"Disproportion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... above the difference they have in common with men in advancing, in stationary, and in declining life. Children, who proceed on the reverse order, growing from less to greater utility, but with a still greater disproportion of nutriment to labor than is found in the second of those subdivisions: as is visible to those who will give themselves the trouble of examining into the interior ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... up; and the most superficial observer, comparing the sentiments and views of the bulk of the Christian world, with the articles still retained in their creed, and with the strong language of Scripture, must be struck with the amazing disproportion. ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... superficies of the visible heaven,[190] or Struve's supposition of the existence of a star subtending no measurable angle, in every part of the visible sky as large as the surface of the moon, the vast disproportion of the universe, to the space in which it is placed, forces itself upon our notice. For, upon the largest of these computations, the proportion of existence to empty space is mathematically proved to be not greater than as ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... worth while to claim them. It must be a long time after the first establishment of such colonies, before it can become profitable to feed cattle upon the produce of cultivated land. The same causes, therefore, the want of manure, and the disproportion between the stock employed in cultivation and the land which it is destined to cultivate, are likely to introduce there a system of husbandry, not unlike that which still continues to take place in so many parts of Scotland. Mr Kalm, the Swedish traveller, when he gives an account of ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... black geometrical diagrams, how frightfully narrow—how spectral did its slender lines appear at a distance, to any philosophic spectators that knew the amount of human interests confided to that army, and the hopes for Christendom that even then were trembling in the balance! Such a disproportion, it seems, might exist, in the case of a ghostly war between the harvest of possible results and the slender band of reapers that were to gather it in. And there was even a worse peril than any analogous one that has been proved to exist at Waterloo. A British surgeon, indeed, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... proved by a cool Examination to contain a beautiful Proportion, in the Point it was placed in, relative to Society? And what is it that constitutes Moral Deformity, or what we call Vice, but the Disproportion which any Agent occasions, in the Fabric of Civil Community, by a Non-compliance to the general Order which ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... distinguishes these two men. The Greeks—predecessors, contemporaries, successors of Aristotle—were speculators, full of clever and ingenious guesses, in which the amount of clear and certain fact was in lamentable disproportion to the schemes blown up from it; or they devoted themselves more profitably to some one or two subjects of inquiry, moral or purely intellectual, with absolute indifference to what might be asked, or what might be known, of the real conditions under which ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... thought that "the great number of negroes which of late have been imported into this Collony may endanger the safety thereof." The immigration of white servants was therefore encouraged by a special law.[10] Increase of immigration reduced this disproportion, but Negroes continued to be imported in such numbers as to afford considerable revenue from a moderate duty on them. About the time when the Assiento was signed, the slave-trade so increased that, scarcely a year after the consummation of that momentous ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... tales in such enormous phrases, with such gigantic structure of rhetorical flourish, that the mere disproportion amounts to false-hood; and, the diseased appetite in listeners growing more and more diseased, feeding on such diseased food, it is impossible to predict what it will not be necessary for story-mongers to invent at the end of a century or so ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... agricultural products to the value of 150,000,000 pounds, and Ireland of but 36,000,000 pounds, there are in Ireland 75,000 agricultural proletarians more than in the neighbouring island. {272a} How great the competition for land in Ireland must be is evident from this extraordinary disproportion, especially when one reflects that the labourers in Great Britain are living in the utmost distress. The consequence of this competition is that it is impossible for the tenants to live much better than the labourers, by reason of the high rents ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... foreseeing the same danger of certain ruin, should rush into it for the sake of a present gratification; he in this instance would follow his strongest desire, as did the brute creature; but there would be as manifest a disproportion between the nature of a man and such an action as between the meanest work of art and the skill of the greatest master in that art; which disproportion arises, not from considering the action singly in itself, ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... and regards which had there surrounded her. Without a mother, without a companion, she had to find what solace, what pastime she could. In the huge house there was not a piano fit to play upon; and her only source of in-door amusement was a library containing a large disproportion of books in old French bindings, with much tarnished gilding on the backs. But a native purity of soul kept her lovely, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Howard of Effingham slipped out of the bay and hung with the wind upon their rear. In numbers the two forces were strangely unequal, for the English fleet counted only eighty vessels against the hundred and forty-nine which composed the Armada. In size of ships the disproportion was even greater. Fifty of the English vessels, including the squadron of the Lord Admiral and the craft of the volunteers, were little bigger than yachts of the present day. Even of the thirty Queen's ships which formed its main body, ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... stated that 'the internal resistance of the armature' of this machine 'is only 1/2 ohm.' On this fact and the disproportion between this resistance and that of the external circuit, the theory of the alleged efficiency of the machine is stated to be based, for we are informed that, 'while this generator in general principle is the same ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... be said, that, knowing his pride, and become hopeless of subduing him, except by means of himself, these monarchs and their people only humbled themselves before him, in order to aggravate the disproportion of his elevation, and by so doing, to dazzle his moral vision. In their assemblies, their attitude, their words, even the tone of their voice, attested his ascendancy over them. All were assembled there for his sake alone! They scarcely ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... that the fortune of war is sometimes more impartial than the disproportion of numbers might lead one to suppose; to submit is to give ourselves over to despair, while action still preserves for us a hope that we ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... soul the same chivalrous and moved affection. I have spoken with one who remembered her, and who had been the intimate and equal of her sons, and I found this witness had been struck, as I had been, with a sense of disproportion between the warmth of the adoration felt and the nature of the woman, whether as described or observed. She diligently read and marked her Bible; she was a tender nurse; she had a sense of humour under strong control; she talked and ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... deficient supply of oxygen. The carbon of the food, not meeting with a sufficient supply of oxygen to consume it, passes into other compounds containing a large excess of carbon—or, in other words, fat is produced. Fat is thus an abnormal production, resulting from a disproportion of carbon in the food to that of the oxygen respired by the lungs or absorbed by the skin. Wild animals in a state of nature do not contain fat. The production of fat is always a consequence of a deficient supply of oxygen, for oxygen is absolutely indispensable for the dissipation ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... offence, a perfectly trivial offence, committed by a brave well-behaved soldier (as by common consent his boy had been pronounced), who had been driven into it moreover by the "mismanagement" of his superior; and on the other side was this heavy punishment of five months' imprisonment! The disproportion between crime and sentence was ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... self-consciousness. It was American in these fine qualities. This was at Mr. Lecky's. He is Irish, you know. Last night it was Irish again, at Lady Gregory's. Lord Roberts is Irish, & Sir William Butler, & Kitchener, I think, & a disproportion of the other prominent generals are of Irish & Scotch breed keeping up the traditions of Wellington & Sir Colin Campbell, of the Mutiny. You will have noticed that in S. A., as in the Mutiny, it is usually the Irish & Scotch that are placed in the forefront ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... to the nations, there is less disproportion between the strength of the unit and the society. Hence nations have been slower than individuals in realizing their common interest. Each has placed greater reliance on its own strength for its protection. Yet the principle remains the same. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... low woman of the court should have the odious power of being a benefactress, and that a man so superior should be condemned to pick up such bribes falling from such a hand, what a frightful iniquity! And what social system is this which has for its base disproportion and injustice? Would it not be best to take it by the four corners, and to throw pell-mell to the ceiling the damask tablecloth, and the festival, and the orgies, and the tippling and drunkenness, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... had in prospect a little dinner at Philippe's—not uncheered by the smiles of venal beauty—and had just completed a careful toilette. He was above the small peculations of his order; indeed, had he been inclined to plunder his late masters wardrobe, the absurd disproportion in their size would have saved him from that vulgar temptation. He was somewhat choice in his tailors, and his clothes fitted him and suited him well. He was reviewing the general effect in the glass with a complacent and rather egrillarde expression in his little eyes, when between ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... the expiration of the sentence, good conduct was, if not easy, at least generally possible. If any one is surprised at these contradictions of the law, what would he be when he compares certain penalties to certain crimes—either on account of their inevitable consequences, or on account of the disproportion which exists in their punishment? The conversation of the prisoner whom the bailiff came to see will offer to us one ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... this strange disproportion in your years, And, let me add, disparity of tempers, Might make the world doubt whether such an union Could make you wisely, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... the aristocracy of money, while Gallatin, with a clearer insight into commercial and financial questions, recognized that in a young country where capital was limited, and specie in still greater disproportion to the increasing demands of trade, a well-ordered, well-managed money institution was an enormous advantage, if not an imperative necessity to the ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... divine repose Of spirits angelical. Blessed be God, The measure of his judgments is not fixed By man's erroneous standard. He discerns No such inordinate difference and vast Betwixt the sinner and the saint, to doom Such disproportion'd fates. Compared with him, No man on earth is holy called: they best Stand in his sight approved, who at his feet Their little crowns of virtue cast, and yield To him of his own works the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the period just before the adult age is the plastic period per se, this diminishes the chances of a departure from the common type. Thus comparison between whites and blacks, between primitive and civilized peoples, shows that, for equal populations, there is an enormous disproportion as ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... the bitterness about the curse that he uttered just now. He does, with sincere shame and terror, hide under that purple wig something he thinks it would blast the sons of man to see. I know it is so; and I know it is not a mere natural disfigurement, like a criminal mutilation, or a hereditary disproportion in the features. I know it is worse than that; because a man told me who was present at a scene that no man could invent, where a stronger man than any of us tried to defy the secret, and ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... find out other men's wit; and whatsoever he lights upon, either in books or company, he makes bold with as his own. This he puts together so untowardly, that you may perceive his own wit as the rickets, by the swelling disproportion of the joints. You may know his wit not to be natural, 'tis so unquiet and troublesome in him: for as those that have money but seldom, are always shaking their pockets when they have it, so does he, when he thinks he has got something that will make him appear ...
— English Satires • Various
... black basalt, of the size of life, representing an early king, which Mr. Layard discovered at Kileh-Sherghat [PLATE LXIII, Fig. 1], and which is now in the British Museum, may be instanced as quite free from this disproportion. It is very observable, however, in another of the royal statues recently recovered [PLATE LXIII, Fig. 2], as it is also in the monolith bulls and lions universally. Otherwise, the proportions of the figures are commonly correct. They bear a resemblance ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... Hippodamoi or tamers of horses, thought to be meant for Castor and Pollux which stand on this hill; this group is surmounted by an Egyptian obelisk. These statues are said to be the work of Phidias; but there is a terrible disproportion between the men and the horses they are leading; they give you the idea of Brobdignagians leading Shetland ponies. The Quirinal palace is every way magnificent and worthy of the Sovereign Pontiff; there are large grounds annexed to it; it stands nearly in the centre of Rome and from this ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... first time I perceived, in examining the fruits of the labour of so many days and nights, the vast disproportion between the magnitude of the subject and my untrained powers. One passage seemed faulty, another so overstrained and inadequate, that I flung it angrily back among the rest. At the same time I thought that the verses I had addressed to various beauties and the answers which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... finer and read two descriptions of the filigree ball. The disproportion in the rewards offered was apparent. That promised by Uncle David was calculated to rouse any man's cupidity and should have resulted in the ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... complete the four years' course. "Nature," in commenting upon this fact, attributes it to the great attractiveness of commercial pursuits in this country, and the consequent eagerness of boys to enter upon them at as early an age as possible. This is doubtless the true reason, and the disproportion is more likely to increase than to diminish, even though the actual number of boys who rush into a money-making career as soon as they have mastered the arithmetic necessary for it may be growing smaller. It is beginning, moreover, to be an every-day ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... own character, and of their own fortunes. Secondly, his jealousy of able men. He wishes to be what you called him, a giant, and as Nature has not made him positively tall, he tries to be comparatively so, by surrounding himself with dwarfs. His third defect is the disproportion of his wishes to his means. His desires are enormous. No power, no wealth, no expenditure would satisfy them. Even if he had his uncle's genius and his uncle's indefatigability, he would sink, as his uncle ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... reader's consuming desire to get it over, and if it be not a pleasure, it is difficult to understand his desire to have it at all. Mere size, it seems to me, cannot be a fault. The fault must lie in some disproportion. If some of Scott's stories are dull and dilatory, it is not because they are giants but because they are hunchbacks or cripples. Scott was very far indeed from being a perfect writer, but I do not think that it can be shown that the large and elaborate plan on which his stories ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... altogether degraded, even by the diminution of its animal energy. Certain spiritual phenomena are possible to the weak, which are hidden from the strong;—nay, the monk may, in his order of being, possess strength denied to the warrior. Is it altogether, think you, by blundering, or by disproportion in intellect or in body, that Theseus becomes St. Athanase? For that is the kind of change which takes place, from the days of the great King of Athens, to those of the great Bishop of Alexandria, in the thought and theology, or, ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... seen the casual passer through the cloisters stand still, entranced with admiration (while he weighed the disproportion between the speech and the garb of the young Mirandula), to hear thee unfold in thy deep and sweet intonations the mysteries of Iamblichus or Plotinus (for even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such philosophic ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... like a thunder-clap on Joan and her husband. The Hungarian army consisted of 10,000 horse and more than 7000 infantry, and Aversa had only 500 soldiers under Giacomo Pignatelli. In spite of the immense disproportion of the numbers, the Neapolitan general vigorously repelled the attack; and the King of Hungary, fighting in the front, was wounded in his foot by an arrow. Then Louis, seeing that it would be difficult to take the place by storm, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... They who imagine themselves entitled to veneration by the prerogative of longer life, are inclined to treat the notions of those whose conduct they superintend with superciliousness and contempt, for want of considering that the future and the past have different appearances; that the disproportion will always be great between expectation and enjoyment, between new possession and satiety; that the truth of many maxims of age gives too little pleasure to be allowed till it is felt; and that the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... this will not awaken in common natures religious trust. Under such protracted suffering, the animal outgrows the spiritual in frightful disproportion. Yet the mother's sublime faith, which had brought her thus far through her agonies, with a heart still warm toward those who shared them, did not fail her now. She spoke gently to one and another; asked her husband to repeat the litany, ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... other countries. It is not possible to say with certainty how far gold would have cheapened, or, to speak in the current language, how high the ratio of silver would have become, had France during the decade abandoned her bimetallic system; but it is certain that the disproportion would have been enormous, undoubtedly very much greater than the present disproportion in the market between silver and gold, resulting from the demonetization of silver. M. Chevalier gave it as his opinion that the ratio would sink at least ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter
... imperfections are greater than those of others, and that they have to do violence to themselves in order to bear with my shortcomings; therefore it is my duty to be patient with them, in imitation of God, who is patient with all, who supports all, and endures all, notwithstanding our many defects, and the disproportion that ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... fine European-built ship, of 50 guns, and the disproportion was so great between us, that there seemed no hopes of escaping, as we were under his lee. I endeavoured to get into shoal water, but he becalmed me with his sails, and confined us for the best part of an hour, during ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... disproportion would be very much greater if the number of deaths of those who go from other States, after it is too late for them to receive any benefit, could be eliminated from the actual number that die from among the inhabitants ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... discrepancy; unconformity &c 83; incongruity, incongruence^; discongruity^, mesalliance; jarring &c v.; dissension &c 713; conflict &c (opposition) 708; bickering, clashing, misunderstanding, wrangle. disparity, mismatch, disproportion; dissimilitude, inequality; disproportionateness &c adj.^; variance, divergence, repugnance. unfitness &c adj.; inaptitude, impropriety; inapplicability &c adj.; inconsistency, inconcinnity^; irrelevancy ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... therefore is as high as Claude Montigny's. Your mother is descended from a warlike Scottish line, your father's father was an English peer. Your parents are yet living; but their union, which was in many points unequal, was, alas! rendered the more unequal by a gulf-like disproportion in the passion that provoked it;—a gulf, too, that was undiscovered, till, too late, your mother saw it. Thence, their lives, their loves, so call it, their mutual progress (save on the course of fondness towards yourself, their child, whereon ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... there's the point:—as,—to be bold with you,— Not to affect many proposed matches, Of her own clime, complexion, and degree, Whereto we see in all things nature tends,— Foh! one may smell in such a will most rank, Foul disproportion, thoughts unnatural:— But pardon me: I do not in position Distinctly speak of her; though I may fear, Her will, recoiling to her better judgement, May fall to match you with her country forms, ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare
... or processes used in decoration, or the rules of treatment which will modify a low and dark room and make it seem light and airy, or "bring down" too high a ceiling and widen narrow walls so as to apparently correct disproportion? These things are the results of laws which she has never studied—laws of compensation and relation, which belong exclusively to the world of colour, and unfortunately they are not so well formulated that they can be committed to memory like rules ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... would delay a week, and after a week things would be adjusted to submission forever. "I'll go," she vowed to the night, "or I'll die!" She made plans and estimated means and resources. These and her general preparations had perhaps a certain disproportion. She had a gold watch, a very good gold watch that had been her mother's, a pearl necklace that was also pretty good, some unpretending rings, some silver bangles and a few other such inferior ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... of the Lord so unlike the former, wanting many things the former had, and pestered with many things the former wanted. They that have seen our former reformation in its integrity, before the late deformation, can hardly refrain from weeping at the sight of the sad disproportion between this and the former. In the former, as the constitution was calculate in the nearest conformity to the divine pattern, so the builders had always a care to pull down what was to be demolished, before they established what ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... that the pea is not the original food plant of the Bruchus. The original plant must rather have been the bean, one seed of which is capable of supporting a dozen or more larvae. With the larger cotyledon the crying disproportion between the number of eggs and the available ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... evening began to close in. What messages were they, I wondered, that were passing across the mountains? I connected them, idly enough, with the corner in wheat a famous speculator was endeavouring to establish in Chicago; and reflected upon the disproportion between the achievements of Man and the use he puts them to. He invents wireless telegraphy, and the ships call to one another day and night, to tell the name of the latest winner. He is inventing the flying-machine, ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... at distance than near at hand, I have found, that being well, I have had maladies in much greater horror than when really afflicted with them. The vigour wherein I now am, the cheerfulness and delight wherein I now live, make the contrary estate appear in so great a disproportion to my present condition, that, by imagination, I magnify those inconveniences by one-half, and apprehend them to be much more troublesome, than I find them really to be, when they lie the most heavy upon me; I hope to ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... his six companions now had fourteen prisoners on their hands, and in ordinary circumstances the disproportion would have been fatal. But the captives, besides having been deprived of all means of offense, had no exact knowledge of the exact number of men who had trapped them. Their fears and the darkness had a magnifying ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... inequality that is the illusion. The extreme disproportion between men, that we seem to see in life, is a thing of changing lights and lengthening shadows, a twilight full of fancies and distortions. We find a man famous and cannot live long enough to ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... extraction" as yet "only partially extracted;" and again it is the delicate insinuation contained in spelling "Parc" with a c, for that one letter gives us an entire foreign atmosphere, and the disproportion between the smallness of the letter and the extent of the suggestiveness touches our ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... was happening to her. She was by no means sure that she liked it, but was stiffened into a stubborn resistance to any doubts by the unvoiced objection to it all at home. With an instinct against disproportion, perverse perhaps in this case, but with a germ of soundness in it, she felt confusedly and resentfully that since her home circle was so patently narrow and exaggerated in its standard of personality, she would just have ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... restrained Jackson from a resolute endeavour to at least postpone the capture of the town. He had failed to induce the enemy's advanced guard to attack him in position. To attack himself, in broad daylight, with such vast disproportion of numbers, was out of the question. His resources, however, were not exhausted. After dark on the 12th, when his troops had left the town, he called a council, consisting of General Garnett and the regimental commanders ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... his feet, as if by some cataclysm of nature, to plunge him into the unfathomable abyss sown with enormous suns and systems, and among the inconceivable numbers and magnitudes and velocities of the heavenly bodies. So that he concludes by striking into us some sense of that disproportion of things which Shelley has illuminated by the ironical flash of these eight words: The desire of the moth ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... place, they fully bear out the forecast of the Financial Relations Commission that the position of Ireland under the Act of Union would become steadily worse. We have probably not yet reached the bottom of the hill. Ireland is so poor that each new Act for the relief of poverty increases the disproportion between the expenditure of Great Britain and Ireland. There is no way out of that vicious circle. If England were to increase Irish taxation she would simply increase the poverty which she has to relieve. During the last fifty years, in fact, ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... little exercise to the educated mind and leaves the latter free to brood over its unsatisfied longings and desires, as well as its many trials and disappointments. There are other causes, such as the growing disproportion between wants generally and the means of gratification generally; alcoholism; unhealthful work, especially in manufacturing districts; barrack and tenement-house life; and all the evils incident to poverty, overcrowding, and bad sanitary ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... Phoenician, or Egyptian, or Pelasgian part. The essential Hellenic stamp is veracity:—Eastern nations drew their heroes with eight legs, but the Greeks drew them with two;—Egyptians drew their deities with cats' heads, but the Greeks drew them with men's; and out of all fallacy, disproportion, and indefiniteness, they were, day by day, resolvedly withdrawing and exalting themselves into ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... gives birth to, and the benefits, if such they are, which result from these relations. The most obvious division of society is into rich and poor; and it is no less obvious, that the number of the former bear a great disproportion to those of the latter. The whole business of the poor is to administer to the idleness, folly, and luxury of the rich; and that of the rich, in return, is to find the best methods of confirming the slavery and increasing the burdens of the poor. In a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... in order to occasion the least inconvenience to the traffic and commerce of the country. From the fact that nearly 2,000 miles of Railway are already made or sanctioned on the narrow gauge, while not more than 300 are sanctioned on the wide gauge, a disproportion which will be still more largely increased by the new Railways now in contemplation, an inference might be drawn in favour of confining the gauge which is in such a decided minority within the narrowest possible limits; and this inference might be strengthened ...
— Report of the Railway Department of the Board of Trade on the • Samuel Laing
... real action, the notions of the actual strength of the enemy are generally so uncertain, the estimate of our own commonly so incorrect, that the party superior in numbers either does not admit the disproportion, or is very far from admitting the full truth, owing to which, he evades almost entirely the moral disadvantages which would spring from it. It is only hereafter in history that the truth, long suppressed through ignorance, vanity, or ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... the wall, lies the Cemetery, on a piece of undulating ground traversed by deep gullies, and unadorned even by a solitary tree,—the only vegetation sprouting out of its parched soil being a melancholy crop of weeds interspersed with languid sunflowers. The disproportion between the deaths of adults and those of children, which has been a subject for comment by every writer on Mormonism, is peculiarly noticeable there. Most of the graves are indicated only by rough boards, on which are scrawled rudely, with pencil or paint, the names and ages of the dead, and usually ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... forty fold. The quantity sown by a family is usually from five to ten bamboo measures or gallons. These returns are very extraordinary compared with those of our wheat-fields in Europe, which I believe seldom exceed fifteen, and are often under ten. To what is this disproportion owing? to the difference of grain, as rice may be in its nature extremely prolific? to the more genial influence of a warmer climate? or to the earth's losing by degrees her fecundity from an excessive cultivation? Rather than to ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... be mended, or, at least, it could not be mended much, without upsetting the capitalist balance, or, rather, disproportion in society; for a man with a roof is a man with a house, and to that extent his house is his castle. The cradle could not be made to rock easier, or, at least, not much easier, without strengthening the hands of the poor ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... effectiveness of the Krupp gun. Counting all the French dead we came across killed by artillery, they figured up about three hundred —a ridiculously small number; in fact, not much more than one dead man for each Krupp gun on that part of the line. Although the number of dead was in utter disproportion to the terrific six-hour cannonade, yet small as it was the torn and mangled bodies made such a horrible sight that we turned back toward Bazeilles without having gone ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan
... themselves in such dangers; and it was so stubborn and courageous that it sufficed to restrain the fury of those who hitherto had been victors, and even to make them retire, notwithstanding the very great disproportion between the two forces. In retiring, the Chinese lost some soldiers without inflicting any serious loss on the Spaniards, who performed many remarkable deeds in this defense. Thereupon the Chinese, inasmuch ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... the art has nearly disappeared. It is a common observation that if persons fail in everything else, if they are fit for nothing else, they can at least write. It is such an easy occupation, and the remuneration is in such disproportion to the expenditure! Isn't it indeed the golden era of letters? If only ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... another—too often successful—had been made upon the lives of persons who had incurred the hostility of powerful labour organizations. This is a terrible time in which we live, my dear boy. There is none recorded in history, I think, in which the disproportion between the material and the moral constituents of society has been so great or so menacing to the permanence of the fabric. But nowhere, in my judgement, is the prospect so dark as it is ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... Well: even by night and alone Lawrence knew that he would have recovered himself and gone on. It was no more than they all had to fight through, thousands of officers, millions of men. Val had failed. . . . Yet how vast the disproportion between the crime and the punishment! Endurance is at a low ebb at nineteen when one's eyelids are dropping and one's head nodding with fatigue. Oh to sleep—sleep for twelve hours on a bed between clean sheets, ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... efforts recoiled on themselves; that the more he thought, the less he comprehended; and the more he wrote, the less capable was he of expressing his thoughts. In every step of the inquiry, we are compelled to feel and acknowledge the immeasurable disproportion between the size of the object and the capacity of the human mind. We may strive to abstract the notions of time, of space, and of matter, which so closely adhere to all the perceptions of our experimental knowledge. But as ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... with it, except to expose its false professors. The dialogue that perhaps comes next, The Parasite, is still Platonic in form, but only as a parody; its main interest (for a modern reader is outraged, as in a few other pieces of Lucian's, by the disproportion between subject and treatment) is in the combination for the first ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... proper interest when some part of his attention was drawn away by a sound across the house. It was, softened by distance, that species of lion's roar, incredibly large as issuing from a human throat, and comical from such a disproportion, which had startled the audience several times already that evening. Gerald turned, without much thinking, to look off in the direction whence it came and single out the figure with which it was associated, when he was ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... concerning that envy, which arises from a superiority in others, that it is not the great disproportion betwixt ourself and another, which produces it; but on the contrary, our proximity. A common soldier bears no such envy to his general as to his sergeant or corporal; nor does an eminent writer meet with so great jealousy in common hackney scriblers, as in authors, ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... talents in this way: He appeared to be just of that age which we should think least advantageous to him; too young to enforce approbation by robust manly exertion of talents; too far advanced to win over the judgment by tenderness; or by a manifest disproportion between his age and his efforts, to excite that astonishment which, however shortlived, is, while it lasts, despotic over the understanding. Labouring, therefore, under most of the disadvantages without any of the advantages ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... charge for the passage amounted to one guinea, which is the sum paid for the passage between Dublin and Holyhead, although that is nearly three times the extent of the channel between Dover and Calais. I was informed that the seeming disproportion in those prices was to be attributed to the heavy post dues at Calais, which, for so small a vessel as the packet, amounted to L14 or L15, although in the year 1793 they did not exceed ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... I say further, they are both unreasonable, intricate, and intolerable. Unreasonable, as was hinted before; for that the punishment is not proportioned to the offence: there is great difference and disproportion between the life and an apple; yet the one must go for the other by the law of your Shaddai. But it is also intricate, in that he saith, first, you may eat of all; and yet after forbids the eating of one. And then, ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... perfect races, may become a fault when wanted for the table. The very rapidity with which they increase in size is thought by some to prevent their meat from ripening up sufficiently before being hurried off to the butcher. The disproportion of the fatty to the muscular flesh, found in this to a greater extent than in races coming more slowly to maturity, makes the meat of the thorough-bred short horn, in the estimation of some, less agreeable to the taste, and less profitable to the consumer; since the nitrogenous ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... must it be to compare the son of Sophronicus to the son of Mary! What an infinite disproportion there is between them! Socrates dying without pain or ignominy, easily supported his character to the last; and if his death, however easy, had not crowned his life, it might have been doubted whether Socrates, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... not wait for the rear, making his way onward by nearly impassable roads and coming before the outposts of the supplementary Russian army with only eight thousand men. With apparently utter indifference to the vast disproportion in numbers, the Swedish firebrand rushed forward, the Russians, not dreaming of such mad temerity, being sure that he had his whole ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... called the Battle of the Golden Spurs, owing to the great number of these spurs collected on the battlefield after the defeat of the French knights by the Flemish militia. It was hailed at the time as a miraculous triumph for the commoners, the disproportion between the opposing forces being somewhat exaggerated by enthusiastic contemporary chroniclers. But its influence was not only social, it was national, for it definitely secured the independence of Flanders and of the other Belgian principalities against ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... residence at Delaford, where, in his evening hours at least, he had little to do but to calculate the disproportion between thirty-six and seventeen, brought him to Barton in a temper of mind which needed all the improvement in Marianne's looks, all the kindness of her welcome, and all the encouragement of her mother's language, to make it cheerful. Among such friends, however, and such ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... of work, take the first respectable job that offers, heeding not the disproportion between your faculties and your task. If you put your manhood into your labor, you will soon be given something better ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... boarded; but, beating off the enemies, he disengaged himself, and retired into the Thames, with the loss only of two ships of force, and four small frigates, but with his whole fleet much shattered. Nor was the victory gained at a cheap rate, notwithstanding the unusual disproportion of strength; for of the Dutch flagships, one was blown up, and the other two disabled; a proof of the English bravery, which should have induced Van Trump to have spared the insolence of carrying ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... are pleased to mark the steps by which we have been raised from rudeness to elegance; and our reflections on this subject are accompanied with a conscious pride, arising, in a great measure, from a tacit comparison of the infinite disproportion between the feeble efforts of remote ages, and our present improvements in knowledge. In the mean time, the manners, monuments, customs, practices, and opinions of antiquity, by forming so strong a contrast with those of our own times, and by exhibiting human nature and human inventions ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... of life, and who showed me marks of great esteem and affection; but although the heart of the uncle was set upon this marriage, which was much wished for by the nephew also, and I was greatly desirous to promote the satisfaction of both, the great disproportion of age, and the extreme repugnancy of the young lady, made me join with the mother in postponing the ceremony, and the affair was at length broken off. The colonel has since married Mademoiselle Dillan, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... offered to put into his possession for the purpose of sale, first binding him by a horrid ceremony* and oath not to betray him. Williams, on receiving the watch, which proved a metal one, worth only about ten pounds, and the disproportion of which to the value he had expected, probably had induced him to make the discovery, immediately caused him to be taken into custody, and delivered the property to a magistrate, giving at the same time an account how he came by them. All these circumstances were produced in evidence ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... Desdemona to death, has been goaded to madness by the machinations of Iago; and even this last can plead his by no means gratuitous hatred. The disasters that weighed so heavily on the lovers of Verona were due to the inexperience of the victims, to the manifest disproportion between their strength and that of their enemies; and although we may pity the man who succumbs to superior human force, his downfall does not surprise us. We are not impelled to seek explanation elsewhere, ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... at her over garden walls, and vines were yellowing beneath the autumn sky. Her sensitive perception of beauty and grandeur was so much greater than her power of grasping and comprehending them, that her poor little mind became oppressed and bewildered by the disproportion between the vividness with which she received new impressions, and her ability ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... this conclusion, or inconclusion, it was time to grill forth to our boat, and we escaped from shade to shade, as before, until we reached the first-class shelter of the awning at her stern. Even there it was crowded in agonizing disproportion to the small breeze that was crisping the surface of the solution; and fifteen or twenty babies developed themselves to testify of the English abhorrence of race-suicide among the lower middle classes. They were mostly ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... wherewith to cuddle her young one to her capacious bosom while making tracks from her enemies; nor is she much "on the fight," not being so liberally furnished with jaw as the fierce and much larger bull—for this is the only species of whale in which there exists a great disproportion between the sexes in point of size. Such difference as may obtain between the MYSTICETA is slightly in favour of the female. I never heard of a cow-cachalot yielding more than fifty barrels of oil; but I have both heard of, and seen, bulls carrying one hundred and fifty. One individual ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... sinister contraction; you would have pronounced the face not only beautiful, but sweet and womanly. Take that bandage suddenly away and the change would have startled you, and startled you the more because you could detect no sufficient defect or disproportion in the lower part of the countenance to explain it. It was as if the mouth was the key to the whole: the key nothing without the text, the ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... perpetual inheritance of land, where all is possessed, and none remains waste, to be taken up by him that is disseized: which will be easily granted, if one do but take away the imaginary value of money, the disproportion being more than between five and five hundred; though, at the same time, half a year's product is more worth than the inheritance, where there being more land than the inhabitants possess and make use of, any ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... succession of four Emperors, all of whom were endowed with excellent understandings, uncommon vigour of mind, and decision of character, has hitherto obviated the danger of such an enormous disproportion between the governors and the governed. The wisdom, prudence, and energy of these Emperors have not only maintained the family on the throne, the fifth of which now fills it, but have enlarged the dominions to an extent of which history furnishes no parallel. ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... brings also to consciousness the foreignness of the spiritual idea to natural phenomena. And the spiritual idea, having no other reality to express its essence, expatiates in all these natural shapes, seeks itself in their unrest and disproportion, but finds them inadequate to it. It then exaggerates these natural phenomena and shapes them into the huge and the boundless. The spiritual idea revels in them, as it were, seethes and ferments in them, does violence to them, distorts and disfigures them into grotesque shapes, and endeavors by ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... and be slighted, she would never care for me afterwards; but again, I considered that if I should attempt and fail, she would never speak of it; or would any believe I durst be so audacious as to propound such a question, the disproportion of years and fortune being so great betwixt us: however, all her talk was of husbands, and in my presence saying one day after dinner, she respected not wealth, but desired an honest man; I made answer, I thought I could ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... fortune of Hannibal was then consolidated; more than 60,000 Boians, Insubrians, and Ligures flocked in a few days to his standards, and raised his forces to 100,000 men. With such a disproportion between the nucleus of the Carthaginian army and its auxiliaries, Hannibal was in reality but a Gaulish chief; and if, in the moments of danger, he had no cause to repent his new situation, more than once, nevertheless, he cursed with bitterness its inconveniences. Nothing could equal the courage ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... five-and-forty sail. They fell in with the Dunkirk squadron, consisting of ten ships of war, one frigate, and four privateers, under the command of M. de Forbin. A furious action immediately ensued, and notwithstanding the vast disproportion in point of number, was maintained by the English commodore with great gallantry, until captain Acton was killed, captain Clements mortally wounded, and the Grafton and Hampton-Court were taken, after having sunk the Salisbury, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... years he had lived on the earth. Each new machine being for man a new organ—an artificial organ which merely prolongs the natural organs—his body became suddenly and prodigiously increased in size, without his soul being able at the same time to dilate to the dimensions of his new body. From this disproportion there issued the problems, moral, social, international, which most of the nations endeavoured to solve by filling up the soulless void in the body politic by creating more liberty, more fraternity, more justice than the world had ever seen. Now, while mankind laboured at this ...
— The Meaning of the War - Life & Matter in Conflict • Henri Bergson
... disproportion of number and value may be noticed on many occasions between the sin-offering and the peace offering. A striking example of this was the sacrifice of peace-offerings made by Solomon on the dedication of the temple to the number of 22,000 oxen, and ...
— Separation and Service - or Thoughts on Numbers VI, VII. • James Hudson Taylor
... military monarchs or a great military State. The bow and arrow were used equally to shoot men and shoot deer; but they rarely penetrated the armor of knights, or their force was broken by the heavy shield: they took effect only on the undefended bodies of the peasantry. Hence there was a great disproportion of the slain in battle between peasants and their mounted masters. War, even when confined to a small sphere, has its terrors. The sufferers were the common people, whose lives were not held of much account. History largely confines itself to battles. Hence we are apt ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... The apparent disproportion between the losses of the two armies is not surprising, when we remember the armour of the Greek spearmen, and the impossibility of heavy slaughter being inflicted by sword or lance on troops so armed, as long as they kept firm in their ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... aristocracy had degenerated in morals as well as influence. They still retained their enormous fortunes, originally acquired as governors of provinces, and continually increased by fortunate marriages and speculations. Indeed, nothing was more marked and melancholy at Rome than the vast disproportion in fortunes. In the better days of the republic, property was more equally divided; the citizens were not ambitious for more land than they could conveniently cultivate. But the lands, obtained by conquest, gradually fell into the possession of powerful families. The classes ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... temptation there was in the case, and turned again to the campo beneath—to the placid dandies about the door of the caffe; to the tide of passers from the Merceria; the smooth-shaven Venetians of other days, and the bearded Venetians of these; the dark-eyed, white-faced Venetian girls, hooped in cruel disproportion to the narrow streets, but richly clad, and moving with southern grace; the files of heavily burdened soldiers; the little policemen loitering lazily about with their swords at their sides, and in their spotless ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... I was impressed, on walking through the booths and galleries, on this occasion, was the great disproportion between the objects purely of taste and luxury, and the objects of use. The former abounded, were very generally elegant and well-imagined, while the latter betrayed the condition of a nation whose civilization has commenced with the summit, instead ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... manners, and possessed of great natural talents. It was upon a Monday morning, in the month of June, that the school-room door opened a foot and a half wider than usual, and a huge, colossal figure stalked in, with a kind of bashful laugh upon his countenance, as if conscious of the disproportion betwixt his immense size and that of the other schoolboys. His figure, without a syllable of exaggeration, was precisely such as I am about to describe. His height six feet, his shoulders of an enormous ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... himself with all of his friends again, and he was proud of the army's defiant attitude. Meade and the Army of the Potomac were not far away, it was said, but the youthful veterans of the South were entirely willing to fight again. The older men, however, knew their danger. The disproportion of forces would be much greater than at Gettysburg, and even if they fought a successful defensive action with their back to the river the Army of the Potomac could bide its time and await reinforcements. The North would pour ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the disproportion of their marriages to that of their younger sister. This consideration made them far from being content, though they were arrived at the utmost height of their late wishes, and much beyond their hopes. They gave themselves up to an excess of jealousy, ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... are not strength and moral enough?—No; they are not: because it is only the Balance which can keep you on the right path; strength without the beauty sense,—yes, even fortitude, strength of will,—turns at the touch of quickening time and new and vaster conditions, into gaucherie, disproportion, brutality; ay, it is not strength:—the saving quality of strength, morale, dribbles out and away from it: only the Balance is true strength. The empires that were founded upon uncompassion, through they swept the world in a decade, within a poor century or so were themselves swept away. Rome, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... urged with all the fervency of almost paternal affection for both Mr. Morton and his seamen. Unable to oppose or refute the arguments of Captain Williams, proving the innocence of the prisoners, or, at least, the veniality of their offence, if guilty, and the unreasonable disproportion between the crime and the punishment; wearied by the perseverance of the petitioner, and convinced, though unwilling to own it, by his arguments;—convinced, too, that he was making a very ridiculous figure in the eyes of his officers and ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... impossible to give more than a superficial glance at the matter. The particulars at hand are not complete and a full list of German exactions has not yet been drawn up. Let us, however, try to give an idea of the disproportion existing between the country's resources and the demands which were ...
— Through the Iron Bars • Emile Cammaerts
... which I have here rendred Starlight, is Zohal in Arabick which signifies Saturn. 'Tis a common way with the Arabian Authors, when they intend to shew a vast disproportion between things, to compare the greater to the Sun and the lesser to Saturn. The meaning of this Distich, is that there is as much difference between what a Man knows by hearsay, or what notions he imbibes in his Education, and what he knows when he comes to examin things to ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... remarkably unsuccessful in the deeds it has witnessed on the high seas, as it has been remarkable for the reverse on land. The French have not been wanting in excellent sailors—gallant seamen, too; but the results of their exploits afloat have ever borne a singular disproportion to the means employed—a few occasional exceptions just going to prove that the causes have been of a character as peculiar, as these results have, in nearly all ages, been uniform. I have heard the want of success in maritime exploits, among the French, attributed to a want of sympathy, in ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... overawed as she entered Orleans and, riding round the walls, bade the people shake off their fear of the forts which surrounded them. Her enthusiasm drove the hesitating generals to engage the handful of besiegers, and the enormous disproportion of forces at once made itself felt. Fort after fort was taken till only the strongest remained, and then the council of war resolved to adjourn the attack. "You have taken your counsel," replied Jeanne, "and I take mine." Placing herself ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... by which the race shall be lifted nearer its Creator, and the individual ascend into a more conscious neighborhood and stronger affinity to the world which shall receive him at last. All this must that other department be, and this other capacity achieve or there is a fatal disproportion in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... there been provided with tusks, they would long since have been annihilated for the sake of their ivory.[1] But it is a curious fact that, whilst in Africa and India both sexes have tusks[2], with some slight disproportion in the size of those of the females: not one elephant in a hundred is found with tusks in Ceylon, and the few that possess them are exclusively males. Nearly all, however, have those stunted processes called tushes, about ten or twelve inches in length and one or two in diameter. ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... judge that the conclusion follows from the premises, our sole warrant for that judgment being that we can not conceive it not to follow. Consequently if the postulate is fallible, the conclusions of reasoning are more vitiated by that uncertainty than direct intuitions; and the disproportion is greater, the more numerous the ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... let down the stairs leading to the story above a heavy broad cart-wheel, and as it bounded clattering towards the floor below, the assailants fled out of doors in a panic, and taking advantage of their disorder, the Lowes, disregarding the vast disproportion of numbers, rushed upon them, and a regular melee began. It is thought, that the smaller party would have been victorious, but for an ugly blow on the head of the youngest brother, which felled and disabled him; whereupon ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... to say, that as a very large sum must be raised on the security of Irish property, and expended upon labour, during the continuance of the distress occasioned by the failure of the potato crop, the expenditure of this sum upon unproductive works will increase the disproportion already existing between labour and capital in the country; which disproportion they look on as the main cause of the want of employment for the people, and of the miserable wages they are sustained by. Reproductive work, they continue, ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... smiled. He did not find this the least bit sage, while the dwarf from Saturn would have kissed the sectarian of Locke were it not for the extreme disproportion. But there was, unfortunately, a little animalcule in a square hat who interrupted all the other animalcule philosophers. He said that he knew the secret: that everything would be found in the Summa of Saint Thomas. ...
— Romans — Volume 3: Micromegas • Voltaire
... case of all the child angels by what will seem to you the undue size of their abdomen. You will notice this even in the works of painters who, like Raphael, most idealise their subjects, while in those of others who, like Rubens, interpret nature more literally, the apparent disproportion becomes grotesque; or, in the coarser ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... this case, "mutton"—recurred and became general when wool-growing and the manufacture of woollen goods developed into important industries. Relatively to the population there was more "meat" of oxen and sheep in this country than on the continent of Europe, and this disproportion has been maintained. ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... the South, in the services of Mrs. Marsh here, there was a great disproportion between their showiness and their usefulness. She pursued her quiet round of labors, the results of which will be seen and felt for years, as much as in the present. Her kind voice, and pleasant smile will be an ever living and delightful memory in the hearts ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... upon singing into the external artificial ear the piece of hay was thrown into vibration, and tracings were obtained upon a plane surface of smoked glass passed rapidly underneath. While engaged in these experiments I was struck with the remarkable disproportion in weight between the membrane and the bones that were vibrated by it. It occurred to me that if a membrane as thin as tissue paper could control the vibration of bones that were, compared to it, of immense size and weight, why should not a larger and thicker ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... given for this dealing is, "Son, thou art always with Me, and all that I have is thine." By which Christ seems to tell us that the disproportion between man and man is much less than we suppose. The profligate had had one hour of ecstasy—the other had had a whole life of peace. A consistent Christian may not have rapture; but he has that which is much better than rapture: calmness—God's serene and perpetual presence. ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... must necessarily be general, and there may be a use with a view to comprehensiveness in dropping individuals and their lives and actions. In all things, if we leave out details, a certain degree of order begins to appear; at any rate we can make an order which, with a little exaggeration or disproportion in some of the parts, will cover the whole field of philosophy. But are we therefore justified in saying that ideas are the causes of the great movement of the world rather than the personalities which conceived them? The great man is the expression ...
— Sophist • Plato |
