is no blot of heart's blood and the Old Night: there are no harmonics, there is scarce harmony to his music; and in Henley - all of these; a touch, a sense within sense, a sound outside the sound, the shadow of the inscrutable, eloquent beyond all definition. The First London Voluntary knocked me wholly. - Ever yours affectionately, my ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... affirmative idea. Or perhaps I shall better explain my meaning by substituting other terms with my own illustration of their value. I say, then, that the Greek idea of immortality involves only the nominal idea, not the real idea. Now, the nominal idea (or, which is the same thing, the nominal definition) is that which simply sketches the outline of an object in the shape of a problem; whereas the real definition fills up that outline and solves that problem. The nominal definition states the conditions under ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... accept the definition of Kultur which identifies it with "form," with the harmonious "rhythm" which, in the English, for example, permeates and unifies everything, from the highest spiritual life to clothes, footwear and table manners.... I am of opinion that we shall ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... "free from contact with that which weakens, impairs or pollutes." How forceful then is the converse of the definition: Impurity weakens, impairs, and pollutes. It weakens both mind and body. It impairs the health. It pollutes not only the thoughts but the conduct which inevitably has its beginning and its end ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... long enjoyed the advantages of a definite scale and notation. Should not the art of coloring gain by similar definition? The musical scale is not left to personal whim, nor does it change from day to day; and something as clear and stable would be an advantage in ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... slaves, unless we make a particular enumeration on this account; the collector may mistake, for he would not presume to apply the term goods, wares, and merchandise to any person whatsoever. But if that general definition of goods, wares, and merchandise are supposed to include African Slaves, why may we not particularly enumerate them, and lay the duty pointed out by the Constitution, which, as gentlemen tell us, is no more ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... for the timorous citizen, for all those for whom an "i" can never be too plainly dotted in definition, we repeat as an axiom: "Bohemia is a stage in artistic life; it is the preface to the Academy, the Hotel ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... know why. I will tell you. When St. Patrick first preached the Christian faith in Ireland, before a powerful chief and his people, when he spoke of one God, and of the Trinity, the chief asked how one could be in three. St. Patrick, instead of attempting a theological definition of the faith, thought a simple image would best serve to enlighten a simple people, and stooping to the earth he plucked from the green sod a shamrock, and holding up the trefoil before them he bade them there behold one in three. The ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... and on high authority, that the end of art is to please. But this is a very imperfect definition. It might as well be said that a library is only intended ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... Great Britain, was met by an adverse vote of the Senate on April 13 last, and thereupon negotiations were instituted to obtain an agreement with Her Britannic Majesty's Government for the promulgation of such joint interpretation and definition of the article of the convention of 1818 relating to the territorial waters and inshore fisheries of the British Provinces as should secure the Canadian rights from encroachment by the United States fishermen and at the same time insure the enjoyment by the latter ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... same time there was nothing hidebound. There was no attempt to draw lines too tight; indeed, there was little drawing of lines. Principles were stated, and applied. Description took the place of definition. ...
— Sixty years with Plymouth Church • Stephen M. Griswold
... bare feet pattering swiftly down the stairs. He came flying back, still laughing, and laid a heavy dictionary in my lap. I hastily turned the leaves, Pola questing in each one like an excited little dog, till I found the definition of his word, "to fall squash like a ripe ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... mentioned symptom in merely a superficial way and dismisses it with a few cursory remarks, viz: "It may be defined a passion to possess books of which the edges have never been sheared by the binder's tools." This definition is vague and unsatisfactory. Mr. Adrian H. Joline (Diversions of a Booklover, Harper & Bros., New York, 1903,—a charming book that should be read by every book-fancier) discourses upon the subject more intelligently; he observes ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... has preached five special phases of belief, as follows: First, Religion by Definition; Second, Religion by Submission; Third, Religion by Substitution; Fourth, Religion by Culture; ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... reason that Christ cannot be what He is and fail to suffer in and for a world like ours. What is the nature of Christ? Christ is like God. Christ is God. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." But what is God? There are many definitions. There is only one all comprehensive and all inclusive definition. That is that sentence of pure gold that fell from the lips of the apostle that leaned upon the bosom of his Lord. "What is God?" I ask this man who had such a wonderful knowledge of Him. And ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... himself so amiably in society, and so inoffensively among his fellow-bards, and versified his way so tranquilly into the good graces of his royal mistresses, distending the thread, and diluting the sense, and sparing the ornaments, of his passionless poetry,—if poetry, which, by the definition of its highest authority, is "simple, sensuous, passionate," can ever be unimpassioned,—that he was the oracle of feminine taste while he lived, and at his death bequeathed a fame yet dear to the school of Southey and Wordsworth. Daniel was no otherwise Laureate than his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... believe in a living God, or are we not? If we are not, then David's words are of course worse than nothing. If we are, I do not see why David was wrong in calling on God to exercise that moral and providential government of the world, which is the very note and definition ...
— David • Charles Kingsley
... we not, for a moment, interrupt the stream of Oratory with a remark, that this Definition of the Tool-using Animal appears to us, of all that Animal-sort, considerably the precisest and best? Man is called a Laughing Animal: but do not the apes also laugh, or attempt to do it; and is the manliest man the greatest and oftenest laugher? Teufelsdrockh himself, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... OF JESUS.—The Council of Trent, by providing a clear definition of doctrine, cemented unity, and was the first great bulwark raised against Protestantism. Another means of defense, and of attack as well, was provided in new orders, especially the order of Jesuits. This was founded by Ignatius Loyola, a Spanish soldier ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... the definition excludes brewers, distillers, biological supply houses, and others, such as zoo curators, who manage living things. Agriculture takes place on a piece of land widely and commonly known ...
— Agricultural Implements and Machines in the Collection of the National Museum of History and Technology • John T. Schlebecker
... years or so of life did he undertake this occupation which ruined him. Mr. Reade shows that he had been for thirty years engaged in this trade in parchment. Brother Birkbeck Hill quotes Croker, who hinted that Johnson's famous definition of Excise as "a hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the Common Judge of Property but by wretches hired by those to whom Excise is paid," was inspired by recollections of his father's constant disputes ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... that God is a spirit," quickly corrected the professor. "That definition has already been given several times; but I am trying to ascertain your own conception of Deity. Why did you ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... to raise the question who were included in the general term "the royal family," which Lord Halifax, as Secretary of State, answered by saying that he regarded it as meaning "those only who were in order of succession to the throne." Such a definition would have excluded the Queen as effectually as the Princess Dowager; and when Mr. Grenville found the peers reluctant to accept this view (which, indeed, his own Lord Chancellor pronounced untenable), he then sent another of his colleagues to represent ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... Early Popularity of Heraldry in England— Origin of English Heraldry; Definition; Characteristics; Development; Early Uses; Not connected with Earlier Systems— Ancient Heraldry— Past and Present Treatment of ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... with the inferiority of others, or with our own formerly." Too cynical a view, declare many critics, but they usually end by admitting that there is a good deal in it after all. I am inclined to think that Hobbes's famous definition is more applicable to wit than it is to humor. Wit is more purely intellectual than humor. It rejoices in its little triumphs. It requires, as has been remarked, a good head, while humor takes a good heart, and fun good spirits. If you take Carlyle literally when he says that humor is love, ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... the power of observing every fact about all human beings at once, he might ask, as the newspaper editors are asking as I write, what that Socialism is which influences so many lives? He might answer himself with a definition which could be clumsily translated as 'a movement towards greater social equality, depending for its force upon three main factors, the growing political power of the working classes, the growing social sympathy of many members of all classes, and the belief, based on ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... Chrysippus deem every man mad, whom vicious folly or the ignorance of truth drives blindly forward. This definition takes in whole nations, this even great kings, the wise man [alone] excepted. Now learn, why all those, who have fixed the name of madman upon you, are as senseless as yourself. As in the woods, where a mistake makes people wander about from the proper path; one goes out of the way to the ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... ready I would not be wasting time talking to reporters. I am working on one. When it is found, by me or another, it will be a true counteragent, changing the very structure and habit of Cynodon dactylon as the Metamorphizer changed it originally. External weapons, by definition, can at best, at the very best, merely stop the grass—not render it innocuous. Equals fighting ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... multiform records accumulated during years of study, to define the various typical stages of the sidereal evolution; and not merely to define them but to illustrate them practically by citing stars which belong to each of these stages, and to give them yet clearer definition by naming the various elements which the spectroscope reveals ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... during a certain period of his development. Later, the mythic creations seem absurd, often immoral, because they are survivals of a distant epoch, cherished and consecrated through tradition, habits, and respect for antiquity. According to the definition that seems to me best adapted for psychology, the myth is "the psychological objectification of man in all the phenomena that he can perceive."[51] It is a humanization of nature according to ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... novel merely, this War and Peace, with the addition of another excellence, a comeliness of form. We might have had a novel that would be a finer, truer, more vivid and more forcible picture of life. The best form is that which makes the most of its subject—there is no other definition of the meaning of form in fiction. The well-made book is the book in which the subject and the form coincide and are indistinguishable—the book in which the matter is all used up in the form, in ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... that somebody might be fortunate enough to find in that instrument the clause which supported his theory. Mr. Johnson, however, though the most consequential of individuals, is the most inconsequential of reasoners; every proposition which is evident to himself he considers to fulfil the definition of a self-evident proposition; but his supporters at Philadelphia must have known, that, in affirming that insurgent States recover their former rights by the fact of submission, they were arraigning the conduct of their leader, who had notoriously violated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... the fewest words; then transpose your definition into a word or words equivalent to the ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... recognised that not every compound of oxygen is an acid, he taught that every acid is a compound of oxygen. We know now that many acids are not compounds of oxygen, but we have not yet sufficient knowledge to frame a complete definition of the term acid. Nevertheless it is convenient, indeed it is necessary, to place together many compounds which react similarly under certain defined conditions, and to give a common name to them all. The alchemists also classified substances, but their classification was necessarily more ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... let loose upon the country whenever they feel like it, to build what go by the names of railroads and bridges, but are in reality traps in which to lose both life and money. Indeed, any man (in the United States) who has carried a rod or chain is called an engineer; while the correct definition is, a man who has, first, a thorough knowledge of mechanics, mathematics, and chemistry,—second, the knowledge necessary for applying these sciences to the arts,—and last, the knowledge requisite to the correct adaptation of such arts to the wants of man, but more than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... distinguished between normal and abnormal worry, and directed his efforts against the latter. Webster's definition of worry (A state of undue solicitude) obviates the necessity of deciding what degree and kind of worry is abnormal, and directs attention rather to deciding what degree of solicitude may be ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... are the common laws of custom,"—he replied—"No more,—no less. And in this we are much like other nations. We believe in no actual Creed,—who does? We accept a certain given definition of a supposititious Divinity, together with the suitable maxims and code of morals accompanying that definition, ... we call this Religion, . . and we wear it as we wear our clothing for the sake of necessity ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... however, turn out that I have given a right definition, and a correct solution of this most interesting problem, I shall rejoice to know that I have rendered an essential service to a great number ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... scredoar, screetor, scrittore, scriptore, scrutoir, scritory, scrutore, escrutor, scriptoree, this useful piece of furniture appears constantly in the inventories of men of wealth in the colonies from the year 1669 till a century later. Judge Sewall tells of losing the key of his "scrittoir." The definition of the word in Phillips's "New World of Words," 1696, was "Scrutoire, a sort of large Cabinet with several Boxes, and a place for Pen, Ink and Paper, the door of which opening downward and resting upon Frames that are to be drawn out and put back, serves ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... The definition was not quite clear to him. He had proved that he could see farther and clearer than she could when looking at trees or chipmunks. He looked critically ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... come in. I shall want you to take the photograph of me as I stand there. I will select the spot from which the photograph is to be taken, and will focus the camera, stop down the lens to the extent required to get satisfactory definition, and generally arrange the picture; and all that you will need to do will be to remove the cap and give the proper exposure when I am ready. The light is not too good, and I intend to use the orange screen, so I guess the exposure will be rather a lengthy one, but I ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... NOTE K, p. 221. In some of these declarations, supposed to be penned by Lord Falkland, is found the first regular definition of the constitution, according to our present ideas of it, that occurs in any English composition; at least any published by authority. The three species of government, monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical, are there plainly distinguished, and the English government is expressly ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... p. 47). Used in a vague way, mysticism stands for spiritual inwardness. Religion without mysticism, said Amiel, is a rose without perfume. This saying is no more precise and no more informing than Matthew Arnold's definition of religion as morality touched with emotion. Neither mysticism nor an emotional touch makes religion. They are as often as not concomitants of a pathological state which is the denial of religion. But if mysticism means a personal attitude towards God in which the heart is active as well ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... commonplaces of criticism which express vaguely and loosely a general impression gathered from the comparison of ancient with modern poetry. Like most of such generalisations it is not of much value unless defined more closely; and as the definition of the rule becomes more accurate, the exceptions and limitations to be made grow correspondingly numerous. The section which is here placed under this heading is obviously different from any collection which could be made of modern poems, professing ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... discovered a new definition of disloyalty. He considers my suggestion to boycott the visit of the Prince of Wales to be disloyal and some newspapers taking the cue from him have called persons who have made the suggestion 'unmannerly'. They have even attributed to these 'unmannerly' persons ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... love, justice, conduct of life—or what not. If it had come to crawling before Mr. Kurtz, he crawled as much as the veriest savage of them all. I had no idea of the conditions, he said: these heads were the heads of rebels. I shocked him excessively by laughing. Rebels! What would be the next definition I was to hear? There had been enemies, criminals, workers—and these were rebels. Those rebellious heads looked very subdued to me on their sticks. 'You don't know how such a life tries a man like Kurtz,' cried Kurtz's last disciple. ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... accustomed to say that one could always tell an honorable man by his conduct to his wife, his children, and his servants; and I hope it will appear from these memoirs that the Emperor conducted himself as an honorable man, according to his own definition. He said, moreover, that immorality was the most dangerous vice of a sovereign, because of the evil example it set to his subjects. What he meant by immorality was doubtless a scandalous publicity given to liaisons which might otherwise have remained secret; for, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... time I imagine you are wondering how the stereoscopic camera was behaving itself as such. It is due to the psychic entities to say that whatever was produced on one-half of the stereoscopic plates was produced on the other—alike good or bad in definition. But, on a careful examination of one which was rather better than the other ... I deduce this fact, that the impressing of the spirit form was not simultaneous with that of the sitter.... This ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... its inventor. It remembered, compared, judged, reasoned: does the drowsy, digesting paunch remember? Does it compare? Does it reason? I defined the Capricorn-grub as a bit of an intestine that crawls about. The undeniable accuracy of this definition provides me with my answer: the grub has the aggregate of sense-impressions that a bit of an intestine ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... John Quincy, Airedale, America, appointment of non-elected officials in, Civil Service, science and politics in, tendency to electoral concentration in, Amos, Ampthill, Lord, Antigone, Aristotle, comparison of State to a ship, criticism of Plato's communism, definition of 'polity', maximum size of a State, on action as the end of politics, on political affection, Athens, glassmakers of, Sophocles' love ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... the proper sense, implying a considerable establishment of slaves, such as we afterwards meet with at Rome, cannot be supposed to have existed during this period. On the contrary, to this period we must refer the ancient definition, which represents the senators as called fathers from the fields which they parcelled out among the common people as a father among his children; and originally the landowner must have distributed that portion of his land ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... appointed Church deaconesses. "They were to form a female council of elder women, who were to counsel and care for the married women, widows, and young girls, to make peace between quarrelers, to prevent slandering, and to preserve purity and good morals,"[21] aims which keep close to the apostolic definition ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... The following is Fracastorius' definition of a man who not only writes verses, but is by nature a poet: "Est autem ille natura poeta, qui aptus est veris rerum pulchritudinibus capi monerique; et qui per illas loqui et scribere potest;" and he gives ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... if I understood you rightly, that we have had no poets, artists, or warriors; by which he meant, I suppose, to deny that we have had great men, the next most certain of the signs. A just consideration of this charge requires a definition at the commencement. A great man, O my boy, is one whose life proves him to have been recognized, if not called, by God. A Persian was used to punish our recreant fathers, and he carried them into captivity; another Persian was selected to restore their children to the Holy Land; greater than ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... alone understood it as science: which he could never have done by the mere study of the law, and without a previous acquaintance with the art which teaches us to divide a whole into its subordinate parts, to, decide an indeterminate idea by an accurate definition: to explain what is obscure, by a clear interpretation; and first to discover what things are of a doubtful nature, then to distinguish them by their different degrees of probability; and lastly, to be provided with a certain rule or measure by which we may judge what ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... "No doubt," he said. "Now understand me clearly. Very soon you will be killed. How quickly or slowly you die will depend largely upon the civility of your tongues. A civil tongue answers questions with the right answers. That is my definition of a civil tongue." He sat back coldly. "Now, shall we ...
— The Link • Alan Edward Nourse
... doubt, however, if King Albert had in the field at anyone time more than 120,000 men—a very large proportion of whom were, of course, raw recruits. Now the Belgian army, when all is said and done, was not an army according to the Continental definition; it was not much more than a glorified police force, a militia. No one had ever dreamed that it would be called upon to fight, and hence, when war came, it was wholly unprepared. That it was able ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... taboo or system of taboos that, according to Reinach, religion arose. "I propose (he says) to define religion as: A SUM OF SCRUPLES (TABOOS) WHICH IMPEDE THE FREE EXERCISE OF OUR FACULTIES." (1) Obviously this definition is gravely deficient, simply because it is purely negative, and leaves out of account the positive aspect of the subject. In Man, the positive content of religion is the instinctive sense—whether conscious or subconscious—of ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... eminent as scholar, preacher, and translator, was born in 1324 in Spresswel, near Richmond, Yorkshire, England. Known as the "Morning Star of the Reformation" he was a vigorous and argumentative speaker, exemplifying his own definition of preaching as something which should be "apt, apparent, full of true feeling, fearless in rebuking sins, and so addrest to the heart as to enlighten the spirit and subdue the will." On these lines he organized a band of Bible preachers ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... and antipathy to Rouge extremism among them—kept Bleu and Castor in an uneasy alliance. This alliance began to disintegrate when Laurier rose to the command of the Liberals. There was a steady drift from the Bleu to the Liberal camp—by this time the old definition of "Rouge" was under taboo; and in 1896 the Bleus moved over almost in a body. This was not an altogether instinctive and voluntary movement; it was suggested, inspired, ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... which were forwarded under the same cover have been preserved. Ten days later (February 25) he reverts to these "extracts," and on February 28 he despatches a fair copy of the first act. On March 9 he remits the third and final act of his "dramatic poem" (a definition adopted as a second title), but under reserve as to publication, and with a strict injunction to Murray "to submit it to Mr. G[ifford] and to whomsoever you please besides." It is certain that this third act was written at Venice (Letter to Murray, April 14), and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... certain measure which is neither so small as to preclude us from distinguishing its parts, nor so extensive as to prevent us from taking the whole in at one view. This is, therefore, merely an external definition of the beautiful, derived from experience, and founded on the quality of our organs of sense and our powers of comprehension. However, his application of it to the drama is remarkable. "It must have an extension, but such ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... great complexity and peculiar composition which varies from organism to organism and from part to part. Life itself may be defined as a group of characteristic activities dependent upon the transformations in this system under appropriate conditions. According to this definition, life is determined not only by the physical and chemical attributes of the system, but by the fitness of its environment, which Henderson has recently done the important service of emphasizing.[1] Relatively trifling changes in the environment suffice to ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... sensibly asked for a definition of our respective duties, and it was settled that I was to be guide to the expedition; Higgs, antiquarian, interpreter, and, on account of his vast knowledge, general referee; and Captain Orme, engineer and military commander, with the proviso ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... in its turn, deals with human events; and, in the same way as science, by attending to causal relations, arrives at the conception of spiritual law as a similarly permanent principle in the order of the soul. This causal unity is the cardinal idea of plot which by definition is a series of events causally related and conceived as a unit, technically called the action. Plot is thus analogous to an illustrative experiment in science; it is a concrete example of law,—it ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... impersonal deities; presences to be felt and remembered, not clothed imaginatively with features and myths:—Cuba, who gave the new-born child its first breath; Anna Perenna of the recurring year; hosts of agricultural gods without much definition, and the unseen genii of wood, field, and mountain. Everything, even each individual man, had a god-side: there was something in it or him greater, more subtle, more enduring, than the personality or outward show.—To the ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris |
