"Tangible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no light favor to be quickly given and quickly removed. Most good things are gradual; and Mary's kindness fell as the dew, a little in the morning, and a little in the evening. Here, a formality was dropped; there a tangible token of equality given. First, the evening dresses of white mull and pale merinos; then the meal at her table, and the seat in her carriage. And when this point had been reached, it had been so naturally and unobtrusively reached, that even the servants only remembered the first days of Maggie's ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... I thought perhaps there would be more about—about misfortune, and scattered leaves, and dells,"—poor Miss Delia smiled deprecatingly, while she felt wildly about for more tangible reminiscences of her favorite poets, that she might respond to the unuttered questioning of Lucyet,—"and"—she ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... him hard and shrewd. And now, as he grew older and understood what the tribute of honest men was worth, even to the dead, he waited to hear one word. But he never heard it. He had heard other things, however, but always veiled, like the menacing outbreak of old man Jocelyn—nothing tangible, nothing that he could answer or refute. At times he became morbid, believing he could read reproach in men's eyes, detect sarcasm in friendly voices. Then for months he would shun men, as he was doing now, ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... this was framed in the frame of the open porthole. It was a pale, dim world outside that dark and tangible rim. All night he had clutched at that rim, jumped and quivered at explosions, and watched phantom events. Now he had been high and now low; now almost beyond hearing, now flying close to crashings and shouts and outcries. He had seen airships flying low and swift over darkened and groaning ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... which lasted for generations, and prepared a natural soil for the rapid growth of a partially mythical explanation to account in a satisfactory way for the dramatic accidents which followed the family of the Conqueror in the Forest, by the direct and tangible wickedness which had attended the making of the hunting ground. It is probable also that individual acts of violence did accompany the making, and that some villages and churches were destroyed. But the likelihood is so strong against a general devastation that history should probably acquit William ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... a vague uneasiness in my mind which causes a cold shiver to run all over me. I look round, and of course nothing is to be seen, and I wish there were something there, no matter what, as long as it were something tangible: I am frightened, merely because I ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... under the earth have no more fascinating sight than the gray, silent form of a pike, moving and motionless in the shallow water, a shadow more tangible than himself thrown by a jack-light on the mottled yellow rocks and sands of the bottom. A passing breath of wind, even the slightest motion of the punt, breaks every shadow and indentation into ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... worth and weight of my subject may commend these songs, both at home, and in the many Englands beyond sea, to those who, (despite the inevitably more engrossing attractions of the Present, and the emphatic bias of modern culture towards the immediate and the tangible), maintain that high and soul-inspiring interest which, identifying us with our magnificent Past, and all its varied lessons of defeat and victory, offers at the same time,—under the guidance from ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... of the afternoon to the meeting-house on Tory Hill. Waitstill kept the beaten path on one side and Ivory that on the other, so that the width of the country road, deep in dust, was between them, yet their nearness seemed so tangible a thing that each could feel the heart beating in the other's side. Their talk was only that of tried friends, a talk interrupted by long beautiful silences; silences that come only to a man and woman whose understanding of each other is beyond question and answer. Not a sound broke ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... recital by Reinald Werrenrath, the listener feels he has something to carry away, a tangible impression, a real message. What is the impression—can it be defined? Perhaps it is more the complete effect as a whole that makes the deepest impression. The voice is always agreeable, the diction so clear and distinct that every syllable can be followed from the topmost corner of Carnegie ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... cast and gentleness was one of his chief characteristics. Moreover, he could tell a good story, and sing a good song in a fine bass voice. Still further, although these gallant cow-boys felt intensely jealous of this newcomer, they could not but admit that they had nothing tangible to go upon, for the sailor did not apparently pay any pointed attention to Mary, and she certainly gave ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... about the chamber, and his nostrils sniffed as if disease was a presence to be seen and scented, a thing tangible in the air, maybe to be warded off by a sharp man's instruction ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... employees, in a body, attended the double funeral. Each man had been the recipient of tangible assistance from both Harris and Ingram, and each laborer felt that he had lost a personal friend. It was a touching scene as the four regiments of employees, each wearing evidence of mourning on his arm, filed past the two open caskets. Each employee left a rose on the ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... when one is cooped up in a confined and airless space, Marseilles in June can be a gasping inferno. Andrew, in spite of hard physical training, was wet through. His little white-jacketed dresser, says he, perspired audibly. There was not so much air in the dressing-room as tangible swelter. ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... was after several years. Long before the divorce was granted John and Dorothy were aware of a tangible fruit of their love.... I had often wondered why the Master so ardently, so often, wrote eloquently in defense of the superior qualities ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... hand a polished, oval, white carnelian, the gift of his widowing love, and at times it seemed his only consolation, the only thing left him in this world clearly tangible. Many letters which he was unable to read came for him. Some he allowed me to read to him; others were too worldly,—for, as he said, he had "already journeyed far beyond them." There were two letters, I remember, for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... little unreasonable had seemed his distrust. Mr. Stephens had tried sober argument and good-humored raillery by turns to convince his confidential clerk that he was prejudiced. All to no purpose. Theodore could give no tangible reasons for his unwavering opinion; but his early living by his wits, among all sorts of people, had so sharpened his ideas that he felt almost hopelessly certain that a villain was being harbored among them. Now while he tried to answer ...
— Three People • Pansy
... you will allow me," he interrupted excitedly, "that we will go through the points—the sensible, tangible points of the case. Firstly: Mr. Morton disappears with L10,000 in his pocket for four entire days; at the end of that time he is discovered loosely tied to an arm-chair, and a wool shawl round his mouth. Secondly: A man named Skinner is accused ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... then sat in her room to examine the pictures and the books. She had already learned to read, but the effort of reading quickly exhausted her; and she ceased to understand the meaning of the words. But the pictures were a constant astonishment to her. They opened up before her a clear, almost tangible world of new and marvelous things. Huge cities arose before her, beautiful structures, machines, ships, monuments, and infinite wealth, created by the people, overwhelming the mind by the variety of nature's products. Life widened endlessly; each day brought some new, huge wonders. ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... unaccountably old and tired. The vision that had seemed so close, so tangible, so ready to be made actual, had suddenly retreated beyond her reach, and she was left as empty of heart and hand as she had been before. For a moment her whole figure seemed to crumple; and then she shook herself together into a resisting, fighting ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... as hereinafter provided, all assessments of real estate and tangible personal property shall be at their fair market value, to be ascertained as prescribed by law. The General Assembly may allow a lower rate of taxation to be imposed for a period of years by a city or town upon land ...
— Civil Government of Virginia • William F. Fox
... fed by hope and winged with dream, which scour the glens and scale the peaks of the land of thought, this nook of hypothesis must some time be discovered. And, brought to light, it has much to interest and to please; but it is too destitute of tangible proof to be successfully maintained ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... dollars have been expended in dredging rivers and shallow seas, and in blasting caves and cellars. Certain promoters of these schemes have enjoyed salaries as officers in the stock companies organized for their furtherance, and they have seen the only tangible results ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... dawn and lay gazing around the unfamiliar room. She noticed that every vestige of masculine attire and belongings was gone, and knew, without any explanation, what that meant. For some reason every tangible evidence of her father was banished, and she was at last to be allowed to take his place. She turned to look at her mother. Mrs. Comstock's face was white and haggard, but on it rested an expression of profound peace Elnora never before ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... be surprised at individuals going off to Rome, but that is not my chief fear, but a schism; that is, those two parties, which have hitherto got on together as they could, from the times of Puritanism downwards, gathering up into clear, tangible, and direct forces, and colliding. Our Church is not at one with itself, there is no denying it." That was at first the disaster before him. His thought for himself began to turn, not to Rome, but to a new life without office and authority, but still within the English Church. "You see, if things ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... in Garth's veins subsided. Here he had something tangible to work upon; and his conscious brain resumed operations; prompting him at first like a small, strange ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... got started at my building I was in a still more cheerful mood—there being such a sense of definite accomplishment as I set each piece in its place, and such a comfort in the tangible advance that I was making, that half the time I was singing as I made my bolts and rivets fast. But for all my cheerfulness I had a plenty of trouble over what I was doing; and I was sorry enough that I had not somebody beside ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... expresses the inevitable foppery of the severest soldier, the tease and the taunt of the evolutions, the fierce wish that all this ploying and deploying were in the face of an actual enemy, the mania to reek upon a tangible foe all the joyous energy, ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... powers, as Nell M'Collum was supposed to be, never failed to produce fear and misgiving in those who met her. Mere physical courage was no bar against the influence of such superstitions; many a man was a slave to them who never knew fear of a human or tangible enemy. They constituted an important part of the popular belief! for the history of ghosts and fairies, and omens, was, in general, the only kind of lore in which the people were educated; thanks to the sapient traditions ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Germany's action in other affairs we find pleasant words but no tangible profit. From her geographical position Italy claimed an interest in the status of the Balkan Peninsula, and particularly in the eastern shore of the Adriatic. Germany pretended to favor her interests—according to Crispi, Bismarck ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... as she observed Varr seated on the rock, and she came toward him promptly. He brightened, too, welcoming any human being of tangible flesh and blood at that moment, although there was no living person whom he habitually detested more than he did his wife's sister, Miss October Copley. Her evident perturbation, however, gave him an uneasy premonition that he was about to hear more of his monk. But ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... of the adventure of Fernao Perez d'Andrade to China in 1517, says that he took in at Pacem a cargo of pepper, "as being the chief article of trade that is valued in China." And it is evident from what Marsden says in his History of Sumatra, that in the last century some tangible quantity was still sent to China. The export from the Company's plantations in Sumatra averaged 1200 tons, of which the greater part came to Europe, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... it is. To be truthful, Captain Warren, we're not sure as to the amount of your brother's tangible assets. Graves made a hurried examination of the stocks, bonds, and memoranda, and estimated ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... mind. It has reappeared not as a speculative inquiry into the possibility of a personal embodiment of evil operating mysteriously, but after a wholly spiritual manner, for the propagation of the second death; we are asked to acknowledge that there is a visible and tangible manifestation of the descending hierarchy taking place at the close of a century which has denied that there ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... I should choose. I turned them all over, one after another, in my mind, and then, not feeling inclined to any of them, I allowed my thoughts to wander. Suddenly it seemed to me that I felt the earth move, and that a secret, invisible force was slowly dragging me into space and becoming tangible to my senses. I saw it mount into the sky; I seemed to be on a ship; the poplar near my window resembled a mast; I arose, stretched ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... Hannah was earnest in comforting her, and though she gave no tangible grounds for hope, the confidence that woman of few words expressed in the ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... three in the same whirlpool of crime, bound by thieves' law to sink or swim together. It is because they are astute and far-seeing that they must inevitably have considered the possibility of exposure and safeguarded themselves against it with bogus corroborative proof. If that proof is in tangible form, and we can lay our hands on it, we shall have them where we want them. Now go back to your office, Mr. Hamilton, and dictate this letter to your stenographer, having it left open on your desk for your ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... all systems of discipline should be alike. There will be found in all shops, however, a certain number of men with whom talk, either mild or severe, will have little or no effect, unless it produces the conviction that something more tangible and disagreeable will come next. The question is what this something ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... from arrest: what he had done he had done in love. Arthur gave him credit for another thing—that he had never cast a glance to the possibility of suspicion falling on Arthur; the post-office would receive credit for the loss. Nothing more tangible than that wide field, where they might hunt for the supposed ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... upon human life and destiny. And in this brief and burning play, more than in much of his later writing, I find the reflection of that unique temperament, to which real things are so abstract, and abstract things so coloured and tangible; a temperament in which there is almost too much poetry for a poet—as pure gold, to be worked in, needs to be ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... to make him almost physically faint and sick. Even had his canning plant been open and running, he knew that they would never take him in; Wayne Wayland's consistent attitude toward him showed that plainly enough. And with nothing more tangible to offer than a half-born dream, they would laugh him to scorn. Furthermore, they had proclaimed their determination ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... faint and blurred like the memory of a dream, and the certitude grew distinct, and convincing, and visible to the eyes like some material thing in full sunlight. It was a deep joy, a great pride, a tangible sweetness that seemed to leave the taste of honey on her lips. He lay stretched at her feet without moving, for he knew from experience how a slight movement of his could frighten her away in those first days of their intercourse. He lay very quiet, with all the ardour of his desire ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... unwarped by a sense of duty. And blessed as he was with a lively nature, he proceeded happily upon his path in life, notwithstanding a certain ticklish sense of being shot at undesirably. This had befallen him now so often, without producing any tangible effect, that a great many people, and especially the shooters (convinced of the accuracy of their aim), went far to believe that he possessed some charm against wholesome bullet and gunpowder. And lately even a crooked sixpence dipped in holy ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... death of the late Earl Lady Chetwynde had gone away to recruit her health, and, now that she was better, she had determined to make a complete change. When she herself arrived other changes would be made. This much Gualtier managed to communicate to them, so as to give them some tangible idea of the affairs of the family and prevent idle conjecture. He let them know, also, that Lord Chetwynde was in India, and might come home at any moment, though his engagements there were so important that it might be impossible for ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... arise spontaneously in presence of the vastness, and grandeur, and magnificence of the universe, and of the power and glory of which the created universe is but the symbol and shadow. There is the felt apprehension that, beyond and back of the visible and the tangible, there is a personal, living Power, which is the foundation of all, and which fashions all, and fills all with its light and life; that "the universe is the living vesture in which the Invisible has robed his mysterious loveliness." There is the feeling of an overshadowing ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... I heard a peculiar sigh of pain in the next room. 'This is rather interesting,' I thought. To face something tangible is comparatively easy; to wait for the unknown is much more difficult. I took out the revolver from my pocket and examined it. It looked quite all right—this small piece of metal which could have killed six men in half a ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... the valley they stopped to look at the river. The bed was half full—muddy, debris-laden, with a sheen of dust on the surface. But it was water—wet, tangible, undeniable. ...
— The Invaders • Benjamin Ferris
... at sea in a dense fog, when it seemed as if a tangible white darkness shut you in, and the great ship, tense and anxious, groped her way toward the shore with plummet and sounding-line, and you waited with beating heart for something to happen? I was like that ship before my education began, only I was without compass or sounding-line, and had no ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... barbaric, half advanced. That she was unhappy and hated it all, he more than divined. It was a proof of the strength of his character that he did not let the terrible thought of inevitable parting mar the bliss of the tangible now. He had promised her to live while the sun of their union shone, and he had the force to keep ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... revelation of the Dry Rot in men, is a tendency to lurk and lounge; to be at street-corners without intelligible reason; to be going anywhere when met; to be about many places rather than at any; to do nothing tangible, but to have an intention of performing a variety of intangible duties to-morrow or the day after. When this manifestation of the disease is observed, the observer will usually connect it with a vague impression once formed or received, that the patient was living a little too hard. He ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... industrious perseverance of the Hollander; others shouted forth songs in honor of the bottle, and with all the fervor and ferment of Bacchanalian novitiates; and not a few, congregating about the immediate person of the pedler, assailed his ears with threats sufficiently pregnant with tangible illustration to make him understand and acknowledge, by repeated starts and wincings, the awkward and uncomfortable predicament in which he stood. At length, the various disputants for justice, finding it difficult, if not impossible, severally, to command that attention which they ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... sending forth their sweet sounds from far and near into the fateful night, there are few of us who have not a feeling that a great event has occurred. A physical change has set in—the Old Year is dead and gone, and the New Year, something tangible, which you can let in at the door or the window—has just come into being, and is there waiting for us. We are, of course, indulging in "make-believe," for there is no New Year, with any natural, noteworthy ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... "properly." Why, in that one word "properly" lay the whole question. What constitutes proper payment? Every career in life carries with it some circumstance either of advantage or the reverse, which either compensates for the loss of a material benefit, or is requited by some addition of a tangible profit. The educated man who accepts three hundred a-year in the Church is not recompensed, or considered to be recompensed, by this miserable pittance. It is in the respect, the influence, the power, and the reverence that attach ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... more tangible community of interest between these two remarkable men. Each detested the silk hat. Frohman had never worn one since the Haverly Minstrel days, when he had to don the tile for the daily street parade. ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... honest conception of the square deal which was the one valuable heritage of his childhood was slipping away from him. He had little in common with Conward outside of their business relationship. He suspected the man vaguely, but had never found tangible ground for his suspicion. Dave did not drink, and those confidences peculiar to a state of semi-intoxication were denied him. He was afraid to drink, not with the fear of the craven, but with the fear of a man who knows his ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... man to cultivate unselfishness. Do at least one thing every day which helps somebody else, and from which you cannot possibly harvest any profit and advantage. Do one thing every day that cannot in any way bring you tangible reward, directly or ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... year, all the moneys, wages, etc., due the various members for labors performed and services rendered. This, of course, is due to the fact that everything is owned in common by the community: Land, food products, wood, in short, practically all tangible property. ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... the ways of Providence, if there is any belief left in Providence. But when men like Benoix come to us, as occasionally they do come, the old-fashioned idea of a guardian Providence becomes—well, more tangible. There seems to be a reason back of such miscarriage of justice. I believe," he said rather haltingly, "that Benoix was sent here, not because he had any need of prison, but because prison had ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... fall back upon a certain alleged divine right it cannot produce documents to prove its authority. The industrial monarchs of the United States are fortified with both power and proofs of possession. Those bonds and stocks are the tangible titles to tangible property; whoso holds them is vested with the ownership of the necessities of tens of millions of subjected people. Great stretches of railroad traverse the country; here are coal mines to whose products some ninety million people look for warmth; yonder are ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... most horrible yet to me, because I've lost my nerve. We were all in the cellar, when a shell came tearing through the roof, burst up-stairs, tore up that room, and the pieces coming through both floors down into the cellar, one of them tore open the leg of H.'s pantaloons. This was tangible proof the cellar was no place of protection from them. On the heels of this came Mr. J. to tell us that young Mrs. P. had had her thigh-bone crushed. When Martha went for the milk she came back horror-stricken to tell us the black girl there had her ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... one sense against another, feeling the rough monk's cloth and the edging of maroon silk thread. They were tangible as well as visible. Then he saw that the back of his hand was unscarred. There should have been a scar, souvenir of a rough-and-tumble brawl of his cub reporter days. He examined both hands closely. An ...
— Time and Time Again • Henry Beam Piper
... tasted as sampled, had taken to brooding in his presence: she sometimes drooped an eye upon him like a question.... Let her look out or maybe he'd blaze into her teeth: howl menace down her throat until she swooned. Some one should yield to him a visible and tangible agony to balance his. Does law probe no deeper than the pillage of a watch? Can one filch our self-respect and escape free? Shall not our souls also sue for damages against its aggressor? Some person rich enough must pay for his lacerations or there was less justice in heaven ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... was saying, that arithmetic has a very great and elevating effect, compelling the soul to reason about abstract number, and rebelling against the introduction of visible or tangible objects into the argument. You know how steadily the masters of the art repel and ridicule any one who attempts to divide absolute unity when he is calculating, and if you divide, they multiply (Meaning either (1) that they integrate the number because they deny the possibility ...
— The Republic • Plato
... Canadian dominion; and, strictly speaking, this is true, it being admitted that the campaign by which the Indian empire was virtually won was not planned by him, though brought to a successful issue during his ministry. But material aggrandizement, though the only tangible, is not the only real or lasting effect of a war policy. More may be gained by crushing a formidable rival than by conquering a province. The loss of her Canadian possessions was only one of a series of disasters suffered by France, which radically affected ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... skin-function. The fact is one well established among animals, but after a full series of actual experiments, Tecontjeff of St. Petersburg concludes that in this respect man differs from animals. This authority states that in man no tangible risk is entailed by this process, at least for any length of time required for therapeutic purposes. "Tarred and feathered" persons rarely die of the coating of tar they receive. For other instances of peculiar forms of suicide reference may be made to numerous volumes on this ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... its appearance as well as I could, and I must confess if I had been at all superstitious, or had come on such an object in a strange place, I think I should have been somewhat shaken. However, I knew my spectre, boldly took hold of it, and found I had something tangible in my grip. After a brief and silent struggle, I thrust open the door, and brought my victim into the room. My mother and sisters, who knew nothing of what had been going on, were greatly alarmed to see me dragging into the house a white object, and, ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... teacher, and, with the taxman's ink horn at his button-hole, gives at every door lessons that sink into the heart of the scholar. Public opinion, which, in the good old days "when George the Third was king," was little more than an abstraction—a thing talked of, not acknowledged—is now a tangible presence. The said public opinion is now formed of hundreds of thousands whose existence, save in the books of the Exchequer, was scarcely admitted by any reigning minister. Sir ROBERT PEEL has now to give in his reckoning to the hard-heads of Manchester, of Birmingham, of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various
... remarking upon the high merit of his brief fiction in other years, and in recalling that he alone is represented in the first three volumes of O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories, the Committee intimated the wish to express in some tangible fashion its appreciation of this author's services to American fiction. On the motion of Doctor Wheeler, therefore, the Committee voted to ask an appropriation from the Society of Arts and Sciences as a prize to be ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... and Bellini,—this difference is typical of the difference between the art of the fourteenth century and the art of the fifteenth century; the first suggests, the second realizes; the one gives impalpable outlines, the other gives tangible bodies; the Giottesque cares for the figure only, inasmuch as it displays an action, he reduces it to a semblance, a phantom, to the mere exponent of an idea; the man of the Renaissance cares for the figure, inasmuch as it is a living organism, he gives it substance and weight, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... reader of the gospels that Christ's pre-resurrection body was real and normal. It was an organism of flesh and blood, of the same constitution and structure as ours. It occupied space, and was ordinarily subject to the laws of space. It was visible and tangible. It shared the natural processes of birth, growth, and metabolism. At the resurrection a catastrophic change took place in it. It was still a body. It was still Christ's body. Continuity was preserved. The evidences of continuity were external, and so strong as to ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... body of his "King" stretched senseless before him! Had he brought him there? He could not remember what he had done during the past few mad minutes,—the earth and sky whirled dizzily around him,—he could grasp nothing tangible in thought or memory. But there, most certainly, Olaf Gueldmar lay,—his pallid face upturned, his hair and beard as white as the snow that clung to the masts of his vessel—his hand clenched on the fur garment that enwrapped him as with a ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... Richmond did much good to the Union cause in the pending Presidential campaign. The story closed the mouths of the peace factionists, though a few of Mr. Lincoln's party friends, fearing the result of the election, continued to demand more tangible testimony of his disposition to negotiate a peace; this largely for the purpose of its effect ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... significance of objects or their dramatic relations, which depend upon their being taken as separate things, is to be expressed. For example, to get the expression of the action of a woman pouring water into a jug, it is necessary that we feel the shape and color of the latter as aspects of a tangible reality having a distinct purpose, that of holding water; and this purposefulness makes of the object a separate, individual thing. Yet a too great distinction of objects and a too great elaboration of detail, as in Meissonier ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... mysterious Providence. This was exceedingly perplexing to the thoughtful child, whose queries as to justice were too often hushed by parent or teacher. In real life, every child expected, even if he did not receive, a tangible reward for doing the right thing; but Providence, according to these authors, immediately caused a good child to become ill unto death. It is not a matter for surprise that the healthy-minded, vigorous child often ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... are measured, some members of the starry galaxy are timed in their flight, the direction of movement of the solar system itself is investigated, the spectroscope reveals the chemical composition even of suns that are unthinkably distant, and a tangible theory is grasped of the universal cycle which includes the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... each year, count the steps it has advanced in arithmetical numbers. The reformer asks not always for general growth and advancement in Christian Character; but demands special evidences, startling results, tangible proofs. These things all have their value, and the persons who strive for them doubtless have their reward; but if the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness were first sought, the good things so fiercely advocated and labored after by special reformers would be added ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... have produced any very strong impression upon his convictions. Garibaldi was a fact, and Saracinesca did not believe that any proclamations would interfere with his march unless backed by some more tangible force. Even had he known that the guerilla general had been arrested at Sinalunga and put in confinement as soon as the proclamation had appeared, the prince would have foreseen clearly enough that the prisoner's escape would be only a question of a few days, since there were manifold ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... knows what she is about. Genius has an infinitely deeper reverence for character than character can have for genius. To be sure, genius gets the world's praise, because its work is a tangible product, to be bought, or had for nothing. It bribes the common voice to praise it by presents of speeches, poems, statues, pictures, or whatever it can please with. Character evolves its best products for home consumption; ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... evidence against us? We were quietly at our work." I talked thus, with unusual freedom, to bring out the evidence against us, for we all wanted, above all things, to know the guilty wretch who had betrayed us, that we might have something tangible upon which to pour the execrations. From something which dropped, in the course of the talk, it appeared that there was but one witness against us—and that that witness could not be produced. Master Thomas would not tell us who his informant was; but we suspected, and suspected ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... Wildeve! it was terrible to think of. She could feel his breathing, and he, of course, could feel hers. How badly she had treated him! yet, here they were treading one measure. The enchantment of the dance surprised her. A clear line of difference divided like a tangible fence her experience within this maze of motion from her experience without it. Her beginning to dance had been like a change of atmosphere; outside, she had been steeped in arctic frigidity by comparison with the tropical sensations here. She had entered the dance from the troubled ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... will be regarded as an act of hostility, and you may then put your command into either of them which you may deem most proper, to increase its power of resistance. You are also authorized to take similar defensive steps whenever you have tangible evidence of a design to ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... too, in Wharfedale for the variety of its contents. Desperately poor though Kettle might be on many of his returns from his unsuccessful ventures, he never came back to his wife without some present from a foreign clime as a tangible proof of his remembrance, and because these were usually mere curiosities, without intrinsic value, they often evaded the pawn-shop in those years of dire distress, when more negotiable articles passed irretrievably away from the family possession. And with them too, in stiff, decorous ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... remarkably large, but comes forward at the eyebrows; it is not the brow nor countenance of a prominently intellectual man (not a natural student, I mean, or abstract thinker), but of one whose office it is to handle things practically and to bring about tangible results. His face looked capable of being very stern, but wore, in its repose, when I saw it, an aspect pleasant and dignified; it is not, in its character, an American face, nor an English one. The man on whom he fixes his eye is conscious of him. In his natural disposition, he seems calm and ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... an increased agility of finger, not a whit further forward than he had found him. Then followed months when the phantom of discontent stalked large through Maurice's life, grew, indeed, day by day more tangible, more easily defined; for there came the long, restless summer evenings, when it seemed as if a tranquil darkness would never fall and bar off the distant, the unattainable; and as he followed some flat, white country road, that was lost to sight on the horizon as a tapering line, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... appeared in a tangible form shortly previous to the election by the House of Representatives, in an anonymous letter in the "Columbian Observer," at Philadelphia. It was soon ascertained to have been written by Mr. Kremer, a member of the House of Representatives ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... militans of obscurantism, there survived so much of a sense of decency regarding the ancient traditions as to exempt the liberty of scientific teaching from the indignity of that preventive censure which in those days rendered repressive legislation superfluous. In their search for some tenable and tangible criterion of the scientific character of any publication, the men of that time, it is true, hit upon a somewhat absurd one in making the test a test of bulk—books of more than twenty forms were exempt from censure. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... toward the distant lover in a very frenzy of desire. She felt the longing well in her, a craving so agonized that nothing else mattered, neither life nor death. Had the power been hers then, she would have summoned him across the void. The loneliness was a visible, tangible monster, beating in upon her, crushing her with hideous, remorseless strength. Her man ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... slightest tangible corroboration of this story. It might have been the merest gossip or the invention of an enemy. But it fitted Carron so perfectly, that from the day I heard it I could never, somehow, question its substantial ...
— In Madeira Place - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... with a lively response. Among other manifestations of current interest in mechanisms, the contributions of Americans to international conferences on mechanisms reflects the growing recognition of the value of scholarly investigation of the kind that can scarcely hope to yield immediately tangible results. ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... temptations to that loitering and indecision, that fluctuation between sloth and consuming toil, that infirmity of resolution, with all its tormenting and enfeebling consequences, to which a literary man, working as he does at a solitary task, uncalled for by any pressing tangible demand, and to be recompensed by distant and dubious advantage, is especially exposed. Unity of aim, aided by ordinary vigour of character, will generally insure perseverance; a quality not ranked among the cardinal ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... Mr. Guille. As time rolled on he was taken into partnership with the firm, as was also his friend and fellow-countryman, Mr. F.M. Alles, and his increasing prosperity enabled him to put his cherished project into more tangible shape. While on a visit to Guernsey in 1851, he wrote a few articles in the Gazette Officielle, with the view of drawing public attention to the importance of forming district or parish libraries. These articles attracted ...
— Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands • John Linwood Pitts
... bewildered, at the sight of a gnome in an underground cavern, I was not, it was as if I had almost been expecting it to happen, as if in the back of my mind I had already been there and done that. Perhaps it was only a case of predestined deja vu, or maybe it was something less tangible. Either way, the gnome then ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... while, on the other hand, freed from the enticements and attractions that are inseparable from it,—Mr. Mill has qualifications unsurpassed, perhaps, by those of any man living for considerate and serviceable thinking upon matters of immediate practical interest and of a somewhat tangible nature. His mental structure exhibits combinations which are by no means frequent. Seldom is seen a conjunction of such cold purity of thinking with such generosity of nature; seldom such considerateness, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... have taken the politicians of the coffeehouses by surprise, but did not astonish those who had observed what was passing in the palace. Treason had not been brought home to him by legal, or even by tangible, evidence but there was a strong suspicion among those who watched him closely that, through some channel or other, he was in communication with the enemies of that government in which he occupied so high a place. He, with unabashed forehead, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is an epitome of universal initiation, and whose simple symbols are the depositaries of the noblest wisdom of mankind. As such, it brings men together at the altar of prayer, keeps alive the truths that make us men, seeking, by every resource of art, to make tangible the power of love, the worth of beauty, and ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... lowered condition and consequent frame of mind, and what with the traditions, for me inseparable from that gloomy quarter of London, I was in the grip of a shadowy menace which at any moment might become tangible—I perceived, in the most commonplace objects, the yellow ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... watched, with bated breath and pounding hearts, for shadowy forms to appear. They were not unaccustomed to danger and the suspense of an ambush. But in the forest they had solid ground beneath their feet. Trees and other tangible objects were all about them. But here everything seemed unreal, almost ghostly. The darkness of the forest was no blacker than the night here in the open. And yet there was no shady covering of ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... more especially as they flatly contradicted each other in one material point, one saying that words had passed between the farmer and himself, and the other that no words at all had passed, and were unable to corroborate their testimony by anything visible or tangible. If his client speared the salmon and then flung the salmon with the spear sticking in its body into the pool, why didn't they go into the pool and recover the spear and salmon? They might have done so with perfect safety, there being an old proverb—he ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... incentive to emulate increase greatly in scope and urgency. The activity of the men more and more takes on the character of exploit; and an invidious comparison of one hunter or warrior with another grows continually easier and more habitual. Tangible evidences of prowess—trophies—find a place in men's habits of thought as an essential feature of the paraphernalia of life. Booty, trophies of the chase or of the raid, come to be prized as evidence of pre-eminent ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... not quite a modern forgery can be proved, however, by more tangible evidence. Hiouen-thsang, a Buddhist pilgrim, who travelled from China to India in the years 629-645, and who, in his diary translated from Chinese into French by M. Stanislas Julien, gives the names of the four Vedas, mentions some grammatical forms ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... Demeter appears to one in [102] her anger, sullenly withholding the fruits of the earth, to another in her pride of Persephone, to another in her grateful gift of the arts of agriculture to man; at last only, is there a general recognition of a clearly-arrested outline, a tangible embodiment, which has solidified itself in the imagination of the people, they ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... that Brenton was struggling with some half-forgotten memory, striving to bring it forth to light, to link it with the present; or, failing that, at least with something tangible in his past life. And yet, the blurring of his memory was not too inexplicable. Reed Opdyke still remembered Brenton clearly, still regretted the apparent waste of some of his more brilliant possibilities. Scott Brenton, on the other hand, had totally dismissed Reed Opdyke ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... trustfulness was, therefore, chiefly that of the non-military classes. The trustfulness of the samurai sprang from their distinctive training. As already mentioned, when drawing up a bond in feudal times, in place of any tangible security, the document would read, "If I fail to do so and so, you may laugh at ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... as one man and rush towards the platform. But greater things were in store for her. She was engaged at two halls in the West End. Her horizon was fast receding and expanding. Homage became nightly tangible in bouquets, rings, brooches—things acceptable and (luckier than their donors) accepted. Even Sunday was not barren for Zuleika: modish hostesses gave her postprandially to their guests. Came that Sunday night, notanda candidissimo calculo! when ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... Latin America in the good intentions of the Wilson Administration. The acceptance of A-B-C mediation in 1914 made possible the entry of most of the Latin-American powers into the European War in 1917 as allies of the United States. And for a time it was to appear as if this had been about the only tangible profit of the episode; for Carranza presently proved almost as troublesome as Huerta. The Fall of 1914 saw the outbreak of a new civil war between Villa and Carranza, in which Zapata, Villa's ally, for a long time held Mexico City. Obregon's ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... parties' having meant the same thing but on their having said the same thing. Furthermore, as the signs may be addressed to one sense or another—to sight or to hearing—on the nature of the sign will depend the moment when the contract is made. If the sign is tangible, for instance, a letter, the contract is made when the letter of acceptance is delivered. If it is necessary that the minds of the parties meet, there will be no contract until the acceptance can be read; none, for example, if the acceptance be snatched from ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... happy—and the one thing wanting was the presence of Lucille at the fight. How he would have loved to show her that he was not really a coward—given a fair chance and a tangible foe. ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... to take away with us," I said, "a tangible memory of this beautiful, this picturesque, this verdant court in ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... tangible and Joyce was roused to an outburst of honest indignation. "No!—no! A thousand times, no! How dare you think so! How dare you imply I am lying? I have said I love you, but I shall hate you if ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... artisans. These ruling castes are imbued with pride of colour. The Aryans' fair complexions differentiated them from the coal-black aborigines; varna in Sanskrit means "caste" and "colour". Their aesthetic instinct finds expression in a passionate love of poetry, and a tangible object in the tribal chiefs. Loyalty is a religion which is almost proof against ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... minutes at the end of school, if a bit of work had been satisfactorily mastered. It certainly produced a lot of cheerful effort; my story was simple enough, description as brief and vivid as I could make it, and brisk tangible incidents. But the silence, the luxurious abandonment of small minds to an older and more pictorial imagination, the dancing light in open eyes, did really give me for once a sense of power which I never had in teaching Latin Prose or the Greek conditional sentence. ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... they did not much consider. In the forming of this state of opinion the individual action of Robespierre had played a great part. Robespierre, who feared in war the opportunity for the soldier, saw in republicanism merely the triumph of a Cromwell; to him La Fayette was a tangible danger, the word republic an empty formula. And so, with an influence still widening, despite his opposition to the war, he steadily preached the doctrine that the form of government was nothing so long as civil, social and political equality ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... not surpassed even by the ceremonial religions of the East. It is evident from a study of these formulas that the Cherokee Indian was a polytheist and that the spirit world was to him only a shadowy counterpart of this. All his prayers were for temporal and tangible blessings—for health, for long life, for success in the chase, in fishing, in war and in love, for good crops, for protection and for revenge. He had no Great Spirit, no happy hunting ground, no heaven, no hell, and consequently death had for him no terrors and he awaited the inevitable end ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... in those delicate weights and measures that go to estimating the least tangible things in personality, to note how his action seemed not only to dim her vividness but actually to efface the girl. In the first moments she herself accepted it at that. Her looks said: He is not aware of me any more—ergo, ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... can't be helped," said Tom, bravely, not translating the loss of a large sum of money into any tangible results. "But my father's very much vexed, I dare say?" he added, looking at Maggie, and thinking that her agitated face was only part of her ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... purely voluntary means, till it gained a firm footing throughout the Empire and beyond it. To a large extent it was an association for mutual aid. Wherever anyone was in need, help was at hand. The tangible advantages of belonging to such a guild were so great that the Church had to enforce labour on all who could work, as a condition of sharing in the benefits of membership. Social distinctions, such as those of rich and poor, master and slave, ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... having now fully accomplished his ends, gave orders for the early departure of the victorious army for the plains of Chaldea. He decided to take with him, as prisoners of war, a number of youths of Judah. He had the twofold object of showing to his people some tangible evidence of his victory and of gaining for his court the advantage of having as aids and attendants some of the more cultured young men of Judea. With the aid of Jeconiah a list of suitable youths was soon prepared by the victorious monarch's officers. These chosen ones were ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... society in the rear. But evidently scouting was a drug in the general's market, for the close of another day found Will impatiently awaiting orders in the couriers' quarters. This sort of inactivity was harder on the nerves than more tangible perils, and he about made up his mind that when he left camp it would be without orders, but with a hatful of bullets singing after him. And he was quite sure that his exit lay that way when, strolling past headquarters, ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... myself to write you what you wished. You would be disappointed, at any rate, after all the solemn note of preparation; the consciousness of this would chill me now. Besides, I cannot be willing to leave with you such absolute vagaries in a tangible, examinable shape. I think of your after-smiles, of your colder moods. But I will tell you, when a fitting opportunity presents, all that can interest you, and perhaps more. And excuse my caution. I do not profess, I may not dare, to ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the shock that ran through me, that left me numbed and helpless. For an instant, I stumbled on, half-dazed; then, gradually, my self-control came back, and with it a certain fierce joy, a hot exultation. Here, at last, was something definite, tangible, a clew ready to my hand, if only I were clever enough to follow it up; a ray of light in the darkness! I could feel my cheeks burning, and my heart leaping at ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... beyond. He and Tige had wandered farther from home that day than ever before, though wanderers they had always been, the woods holding a deep interest for Steve. He loved to hide in the densest solitudes, lie still with his dog and dream, fantastic, unreal dreams. Now a definite, tangible vision had come to him out of the solitude of a hazy November day in the mountains of Kentucky. He had lain for two hours or more in the stillness when suddenly Tige lifted his head and gave a sharp bark, then came the sound of voices, ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... in bed and discussed the problem gravely. For me she was sanguine, for herself less so; for, said she, they go on worrying the girls for ever so long. "She won't rap your knuckles any more," I suggested, fastening on a certain and tangible advantage. Victoria agreed that in all likelihood her knuckles would henceforth be inviolate; and she did not deny such gain as lay there. Thus in the end I won her to cheerfulness, and we parted merrily, declaring to one another that we were free; and I knew that in some way the ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... head. Lucky you, who need only sit down and spill out your soul in something thoughtfully arranged for that very purpose by Mr. Chopin or Mr. Tschaikovsky! While I—"out of senseless nothing to evoke"—I wish I did something definite and tangible like plain sewing! If I don't start soon I'll sell this think-mobile for junk and put out a sign—"Mending and Washing and Going Out by ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell |
