"Function" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... larger families; the process goes on from decade to decade, from generation to generation, and the spectacle we behold is that of advancement in scientific knowledge and technological power according to the law and rate of a rapidly increasing geometric progression or logarithmic function. ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... over to celebrate the housewarming that followed the achievement of the great stone fireplace. Daylight had ridden across the valley more than once to confer with him about the undertaking, and he was the only other present at the sacred function of lighting the first fire. By removing a partition, Daylight had thrown two rooms into one, and this was the big living-room where Dede's treasures were placed—her books, and paintings and photographs, her piano, the Crouched Venus, the chafing-dish ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... psychic organs are the creation of the man of genius. To create such organs is his function. The characteristics, then, of the genius are an immense capacity for sympathy and an immense surplus of power; sympathy, that he may know the needs of mankind; power, that he may fashion those great organs of life by which the race ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... knowing what was passing in Italy, for I had just been invested with a new dignity. As the new King of Naples, Joseph, had no Minister in Lower Saxony, he wished that I should discharge the function of Minister Plenipotentiary for Naples. His Ministers accordingly received orders to correspond with me upon all business connected with his government and his subjects. The relations between Hamburg and ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... was far from her ease. They waited outside the gate till their parents came up. The tall, thin man in his crumpled clothes was unnerved and irritable as a boy, finding himself on the brink of this social function. He did not feel a gentleman, he did not feel anything except ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... thank you; reason not my wastefulness, For, if you make me answer you, you cause More waste. My taper's burnt already. It flickers even now, and, ere I leave This place, my light, my life will go. Question me not, For, now I have fulfilled my public function, There hurries on a duty of a private kind I must perform at once or not at all; Too long delayed already. My friends, my life is flowing fast away, I, that should be at full or on the turn, Am near my lowest ebb. This gnawing at my heart hath eaten ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... Southern state organizations was in doubt after the refusal of Congress to recognize them. Nevertheless, in spite of this uncertainty they continued to function as states during the year of controversy which followed; the courts were opened and steadily grew in influence; here and there militia and patrols were reorganized; officials who refused to "accept the situation" were dismissed; elections were held; the legislatures ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... principles you must apply to others." "What!" said Cyrus; "do you think it will be possible for the soldiers to diet and train themselves?" "Not only possible," said the father, "but essential. For surely an army, if it is to fulfil its function at all, must always be engaged in hurting the foe or helping itself. A single man is hard enough to support in idleness, a household is harder still, an army hardest of all. There are more mouths to be filled, less wealth to start with, and greater waste; and therefore an army ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... assemble the next day to hear a speech from him. At the appointed hour about 5000 persons met in front of his residence, when the Archbishop, clad in his purple robes and other insignia of his high sacerdotal function, spoke to them from his balcony. He appealed to their patriotism, and counselled obedience to the law as a tenet of their Catholic faith. He told them "no government can stand or protect itself unless it protects ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... a pupil receives in studying the parts of a plant or an animal and the adaptation of these parts to function is valuable. He studies the plant and the animal as living organisms with work to do in the world, and learns how what they do and their manner of doing it affect ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... response to a greater or less extent. Some, however, give stronger response than others. In favourable cases, we may have an E.M. variation as high as .1 volt. It must however be remembered that the response, being a function of physiological activity of the plant, is liable to undergo changes at different seasons of the year. Each plant has its particular season of maximum responsiveness. The leaf-stalk of horse-chestnut, for example, exhibits fairly strong response in spring and ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose
... that I demand of you deep regard and veneration for the great foolish boy who lay helplessly weeping because of that strange difference between men and flowers that with the former carries so much discord into their most important vital function. ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... "'The economic function and possibilities of the farmer had similarly been dwarfed or cut off as a result of the concentration of the business system of the country in the hands of a few. The railroads and the grain market had, between them, absorbed the former profits of farming, and left the farmer only the wages ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... Muhlen-Sarkey entering the room. He bent above Trusia's extended hand as serenely as though they were both figuring in a court function and ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... that objection is based upon a misconception of the real relations which exist between structure and function, between mechanism and work. Function is the expression of molecular forces and arrangements no doubt; but, does it follow from this, that variation in function so depends upon variation in structure that the former is always exactly proportioned to the latter? ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... distribution of the offices,—nay, rather, is involved in a maze of contradictions. Obededom, Jeduthun, Shelomith, Korah, occur in the most different connections, belong now to one, now to another section of the Levites, and discharge at one time this function, at another, that. Naturally the commentators are prompt with their help by distinguishing names that are alike, and identifying names ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... coming over him that revulsion that would make him look upon death as the goal of his desires, as happiness. Hitherto each individual desire, aroused by suffering or privation, such as hunger, fatigue, thirst, had been satisfied by some bodily function giving pleasure. But now no physical craving or suffering received relief, and the effort to relieve them only caused fresh suffering. And so all desires were merged in one—the desire to be rid of all his ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... played to a chosen few, the beautiful Mrs. Mortimer and her delightful husband were seldom missing. They were prominent members of that sort of family party which made the "Monday Pops" for years a social as well as an artistic function. And their small, but exquisite house in Berkeley Square, now inherited by their daughter, was famous for its "winter evenings," at which might be met the creme de la creme of the intellectual and artistic worlds, and at which no vulgarian, however rich and ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... was on his feet again, that his life was wrecked for ever. He did suffer from insomnia, even with his splendid sea-seasoned constitution, for months, which proved the poignant insistency of his grief, making thinking a disease instead of a healthy function. He performed his duties mechanically, rigidly, like an engine stoked from the outside. He no longer had pleasure or interest in them. The flavour was gone from life; it had become a necessary burden, to be borne as best he ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... the speakers continued, but in this respect they were guided by faith rather than by experience. At least, the momentary end of "manifest destiny" was clearly the political function; to be ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... is a function of the crowd," says Brander Matthews, "and the work of the dramatist is conditioned by the audience to which he meant to present it. In the main, this influence is wholesome, for it tends to bring about a dealing with themes ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... a very real distress to the bishop. He had a firm belief that it is a function of the church to act as mediator between employer and employed. It was a common saying of his that the aim of socialism—the right sort of socialism—was to Christianize employment. Regardless of suspicion on either hand, regardless of very distinct ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... satisfaction to spending the following day in going down to his diocese in order to preside at a Church fete, make a humorous speech, and meet a number of important county people. There was no question of any religious element entering into the function, and Hugh found himself dimly wondering whether such a development of the energies of Christian elders was seriously contemplated in the Gospel. But the bishop seemed to have no doubts ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and we learn that at exactly 2.48 p.m. they were crossing the Medway, six miles west of Rochester, while at 4.5 p.m. the lofty towers of Canterbury were well in view, two miles to the east, and here a little function was well carried out. Green had twice ascended from this city under patronage of the authorities, and the idea occurred to the party that it would be a graceful compliment to drop a message to the ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... say thought, its strength has become so exhausted by this excessive extension of its duties during the comparatively short period of modern civilisation, that it is no longer able to perform even that function which alone justifies its existence, to wit, the assisting of those who suffer, in communicating with each other concerning the sorrows of existence. Man can no longer make his misery known unto others ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... this particular writer was missing. There was no inspiration. The words were dead. Even the tobacco in his pipe seemed to lack something, and he changed it for a cigar—and chose another book. The result was the same. His mind refused to function, and there was ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... leaders have a clear though a difficult duty to perform. Their one immediate function is resistance to a dangerous revolution. Logically and politically, there was a good deal to be said for the deliberate refusal to discuss, or to vote upon, any of the details of the Home Rule Bill. There is always a danger ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... this sort of function," said Paul. "And, to tell you the truth, I have been very weary ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... recognition of the real significance of Flinders in southern exploration has led to his name being honoured and commemorated even with respect to parts where he was not the actual discoverer. It is a function of history to do justice in the large, abiding sense, discriminating the spiritual potency of personalities that dominate events from the accidental connection of lesser persons with them. In that wider sense, Flinders was the true discoverer ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... occasion for its introduction is apparent. The new wine might not be put into old bottles; here is a new name for the new thing, and that name most pregnantly sums up what the democratic party had already expressed in the Gabinian law, only with less precision, as the function of its chief—the concentration and perpetuation of official power (-imperium-) in the hands of a popular chief independent of the senate. We find on Caesar's coins, especially those of the last period, alongside of the dictatorship the title of Imperator prevailing, and ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... again felt my pulse, and took his leave, declaring that his function was at an end, and that the rest depended ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... a man of any hue or character, so sorely perplexed as our African was by this singular suggestion. To stop the slave-trade, unless by compulsion, was, in his eyes, the absolute abandonment of a natural appetite or function. At first, he believed we were joking. It was inconceivable that I, who for years had carried on the traffic so adroitly, could be serious in the idea. For half an hour the puzzled negro walked up and down the verandah, muttering to ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... "The function might perhaps seem an unusual one," suggested Chang Tao, who secretly feared the outcome of an enterprise conducted under ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... after experiences of which he alone may be aware: when he has left off being wholly preoccupied with his own powers and interests and with every petty plan that centers in himself; when he has cleared his eyes to see the world as it is, and his own true place and function in it. ...
— When a Man Comes to Himself • Woodrow Wilson
... painfully, recollection was attempting to reassert itself, the hurt brain was mending, as the cause of its recent failure to function was being slowly absorbed or removed by the healing processes ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... underlies and issues from a romance, this something which it is the function of that form of art to create, this epical value, that I propose chiefly to seek and, as far as may be, to throw into relief, in the present study. It is thus, I believe, that we shall see most clearly the great stride that Hugo has taken beyond his predecessors, and how, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the word "invite" is worthy of notice, and calls to mind a sentence used by a writer on Freud,[14] that "the activity of a human being is a constant function of his environment." We adults, who are so ready with our "Don't touch," must endeavour to remember how everything is shouting to a child: "Look at me, listen to me, come and fetch me, and find out all you can about me by every means in ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... the external senses of the body, and good acts, are declared by the Ved to be indispensable in the mind's approximation to God." Yet the spirit can for the time pervade and control every member and function of the body, and transmute what in form is the grossest sensuality into purity and devotion. The generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... with his superlative sympathy with all men. The visitor fell under the influence of a benign nature which, intensely human in all its attributes, proffered its solace to all alike. It was, he concluded, the life function of the bishop to give ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... (Report of Gregoire, Frimaire 24, year III.) "Rascallery—this word recalls the old revolutionary committees, most of which formed the scum of society and which showed so many aptitudes for the double function of robber and persecutor."] ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... one of his admirable treatises, ridicules those who imagine that any one who chooses may sit down and write history as easily as he would walk or sleep, or perform any other function of nature, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... public welfare outweighed with him his duty towards his children. (43) This being so, it follows that the public welfare is the sovereign law to which all others, Divine and human, should be made to conform. (44) Now, it is the function of the sovereign only to decide what is necessary for the public welfare and the safety of the state, and to give orders accordingly; therefore it is also the function of the sovereign only to decide the limits of our ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza
... which has reached its nicely calculated climax. While the flush of irritation was still making him ashamed that he had shown so much warmth, Blount found himself gossiping with his table companion over a social function two days old; and subsequently, when the waiter brought the cigars, Gantry was congratulating himself that the danger-point, if any there ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... fourteen years are past, With earrings decked return at last. My fainting mind forgets to think: Low and more low my spirits sink. Each from its seat, my senses steal: I cannot hear, or taste, or feel. This lethargy of soul o'ercomes Each organ, and its function numbs: So when the oil begins to fail, The torch's rays grow faint and pale. This flood of woe caused by this hand Destroys me helpless and unmanned, Resistless as the floods that bore A passage through the river ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... to its home was an event, but an event that was kept quiet. Our departure from Paris had been very lively and gay, and quite a public function. Our return was clandestine for many of the members, and for me among the number. It was a doleful return for those who had not been appreciated, whilst those who ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... course in regard to this or the other high matter will be; what the public will think of it; and, in short, what and how the Executive-Royal shall DO therein: this, the essential function of a Parliament and Privy-Council, was here, by artless cheap methods, under the bidding of mere Nature, multifariously done; mere taciturnity and sedative smoke making the most of what natural intellect there might be. The substitution of Tobacco-smoke for Parliamentary eloquence ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... out of the public-address speaker. "Some of the radio equipment around the target area, that wasn't knocked out by blast, is beginning to function again. There is an increasingly heavy gamma radiation, but no more cosmic rays. They were all prompt radiation from the annihilation; the gamma is secondary effect. Wait a moment; Captain Urquiola, of the Air Force, says that the first drone ...
— The Answer • Henry Beam Piper
... shown in the accompanying engraving is to effect a separation of the tough epidermis of the sugar-cane from the internal spongy pith which is to be pressed. Its function consists in isolating and separating the cells from their cortex, and in putting them in direct contact with the rollers or cylinders of the mill. After their passage into the apparatus, which is naturally placed in a line with the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... machine, he also gave us iced champagne every evening. As an example of how thorough the Maharajah was in his arrangements, he had brought three of his mallees, or native gardeners, with him, their sole function being to gather wild jungle-flowers daily, and to decorate the tables and ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... in the hand without the combustion of a certain amount of food; we cannot think a thought without a similar demand; and the force that goes in one way is unavailable in any other way. While we are expending ourselves largely in any single function—in muscular exercise, in digestion, in thought and feeling, the remaining functions must continue for the time in comparative abeyance. Now, the maintenance of a high strain of elated feeling, unquestionably costs a great deal to the forces of the system. All the facts confirm this high estimate. ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... I could see through the great windows of the first floor into the brilliantly illuminated audience chamber of Than Kosis. The immense hall was crowded with nobles and their women, as though some important function was in progress. There was not a guard in sight without the palace, due, I presume, to the fact that the city and palace walls were considered impregnable, and so I came close ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... character present was Mr. Deputy Bedford—"Robert" in the pages of Punch—an undertaker in the City, and one of the most humorous men within its boundary. I recollect introducing my wife to him at some function at the Mansion House—not as Robert, but as Mr. Deputy Bedford. She expressed her pleasure at meeting one of the City dignitaries, and he offered to show her over the treasures in the Mansion House. "There's a fine statue for you! Don't know who did it, ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... speaking of the Albert Memorial, now approaching completion, says:—'In ten years the spire and all its elaborate tracery will have become obsolete and effaced for all artistic purposes. The atmosphere of London will have performed its inevitable function. Every 'scroll work' and 'pinnacle' will be a mere clot of soot, and the bronze gilt Virtues will represent nothing but swarthy denizens of the lower regions; the plumage of the angels will be converted into a sort of black-and-white check-work. 'All this fated transformation ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... itself; its value is changeable,—fluctuating from time to time according to the relation of supply and demand, and from place to place according to the perturbations of the trade of the world. Moreover, its very preeminence of function—the universality and the durability of its worth—renders it peculiarly sensitive to accidental influences, or to influences outside of the usual workings of trade. A great war or revolution occurring anywhere, the loss by tempests or frosts of an important ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... the brethren from Thebes. All Thebes will be present at the solemn service, and it must be proved which knows how to serve the Divinity most worthily, they or we. We must avail ourselves of all our resources, and Pentaur we certainly cannot do without. He must fill the function of Cherheb ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... princess lady herself did not quite understand either. Perhaps the sight of little Maggie and her play lady friends so elegantly costumed for their social function had suddenly convinced her that these children of the Flats were of her world after all. Perhaps the shouting children had awakened memories that banished for the moment the sadness of her grown-up years. Or it may have ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... that these seaplanes were constructed like catamarans with twin bodies, enabling them to ride on any sea, and between these bodies the torpedoes were swung, one for each seaplane, with a simple lowering and releasing device that could be made to function by the touch of a lever. The torpedo could be fired from the seaplane either as it rested on the water or as it skimmed over the water, say at a height of ten feet, and the released projectile darted straight ahead in the line of ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... but she washes! I know who they must be. I know in Bellevue there are some; but they go to the Kennel Church. Didn't you come home, Ada, from that function you went to with Florence, raving about the handsome youth in ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be set down that he wasn't the aggressor; his contract with Max stipulated that he should have the deciding word in the selection of the cast—aside from the leading role, of course—and when Alison chose, as she invariably did, to try to usurp that function, the author merely stood calmly and with imperturbable courtesy upon his rights. In consequence, it was Alison who made the conference so stormy a one that Max more than once threatened to tear his hair, and as a matter of fact did make futile grabs at ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... trees and in a wilderness of bright flowers and flags as bright, a vast concourse of people was gathered about the pretty pavilion in the park to give the Prince a welcome. The function had all the informality of a rather large picnic, and when the sun banished the Pacific "smoke," or mist, ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... the mission of art; and to unfold its working in the art of all times and of all nations, to set it forth by intuition, by patient reason, by every means at his command, is the function of the critic. To have seen this, and to have marked out the way for its performance, is not the least among the services rendered by Carlyle to his own generation and to ours. Later critics can hardly be said to have yet filled ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... a divine incapacity of living among lies. Likewise, which is a corollary, that the highest Shakspeare producible is properly the fittest Historian producible;—and that it is frightful to see the Gelehrte Dummkopf [what we here may translate, DRYASDUST] doing the function of History, and the Shakspeare and the Goethe neglecting it. 'Interpreting events;' interpreting the universally visible, entirely INdubitable Revelation of the Author of this Universe: how can Dryasdust interpret such things, the dark chaotic dullard, who knows the ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... community on the American continent. Men with reputations for licentiousness that would shame old Silenus are cordially received in the most exclusive society. They are found at every high-falutin' "function," bending over the white hands of the most accomplished ladies in the land; on every ballroom floor, encircling the waists of debutantes; in the parlors of our best people, paying court to their young daughters. The noblest women in this world become their wives—fondly undertake their "reformation" ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Calvin, we find not only references to deaconesses as filling a "most honorable and most holy function in the Church," but in the Church ordinances of Geneva, which were drawn up by him, there is mention of the diaconate as one of the four ordinances indispensable to the organization ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... Brunetiere, declared science bankrupt. This was on the eve of the discoveries in radio-activity which have opened up great vistas of possible human readjustments if we could but learn to control and utilize the inexhaustible sources of power that lie in the atom. It was on the eve of the discovery of the function of the white blood corpuscles, which clears the way for indefinite advance in medicine. Only a poor discouraged man of letters could think for a moment that science was bankrupt. No one entitled to an opinion on the subject believes that we have made more ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... criminals, this pardoning power in the finer sense of the term. The prison warden, if he be a man of the right stamp, sometimes exercises it. The Society for the Befriending of Released Prisoners has here an appropriate function open to it; also the employer who after due inquiry has the courage to dismiss suspicion and to give work to the ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... that the very foundation and outcome of the human mind is dependent on race, and that the qualities of races vary, and therefore that humanity taken as a whole is not fixed but variable, compels us to reconsider what may be the true place and function of man in the order of the world. I have examined this question freely from many points of view, because whatever may be the vehemence with which particular opinions are insisted upon, its solution is unquestionably doubtful. ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... almost so, of the young girl of the Turin Museum. They are dressed in rich costumes, to which they have, doubtless, a just claim; for one of them, Hori, surnamed Ra, rejoiced in the favour of the Pharaoh, and must therefore have exercised some court function. They seem to step forth with a measured pace and firm demeanour, the body well thrown back and the head erect, their faces displaying something of cruelty and cunning. An officer, whose retirement from service is now spent in the Louvre, is dressed in a semi-civil costume, with a light wig, a ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... conduct the happy chocolate to Monseigneur's lips. One lacquey carried the chocolate-pot into the sacred presence; a second, milled and frothed the chocolate with the little instrument he bore for that function; a third, presented the favoured napkin; a fourth (he of the two gold watches), poured the chocolate out. It was impossible for Monseigneur to dispense with one of these attendants on the chocolate and hold his high place under the admiring ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... music and syrup and little hard cakes, and you carry away the impression of a lordly function because of the scenery ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... about being present to his friends in the sudden flicker of the fire, or the brightening of a candle-flame. Balzac, the Seer, the believer in animal magnetism, in somnambulism, in telepathy, the weaver of strange fancies and impossible daydreams—Balzac with philosophical theories on the function of thought, and faith in the mystical creed of Swedenborg—in short, the Balzac of "Louis Lambert" and "Seraphita," is not, however, depicted by Boulanger: he can only be found in M. Rodin's wonderful statue. There ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... VERBINDEN (Not a devil of them would bandage us)!" Upon which there is a Surgeon instantly brought; reprimanded for neglect: "Desperate, say you? These are young fellows; feel that hand, and that; no fever there: Nature in such cases does wonders!" Upon which the leech had to perform his function; and the poor young fellows were saved,—and did new fighting, and got new wounds, and had Pensions when the War ended. [Kriele, pp. 169, 170; and in all the Anecdote-Books.] This appears to have been Friedrich's first ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of the kingdom during his absence, they figure as part of a general system. Probably the first royal bailiffs or seneschals were the seigniorial bailiffs of certain great fiefs that had been reunited to the crown, their functions still continuing after the annexation. Their essential function was at first the surveillance of the royal provosts (prevots), who until then had had the sole administration of the various parts of the domain. They concentrated in their own hands the produce of the provostships, and they organized and led the men who by feudal rules ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... five o'clock, the Norumbia came to anchor in the pretty harbor of Plymouth. In the cool early light the town lay distinct along the shore, quaint with its small English houses, and stately with come public edifices of unknown function on the uplands; a country-seat of aristocratic aspect showed itself on one of the heights; on another the tower of a country church peered over the tree-tops; there were lines of fortifications, as peaceful, at their distance, as the stone walls dividing the green fields. The very iron-clads in ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... narrative of the second cylinder begins at the moment when the building of the temple was finished, and when all was ready for the great god Nin-girsu to be installed therein, and its text is taken up with a description of the ceremonies and rites with which this solemn function was carried out. It presents us with a picture, drawn from life, of the worship and cult of the ancient Sumerians in actual operation. In view of its importance from the point of view of the study and comparison of the Sumerian and Babylonian religious ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... vital action. In its passive or negative state it is affected by impressions coming to it in different ways through the sense-organs, resulting in nervous and mental action. It is this latter phase of brain-function with ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... creatures," was his real belief, "and must always be hewers of wood and drawers of water. They are merely the virgin soil out of which men of genius and artists grow like flowers. Their function is to give birth to genius and nourish it. They have no other raison d'etre. Were men as intelligent as bees, all gifted individuals would be supported by the community, as the bees support their queen. We should be the first charge on the state just as Socrates declared that he should ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... proportion are needed rigorously only on the exterior. Within, general beauty no longer dominates, but individual life. If we look at the interior of the human body we find no symmetry, no arrangement but that demanded by the function of the organs. The brain, it is true, has two symmetrical lobes, because the brain is destined to a life of relation, to the life of intelligence. But in their individual functions the life of the internal organs ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... long-necked or more particularly long-haired and chinless compatriots, in black frock-coats of no type or "cut," no suggested application at all as garments—application, that is, to anything in the nature of character or circumstance, function or position—gathered about in the groups that M. Bonnefons almost terrorised by his refusal to recognise, among the barbarous races, any approach to his view of the great principle of Diction. I remember deeply and ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... at HADLEIGH, the idea of a local subscription of a Guinea each in that Town and Neighbourhood. This has been carried into effect by himself and eleven other Friends, who may be said in this instance to sustain, in a manner, the honorable function of a kind of LITERARY JURY. The Names who have given this testimony of their high esteem to the character of Mr. BLOOMFIELD, and of the pleasure they have received from the ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... or early in March, 1914, that the Grand Duchess sent out an invitation to the Diplomatic Corps to attend a court function. We all went gladly because of the pleasantness of the land and the good hospitality of the palace. There were separate audiences with Her Royal Highness in the morning, a big luncheon given by the Cabinet and the city authorities ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... bettering her education and widening her sphere, seem to ignore any difference of the sexes; seem to treat her as if she were identical with man, and to be trained in precisely the same way; as if her organization, and consequently her function, were masculine, not feminine. There are those who write and act as if their object were to assimilate woman as much as possible to man, by dropping all that is distinctively feminine out of her, and putting into her as large an amount of masculineness as possible. These persons ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... Miss Cordelia had bathed her (which would have reminded you of a function at the court of the Grand Monarque, with its Towel Holder, Soap Holder, Temperature Taker and all and sundry) she suddenly sent the two maids and the nurse away and, casting dignity to the winds, she lifted Mary in a transport of ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... much could happen, of course. They wouldn't let the Lhari hurt anyone—then Bart remembered his course in Universal Law. The Lhari spaceport in every system, by treaty, was Lhari territory. Once you walked beneath the lightning-flash sign, the authority of the planet ceased to function; you might as well be on that unbelievably remote world in another galaxy that was the Lhari home planet—that world no human had ever seen. On a Lhari spaceport, or on a Lhari ship, you were under ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... incentive to conduct. It is obviously impossible to pass a blue law compelling parents to conform to—what ideal? The school is fast taking the place of the home, not because it wishes to do so, but because the home does not fulfill its function, and so far has not been made to, and the lack must be supplied. The personal point of view, inculcated now by modern conditions of strife for money, just as surely as it must have been by barbarian struggle in pre-civilized ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... itself and is therefore dissipated as soon as the external energy which supported it is withdrawn. The mistake is in attributing the creative power to the will, or perhaps I should say in attributing the creative power to ourselves at all. The truth is that man never creates anything. His function is, not to create, but to combine and distribute that which is already in being, and what we call our creations are new combinations of already existing material, whether mental or corporeal. This is amply demonstrated in the physical sciences. No one speaks of creating energy, but only ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... the requirements a man looks for in a war horse, which are not of necessity those he requires in a mount with the Grafton. She scorned guns—she repudiated lorries, and he could lay the reins on her neck without her ceasing to function. She frequently fell down when he did so; but—c'est la guerre. The shadows were beginning to lengthen as he hacked out of the camp, waving a farewell hand at a badminton four, ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... an expansive gesture, signifying "Anywhere." Being an astute person in his own opinion, the Jehu studied the pretty foreigner's attire with an appraising eye, profoundly estimated that so much style and elegance could be designed for only one function of the day, whirled her swiftly along the two-mile drive of the Calvario Road, and landed her at the President's palace, half an hour after the reception was over. Supposing from the coachman's signs that she was expected to go in and view some public garden, ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... he can, what he imitates in the way of style, and choosing from his own interpretation of the things around him what constitutes material. But after all every writer writes because it's his mode of living. Don't tell me you like this 'Divine Function of the Artist' business?" ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... commission to decorate the new court of the Sebasteion or Caesareum, as it was called—a grand pile in Alexandria—with twenty granite lions. More than thirty artists had competed with him for this work, but the prize was unanimously adjudged to his models by qualified judges. The architect whose function it was to construct the colonnades and pavement of the court was his friend, and had agreed to procure the blocks of granite, the flags and the columns which he required from Petrus' quarries, and not, as had formerly been the custom, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... for making friends with them. He was inclined, always, to try and set them in the right way; to help them to some of the mental training which men got in a hundred ways, and women, as it seemed to him, were often so deplorably without. But this schoolmaster function only attracted him when there was opposition. He had been quite sincere in denouncing humility in women. It never failed to warn ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... connects all the fingers with each other, together with the fact that the lower side of the fore limb is as delicate in its epidermal structure as the upper, certainly tends to support the theory of the swimming rather than the walking or terrestrial function of this fore paddle as indicated in the accompanying preliminary restoration that was made by Charles R. Knight working under the writer's direction. One is drawn in the conventional bipedal or standing posture while the other is in a quadrupedal pose or walking position, sustaining or balancing ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... two stories Studies of the Reflex Function in its higher sphere, I should frighten away all but the professors and the learned ladies. If I should proclaim that they were protests against the scholastic tendency to shift the total responsibility of all human action from the Infinite to the finite, I might alarm the jealousy of the ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... determined how each plant shall grow: how, within limits of cultivation, its stems and branches shall separate, each to seek its own share of air and sunshine; how its leaves shall stand erect or droop, each according to its function; and always in perfect beauty. And further: how each family of plants shall have its own method of branching; which is as much a part of its character and often of its beauty as are the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... assign to him or them, subject to any Limitations or Directions expressed or given by the Queen; but the Appointment of such a Deputy or Deputies shall not affect the Exercise by the Governor General himself of any Power, Authority, or Function. ...
— The British North America Act, 1867 • Anonymous
... and the deuill shoulde deale by their factors. He stand to it, there is not a pandor but hath vowed paganisme. The deuill himselfe is not such a deuill as he, so be he performe his function aright. He must haue the backe of an asse, the snout of an elephant, the wit of a foxe, and the teeth of a wolfe, he must faune like a spaniell, crouch like a Jew, Here like a sheepbiter. If he be halfe a puritan, and haue scripture ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... countries began using euro banknotes and coins. Ten new countries joined the EU in 2004 - Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia - bringing the current membership to 25. In order to ensure that the EU can continue to function efficiently with an expanded membership, the 2003 Treaty of Nice set forth rules streamlining the size and procedures of EU institutions. An EU Constitutional Treaty, signed in Rome on 29 October 2004, gives member states ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... suddenly changed his mind, apparently, and went away, leaving Mr. Bates to infer that the throwing of that particular lever would leave them all in darkness; later, with Biff ready to spring upon him, he threw that switch to show that it had no important function to perform at all. To all these and many more ingenious tricks to humiliate him, Mr. Bates paid not the slightest attention, but, as calmly and as impassively as Fate, kept as nearly as he could to the four-foot distance ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... know how to saddle a horse correctly, or to distinguish the German bird-dog from the English setter at a thousand paces. What is aimed at is not personal respect for the judge, but for the judge's function, which the witness identifies with the judge's person. If he has such respect, he will find it worth the trouble to help us out, to think carefully and to assist in the difficult conclusion of the ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... in our time, and was celebrated for its talents and its extravagance, proposed to concentrate all property into the hands of a central power, whose function it should afterwards be to parcel it out to individuals, according to their capacity. This would have been a method of escaping from that complete and eternal equality which seems to threaten democratic society. But it would be a ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... province of purely organic institutions, and raises, by anticipation, some other questions to which growing necessities will sooner or later compel the attention both of theoretical and of practical politicians. The chief of these last, is the distinction between the function of making laws, for which a numerous popular assembly is radically unfit, and that of getting good laws made, which is its proper duty and cannot be satisfactorily fulfilled by any other authority: and the consequent need of a Legislative Commission, as ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... was at variance with all our experience of the course of nature; or again if his legs had been broken, or his feet pierced, we could say nothing; but what irreparable mischief is done to any vital function of the body by the mere act of crucifixion? The feet were not always, 'nor perhaps generally,' pierced (so Dean Alford tells us, quoting from Justin Martyr), nor is there a particle of evidence to shew that any exception was made in the present ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... emphasis put upon qualities by circumstances." There were two circumstances which enabled this young rector to create in Christ Church, Cincinnati a far-famed chapter in the history of American churches and cities. One was his conception of the place and function of the modern church in the new age, as just outlined. It has been the reproach of the Protestant Churches that they have too largely attracted only the well-to-do and middle classes. Frank Nelson made Christ Church a place where rich ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... rule, general, not personal, and yet the best ones have the personal touch. The letter is a silent salesman whose function is to anticipate the needs of its customers and offer to supply them. In this as in any other kind of salesmanship it is the spirit which counts for most, and the spirit of genuine helpfulness (mutual helpfulness) gives pulling power to almost any letter. The one which ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... of the weather" (he has no official title, though the great importance of his function secures him general respect) has no knowledge of the number of days in the year, and does not count their passage. He is aware that the lunar month has twenty-eight days, but he knows that the dry season does not recur after any given number of completed months, and therefore keeps no record ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... undertook the sacred function, after having drawn his sleeve across his mouth, and muttered, 'Well! I don't know as I see my way to hitting any of you quite in the right place neither.' He said this with a dark smile, and then began to bellow. What we were specially ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens
... hundreds of young actors in London alone who are being forcibly kept in the country to go on entertaining and playing the fool for the same sedative purpose. These youths are all healthy and fit, but it is held that their true function is to work in the theatres and halls to beguile the audiences and divert their thoughts from the terrible reality of German invasion. With each step that the Germans draw nearer the mummers redouble their efforts to excite laughter. Thus did ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various
... {143} selection, and provided that it is not directly harmful there is no reason why it should not persist. In this way we are released from the burden of discovering a utilitarian motive behind all the multitudinous characters of living organisms. For we now recognise that the function of natural selection is selection and not creation. It has nothing to do with the formation of the new variation. It merely decides whether it is to survive or ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett
... the reproductive function inheres in a single bisexual flower, consisting of both male and female elements. In walnuts, as well as most other nuts, the male and female functions are performed by unisexual flowers of ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... formed one of the party; carrying, equally as a matter of course, his young master's towels in his mouth and wagging his fine bushy tail with even more energy than he generally evinced when performing that function, in order to express his proud exultation at the trust ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... of his place was evinced in almost every function pertaining to it. Proud as he was moody, he condescended to no personal mandate. Whatever special orders were necessary, their delivery was delegated to his body-servant, who in turn transferred them to their ultimate ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... them. All fanatics, being consecrated by their own fond imaginations, naturally hear an antipathy to the ecclesiastics, who claim a peculiar sanctity, derived merely from their office and priestly character. This parliament took into consideration the abolition of the clerical function, as savoring of Popery; and the taking away of tithes, which they called a relic of Judaism. Learning also and the universities were deemed heathenish and unnecessary: the common law was denominated a badge of the conquest and of Norman slavery; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... crucial moment. One of the lieutenants whose peculiar and melancholy function seemed to be to pronounce the doom of one section after another, had just sent warning to Nob Hill, the center ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... car of a Phoongyee, or Buddhist priest—a marvellous structure, reminding one of the Juggernaut cars of India. The funeral of a Phoongyee is always made the occasion of a great function. The body is embalmed and placed on one of these huge cars; and the people from the surrounding villages flock to the ceremony, bringing cartloads of fireworks, for the manufacture of which the Burmese are celebrated. Great rivalry arises ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... marble, which, it was believed, had been provided by Datis to form a trophy of the anticipated victory of the Persians. Phidias fashioned out of this a colossal image of the goddess Nemesis, the deity whose peculiar function was to visit the exuberant prosperity both of nations and individuals with sudden and awful reverses. This statue was placed in a temple of the goddess at Rhamnus, about eight miles from Marathon, Athens herself contained numerous memorials of her primary great victory. Panenus, the cousin of ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... has," retorted Mr. Peters. "And a very good thing it has been, too. Did you ever know of a church function that did not arouse animosities ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... suited him like his own garment, as if it had been lying ready for him to put on when the occasion required it, and now became him admirably. He perceived it to be a proper male function to produce easily and with precision whatever utterly charming young ladies might reasonably require. He appreciated Miss Goodward's acceptance of it as she came down from the house bewilderingly tied into soft veils ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... of countenance, gait, movements, and speech, should be noted; the state of the general health, appetite, bowels, tongue, skin, and pulse, should be inquired into; and in women the state of the menstrual function should be ascertained. The family history must be traced out, and the personal history taken with care, especially as to whether the unsoundness came on late in life or followed any physical cause. Ascertain whether it is a first attack, ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... in command here," he said very grimly indeed. "Mr. Taine has a special function, but I am in command! We and the creatures on the Plumie ship are in a very serious fix. One of them apparently means to come on board. There will be no hostility, no sneering, no threatening gestures! This is a parley! ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster
... The Bulgarian economy continued its painful adjustment in 1994 from the misdirected development undertaken during four decades of Communist rule. Many aspects of a market economy have been put in place and have begun to function, but much of the economy, especially the industrial sector, has yet to re-establish market links lost with the collapse of the other centrally planned Soviet Bloc economies. The prices of many imported industrial inputs, especially energy products, have risen markedly, ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... pernicious system of payment euphemistically known as "pocket-money." This should be swept off the face of the earth. Even the richer woman has some rights, notably the right to work, and I would suggest that she has this particular, and certainly not unimportant function of raising the rate of remuneration. From my knowledge of her, I consider that she is most anxious to do nothing but good to her fellows. The only thing she needs in order to become a help instead of a menace to her poorer sisters is knowledge of the rules that ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... of the element x, its evident chromatic nature, its division before each mitosis, and its presence in mitosis and in the spermatids, with the same staining qualities as in the previous rest stages, certainly indicate some important function, either in the whole process of spermatogenesis or in the formation of the sperm-head, of which it finally becomes a part. In Sagitta this element certainly can not be regarded as a specialized spermatogonial chromosome, or as chromatin rejected from the spireme. No such element ...
— Studies in Spermatogenesis (Part 1 of 2) • Nettie Maria Stevens
... thinking, what controversial battlefields of sulphurous smoke and scattering fire might it prevent. He has been called a public benefactor who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before. He is as great a benefactor, who in an age of verbiage makes one word perform the function of two. Wonderful is the precision with which this mental mechanism may be made to work. Some men can even think their best on their feet in the presence of a great assembly. There are others whose spontaneous thoughts move by informal syllogisms. Emmons sometimes ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... That is to say, that if two persons of either or both sexes, having reached years of discretion,[275] privately consent to practise some perverted mode of sexual relationship, the law cannot be called upon to interfere. It should be the function of the law in this matter to prevent violence, to protect the young, and to preserve public order and decency. Whatever laws are laid down beyond this must be left to the individuals themselves, to the moralists, and to ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... this giving of motion to water to be considered as confined only to the surface of the earth. A no less important function of the hills is in directing the flow of the fountains and springs, from subterranean reservoirs. There is no miraculous springing up of water out of the ground at our feet; but every fountain and well is supplied from a reservoir among the hills, so placed as to ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... to say all that there is to say about anything is to show the casement stuck fast, as it were, and themselves battering somewhat desperately to open it. Saying the things "about" is the other people's function. It is as if we suddenly saw a princess come out upon her castle-walls, and hymned that fair emergence, which ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... had always resisted absolutism as strenuously as they had fought the Moors, had been divested of all political power, a like fate had befallen the cities, the free constitutions of Castile and Aragon had been swept away, and the only function that remained to the Cortes was that of granting money at the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... all the most prominent writers of the day had contributed, together with the ever-delightful fact that Matthew Arnold was my uncle, brought us the welcome of those of our own metier and way of life; and when in 1884 my husband became art critic of the paper, a function which he filled for more than five and twenty years, fresh doors opened on the already crowded scene, ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "children of men," as created corporeally instead of spir- itually and as emerging from the lowest, in- 148:12 stead of from the highest, conception of being. Both anatomy and theology define man as both physical and mental, and place mind at the mercy of matter for every 148:15 function, formation, and manifestation. Anatomy takes up man at all points materially. It loses Spirit, drops the true tone, and accepts the discord. Anatomy and the- 148:18 ology reject the divine Principle ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... Matilda, was inexplicably incompetent at this function. So clumsy, so nervous was she, that Mrs. De Peyster was moved to ask with a little irritation what was the matter. Matilda hastily assured her mistress that there was nothing—nothing at all;—and buttoned a few more buttonholes over the wrong buttons. As she followed the ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... nor the regidors awaited the governor at the gates of the city, although they should have gone out to the Puerta Real ["royal gate"]. Neither does the relation state whether the city council paid the bills for any function in honor of Corcuera and of the Spanish arms. The only ones who celebrated these were the Jesuits, the soldiers, the Indians, and some private ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... a good instance of this. Somerset, raw, uneducated, and untrained, had for his nurse as a courtier and politician the accomplished but less fortunate Sir Thomas Overbury. In the course of this function, Overbury could not fail to acquire some state secrets. It is supposed to have been on account of his possession of these secrets that Somerset poisoned him. But the affair goes further still, for we find that the king was much alarmed for himself on the occasion—was ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various |
