"Abstract" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... keenest observation, and the acutest quickness of instinctive cunning—though their plans were generally predicated on the soundest reason, they showed in this, and in all cases, a want of the combination of thought, and the abstract and extended views of the whites on such occasions. For a single effort, nothing could be imagined wiser than their views. For a combination made up of a number of elements of calculation, they had no reasoning powers ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... London and the great merchant towns were steady for the House of York. Zeal for the Lancastrian cause was found only in Wales, in northern England, and in the south-western shires. It is absurd to suppose that the shrewd traders of Cheapside were moved by an abstract question of hereditary right, or that the wild Welshmen believed themselves to be supporting the right of Parliament to regulate the succession. But it marks the power which Parliament had gained that, directly as his claims ran in the teeth of a succession established by it, the Duke ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... polyphonic music to train their powers to the same seriousness of attention expected and freely given in the appreciation of an oration, a drama or a cathedral. These latter manifestations of artistic expression, to be sure, are less abstract than the fugue and more closely related to daily life. Yet no effort is more repaying than the mental and emotional energy expended in listening to the interweavings of a good fugue; for, conscious of missing the periodic divisions of the Folk-song, we have ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... of the mysterious exercise of human intelligence in its earliest development from this habit of symbolizing and presenting in an outward form an abstract conception, thus giving a concrete meaning and material expression to the external fact. We see how everything assumed a concrete, living form, and can better understand the conditions we have established as necessary in the early days of the development ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... works, and specially of the Celestiall courses, by reason of the continuall motion of the heauens, searching after the first mouer, and from thence by degrees comming to know and consider of the substances separate & abstract, which we call the diuine intelligences or good Angels (Demones) they were the first that instituted sacrifices of placation, with inuocations and worship to them, as to Gods; and inuented and stablished all the rest of ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... preceding chapter I have given an abstract of the life of Tom O' the Dingle; I will now give an analysis of his interlude; first, however, a few words on interludes in general. It is difficult to say with anything like certainty what is the meaning ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... equal, vertical bands of red (hoist side), blue, and red; centered on the hoist-side red band in yellow is the national emblem ("soyombo" - a columnar arrangement of abstract and geometric representation for fire, sun, moon, earth, water, and the ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... of the languages of America. What a structure of little monosyllabic and disyllabic forms is added to the verb and to the substantive, in the Coptic language! The semi-barbarous Chayma and Tamanac have tolerably short abstract words to express grandeur, envy, and lightness, cheictivate, uoite, and uonde; but in Coptic, the word malice,* metrepherpetou, is composed of five elements, easy to be distinguished. (* See, on the incontestable ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... friends—lovers that may be, or might have been—because they never would have done it themselves. Neither was given to much speaking. Indeed, I fear their conversation this day, if recorded, would have been of the most feeble kind—brief, fragmentary, mere comments on the things about them, or abstract remarks not particularly clever or brilliant. They were neither of them what you would call brilliant people; yet they were happy, and the hours flew by like a few minutes, until they found themselves back again beside the laurel bush at the ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... efficiency of such regulations has been distrusted mainly because they have seemed to exalt mere educational and abstract tests above general business capacity and even special fitness for the particular work in hand. It seems to me that the rules which should be applied to the management of the public service may properly conform in the main to such as regulate the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... power. He loved to mingle with his pupils, converse with and question them, and he had great skill in drawing them out. In his instruction he employed many illustrations, and proceeded from the concrete to the abstract. ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... in judgment on any one's thoughts, and we must not take any man's gauge of character in the abstract as the correct one; only take the ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... following page Mr. Darwin says:- "Although I am fully" (why "fully"?) "convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume under the form of an abstract, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists," &c. I have not quoted the whole of Mr. Darwin's sentence, but it implies that any experienced naturalist who remained unconvinced was an old-fashioned, ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... brain, heart, or animal fervor they may have, over what is needed for wifehood or maternity. Theodora, he thought, angrily, looked at the war as these women did, had no poetic enthusiasm about it, did not grasp the grand abstract theory on either side. She would not accept it as a fiery, chivalric cause, as the Abolitionist did, nor as a stern necessity, like the Union-saver. The sickly Louisianian, following her son from Pickens to Richmond, besieging God for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... church dedicated to the Virgin. But in spite of all, the storm raged with redoubled fury, and even the admiral feared for the result. In case of a catastrophe, he thought it well hastily to write upon a parchment an abstract of his discoveries, with a request that who ever should find the document would forward it to the King of Spain; wrapping the parchment in oil-cloth, he enclosed it in a wooden barrel, which ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... which those improbabilities advert. Now it is certain, that persons who are acquainted with Popery, are generally convinced, and readily agree, that Maria Monk's narrative, is very much assimilated to the abstract view which a sound judgment, enlightened by the Holy Scriptures, would form of that antichristian system, as predicted by the prophet Daniel, and the apostles, Peter, ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... know. I have no experience of women. In the abstract, it seems to me that every man has a right to some explanation from the woman who ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... continued two hundred years, becomes, in its turn, an acquired right, is not explained in the address to which we allude. The principal fault to be found with such reasoning as this of the Prussian Conservatives, is that it is altogether too vague and abstract. There can be no development without something new; there can be, in social affairs, nothing new without some sort of innovation. Innovation, as such, can therefore not be condemned without condemning ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... equal to the situation. He turned quickly to Pake, squatting in the doorway, and exploded in Cree. Pake answered in kind. It takes a roundabout course to say anything of an abstract nature in Cree. Finally Garth heard the ominous name of Mary Co-que-wasa enter into ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... presuming to say what Miss Vervain's need of instruction is—that your idea is a very good one." He mused in silence his wonder that so much addlepatedness as was at once observable in Mrs. Vervain should exist along with so much common-sense. "It's certainly very good in the abstract," he added, with a glance at the daughter, as if the sense must be hers. She did not meet his glance at once, but with an impatient recognition of the heat that was now great for the warmth with ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... continued, in a deep voice, "I have made it a rule to abstract nothing from booty. But even so, my share will be beyond a doubt far larger than your fortune. Permit me to return it to you ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... avoid extremities, if it could be done with propriety. With this view General Hamilton has been ready to enter into a frank and free explanation on any and every object of a specific nature; but not to answer a general and abstract inquiry, embracing a period too long for any accurate recollection, and exposing him to unpleasant criticisms from, or unpleasant discussions with, any and every person who may have understood him in an unfavourable sense. This (admitting ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... bricks one atop the other; join them with mortar; and the law will defend your wall. Build up in writing an edifice of your thoughts; and it will be open to any one, without serious impediment, to abstract stones from it, even to take the whole, if it suit him. A rabbit-hutch is property; the work of the mind is not. If the animal has eccentric views as regards the possessions of others, ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... the power and amplify the character of a Jupiter, a Mars, a Venus, or a Pan. It is in the nature of man, that personal divinities once created and adored, should present more vivid and forcible images to his fancy than abstract personifications of physical objects and moral impressions. Thus, deities of this class would gradually rise into pre-eminence and popularity above those more vague and incorporeal—and (though I guard myself from absolutely solving in this manner the enigma ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... abstract of the bills he was to introduce —the results of a progressive and statesmanlike brain. There was an account of him as a methodical and painstaking business man whose suggestions to the boards of directors of which he was a member had been invaluable. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... general variability of taste we have in great measure failed to grasp certain laws of beauty which obtain whether appreciated or not. Abstract beauty is but a concept, a thought form for purposes of discussion. The beauty perceived pertains to something, and in that something lie its definitions and limitations. This we practically recognize in certain marked and simple forms. The points which we admire ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... role of landed proprietor in the abstract. He would not have let the Manor and lived elsewhere for the world. He went regularly to church on Sunday morning, though it bored him extremely, because, like Major Pendennis, he thought that "when a gentleman is sur ses terres he must give an example to the country people." Had he been starving ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... garden alcove, books are doubly grateful. As in the library ornamented with flowers they seem to be more enjoyed, so their union there is irresistibly attracting. To enjoy reading under such circumstances most, works of imagination are preferable to abstract subjects. Poetry and romance—"De Vere" and "Pelham"—lighter history— the lively letters of the French school, like those of Sevigne and others—or natural history—these are best adapted to peruse amidst sweets and flowers: in short, any species of writing that does not keep the mind ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various
... problems all other interests paled, for they were no will-o'-the-wisps of theoretical politics. It needs a long political education to appreciate abstract ideas, and the Greeks were still in their political infancy, but the realization of Greater Greece implied for them the satisfaction of all their concrete ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... away from the place, under the gentle impulsion of the elder sister's paddle, the younger sat musing, as was her wont whenever her mind was perplexed by any idea more abstract and difficult ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... paints a "still-life," the decorator creates a color-harmony of abstract or conventional forms, and the costumer produces a color-composition in textiles. The decorator and costumer approach closer to pure color-composition than the artist in his still-life. The latter is a grouping of objects primarily for their color-notes. Why bother with a banana when ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... typical March night, this one upon which the extraordinary incident about to be related took place. It was the kind of night that novelists use when they are handling a mystery that in the abstract would amount to nothing, but which in the concrete of a bit of wild, weird, and windy nocturnalism sends the reader into hysterics. It may be—I shall not attempt to deny it—that had it happened upon another kind of an evening—a soft, mild, balmy June evening, for ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... fundamental idea of his system, that human progress depends on the success with which the laws of phenomena are investigated and the extent to which a knowledge of them is diffused, overlooks the essential element of movement, which is not abstract knowledge, but vital force. Men and nations move in virtue of their passionate, moral, and spiritual forces, and these determine the character of their intellectual development and expression. A nation which knew all the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... picture-making faculty. Men of talent evolve arguments, men of genius create emblems, parables and pictures. Minds oftentimes called profound use long abstractions, and are called deep thinkers, because nobody can understand them. But along comes a man of genius, and he squeezes the juice out of the abstract argument, and flings the rind away, and tells you ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... at his side, was offering enthusiasm to a Geometry class. "Young gentlemen, a swift, perfect demonstration of a pure abstract truth is as beautiful and delightful to me—to any uncorrupted mind—as perfect music ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... (Chevremont, I., 40, 47, 54). "The reports of extraordinary cures effected by me brought me a great crowd of the sick. The street in front of my door was blocked with carriages. People came to consult me from all quarters.... The abstract of my experiments on Light finally appeared and it created a prodigious sensation throughout Europe; the newspapers were all filled with it. I had the court and the town in my house for six months.... The Academy, finding that it could not stifle my discoveries tried to make it appear that they ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... sometimes worked in the house of a friend, but generally in a London or suburban lodging, often with his children about him, and all their noise; for, as in the Blantyre mill, he could abstract his attention from sounds of whatever kind, and go on calmly with his work. Busy though he was, this must have been one of the happiest times in his life. Some of his children still remember his walks and romps with ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... the probabilities of inadvertence are diminished, and the mere attention being left comparatively unemployed, what advantages are obtained by either party are obtained by superior acumen. To be less abstract—Let us suppose a game of draughts where the pieces are reduced to four kings, and where, of course, no oversight is to be expected. It is obvious that here the victory can be decided (the players being at all equal) only by some recherch movement, the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... is not the result of new research; nor is it an abstract resuming historical and critical discoveries on its subject up to date. Of this latter there are several already before the British public; the former, as I said, it was not for me to attempt. Nor do I feel my book to be altogether even what it was intended to be; but am conscious that ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... ground, and the dam there, which is indispensable to the sea-level project, has also been considered unsafe by some of the engineers. In all questions of this kind the aggregate experience of mankind ought to have greater weight than the abstract theories of individuals, and I am confident that our engineers, who have so successfully solved problems of the greatest magnitude in the reclamation projects of the far West and in the control and regulation ...
— 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
... talked of love so often as an abstract thing, she had seen so many love-makings of others, and so many men had tried to make love to her in her short brilliant life, and she had always thought it could not come near her, because, of course, she really loved Ronald. She had marveled, indeed, at what people were willing to do, and ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... brilliant officers, like Sir William Drury, Sir Nicolas Malby, Sir Warham St. Leger, Sir John Norreys, and John Zouch. These papers are the basis of Mr. Froude's terrible chapters on the Desmond rebellion, and their substance in abstract or abridgment is easily accessible in the printed calendars of the Record Office. They show that from first to last, in principle and practice, in council and in act, the Tamerlane system was believed in, and carried out without a trace ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... valuable, from a sense of duty, if one realises one's own unfitness for such labours. I wish with all my heart that all classes cared equally for the things which I love. I should like to be able to talk frankly and unaffectedly about books, and interesting people, and the beauties of nature, and abstract topics of a mild kind, with any one I happened to meet. But, as a rule, to speak frankly, I find that people of what I must call the lower class are not interested in these things; people in what I will call the upper class are faintly interested, in a ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... problem which no one but himself could solve. He was only half conscious of his surroundings; he was moving in a kind of detached world of his own, where the warders and the Sheriff and those who followed were almost abstract and unreal figures. He was living with a past which had been everlasting distant, and had now become a vivid and buffeting present. He returned no answers to the questions addressed to him, and would not talk, save ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Grewgious retired into a window with Rosa for a few words of consultation, and then asking for pen and ink, sketched out a line or two of agreement. In the meantime Mrs. Billickin took a seat, and delivered a kind of Index to, or Abstract of, the ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... you cannot compare it, even in its quarrels, with any of the mere collisions of separate institutions. You could compare it with the emancipation of negroes from planters—if it were true that a white man in early youth always dreamed of the abstract beauty of a black man. You could compare it with the revolt of tenants against a landlord—if it were true that young landlords wrote sonnets to invisible tenants. You could compare it to the fighting ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... of these caves was communicated to the Geological Society in a paper read on the 13th of April 1831, of which an abstract was published in its Proceedings, but the particulars respecting the animal remains found by me have derived great additional importance from the discoveries made by Professor Owen since my return to England. I may be excused therefore for again calling attention to the situation ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... universal Church. The defenders of the French kingship formed a better estimate than was formed at Rome of the effect which would be produced by such doctrine on France, in the existing condition of the French mind; they entered upon no theological and abstract polemics; they confined themselves entirely to setting in a vivid light the pope's pretensions and their consequences, feeling sure that, by confining themselves to this question, they would enlist ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the highest value; and to him that would know of egoism and the egoist the study of Sir Willoughby is indispensable. There is something in him of us all. He is a compendium of the Personal in man; and if in him the abstract Egoist have not taken on his final shape and become classic and typical it is not that Mr. Meredith has forgotten anything in his composition but rather that there are certain defects of form, certain structural faults and weaknesses, which prevent you from accepting as conclusive the aspect ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... danger of his life, disregarded all semblance of danger. He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes in complete enjoyment of Hussein's cigarettes, which were really excellent, and said, in the even, matter-of-fact tones of one who discusses an abstract problem— ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... that the stomach needs bulk as well as nutriment. It would not prosper with the necessary elements in their condensed form. So abstract truths in their lowest terms do not always promote mental digestion like more bulk in the way of pictures and discussions of these truths. Here is bulk as well ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... acknowledge the existence of Deity and must therefore have an abstract idea of spirit, you must have some notions on the subject, and should be able to tell me how it ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the masters, will be moved Northward, and the other branch, with the masters, will be moved Southward, so that, by the time the Northern army will have penetrated to the centre of the border slave States, they will be relieved of the substance and abstract rights of slave property for all time ...
— The Abolition Of Slavery The Right Of The Government Under The War Power • Various
... tour of this country in 1881 to stir up interest in the cause. It was soon apparent that the growth of the Socialist party organization was hindered by the fact that its methods were too studious and its discussions too abstract to suit the energetic temper of the times. Many Socialists broke away to join revolutionary clubs which were now organized in a number of cities without any clearly defined principle save to fight the ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... prepared for the press, which were bought from the printer by the Sectaries, and probably destroyed. It is also stated, that there were six octavo volumes of notes written by Gillespie at the Westminster Assembly then extant, containing an abstract of its deliberations. Of these manuscript volumes there are two copies in the Wodrow MSS., Advocates' Library, but neither of them appears to be Gillespie's own hand-writing; the quarto certainly is not, and the octavo seems to be an ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... a moment. "And what on earth," he said, "do you think the world is made of? Why do you think I have been doing things for you? The abstract pleasure of goodness? Are you one of the members of that great white sisterhood that takes and does not give? The good accepting woman! Do you really suppose a girl is entitled to live at free quarters on any man she ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... by men qualified by intellect and study to deal with them are the obvious resort. There is room among the two hundred judges for some such men, but the juries are little more numerous than is required for the examination of and report on objects. For more abstract inquiries they will need recruits. These should be supplied by the leading philosophical associations of this country and Europe. The governments have all an interest in enlisting their aid, and the Centennial Commission ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... over. He had now but to abstract the money he wanted, and replace the book where he had found it. He put the book on ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... of the self-made man in the abstract. It is the true spirit of Americanism which caused him to raise himself from the ranks of the poor and obscure, and educate himself, or, more likely still, grow rich without education. But is it necessary for him to have the bad taste to boast of it, and never let you forget ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... apartment—the one which he thought it most important for a German to know, namely, the smoking-room. "According to his idea," continued the professor, "every German has three national characteristics, smoking, singing, and Sabbath-breaking; the first and only idea in which I found him led astray by an abstract theory." Later, his hostess, explaining to him the method and routine of life in an English country-house, said that the ladies retired about eleven, while the gentlemen finished their day's work in the smoking-room—the secluded apartment—or enjoyed a cigar at the billiard-table; ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... clergyman of my own parish, who is, perhaps, rather too corpulent, and in other respects is not an Oberlin or a Tillotson, than at the deeds of heroes whom I shall never know except by hearsay, or at the sublimest abstract of all clerical graces that was ever conceived by an able novelist. [Footnote: ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... would demand, "men—and women—increasing the risks of this uncertain life?" But he was also full of respect for them. There was a certain nobility rightly attributable to emigration itself in the abstract. It was the cutting loose from friends and aid,—those sweet-named temptations,—and the going forth into self-appointed exile and into dangers known and unknown, trusting to the help of one's own right hand to exchange honest toil for honest ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... in 1909 by William Boone Douglass, Examiner of Surveys in the General Land Office, Santa Fe. Following is an abstract of the government ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... of their general character and resemblances is, indeed, entirely inconsistent with certain well-known facts regarding the mental operations of primitive or semi-civilized man. To the mind of primitive man abstract conceptions of things, while doubtless not entirely wanting, are at best but vaguely defined. The experience of numerous investigators attests how difficult it is, for instance, to obtain from a savage the name of a class of animals in distinction from a particular species of that class. Thus it ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... case with writers of "Diaries," "Memoirs," "Autobiographies," and the like, a good deal of matter is deflected into Evelyn's famous Diary from possible letters: while his numerous and voluminous published works may also to some extent abstract from or duplicate his correspondence. But there is enough of this[98] to make him a noteworthy epistoler. And it is interesting, though not perhaps surprising, to find that while his Diary is less piquant than his friend Mr. Pepys's, his letters are more so. Not surprising—first, ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... filled the window with flowering plants for his mother, and the whole room was fragrant with his hyacinths. The little Greys had sent Mrs Enderby a bunch of violets; Phoebe had made bold, while the gardener was at breakfast, to abstract a bough from the almond tree on the grass; and its pink blossoms now decked the mantelpiece. These things were almost too much for the old lady. Her black eyes looked rather too bright, and her pale thin face twitched when she spoke. She talked a great deal ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... he obtained. To male sheep he gave nothing, to ugly female sheep a very little, to pretty female sheep the rest. Ferrand hazarded an inference, but he was a foreigner. The Englishman preferred to look upon the preacher as guided by a purely abstract love of beauty. His eloquence, at any rate, was unquestionable, and Shelton ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... not do him then the justice I have done since; for we students and abstract thinkers are apt too much, in our first youth, to look to the depth, of a man's mind or knowledge, and not enough to the surface it may cover. There may be more water in a flowing stream only four feet deep, and certainly ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... more familiar to me than things I'd never seen before. Especially afterwards. But while things were remembered, persons, I found by-and-by, were completely forgotten. Or rather, while I remembered after a while generalities, such as houses and men, recognising them in the abstract as a house, or a man, or a horse, or a baby, I forgot entirely particulars, such as the names of people and the places I had lived in. Words soon came back to me: names and facts were lost: I knew the world as a whole, not my own ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... most rudimentary view of the matter. An abstract and indefeasible right of insurrection may exist, maintainable in any and every case; and yet a particular instance of insurrection maybe foolish, wicked, and altogether worthy of ruin and extinction. And the writer believes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... Parliament, is designedly homely in style, and the magnificence of Milton's diction is still further tamed down by the necessity of resorting to dictation. It is nevertheless a powerful piece of argument, in its own sphere of abstract reason unanswerable, and only questionable in that lower sphere of expediency which Milton disdained. In the following August appeared a sequel with the sarcastic title, "Considerations on the likeliest means to remove Hirelings ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... say that, Marquis. I will look with care into the matter. Doubtless you have with you an abstract of the necessary documents, the conditions of the present mortgages, the rental of the estate, its probable prospects, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... origin to some name—to our mother or to you, to my Chief in London, to an impersonal Foreign Office that has since honoured me with money and a complicated address upon my envelopes, or even, by a stretch of imagination, to that semi-abstract portion of my being some men call ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... the primary purpose is to convey an abstract truth, a something bigger and broader than the mere interesting events described, the illustrations add much to the meaning and purpose of the text. Here the artist shows not only the physical attributes of the real animal, but in a subtle way goes a step further ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... observes, "It appears strange that, in so early a stage of civilisation, the monks should be so alive to the beauties of nature. The contemplative habits of monastic life must at all times have imparted to the mind a feeling of abstract beauty, independent of any idea of real utility. Secure of an uniform, peaceful existence, limited in his pleasures and his ambition, sheltered by his sacred office, above others, from the reverses of fortune, the monk of the thirteenth century was in a position to love, ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... give his narrative the reality of a travel-book instead of the insubstantial quality of a dream. He leaves the reader with the feeling that he is moving among real places and real people. As for the people, Bunyan can give even an abstract virtue—still more, an abstract vice—the skin and bones of a man. A recent critic has said disparagingly that Bunyan would have called Hamlet Mr. Facing-both-ways. As a matter of fact, Bunyan's secret is the direct opposite of this. His great and singular gift was ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... suggested by his aristocratic connexions and historical name. His speech was remarkable for clearness and cogency rather than for rhetorical brilliancy, and he was careful to rest his case on constitutional equity and political expediency of the highest order rather than on vague and abstract principles of popular rights. The debate on the motion for leave to bring in the bill lasted seven nights, and was vigorously sustained on both sides. The drastic and sweeping character of the measure took the whole house by surprise, while its authors justly claimed some credit for moderation ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... This being so, I must add that the character of Captain Brassbound's mother, like the recovery of the estate by the next heir, is an interpolation of my own. It is not, however, an invention. One of the evils of the pretence that our institutions represent abstract principles of justice instead of being mere social scaffolding is that persons of a certain temperament take the pretence seriously, and when the law is on the side of injustice, will not accept the situation, and are driven mad by their vain struggle against it. Dickens has drawn ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... Divine unity. The soul of the State is the higher, the more complex unity, and it is not merely in the actions of the individual in relation to or as an organic part of the State that we must seek for the entire influence of the State upon individual life, or for the perfect expression of the abstract energy of the State in itself and by itself. Man in such relations does often merit the reprobation of Rousseau, and his theory of the deteriorating effects of a complex unity upon the single unity of the individual soul seems often ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... form a corrected Abstract, from No. 75 of the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, of a communication made to that Society on the 20th January 1868, and entitled Pyramidal Structures in Egypt and elsewhere; and the Objects of their Erection. Some additional points are dwelt ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... had been debating on an abstract topic without any immediate application to themselves. But now Dick leaned across the table with a smile upon his face which Thresk ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... Granville being against all commercial treaties, I for good ones and against bad ones, and Chamberlain for punishing Italy for her conduct to us.' [Footnote: 'March 5th, 1883.—We turned to Tariff Treaties: Lord Granville and Mr. Gladstone wishing for a general and abstract declaration against them, and I, with support of Childers, urging most strongly the other view. The proposed declaration was a gratuitous piece of folly, for we were not called on to say ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... day set apart for sacred things, and Mrs. Viggins, as she called herself,—I cannot imagine a Mr. Viggins for no man in his senses could have married such a creature,—as I was saying, Mrs. Viggins is not at all sacred, and I must endeavor to abstract my mind from her till tomorrow, as far as posserble. My first duty today is to induce Mr. Holcroft to take us to church. It will give the people of Oakville such a pleasing impression to see us driving to church. Of course, I may fail, Mr. Holcroft is evidently a hardened ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... Dealing in particular with the aberrations of Menius, the Synod at Eisenach, 1556, adopted seven theses which Menius was required to subscribe. The first declared: "Although the proposition, Good works are necessary to salvation, may be tolerated hypothetically and in an abstract way in the doctrine of the Law (in doctrina legis abstractive et de idea tolerari potest), nevertheless there are many weighty reasons why it ought and should be avoided no less than this one: Christ is a ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... friend, it was because I wished to be gentle in the breaking to you, for I know you have loved that so sweet lady. But even yet I do not expect you to believe. It is so hard to accept at once any abstract truth, that we may doubt such to be possible when we have always believed the 'no' of it. It is more hard still to accept so sad a concrete truth, and of such a one as Miss Lucy. Tonight I go to prove it. Dare you ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... at last, his hands in the pockets of his short gray coat, his brow bent and thoughtful. 'Well, the process in you has been the typical process of the present day. Abstract thought has had little or nothing to say to it. It has been all a question of literary and historical evidence. I am old-fashioned enough'—and he smiled—'to stick to the a priori impossibility ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Mormon; but when the editor had rewritten the first six books, he felt that these were properly his own performance, and the 'Words of Mormon' were assigned a position just in front of the Book of Mosiah, when the abstract of Mormon ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... are, indeed, all second-hand, and mostly fallacious; but he knew instinctively something which is for ever hidden from the mass of mankind—the difference between an argument and a confused stirring of prejudices. Then, again, he was not content with abstract generalities: he was always trying to enforce his views by facts industriously collected from such books of medicine, anatomy, geology, astronomy, chemistry, and history as he could get hold of. For instance, he does not preach ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... also an abstract conception of cooperation, which, in its one-sided emphasis upon equality, excludes any form of leadership, or direction, and in fear of inequality allows no place for competition. Selection of rulers by lot in a large and complex group is one illustration; jealous ...
— The Ethics of Coperation • James Hayden Tufts
... he was charged with using it, and its effect at the time, we may be inclined to believe that his judgment of the line of argument to be pursued was as likely to be appropriate as that of the critic who formed his opinion according to some abstract standard of propriety. ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... may be communicated to the mind and the heart in two ways—by abstract treatment, and by illustration. It must be taken up in its absolute connection with God, and with our own souls. In solitary meditation, in self-examination, and in prayer, we shall learn the intrinsic claims which Faith and Duty have upon reason ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... is much more than mere abstract help and grace, much more even than the Holy Spirit bringing us strength, and peace, and purity. It is ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... collated the list with the Population Returns (Parish Register abstract) 1831, and noted any difference. In addition to the list given from Sir Geo. Nayler's MS. the following early registers ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 32, June 8, 1850 • Various
... seek their pleasure, and ambitious men Fix all their hopes on riches gained by fraud. The women will be fickle and desert Their beggared husbands, loving them alone Who give them money. Kings, instead of guarding, Will rob their subjects, and abstract the wealth Of merchants, under plea of raising taxes. Then in the world's last age the rights of men Will be confused, no property be safe, No joy and no ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... subject to which each part related, and moreover as the original work of Babhravya was difficult to be mastered on account of its length, Vatsyayana, therefore, composed his work in a small volume as an abstract of the whole of the works ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... had failed, and it remained for the Emperor to make it impossible for the Pope to live at Rome except as a dependant of the German King. With Tuscany, Lombardy, and Sicily under the imperial control, there was no room for papal action in Italy. In a contest of abstract principles the Emperor had entirely failed to subdue the Pope; and the interest and importance of the contest between Frederick and Alexander lay in the fact that each was the representative of an idea. This is no ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... such a view. From what he told the representative of a Peking newspaper he never expressed the views attributed to him. Be this as it may, I cannot help having my doubts. All Dr. Goodnow is alleged to have said bearing on the merits of the monarchical and republican system of government as an abstract subject of discussion, such as the necessity of the form of state (Kuo-ti) being suited to the general conditions of the country and the lessons we should learn from the Central and South American republics, are really points ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... questions about the Cortes, and when I told him that many of them made good speeches on abstract questions, but that they failed when any practical debate on finance or war took place, he said, "Oui, faute de l'habitude de gouverner." He asked if I had been at Cadiz at the time of the siege, and said the French ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... explain to the Indians what is necessary for their salvation, and let him not play the discreet among them. Let him use similes and examples in his sermons that they can understand, and not plunge into depths of abstract ideas, for that is a jargon which they do not understand; and they especially detest Latin phrases. The statement that the Indians have no faith is a pretext of the devil, to discourage the gospel ministers. Let him do with fervor whatever he finds to do, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... imagine him cherishing sordid views of life. Asked what of all things he most admired, he might truly answer, "The imaginative intellect." He was a fledgling poet. He worshiped what he called thoughts, would rave about a thought in the abstract, apostrophize an uncaught idea. When a concrete thinkable one fell to him, he was jubilant over the isolate thing, and with his joy value had nothing to do. He would stand wrapped in the delight of what he counted its beauty, and yet ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald |
