"Acquire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... accommodation of passengers was his principal support. He was very poor, and had a numerous family—very young—to provide for by his exertions. The river was much swollen by heavy rains which had fallen for some days. It was the day of the fair at Lanark, and he rejoiced in the gains he should acquire. He was resolute and athletic, and, from long practice, knew the ferry well. The labours of the day had passed off with cheerfulness; the river had continued to rise rapidly, the evening was coming on, and the last boat-load, among whom was my grandfather, were embarked. He pushed out into the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... University of Geneva, succeeding most brilliantly. His extraordinary diligence, no less than his striking ability, distinguished him among the other students, and he bore off first prizes with ease, studying early and late that he might acquire the knowledge he loved. After leaving the University he gave himself to the acquirement of the German language, and studied ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... of Parmenio, but he was of a very different character. The difference was one which is very often, in all ages of the world, to be observed between those who inherit greatness and those who acquire it for themselves. We see the same analogy reigning at the present day, when the sons of the wealthy, who are born to fortune, substitute pride, and arrogance, and vicious self-indulgence and waste for the modesty, and prudence, ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the career of a distinguished man, it is well to neglect none of those details which may appear of but slight importance. They acquire significance as indications of a vocation unknown even to its subject, and throw a light upon the character under consideration. For these reasons we shall dwell a little upon the humble beginning ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... also that any degree of civilization which was acquired by us in say one hundred years will not require half that time for another nation merely to learn. The same is true of all branches of knowledge; the knowledge of the laws of nature which it took Newton many years to acquire may now be mastered by any college student in two months. And let us not forget, besides, that almost the only difficult element of civilization which other people need to acquire, in order to enter ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... distinguishing mark of the Hebrew race. The numerous remains of that people, though they were still excluded from the precincts of Jerusalem, were permitted to form and to maintain considerable establishments both in Italy and in the provinces, to acquire the freedom of Rome, to enjoy municipal honors, and to obtain at the same time an exemption from the burdensome and expensive offices of society. The moderation or the contempt of the Romans gave a legal sanction to the form of ecclesiastical ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... had formerly been his despair. Why he had taken so much trouble to become orderly was his own business. Possibly he had got tired of that state of life in which it is impossible to find anything in less than half an hour when one wants it in half a minute. At all events, he had taken pains to acquire orderliness, and, for reasons which will appear hereafter, it is worth ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... that the reason for the name of Fermin de Nunez de Latona not appearing in the parish register was—forgery; that this was effected by a certain Shaphter, one of Bandon's agents, and that afterwards the curates took advantage of it to acquire possession of some chaplaincies. I am certain that the town where Fermin Nunez was born was either Arnedo ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... hundred times crushed to pieces, the frightful blows of which we have spoken? How can we explain such a power of resistance? A very small change, operated by the nervous fluid, would suffice to render the matter very simple. Let us suppose the skin and fibres of the convulsionists to acquire, in virtue of their peculiar state of excitement, a consistency analogous to that of gum-elastic; then all the facts that astonish us would become as natural as possible. With convulsionists of gum-elastic,[55] or, rather, whose bony framework was covered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... cheap and convenient a power "laid on" in the streets will attract other manufacturers to the area within which it is to be available. It is proposed, therefore, to provide machinery and plant capable of delivering 5,000 indicated horse-power in compressed air, and to acquire for the works sufficient land to permit of their dimensions being doubled when extension shall become necessary. The site which has been chosen is a piece of ground belonging to the Birmingham and Warwick Canal Company, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... had a very good opinion of Toby's intelligence, declaring him to be the smartest dog in Maine, she gradually imbibed a certain degree of respect for Toby's friend. And so it came about that the Pup acquired a taste which no seal was ever intended to acquire—a taste for the luxurious glow of the ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... for a week or so, since which he has run true to form. He'll run around with lady typists, or girls from the cloak department, or most anything that wears skirts, until they discover what a tight-wad he is and give him the shunt. But his great aim in life is to acquire a lady-friend that he can point out in the second row and hang around for at the stage ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... whose series of ever-mounting successes had filled him with adoration. He knew the way of success, knew no man could tread it unless he had, or acquired, a certain hardness of heart that made him an uncomfortable not to say dangerous associate. He regretted his own inability to acquire that indispensable hardness, and envied and admired it in Fred Norman. But, at the same time that he admired, he could ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... sincerity of Thackeray, the heartiness of Dickens, the tenderness of Macdonald, the delicacy of Tennyson, the grace of Longfellow, the repose of Shakespeare." It is well worth while for every young man beginning life to form a true idea of what good manners are, and to make it his constant effort to acquire them. ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... the right of acquiring property in the Roman State (Commercium), and marrying the daughter of a Roman citizen (Connubium), but unable to acquire the honours of the State (Jus Honoris), or to vote at ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... man. The presence of women always disconcerted him, and made him feel awkward and boorish. He had been too much of a student in higher art to acquire the smaller art of the drawing-room. He felt ill at ease in society, and seemed to have a fatal predilection for saying the wrong thing, and suffered the torture afterwards of remembering what the right thing ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... when he was hoping to acquire a new interest in Lowick, had naturally had an especial wish that the new clergyman should be one whom he thoroughly approved; and he believed it to be a chastisement and admonition directed to his own shortcomings and those of the nation ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... empire; its prerogatives change not with the mutations of society. It still shows a charter of "divine right" for the sovereignty at which it aims. It still claims, as it always has demanded, and ever will demand till it shall acquire, dominion over all classes,—from the slave of toil to the heir of a throne, from the pauper whom the charity of the State supports to the Ruler by whom the majesty of the State ...
— The Religion of Politics • Ezra S. Gannett
... good-humouredly tolerated? And was his openness only due to the consciousness of his (Morgan's) being an outsider, into whose ears he had got into the habit of speaking thoughts he would have told to no other living person, pretty much as he might have written them in a diary? Such a habit was easy to acquire with regard to an outsider whom one came into contact with periodically, and with whom one had ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... compute the number of canoes, and inhabitants, which it might contain: sixty-seven canoes, and 147 people were counted. No estimate, however, of even tolerable accuracy, can be drawn from so imperfect a datum; though it was perhaps the best in our power to acquire. ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... imagines men of—of your calling to be," she said; and laughed a little, colouring divinely until her face was like the roses themselves. "You treat me as if I were a queen; and I am not used to Court manners. Where, if you please, did you acquire yours?" ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Russia. In a series of photographic pictures, Smolenskin reproduces in detail the ways and exploits of all the bohemians of the ghetto, from the beggars up to the peripatetic cantors, their moral shortcomings, their spitefulness, and their insolence. Impelled by the wish to acquire an education, and perhaps also put a roof over his head, Joseph finally enters a celebrated Yeshibah. It is the salvation of the young tramp. He is given food, he sleeps on the school benches, and he is rescued ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... fundamental principles.—Thereupon hope spreads her wings to the fullest extent, all obstacles seem removed. It is admitted that, of itself, and through its own force, the theory engenders its own application, and that it suffices for men to decree or accept the social compact to acquire suddenly by this act the capacity for comprehending it and the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... where he boarded with the woman who baked the sacramental wafers for the parish church, and, so he claims, felt the spirit of racial solidarity glow within him for the first time. But he was too timid in the face of pain and too sceptical of science as of everything else to acquire the cocksure brutality of a country doctor. He gave up medicine and returned to Madrid, where he became a baker. In Juventud-Egolatria ("Youth-Selfworship") a book of delightfully shameless self-revelations, he says that he ran a bakery ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... as ever since, a great number of troublesome questions between the two nations, and among them those relating to Germans who, having gone over to the United States just at the military age, had lived there merely long enough to acquire citizenship, and had then hastened back to Germany to enjoy the privileges of both countries without discharging the duties of either. These persons had done great harm to the interests of bona-fide ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... result must necessarily be a diminution of the population of the modified species. If, on the other hand, any species should produce a variety having slightly increased powers of preserving existence, that variety must inevitably in time acquire a superiority in numbers. These results must follow as surely as old age, intemperance, or scarcity of food produce an increased mortality. In both cases there may be many individual exceptions; but on the average the rule will invariably be found to ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... transported into the region of fancy and feeling in a blending of realism and symbolism. Omitting everything which has reference to the moral and physical development, and speaking now only of that which is intellectual, what we should strive for at the beginning is that the child may acquire a habit of quick observation, with clear and precise expression; that in due time he may see not only quickly, but accurately; in short, that a slight degree of judgment may begin to attend his perceptions, so that he may know as well as observe. It is not enough ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... is asserted, that no Gypsey has any idea of submission to any fixed profession of faith; that patents suffering their children to grow up as themselves, without education or instruction, they acquire little knowledge either of morality or justice; that few of them wilt attend to any discourse on religion, but they hear it with indifference, if not with impatience and repugnance. Despising all remonstrance; they endeavour to live without the least solicitude ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... of preparing that specific for the Chinese market; recommended the prompt use of succory to cure a snake bite, and the liberal application of green stramonium leaves to heal sores on the back of a horse. He advised Blennerhassett to acquire an appetite for custard apples, which, he said, regulated ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... have a seeming flash of comprehension of, the Kanaka's reason for exiling himself: he goes away to acquire civilization. Yes, he was naked and not ashamed, now he is clothed and knows how to be ashamed; he was unenlightened; now he has a Waterbury watch; he was unrefined, now he has jewelry, and something to make him ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... entered the service as a young man and rose to be a member of the Government, yet managed to find time for very serious astronomical pursuits in his house at Nungambaukam. Going home to England on long furlough, Mr. Petrie allowed the Madras Government to acquire his instruments; and in 1791, when he came back to Madras, the Madras Observatory was built, ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... looked down into the kindly, narrow face of the missioner. He himself was tall, a long-limbed young man, with a serious, darkly tanned face in which the blue of the eyes showed up strongly; and in his bearing and the fashion of his address there was a touch of that arrogance which men acquire who earn their bread at the ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... was interested. In some parts of Europe there was even jealousy that America should have been chosen as the field of such an experience. If these marvelous inventors were American, then their country, their army and navy, would have a great advantage over others. The United States might acquire an incontestable superiority. ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... here," said John, "could you not learn to be like them? could you not acquire some of these tastes that make ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... with the way of inventing and disposing things, of making a choice of words, and placing them in proper order, requires nothing further than the knowledge of the means whereby in the easiest and best manner he may execute what he has learned. It can not, then, be doubted that he must acquire a certain stock of wealth in order to have it ready for use when needed, and this stock of wealth consists of a plentiful ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... only be carried on by means of the soredia, and the hyphae of such could in themselves alone no more serve for propagation than the hyphae from the pileus or stalk of an Agaric, while it is highly improbable that they could acquire this faculty by interposition of a foreign algal. On the other hand he argues: "It is much more conformable to nature that the gonidia, as self-developed organs of the lichens, should, like the spores, enable the hyphae proceeding from ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... good will of the populace; with this object in view, he joined the tribunes of the people in passing a law, which is called the Flaminian, or Claudian law. By it, the senators, who had been accustomed to acquire considerable wealth by fitting out ships and trading, were expressly forbidden to possess or hire any vessel above the burden of 300 amphorae or eight tons, and not more than one vessel even of that small tonnage. This vessel was allowed them, and was deemed sufficient to bring the produce ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... officer had the right to command; and they were not easily handled when the wisdom of an order or the necessity of a movement was not apparent. The only way, it was said by an Englishman in the Confederacy, in which an officer could acquire influence over the Southern soldiers was by his personal conduct under fire. "Every ounce of authority," was his expression, "had to be purchased by a drop of my blood."* (* Three Months in the Southern States. General Sir Arthur Fremantle, G.C.B.) Such being the case, it is manifest that ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... particular care till, so he had thought, all element of risk had been eliminated. But for this his natural caution would have deterred him from the attempt. What he had completely overlooked was the possibility that some one else might decide this was any man's money who was clever enough to acquire it. Figure as he might—and he had spent hours in deep thought—even his keen mind had been unable to solve the situation to his satisfaction. Somebody had stepped in and walked off with this money in front ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... even increased in numbers, under the influence of civilization. But this is the result of numerous favorable causes combined, and proves nothing, from which to infer the Indian's docility. Other savages, on coming in contact with civilized men, have discovered a disposition to acquire some of the useful arts—their comforts have been increased, their sufferings diminished, and their condition ameliorated, by the grafting of new ideas upon the old. But, between the red man and the white, contiguity has brought about little more than ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... gorgeous a breakfast as Bennington's best hotel could provide, but Abijah promptly vetoed this suggestion and they ate at a lunch counter, which Archie found a most disagreeable proceeding. Abijah left Sally and Archie eating scrambled eggs while he set forth to acquire information about trains. He returned while they were still at the counter to report that a train was almost immediately available. His haste annoyed Archie, who hated being hurried at his meals. At the station Abijah hung ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... at present regard as the most honourable and the most necessary. Let us limit ourselves therefore to recognising the admirable love of justice and truth that exists in the heart of man. Proceeding thus, yielding admiration only where it is incontestably due, we shall gradually acquire some knowledge of this passion, which is the distinguishing note of man; and one thing, most important of all, we shall most undoubtedly learn—the means whereby we can purify it, and still further increase it. As we observe ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... a report, covering seventy-one octavo pages, which illuminated the question even to the enlightenment of Michael Hoffman. It was the first display of that mastery of legislative skill and power, which Seymour's shrewd discerning mind was so well calculated to acquire. The young Oneida statesman had been a favourite since his advent in the Assembly in 1842. His handsome face, made more attractive by large, luminous eyes, and a kind, social nature, peculiarly fitted him for public life; and, back of his fascinating manners, lay sound judgment and great familiarity ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... wharf, Blood found Dr. Whacker in a generous mood. Having slept on the matter, he was prepared to advance the convict any sum up to thirty pounds that would enable him to acquire a boat capable of taking him away from the settlement. Blood expressed his thanks becomingly, betraying no sign that he saw clearly into the true reason ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... frequently continues many days, the cavalry are obliged to climb the hills, to swim the rivers, and to wind through the valleys, without interrupting the prescribed order of their gradual progress. They acquire the habit of directing their eye, and their steps, to a remote object; of preserving their intervals of suspending or accelerating their pace, according to the motions of the troops on their right and left; and of watching and repeating the signals of their ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... with full command of myself. 'It is enough,' I said, raising my hand. 'I thank you, Messieurs, but nothing more is necessary;' and I would not take any of their restoratives. They were impressed, as was only natural, by the sight of my perfect self-possession: it helped them to acquire for themselves a demeanour befitting the occasion; and I felt, though still in great physical weakness and agitation, the consoling consciousness of having fulfilled my functions as head of ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... take any notice. I have spoilt him, sir; I have spoilt him. Look here, my dear sir; I shall very much regret the day when we have to part, for my own sake and for my nephew's, for since he has had the advantage of your son's companionship I have been in hopes that he would acquire something of his refinement and polish, and that it might lead in time to his achieving to somewhat of the carriage of a gentleman. I regret to say that so far he is as rough and boorish as ever. Still, in the hope that every one of his opportunities ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... the globe, besides a lot of lesser "ologies," of no interest to anyone save my coach and myself, but all of which were included in the list of subjects laid down by the Admiralty as incumbent for every would-be naval cadet to acquire, were forced into my unfortunate cranium day and night without ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... work is usually thrown into a state of nervous prostration by the difficulties that beset his task. By a perusal of the following hints he may learn to acquire an invulnerable calm, and if he follows the directions given he can reckon on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... paintings is naturally the fate of the 'plain man,' but, when put forth in the Times, his utterances, however empty, acquire a semblance of sense; so that while he gravely descants with bald assurance upon the engineering of the light in the galleries, and the decoration of the walls, the reader stands a chance of being misled, and may not discover at once that ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... I would often look up to find my mother's eyes fixed upon me. Especially closely did she watch me at feeding times, and on these occasions, as the meal progressed, her face would acquire an expression of ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... obtained recognition by Parliament in the Small Holdings Act of 1892, already referred to. This law made it the duty of each county council, when there seemed to be any sufficient demand for small farms from one to fifty acres in size, to acquire in any way possible, though not by compulsory purchase, suitable land, to adapt it for farming purposes by fencing, making roads, and, if necessary, erecting suitable buildings; and then to dispose of it by sale, or, ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... and Bez in Manchester had both been given to drink too much. They came to Victoria to acquire the virtue of temperance, and they were sober enough when ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... Try to acquire the discontent of Alexander, Carlyle, Pagallini, Taglioni, or even that of the honest bootblack who "shines them up" so hard that the perspiration comes through his check ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... with knowledge, and take an interest in all that has been done, and is doing, to make the world wiser and better from age to age. There is enough leisure in most men's lives to enable them to interest themselves in biography and history. They may also acquire considerable knowledge of science, or of some ennobling pursuit different from that by which money is made. Mere amusement will not do. No man can grow happy upon amusement. The mere man of pleasure is a ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... again. "No. You wouldn't like what you find here. Freedom is heady stuff, but you have to have a taste for it. You can't acquire a fondness for it secondhand. And for a while, there's going to be freedom here. Besides, once you get back to Earth, you'll forget what ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... readily believed that he lived in constant fear of such discovery, and as it was, his dependence on a little scamp like his son's friend was a sore humiliation to one who had naturally supposed hitherto that any knowledge he had not happened to acquire could ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... a most effective aid in development, I must provide myself with the best models. To reduce my tendency to idleness or procrastination I must avoid the companionship of the shiftless. To acquire ease and accuracy in the use of French, I must consort with masters of ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... scenes—but, it must be added, with only a far-off approach, to the strength of that great master. That, had his life been prolonged, he would have risen to very high distinction, cannot be doubted. It was his generous dream, we are told, to acquire a competency by painting commissions, and then dedicate his time and pencil to historical compositions,—a dream which many artists have dreamed; but his works have little of the epic in them. Nature gave him good advice, when she directed his steps to the surf-beat shore, and bade him paint ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... so well; and I never beheld anything like the personal affection which they poured out upon me at the end. I shall always look back upon it with pleasure." He often lost his voice in these early days, having still to acquire the art of husbanding it; and in the trial to recover it would again waste its power. "I think I sang half the Irish melodies to myself as I ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... repair from this famous seat of learning to the institutions of the metropolis, or in the provincial towns. I have just given you these hints, that you may escape the errors of our system, and be enabled to avoid the pomp of learning which is without the power, and acquire the power of knowledge without the pomp." Here ended the lecture, and my venerable conductor and myself made the best of our way to pay our respects to the principal of ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... acts by giving warning against evil and recommending good. (But) Buddhism (alone) is altogether perfect and best of all, in investigating thousands of things and in tracing them back to their first cause, in order to acquire thorough understanding of the natures of things and to attain ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... the young man like birds. If only he could talk like this, he would have caught the world. Oh to acquire culture! Oh, to pronounce foreign names correctly! Oh, to be well informed, discoursing at ease on every subject that a lady started! But it would take one years. With an hour at lunch and a few shattered hours in the evening, ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... fairly and justly, the greater the power and strength of the society that holds it. We take human nature as it is—as God made it. We do not propose to remake it; that is the folly of reformers and theorists, and more especially moralists in and out of the church. The desire, the personal desire, to acquire property is a fundamental trait of character more or less strong in every individual. If a society cannot be adjusted to that trait it will fail. We think one can be. We think ours is so, as fairly as the nature of our transitory conditions will allow. ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... no "more lands to conquer," or acquire, unless the present kingdom of Brunai, or Borneo Proper, as it is styled by the old geographers, is altogether swallowed up by its offspring, which, under its white ruler, has developed a vitality never evinced under the rule of the ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... a staff officer. His advice was at the service of the most recent company commander or newest subaltern. With Gepp as author, no march-table ever went wrong. Moore fell no whit short of his predecessor in ability. He was alike eager to acquire and to impart his knowledge, which in military matters was both profound and practical. He made friends readily with regimental officers, for he remained one of them at heart and in outlook. His powers were truly at the service of the whole Brigade. ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... that thou art poor ... and naked.' Brother, until you have found out that it is only God who will save you from being bankrupt, and enable you to pay your debts, which are your duties, you do not know where your true riches are. And if you have all that men can acquire of the lower things of life, whether of what is generally called wealth or of other material benefits, and have that great indebtedness standing against you, you are but an insolvent after all. Here is the treasure ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... immortal Jefferson, writing in reference to the then state of society in France, and the debauched condition thereof, attributes the whole to the effects of the civil law then in force in France, permitting the wife to hold, acquire, and own property, separate and distinct ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... some cases, also, the force of a grammatical inflection or of an affix may not have been correctly ascertained; but it is believed that the vocabulary will be found, in general, sufficiently accurate to be of service to the student who may desire to acquire some knowledge of ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... it, on wine and women, I respected other men's wives, I supported the Church and the institutions of the city. I too even I had my ambitions, my ideals —and they were not entirely worldly ones. You would probably accuse me of wishing to acquire only the position of power which I hold. If you had accepted my invitation to go aboard the yacht this summer, it was my intention to unfold to you a scheme of charities which has long been forming in my mind, and which ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... had reason to hope that he would acquire those lands and rights; he did not know that I had been waiting for some years past to obtain them. If knowledge is power and money, ignorance is impotence and ruin. My knowledge against your father's ignorance has given me the victory. ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... flowed over also upon the host of lifeless things upon which "soul" itself has in any way been spent. To bear the mark of Man's art and toil, to have been hewn or moulded or built, compounded or taken to pieces, by human handiwork, was to acquire a certain romantic allurement for Browning's imagination hardly found in any other poet in the same degree. The "artificial products" of civilised and cultured life were for him not merely instruments of poetic expression but springs of poetic joy. ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... has enlisted in the military service of the United States, he may locate his family in any one of the settlements at pleasure, and acquire a homestead, and all other rights and privileges of a settler, as though present in person. In like manner, negroes may settle their families and engage on board the gunboats, or in fishing, or in the navigation ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... very little use going on to describe the way the colour acts in these various processes; for its behaviour varies with every degree of all of them. One may gradually acquire the skill to combine all the processes, in all their degrees, upon a single painting; and the only way in which you can test their relative value, either as texture or as light and shade, is to constantly practise each process in all its degrees, and see what ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... to flow again; though not with a viscid and heavy measure. And when I took up my light and ready pen, there, standing at eager attention, was all my staff, waiting the call. What had happened to bring them all back? If the writers of literary manuals will explain that secret to me, I should acquire true wealth. ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... semi-barbarian, lassoed full-grown, and launched into polished society, there to excel the fastidious idlers of drawing-room and tennis-court in their own line! This miracle would be more reasonable than its antithesis. Without doubt, it is easier to acquire gentlemanly deportment than axe-man's muscle; easier to criticise an opera than to identify a beast seen casually twelve months before; easier to dress becomingly than to make a bee-line, straight as ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... the post was of comparatively recent construction. Perhaps it was five or ten years old. It could not have been more. It entirely lacked that appearance of age which green timbers acquire so readily under the fierce Northern storms. And it set him wondering at the nature of the lure which had brought men of obvious means, with wife and child, to ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... his own wife and children; a right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and a right to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience. But here, in the light of these truths, I was a slave, a prisoner for life; I could possess nothing, nor acquire anything but what must belong to my keeper. No one can imagine my feelings in my reflecting moments, but he who has himself been a slave. Oh! I have often wept over my condition, while sauntering through the forest, ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... the help for this? You may say that she should have remained indoors, and not have subjected herself to his companionship. But the remaining indoors would not have brought her health, and it was health that she was staying in Boulogne to acquire, and the sooner it came the better pleased she would be, for she wanted to be at home ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... partly in Carolingian minuscle—the Cheltenham codex, now in New York. The common source at Fulda of these two manuscripts has been established by Traube. There is another testimony pointing to Fulda as the oldest known source. Pope Nicholas V commissioned Enoche of Ascoli to acquire old manuscripts in Germany. Enoche used as a guide a list of works based upon observations by Poggio in Germany in 1417, listing the Apicius of Fulda. Enoche acquired the Fulda Apicius. He died in October ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... refractory engine and chatting along in a seemingly never-ending stream of engine small-talk. All of which was meat and drink to Louis, and was rapidly acquainting him with much that it would otherwise have taken him years of experience to acquire. ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... been my ambition, since His Majesty honored me with the Government of New France, to acquire possession of those vast territories covered with forests old as time, and in soil rich and ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... inherited his calculating and planning nature. With tough tenacity he could sacrifice years of earning and saving and planning to acquire farms and meadows and orchards. Thus the girl could meditate and plan her fate which, until yesterday, had been fluid as water but which to-day lay definitely anchored in the soul of ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... or intimidation, he did not disdain to influence their votes by milder means. He resolved to spend the six weeks of the general election in showing himself to the people of many districts which he had never yet visited. He hoped to acquire in this way a popularity which might have a considerable effect on the returns. He therefore forced himself to behave with a graciousness and affability in which he was too often deficient; and the consequence was that he received, at every stage of his progress, marks of the good ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the treatment she received and would often express a resentment from which she was wholly free. Mrs Alworth's great fondness for her grandson and strong prejudices against schools, from a belief that boys acquire there more vice than learning, had determined on a private education. She therefore provided a tutor for him before he was seven years old; a man of learning and sense, with a great deal of religion and good humour and who ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... plundered everywhere by the south coast, and wrought every kind of mischief. When it was told the navy that they might easily seize him, if they would look about them, then took Brihtric with him eighty ships; and thought that he should acquire for himself much reputation, by getting Wulnoth into his hands alive or dead. But, whilst they were proceeding thitherward, there came such a wind against them, as no man remembered before; which beat and tossed the ships, and drove them ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... small size, in spite of his years, which were not few. He was a tiny scrap of a man, nimble, snub-nosed, curly-haired, with a perennial smile on his infantile countenance, and little, mouse-like eyes. He was a great joker and buffoon; he was able to acquire any trick; he set off fireworks, snakes, played all card-games, galloped his horse while standing erect on it, flew higher than any one else in the swing, and even knew how to present Chinese shadows. There was no one who could amuse children better than he, and he would have ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... said, "you forget I may not yet have had time to acquire certain of the—dilettante accomplishments ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... trustworthy anecdotes that the Asiatic elephants in a few months of captivity acquire the rules of conduct which it is necessary to impose upon them. The speediness of this intellectual subjugation may be judged from the fact that, after a short term of domestication, they will take ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... perish with the body? These are doubts I cannot resolve. But if I deemed there was no future state, this hand should at once liberate me from my own weaknesses—my fears—my life. There is but one path to acquire that knowledge, which, once taken, can never be retraced. I am content to live—while living, to be feared—it may be, hated; when dead, to be contemned—yet still remembered. Ha! what sound was that? A stifled ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... fountain, the jets of which are painted as if spouting out of the prompter's box; or is this, perhaps, the English fire-engine? I know not. The scene-decoration for towns represents the market-place of Slagelse itself, so that the pieces thus acquire a home-feeling. This is the modern history of the little town; and, with regard to its older and romantic history, learn that the holy Anders was preacher here! Yes, indeed, that was a man! He has been also sung of by our first poets. We end with Korsoeer, where Baggesen ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... the cultivation of your mind. You have for an example our mother, who is everywhere honoured with the name of learned. Try, as we do, to prove yourself her daughter; aspire to the enlightened intellectuality which is found in our family, and acquire a taste for the rapturous pleasures which the love of study brings to the heart and mind. Instead of being in bondage to the will of a man, marry yourself, sister, to philosophy, for it alone raises you above the rest of mankind, gives sovereign empire to reason, and submits to its laws ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... the purity of the water supply and the advantage of having the adjoining land—usually more or less wooded—available for picnic parties has encouraged the extension of public control of waterways. Several states now have legislation permitting counties or towns to acquire such areas for park purposes, and the Province of Ontario and some other Canadian provinces require that a width of 66 feet be reserved around ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... the thousands of ragged and squalid wretches, who thronged the pier and streets to gaze on them, were what I had not seen before in such masses. This was the first populace I have beheld; for even the Irish, on the other side of the water, acquire a respectability of aspect. John Bull is going with his whole heart into the Turkish war. He is very foolish. Whatever the Czar may propose to himself, it is for the interest of democracy that he should not be easily put down. The regiment, on ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the vampire. "You must have worked all your life to acquire ignorance, for no one was ever ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... similar character, with instructions to adopt such inquiries (to be secretly made) as they may deem necessary, and to report with the greatest dispatch all information which from time to time they may acquire. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... undertake the general emancipation of society. This class would liberate the whole of society, but only upon the assumption that the whole of society found itself in the situation of this class, and consequently possessed money and education, for instance, or could acquire ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... he is easily fatigued by walking. There may be loss of sexual power and irritability of the bladder, but there is seldom any difficulty in passing urine. The patient tends to lose weight, and may acquire an anxious, careworn expression, and appear prematurely aged. Special attention should be directed to the condition of the deep reflexes and to the state of the muscles, as any alteration in the reflexes or atrophy of the muscles indicates that some ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... that our own sex would better consult their own dignity and respectability, my dear Mrs. Bloomfield, if they talked less of such matters; and that they would be more apt to acquire the habits of good taste, not to say of good principles, if they confined their strictures more to things and sentiments than they do, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... halting, fumbling phrases he had slaved to acquire. "I would put the prisoners from Rahn to work at the machines, releasing citizens." There was a buzz of approval, and he added drily in English: "I'm playing politics, Evelyn." Again in the speech of Yugna he added: "And I ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... chroniclers of the market acquire an infelicitous adroitness in the phraseology of deceit. And yet nowhere on earth is ignorance so carefully counseled and so almost ludicrously warned as in this place of trickery ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... feet per second. This law has been taken advantage of by the French in the present European war. The French drop from balloons, or aeroplanes, a steel dart about the size of a lead pencil, and sharpened in about the same manner. Dropping from a height of a mile or so, that dart will acquire enough velocity to penetrate a man from his head all the way through ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... was not, as yet, initiated into the thousand secrets in the chronicle of the great world: he knew but superficially the society in which he lived; and, therefore, he devoted his evening to the gathering of all the information which he could acquire from the indiscreet conversations of the people about him. His whole man became ear and memory; so much was Stolberg convinced of the necessity of becoming a diligent student in this new school, where was taught the art of knowing and advancing in the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for such an act he could acquire unlimited merit among the gods, whereupon the obliging infant straightened its tiny limbs and expired. Some months after the sultana gave birth to a boy, who afterward ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... Rule, which suggest a far larger figure. But these transactions—to which I shall return—are of an eminently dubious character. We are on safe ground if we compare the number of tenants who were ready under the two Acts to acquire their holdings. After discounting whatever may be claimed on the score that the operation of the Act of 1903 was expedited by the fear of its destruction, a comparision of 217,299 would-be purchasers in six years with 8,992 in two years demonstrates that the abolition of dual ownership ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... thing which "the man in the street" fails sometimes to understand. He says: "Yes, we know, Alsace-Lorraine was taken from France forty-seven years ago by violence, without the people of the occupied territories being consulted. But how did France acquire Alsace-Lorraine in previous times? Was it not also by force after successful wars? Is it not a fact that Alsace-Lorraine, in days of yore, belonged to Germany, and that, historically, ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... and painful wars of Louis XIV. the army had become unpopular; it was the fashion to sneer at it. The common soldiers were considered, and often were, the offscourings of the community. The officers, who had left their homes too soon, in most cases, to acquire the rudiments of education, were bored with garrison life, and regretted Paris, which they made every excuse to regain. They affected to have no curiosity about military science, and to talk "army shop" was the worst of bad form. Those who were poor lived and grumbled in their squalor; those who ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... not actually explore this problem, it contained several valuable suggestions upon the subject. For instance, in a brief passage discussing 'The Relations of Belief and Will,' James pointed out that belief is essentially an attitude of the will towards an idea, adding that in order to acquire a belief 'we need only in cold blood act as if the thing in question were real, and keep acting as if it were real, and it will infallibly end by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real' (ii., p. 321). This passage is an outline of the doctrine ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray
... with the patriarch Jacob, whose name Israel has been appropriated from his day to this time to the true church. How did Jacob acquire his great riches? Was it not by appropriating the property of Laban to himself? And did not God bless him in thus doing? There is not a word of condemnation; but, on the contrary, Jacob, in telling his brother that he had much property, remarked, ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... army would be like a stream of water running to nothing. By the time you extended from New York to Virginia, you would be reduced to a string of drops not capable of hanging together; while we, by retreating from State to State, like a river turning back upon itself, would acquire strength in the same proportion as you lost it, and in the end be capable of overwhelming you. The country, in the meantime, would suffer, but it is a day of suffering, and we ought to expect it. What we contend for is worthy the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine |
