"Proposition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Adrian, with some difficulty recovering the breath which his astonishment had taken away, "you do not think of embracing that black proposition?" ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... by the solid rocks protecting, from the ravages of the floods and sea, the loose materials of the land. It will therefore be proper to show, that this author's argument does not go to prove his proposition in the terms which he has given it, which is, that those sloped mountains are to last for ever, but only that these causes, which he has so well described, make the destruction of the mountains become ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... to Mr. Shaw, but he would not sell. He was preparing to erect a handsome country-place, and he did not want to alter his plans. Courteously at first, then somewhat scathingly he declined to discuss the proposition with her agents. After two months of pressure of the most tiresome persistency, he lost his temper and sent a message to his inquisitors that suddenly terminated all negotiations. Afterward, when he learned that heir client ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... self-evident except one, which was to become self-evident at the close of a summer's day, but in the mean time might be the subject of question, of hypothesis, of debate. Art and philosophy, literature and science, would fasten like bees on that one proposition that had the honey of probability in it, and be the more eager because their enjoyment would end with sunset. Our impulses, our spiritual activities, no more adjust themselves to the idea of their future reality than the beating of our ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... this table, and my position as master of Palomar. Of course, I'm not so optimistic as to think you folks would accept of my hospitality for a year, so I suggest that you become what our British cousins call 'paying guests,' albeit I had never expected to fall low enough to make such a dastardly proposition. Really, it abases me. It's never been done before ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... at Fitz, who did not respond to this suggestion, as he had expected him to do. The coalition seemed so natural and so eminently practical, and yet the sailor sat coldly listening to each proposition as it fell from his companion's lips, weighing it, sifting it with a ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... and see his old companions "that dialectics still detained on St. Genevieve's Mount." "I found them," he tells us, "just as I had left them, and at the same point; they had not advanced one step in the art of solving our ancient questions, nor added to their science the smallest proposition.... I then clearly saw, what it is easy to discover, that the study of dialectics, fruitful if employed as a means to reach the sciences, remain inert and barren if taken as being itself ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... diplomats and newspaper correspondents were gathered at lunch in a German city early in the war, when one of the latter, an American, asked how a certain proposition which was being discussed would suit public opinion. "Will public opinion favour such ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... and Ghangir were often talking together in a whisper, and from these interviews arose a proposition which ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... Absolution actually form a portion of the Anglican Visitation of the Sick; and though the 32nd Article says that "Bishops, priests, and deacons, are not commanded by God's law either to vow the state of single life or to abstain from marriage," and "therefore it is lawful for them to marry," this proposition I did not dream of denying, nor is it inconsistent with St. Paul's doctrine, which I held, that it is "good to abide even as ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... of Virginia and of the other individual American states were the sources of Lafayette's proposition. They influenced not only Lafayette, but all who sought to bring about a declaration of rights. Even the above-mentioned cahiers were ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek
... Varvara Petrovna promptly asked Sofya Matveyevna to leave the cottage again, and waited on the invalid herself unassisted to the end, but she sent for her at once when he had breathed his last. Sofya Matveyevna was terribly alarmed by Varvara Petrovna's proposition, or rather command, that she should settle for good at Skvoreshniki, but the latter refused ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... self-consciousness as to offer her bit of entertainment argued well for the success of Dorothy's House Party with its oddly assorted members. But he surprised Helena's lifted eyebrows and the glance she exchanged with the other Molly, so hastened to endorse the proposition: ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... jotted down in pencil his thoughts and memoranda. He made his notes in the laboratory, in the theatre, and in the streets. This distrust of his memory reveals itself in his first letter to Abbot. To a proposition that no new enquiry should be started between them before the old one had been exhaustively discussed, Faraday objects. 'Your notion,' he says, 'I can hardly allow, for the following reason: ideas and thoughts spring up in my mind which are irrevocably lost for want of noting ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... a proposition to make to you," continued the captain. "We need a bos'n, will you sign on? If you do not care to we will put you ashore at the first convenient port or hail a homeward-bound ship ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... accounted of than long life. And it is to you, as a woman, that the guarding of the higher springs of his nature is especially entrusted. My whole experience has gone to teach me, with ever-increasing force, that the proposition that purity is vitally necessary for the woman, but of comparatively small account for the man, is absolutely false. Granted that, owing to social ostracism, the outward degradation of impurity to the woman is far greater, I ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... temerity to propose to me to follow his example—viz. to break faith with Chilian Government to which we had both sworn—to abandon the squadron to his interests—and to accept the higher grade of "First Admiral of Peru." I need scarcely say that a proposition so dishonourable was declined; when in a tone of irritation he declared that "he would neither give the seamen their arrears of pay, nor ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... ever until next fall. And, let me tell you, there wasn't any local of the Handholders' Union on the Siwash Campus. That's another place where you soubrette worriers have us figured out wrong. Rushing a Siwash girl was about as distant a proposition for us as trying to snuggle up to the planets in the telescopic astronomy course. For cool, pleasant and skillful unapproachability, a co-ed girl breaks all records. We just worshiped them as higher beings, and I find that a lot of Siwash ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... forces could attend to emergencies without the casualties that militate against them in outside seas and dominions. Each one of these arguments was enforced so minutely by the ministers of the treasury that this proposition merited consideration and examination. Had God permitted the king to exclude the Filipinas from his monarchy, and leave them exposed to the power of whomsoever should seize them first, the Malucans would have so strengthened ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... undertaken to justify Povy's accounts, taking them upon myself, but I rectified him therein. So to my Lady Sandwich's to dinner, and up to her chamber after dinner, and there discoursed about Sir G. Carteret's son, in proposition between us two for my Lady Jemimah. So to Povy, and with him spent the afternoon very busy, till I was weary of following this and neglecting my navy business. So at night called my wife at my Lady's, and so home. To my office and there made up my month's account, which, God be praised! rose to ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... No proposition Euclid wrote, No formulae the text-books know, Will turn the bullet from your coat, Or ward the tulwar's downward blow Strike hard who cares—shoot straight who can— The odds are on the ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... make, were not only worthy the pursuit of private ambition, but deserving the attention of Her Majesty's Government. With these feelings I could not but be grateful to Lord Stanley, for having entertained my proposition, and given me an opportunity to distinguish myself. It is not because his Lordship is no longer at the head of the Colonial Office, that I should refrain from making my acknowledgments to him, and expressing the sense I entertain of the obligation ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... he stacks up. Make it plain that the men detailed from day to day are merely acting non-commissioned officers and that you are merely placing them in charge to give them an opportunity to demonstrate their ability. It's better to work this proposition out in a systematic manner than it is to jump in and make a lot of non-commissioned officers that you will have to break later on to make ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... His views (as they are called) upon religious matters varied much; and he could never be induced to think them more or less than views. 'All dogma is to me mere form,' he wrote; 'dogmas are mere blind struggles to express the inexpressible. I cannot conceive that any single proposition whatever in religion is true in the scientific sense; and yet all the while I think the religious view of the world is the most true view. Try to separate from the mass of their statements that which is common to Socrates, Isaiah, David, St. Bernard, the Jansenists, Luther, Mahomet, Bunyan ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... if you had stated the reverse of that proposition I should have the more easily believed you," cried Warner, with flashing eyes. "Even a New York justice of the peace may not rob his neighbor with impunity in the Grants. I shall carry that gun away with me to-day. So, sir, deliver it ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... been blazoned in the papers for days beforehand, was not at present capable of making or carrying out anything effective. Jane was. She knew it. She was a born leader and promoter. She liked nothing better than to work out a difficult situation. But this was the most difficult proposition that she had ever come up against. When her father died and her mother was left with the little house and the three younger children to support in a small country village, and only plain sewing and now and then a boarder to eke out a living for them all, she had sought and found, ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... River, and delivered at the landings on the islands most convenient of access to the points needed. Each man received his lumber by order and receipt, and was under obligation to build his own house. The work was all performed by themselves. A garden was insisted upon. At first this proposition was ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... coup d'etat which caused a change of the ministry in England,—what would have been the consequence? England would probably have remained indifferent, and France would have certainly opposed the proposition of the United States—or rather, supported the cause of Austria; and the Sultan abandoned by the constitutional powers of Europe, would have been forced to make Kutaya what the arrogant despots desired—a physical, or at least, a moral grave for ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... you a sporting proposition," he murmured. "You owe me a hundred and fifty thousand francs. I'll stake that against what only two men in the ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... either malice or covetousness[399]. Examples are seen of even great Rishis who have laid down that even preceptors, if addicted to evil practices, should be punished. But approvable authority there is none for such a proposition. The gods may be left to punish such men when they happen to be vile and guilty of wicked practices. The king who fills his treasury by having recourse to fraudulent devices, certainly falls away from righteousness. The code of morality which is honoured in every respect by those that are good and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... not worth while to discuss such an impossible proposition, and you will best suit us, young man, by making yourself scarce without more ado," supplemented Mr. Mencke, ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... he would leave upon it, not even to dust, so long as he remained with us. I then believed that Gilbert had invited him to stay some time, but I was undeceived in the course of the day, and told that the mysterious project had been unfolded at last, and was a proposition that he should undertake a journey to Palestine in the company of Mr. Beamish, to join Holman Hunt, who was painting studies in the Holy Land. "But what made you think I was ready to undertake such a pilgrimage?" Mr. Hamerton had asked ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... compensation. This granted, we will suppose that Peter, after having said to Paul, "Give me ten sixpences, I will give you a crown," adds, "You shall give me the ten sixpences now, and I will give you the crown-piece in a year;" it is very evident that this new proposition alters the claims and advantages of the bargain; that it alters the proportion of the two services. Does it not appear plainly enough, in fact, that Peter asks of Paul a new and an additional service; one of a different ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... were as black as ink, Yet, still as the Committee dared to think, And hoped the proposition was not rash, A rather free expenditure of cash—" But ere the prospect could be made more sunny— Up jump'd a little, lemon-colored man, And with an eager stammer, thus began, In angry earnest, though it sounded funny: "What! More subscriptions! ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... negotiations between the French minister at Turin and the Sardinian government. No wonder if Mme. de Circourt impulsively entreated the young man to shake the dust of Piedmont off his feet and to seek a career in France. In his answer to this proposition, he asks first of all, what have his parents done that he should plunge a knife into their hearts? Sacred duties bound him to them, and he would never quit them till they were separated by the grave. This ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... good deal worse! The sudden rise to her feet, drawn by two strong hands, brought with it a return of the faintness, and for a moment it seemed as if Geoffrey would have to carry out his first proposition. She struggled bravely, however, and Cornelia forcibly ducked her head forward—a sensible, though on the face of it, rather a callous remedy, of which Geoffrey plainly disapproved. He drew the little hand through his arm, ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... interrupted Bergenheim; "you just now spoke in favor of this woman in a way that made me think you did not wish her ruined in the eyes of the world; so I trust you will accept the proposition I am about to make to you. An ordinary duel would arouse suspicion and inevitably lead to a discovery of the truth; people would seek for some plausible motive for the encounter, whatever story we ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... persimmon-seed is as hard and uneatable as a stone. He, therefore, in his greedy nature, felt very envious of the crab's nice dumpling, and he proposed an exchange. The crab naturally did not see why he should give up his prize for a hard stone-like seed, and would not consent to the monkey's proposition. ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... suggest a laborer in northern China. It was amusing to see how quickly he dropped my suggestion as if it were something very hot. Why, it would not do at all to mention China in that school. It would kill his darling missionary proposition completely. This illustrates not by any means a universal feeling here, but a feeling which is quite too prevalent. And there are many who would help to teach the Mongolians if they were to be taught where ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 06, June, 1884 • Various
... last reign in a disordered condition was still the subject of much concern and careful planning. Recently, as our evidence leads us to believe, the king had given up the Danegeld as a tax which had declined in value until it was no longer worth collecting. At Woodstock he made a proposition to the council for an increase in the revenue without an increase in the taxation. It was that the so-called "sheriffs aid," a tax said to be of two shillings on the hide paid to the sheriffs by their counties as a ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... extent, on which nothing was to be procured. They must all perish before they could get to the end of it. It was better, therefore, that one should die to save the rest. He proposed, therefore, that they should cast lots, adding, as an inducement for Mr. Stuart to assent to the proposition, that he, as leader of the ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... he inquired, "will you be afther resolving me one single proposition.—Where am I at the present spaking? Is it in the Siminary at home, Nancy?" Nancy, in the mean time, had been desired to answer in the affirmative, hoping that if his mind was made easy on that point, he might refresh ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... commonly belonging to all men, yet it may be taken away by a superior right supervening; or it may be lost, or it may be hindered, or it may cease upon a greater reason." As "that which is but the half of a true proposition either signifies nothing or is directly a lie," it must be admitted that "in the same cases in which it is lawful to tell a lie, in the same cases it is lawful to use a mental reservation;" and "where it is lawful to lie, it ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... own proposition, urged by himself, that I should go into business with him. Nobody asked him — it was his own doing; it was his declared purpose and wish, unsolicited by me or my father or by anybody, to set me forward in his own ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... Indian matters here of so much importance, and knowing no one can judge of them so well as when he is on the ground, that I desire to make a proposition to the Government. If the Government will allow me to keep General Connor in the field with not to exceed 2,000 men of his present force, leaving the forces you have designated to garrison posts on the plains. ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... with a capital of $9,000,000. The Executive nevertheless refused to ratify it, and returned it with some very well-deserved comments. In a second debate the first resolution was rescinded by a vote of 40 to 38. In the following session the proposition was renewed with more vigor, and forty-one banks with a capital of $17,000,000 were authorized by a large majority; the representations of the Executive proved useless, and they immediately entered upon their duties ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... last proposition you are quite mistaken, my dear mother. Abbie chances to have a brother, who considers himself honored by being permitted to accompany her any where ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... wait a moment, Mr. Dutcher," he said respectfully. "I want you to hear my proposition before you refuse definitely. First, I'll give you ten dollars for the rent of the pond; then I'll see that there will be no running over your fields and climbing your fences, no lighting of fire or ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... had successfully defended herself against taking a drive which Mr. Thorn came to propose, though the proposition had been laughingly backed by Mrs. Evelyn. Raillery was much harder to withstand than persuasion, but Fleda's quiet resolution had proved a match for both. The better to cover her ground, she declined to ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... They will settle all disputes according to the best of their ability, and will plan the Principal Diversions for the week. These latter will be announced at the Council Meetings. Needless to say, the Chiefs will do no menial labor during the week of their Chiefhood. Is that a fair proposition all ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... of my god-children, Toby-Dog and Kiki-the-Demure. They are so natural—I use the word in the sense in which it is applicable to the savages of Oceania—that all their acts conspire to make of life, a very simple proposition. These are animals in the fullest sense of the word—animos—if I may employ the original orthography, capable of exclaiming with those of Faust: "The fool knows it not! He knows not the pot, He knows not ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... to me that in the consideration of the merits of this bill the necessities of the Government should control the question, and that it should be decided as a business proposition, depending upon the needs of a Government building at the point proposed in order to do the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... had reluctantly consented to sit to him for a portrait during the month of June. He put the request in such terms that it did not sound like a proposition. It was not surprising that he should want her for a subject; in fact, he put it in such a way that she could not but feel that she would be doing him a great and enduring favour. She imposed but ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... the invitation, and less clear-headed than usual, was sufficiently trusting to accept. She soon, however, discovered that his Excellency's intentions were strictly dishonourable, for he made her, she afterwards said, "a most indelicate proposition." Her response was to laugh in his face, and to tell him that "she had no wish to become his toy." Thereupon, Paskievich, furious at such a repulse (and unaccustomed to being thwarted by anyone, must less by a ballet-dancer), dismissed her with threats of reprisals. The first of these ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... person we think you and she'd—she'd like to meet you. And more than that." Mr. Sturgiss's halting speech suddenly became direct and definitive like a flag that had been fluttering suddenly streaming upon the breeze. "And more than that. The fact is, there's a proposition I want to put up to you. A proposition. We could go into it quietly and discuss it. I rather think it would interest you. I'm sure it will. You'll come? Good. I'm very ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... than one. No one had ever remained long at enmity with him. He had "got over" a good many people in the course of his career, as he had "got over" Joseph Hutchinson. This had always been accomplished because he presented no surface at which arrows could be thrown. She was the hardest proposition he had ever come up against, he was thinking; but if he didn't let himself be fool enough to break loose and get mad, she'd not hate him so much after a while. She would begin to understand that it wasn't his fault; then perhaps he could get her ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... feelings, and conduct which may be described as Moral Veal. But, indeed, it is very difficult to distinguish between the different kinds of immaturity, and to say exactly what in the moods and doings of youth proceeds from each. It is safest to rest in the general proposition, that, even as the calf yields Veal, so does the immature human mind yield immature productions. It is a stage which you outgrow, and therefore a stage of comparative immaturity, in which you read a vast deal of poetry, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... dignified Deacon Gould, and his equally dignified colleague, Deacon Drake, gazed very solemnly down upon the communion table, pursing up their mouths most decidedly, as if a sacrilege had already been committed by so astounding a proposition. Of course the duty fell upon Mr. Savage, the minister, to declare before all present that the demand of brother Manning, in behalf of his wife, was unreasonable, incomprehensible, ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... official routine had been departed from, we were ordered to proceed at once to the gates, and humbly deliver up our passports to the sentinel in due form, that the requirements of the law might be fulfilled. This sage proposition was, however, overruled in consideration of our being jewellers: the respectability of the craft being thus acknowledged. It was in Augsburg also that I narrowly escaped being entered in the books of the Guild ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... for dealing in general assertion and declamation. But if it should, I imagine that the Opposition will be the side to fix upon the time and nature of any ulterior proceeding. We don't propose to make any further proposition. Indeed, I doubt the expediency and propriety of doing what we are about to do ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... his possession and taken to Detroit, that the great white chiefs of his own nation would there be able to extort from him such valuable information as would make the final conquest of the Long Knives comparatively easy. To this proposition, which was received rather coldly, he had added, that for this privilege he was willing to pay a fair recompense; and that so soon as all the information necessary had been gleaned from the prisoner, he should, if thought advisable, again be returned to them, to be put to death or not, as they ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... pieces. The Revolution began in Palermo, crossed the Straits of Messina, and passed in successive waves of convulsion through Central Italy to Paris, Vienna, Milan, and Berlin. It has often been remarked that the Latin races are of all the peoples of Europe most prone to revolution; but this proposition did not hold good in 1848. The Czechs in Bohemia, the Magyars in Hungary, the Germans in Austria, rose against the paralysing encumbrance of the Hapsburg autocracy. The Southern Slavs dreamed of an Illyrian ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... paradise! And after looking at it till my spirits have subsided into something like kindred composure and placidity, I open my letter-case, and find your last unanswered epistle lying on the top of it. "If Cunard and Harnden have proved true," you must have received by this time our reply to your proposition touching the Coster business. Thus far on Monday last; and having proceeded thus far, I fell fast asleep, with the pen in my hand, the sound of the rustling trees in my ears, and the smell of the new-mown grass in my nose. Since ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... materially modified, if not altogether changed. We may pronounce with certainty that the institution would not have become extinct in the whole country as soon as it did in Massachusetts, or, indeed, in any one of the present Free States; but we cannot assert that the converse of this proposition would have been true, and that the Government, as a centralized power, would have abolished slavery more certainly, and sooner, than the most backward of the separate States may now be expected to do, under the complex forms of our present ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... H. Winder: "General:—The undersigned Commissioned officers of the United States Army respectfully ask your attention to the following proposition: ...
— Ball's Bluff - An Episode and its Consequences to some of us • Charles Lawrence Peirson
... is the greatest financial proposition in the United States; and, as great affairs always do, it ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... asked the reason for this novel proposition, and learned that the lad's father had contracted to get the cargo of a vessel stranded near Sandy Hook, and take it to New York in lighters. The boy had been sent with three wagons, six horses, and three men, to carry the cargo across a sand-spit to the lighters. ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... with the hundredth, and not the hundred and first, year. He says of Manning, in the Elia essay "The Old and the New Schoolmaster": "My friend M., with great painstaking, got me to think I understood the first proposition in Euclid, but gave me over in ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... tell to landlubbers, and a new light to throw on a subject which our Socialist landlubber had been debating for several years—the torpedoing of passenger-vessels with women and children on board. Somehow Jimmie found it a different proposition when he heard of particular women and children, how they looked and what they said, and what happened when they took to open boats in midwinter, and the boats filled up with water, and the children turned blue ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... and consulted on the subject of the invention. On the 9th of August, 1809, more than two years after the date of the above agreement, Bensley writes to Koenig: "I made a point of calling upon Mr. Walter yesterday, who, I am sorry to say, declines our proposition altogether, having (as he says) so many engagements as to prevent ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... outweigh the use which I should be able to make of them. [Footnote: To this letter of Mr. Hope's I do not find a reply of Mr. Newman's until November 26, when he apologises for having kept him in suspense, adding: 'So far from your not having written to the purpose, you laid down one proposition in which I quite acquiesce; that the subject of the supremacy of Rome should be moved argumentatively, if at all. I felt I had gained something here, and rested upon it, and gave up answering you, as it turns out, selfishly.' At the end of the letter he says: 'As to myself, I don't like ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... at the firm negative of the senor, who seemed to be offended by the proposition. He was a man, not a boy, needing companionship. Let everyone sleep in his own house, and let ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... she could not tell why. She blushed and looked at Karl, whom the proposition seemed to excite to strange eagerness. She did not trust herself to speak, but listened to the ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... were much surprised at the fancy of their father to have a little dog, yet they accepted the proposition with pleasure; and accordingly, after taking leave of the king, who presented them with abundance of money and jewels, and appointed that day twelvemonth for their return, they ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... how they looked upon her proposition, she gained a still clearer feeling of their way of life. It weighed on her, but took no definite form ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... Extra-Reserve Divisions, like a conjurer who produces huge glass bowls full of goldfish out of his waistcoat pocket. He seemed to be doing it on purpose—one felt quite angry with the man. But it was made plain to me that we were up against a tougher proposition than I had imagined. The Field-Marshal must have been, or at all events ought to have been, perfectly well aware of all this, seeing that he had been C.I.G.S. up till very recently, and had devoted special attention to the problems involved in a war ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... Fallit.' The one has for its subject the degradation of modern journalism; the other attacks the low standard of commercial morality prevailing in modern society. 'En Hanske' plants itself squarely upon the proposition that the obligations of morality are equally binding upon both sexes; a problem treated by Ibsen, after a somewhat different fashion, in 'Gengangere' (Ghosts). This play has occasioned much heated discussion, for its theme is of the widest interest, besides being pivotal as regards Bjoernson's ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... Humfrey. 'I must pension him off,' she said. 'I hope it will not hurt his feelings much!' and then she turned away to her old-fashioned bureau, and applied herself to her entries in her farming-books, while Owen sat in his chair, dreamily caressing his beard, and revolving the proposition that had long ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... My third proposition (perhaps more discutable) has been that, the human soul's activities being separated, so far as we can separate them, into What Does, What Knows, What Is—to be such-and-such a man ranks higher than either ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... of Christ. That this should be set aside, was demanded by two causes. First, there was the desire of depriving the Christians of the proof, which they derived from the birth at Bethlehem, for the proposition that He who had appeared was also He who was promised. And, secondly, there was the difficulty of any longer deriving from Bethlehem the descent of Christ, after, by an ordinance of Hadrian (compare Reland, S. 647), all the Jews had been expelled from Bethlehem ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... so involved and complex, where the most eminent engineers divide and disagree, a layman can not be expected to view the problem otherwise than as a business proposition which, demanding solution, must be disposed of by a strictly impartial examination of the facts. Weighed and tested by practical experience in other fields of commercial enterprise, it is probably not going too far to say, as in fact it ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden
... is a very delicate and difficult one, requiring prodigious presence of mind, and an amount of duplicity which would make the most astute diplomatist turn pale with envy. Occasionally, the heir suspects the truth, sneers at the proposition, and hurries off to claim the whole of the inheritance that belongs to him. The agent may then bid his hopes farewell. He has worked and ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... "I have a proposition to make to you," said the stern teacher. "It is not too late to change your plans. I have Mr. Sharp's permission to make the suggestion. He will agree to your changing the play and will be—er—satisfied, I am sure, if you accept my advice and put on the play which ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... like myself, I hope—there's no question of distance. It's either a miss or a hit. Here's a better proposition: Let me put my belt on again. Then put your own gun back in the holster. We'll turn and face the wall. And when the clock downstairs strikes ten—that'll be within a few minutes—we'll turn and blaze at ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... used to say he had well discerned that nothing could be propounded by human reason and understanding, were it never so wise, cunning, or sharp, but that a man, even out of the selfsame proposition, might be able to confute and overthrow it; but God's Word only stood fast and sure, like a mighty wall which neither can be battered ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... brother Baring, in a financial hobble, proposed that on the payment, three years in advance, of the dog and hair-powder tax, all parties so handsomely coming down with the "tin," should henceforth and for ever rejoice in duty-free dog, and enjoy untaxed cranium. Now, why not a proposition to this effect—that on the payment of a good round sum (let it be pretty large, for the ready is required), a man shall be exempt from the present legal consequences of any crime or crimes he may hereafter ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... you, Maryhann," said Jemima, who indeed always agreed with any proposition her friend chose to put forth; "an' I 'old that it is contrairy to 'uman reason to imagin such beastliness, much less to ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... the orig'nal proposition, the same bein' that Polack, let me begin by sayin' that whenever it comes to any utterances of his'n, I'm nacherally onable to quote him exact. What with him rollin' his 'Rs' ontil they sounds like one of them snare drums, an' the jiggerty-jerkety fashion wharin he chops up his English, ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... astounded by this bold proposition, but the very audacity of it caught his fancy. He struck the executioner gently with ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... duties to ourselves and to others, perfect and imperfect, he proceeds to show that they may be all deduced from the single Imperative; the question of the reality of duty, which is the same as the establishment of the possibility of the Imperative as a synthetic practical proposition a priori, at present altogether apart. Suppose a man tempted to commit suicide, with the view of bettering his evil condition; but it is contradictory that the very principle of self-conservation should lead to self-destruction, ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... of Great Britain. He examined many, especially in Germany, and visited some of the great organ-builders, going so far as to obtain specifications from Mr. Walcker of Ludwigsburg, and from Weigl, his pupil at Stuttgart. On returning to this country, he brought the proposition of procuring a great instrument in Europe in various ways before the public, among the rest by his "Reminiscences of a Summer Tour," published in "Dwight's Journal of Music." After this he laid the matter before the members of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... English, and stated that if the advertiser would place the forty pounds promised with a banker at Serajevo the writer would furnish authentic information concerning M. Edmond Paindavoine going back to the month of November of the preceding year. If this proposition was acceptable, the reply was to be sent to ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... parish, that I might help him occasionally in his church. This was altogether such an unsought-for thing, and so unexpected, that I took time to consider. The next day I told him that I could not entertain his proposition, and that for ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... Discussion, (1) The rebukes uttered by the prophet. (2) The encouragements he offers. (3) The historical confirmation of the facts of this book found in Ezra. (4) False content and discontent. (5) Basing conclusions upon the comparative strength of the friends and enemies of a proposition, while leaving God out ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... to her husband in the assembly of his friends. She commends the advice of the physicians and surgeons, and urges that they should be well rewarded for their noble speech and their services in healing Sophia; and she asks Meliboeus how he understands their proposition that one contrary must be cured by another contrary. Meliboeus answers, that he should do vengeance on his enemies, who had done him wrong. Prudence, however, insists that vengeance is not the contrary of vengeance, nor wrong of wrong, but the like; and that ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... rather limited—but he worried more about what he should give, "For," said his mother, "you'll have to give the bride something: everybody does that when they're invited to a wedding." In the crisis of his dilemma over this proposition William consulted "Chuck" Epstein, and the result of their deliberations was the sending to the prospective bride of a parrot "that could talk to beat the band," as William said. Epstein never told him that he had himself paid the original ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... allegation evinces Rousseau's usual ignorance of history, and need not be discussed, any more than his proposition on which he lays so much stress, that Christians cannot possibly be good soldiers, nor truly good citizens, because their hearts being fixed upon another world, they must necessarily be indifferent to the ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... Albert's two brothers will devolve upon him. That means, I suppose, that sooner or later the bulk of the money must be yours. Albert is frail. I do not think he will be a long-lived man. What follows? Surely that you—the last of the Redmaynes—will inherit everything. And you are married. Here is a proposition, then. And what have you just told me? That your husband is 'a devil,' and that you hate him since you have seen a glimpse of his heart. These facts cannot be entirely separated. They may or ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... have studied into these things, the more certainly have they been forced to the conclusion that the conscious mind of man, the part that he can explore at will, is by far the smaller part of his personality. Since this is to some people a rather startling proposition, we can do no better than quote the following statement from White on the relation of consciousness to the rest of the ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... of tears terminated her sad harangue. I had expected some extravagant proposition, and remained silent awhile, collecting my thoughts that I might the better combat her fanciful scheme. "You cherish dreary thoughts, my dear Perdita," I said, "nor do I wonder that for a time your better reason should be influenced by passionate ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... continue that tenacious pursuit of his own interests which had always been the primary aim and object, as well of the profession as the person. He at once sagaciously beheld the embryo lawsuit and contingent controversy about to result from the proposition; and, in his mind, with a far and free vision, began to compute the costs and canvass the various terms and prolonged trials of county court litigation. He saw fee after fee thrust into his hands—he beheld the opposing parties desirous to conciliate, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... in his life, no one had ever extended the hand of fellowship to him. Human sympathy was what Joe needed, and precious little he had had of it. There were more kicks than halfpence in this world for a poor man. The rich did not care what became of the poor; not they—a proposition which ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... old gentleman told Joel he would do better by him than he asked. He would sell him the whole, receive the five hundred dollars, and take back a mortgage for the balance. Joel would not accept this proposition. He wanted one hundred acres, and he wanted to pay for them, and the money was ready at five dollars the acre, and he desired the refusal of the balance at the same rate. The bargain was closed in this way, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... belief in himself that you have shown; and I feel sure that such courage will meet with its just reward. You are the kind of fellow that always comes out on top, simply because you will not allow yourself to be kept down. Now, look here, I am going to make a proposition to you—and, understand me, it is on purely selfish grounds that I am going to make it. I am going out to South Africa because I want to forget a—well, a very bitter disappointment that I have recently ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood |
