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Adventitious   Listen
adjective
adventitious  adj.  
1.
Added extrinsically; not essentially inherent.
Synonyms: accidental; casual; incidental; additional; supervenient; foreign. "To things of great dimensions, if we annex an adventitious idea of terror, they become without comparison greater."
2.
(Nat. Hist.) Out of the proper or usual place; as, adventitious buds or roots.
3.
(Bot.) Accidentally or sparingly spontaneous in a country or district; not fully naturalized; adventive; applied to foreign plants.
4.
(Med.) Acquired, as diseases; not hereditary.
5.
(Med.) Occurring in an unusual place or arising from an external source.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Adventitious" Quotes from Famous Books



... pass without risk of being challenged. It was therefore necessary for him not merely to buttress his hereditary claim by marrying the rival whose title was technically the strongest, and securing the pronouncement of Parliament in his favour, together with such adventitious sanction as a Papal Bull afforded; but further to make his subjects contented with ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... violent, he let in the muzzle while the bellows were full of wind, which he discharged into the body of the patient; then withdrew the instrument to replenish it, clapping his thumb strongly against the orifice of then fundament; and this being repeated three or four times, the adventitious wind would rush out, bringing the noxious along with it, (like water put into a pump), and the patient recovered. I saw him try both experiments upon a dog, but could not discern any effect from the former. After the latter the animal was ready to burst, and made ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift

... constituted a practical and thorough democracy. Their social relations were based on personal equality, varied only by the accident of superior talents, address or enterprise, and as yet but little modified by wealth or its adventitious circumstances. ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... reason, from the beginning of this, you see, I have constructed the main work and the adventitious parts of it with such intersections, and have so complicated and involved the digressive and progressive movements, one wheel within another, that the whole machine, in general, has been kept a-going;—and, what's more, it ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... rubbish—which in quantity is great—passed for jewels, but also what are incontestably jewels have been, and will be, valued at a far higher rate than if they had been raised from less aristocratic mines. So fatal for mediocrity, so gracious for real power, is any adventitious distinction from birth, station, or circumstances of brilliant notoriety. In reality, the public, our never-sufficiently-to-be- respected mother, is the most unutterable sycophant that ever the clouds dropped their rheum upon. She is always ready for jacobinical scoffs at a man for being ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... the arrangement of the long, narrow, prickle-edged leaves displaying in the most regular and demonstrative style the perfect spiral. The single stem of youth frequently deteriorates and occasionally disappears altogether, adventitious roots, descending from various heights, forming an elaborate and sure and ever-developing support. The huge, bright orange-tinted fruit of the species known as Odoratissimus is highly attractive in appearance, and to ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... leaping powers of a "big-horn" and the lungs of a Marathon runner successfully to negotiate them. Moreover, by some oversight, the authorities had neglected to provide the troops with alpenstocks. Without these adventitious aids the cavalry penetrated the northern defiles of the hills, following substantially the route taken by all the ancient invaders from the north. Before the disorganised Turks were fully alive to their advance they had reached the historic ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett

... not often that heroines of real life possess the adventitious attractions of a pretty name, or a charming person; but Grace Darling has both. She would unquestionably have been loved and admired as heartily had she been Dorothy Dobbs, with a wide mouth, snub nose, and a squint; but it is pleasant ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope

... suited to married life. There is a better and a purer life to lead... an inner life, coloured and permeated with feelings and tones that are intensely our own. He who may live this life shrinks from any adventitious presence ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... Being what they are, no matter where or when, the likeness never can be denied, if asserted. It continues predicable as long as the terms continue. Other relations, the where and the when, for example, seem adventitious. The sheet of paper may be 'off' or 'on' the table, for example; and in either case the relation involves only the outside of its terms. Having an outside, both of them, they contribute by it to the relation. It is external: the term's inner nature ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... it, in the Creation) let it be made with the most accurate Symmetry and Proportion, may receive additional Charms from Education, and steal more subtily upon the Soul of the Beholder from some adventitious Circumstances of easy Attitudes or Motion, and an undefineable Sweetness of Countenance, which an habitual Commerce with the more refined Part of Mankind superadds to the Work of Nature. This the ancient Grecian Artists would have represented mythologically ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen

... thought of it, he was piqued as well. A country girl, poor enough, that was evident; living with her family in a cheap and most unattractive frame house, such as carpenters build in America, scantily furnished and unadorned; without the adventitious aids of dress or jewels or the fine manners of society—Harry couldn't understand it. But she fascinated him, and held him just beyond the line of absolute familiarity at the same time. While he was with her she made him forget that ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... Lacedemonians, that while all the other citizens of Greece were careful to surround their towns with walls, they alone left a part open on all sides. Thus, superiority in the field rendered them indifferent to the adventitious protection of ramparts. It is for a similar reason that England is now willing to throw down the barriers of tariffs, and the impediments of custom-houses; and that all other nations are fain to raise them up. It is a secret sense of superiority ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... working by formula towards the realization of a minutely definite intellectual plan must be willing, on occasions, to sacrifice the really valuable qualities of sensibility and handwriting as well as the adventitious charms that spring from happy flukes. Besides, I am not sure that Lewis has been ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... subtle, frank, and generous as that of Browning, the perfume which pervades the atmosphere of "high life" was no less obvious than the miasma. His imagination needed not to free itself of all things adventitious to its object ere it could soar; in a word, for Browning, even a "lady" could be a woman—and remain a woman, even though she be turned to a "great" lady, that figure once so gracious, now so hunted from the ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne

... in this Life, but that a thousand Accidents may either forward or disappoint his Advancement, it is, methinks, a pleasant and inoffensive Speculation, to consider a great Man as divested of all the adventitious Circumstances of Fortune, and to bring him down in ones Imagination to that low Station of Life, the Nature of which bears some distant Resemblance to that high one he is at present possessed of. Thus one may view him exercising in Miniature those Talents of Nature, which being drawn ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... imminent, dangers, and whose property had undergone an unmerited, depreciation. To what could this depreciation, and to what could the late insurrection at Dominica be imputed, which had been saved from horrid carnage and midnight-butchery only by the adventitious arrival of two British regiments? They could only be attributed to the long delayed question of the abolition of the Slave Trade; and if this question were to go much longer unsettled, ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... youngest of whom was above one hundred years of age, and who he had heard were relatives of his father; but they could give him no information upon the subject; whereupon he breaks forth into his professed contempt for these adventitious claims, declaring, that he thinks it better to content himself with dating from the glory of the admiral, than to go about inquiring whether his father "were a merchant, or one who kept his hawks;" [268] since, adds he, of persons of similar pursuits, there ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... though distinctly denounced by their sacred hooks, and ostensibly disavowed by the Singhalese themselves, still exists in their veneration for rank, whether hereditary or adventitious. Thus every district and every village has its little leader, a preeminence accorded to birth rather than property; and, by a descending scale, certain members of the community, in right of relationship or connection, assume an undefined superiority, and are tacitly ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot

... contradictions will be encountered when we come to consider points of detail. The undoubtable antiquity of the phallic element in alchemical doctrine precludes the idea that this element was an adventitious one, that it was in any sense an afterthought; notwithstanding, however, the evidence, as will, I hope, become apparent as we proceed, indicates that mystical ideas played a much more fundamental part in the genesis of alchemical doctrine than purely ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove

... discreet and unobtrusive guide, and just says what is necessary in the right place. In this he is greatly to be commended; for it happens too often that biographers of eminent men use their privilege to do a little adventitious self-advertisement. They blow their own trumpets; they stand and posture courteously in the ante-room, when what one desires is to go straight ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... the assistance of disciplined armies, have often triumphed over large states, or states of greater natural strength, which have been destitute of these advantages. Neither the pride nor the safety of the more important States or confederacies would permit them long to submit to this mortifying and adventitious superiority. They would quickly resort to means similar to those by which it had been effected, to reinstate themselves in their lost pre-eminence. Thus, we should, in a little time, see established in every part of this country the same engines of despotism which have been ...
— The Federalist Papers

... as the patron of Falstaff was likely to be. Further, Hotspur might have been depicted as inordinately proud of his name and birth; the provincial aristocrat usually is, whereas Henry, the Prince, would surely have been too certain of his own qualities to need adventitious aids to pride. Percy might have been shown to us raging over imaginary slights; Worcester says he was "governed by a spleen"; while the Prince should have been given that high sense of honour and insatiate ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... spirituality that finds God everywhere every hour of the day; faith that welcomes death as cheerfully as life; comradeship that would weld the nation into a family of brothers; sexuality that makes prudes shudder; poetic enthusiasm that scornfully dispenses with all the usual adventitious aids; and in general a largeness, coarseness, and vehemence that are quite appalling to the general reader. Lovers of poetry will of necessity be very slow in adjusting their notions to the standards of "Leaves of Grass." It is a survey of life and of the world ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... forty-five, I was still her "little boy." You, however, guessed shrewdly that Luck had played strong cards in bringing me this distinction, and I will admit at once that it was, indeed, due to little born in me, but, rather, to some adventitious aid that, curiously, seemed never lacking at the opportune moment. And this ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood

... occupied a high plane (in the pantomimic dance of the ancients) but has now retrograded; music, supreme at the outset, then neglected, is but now pushing forward into the place which its nature entitles it to occupy. When we conceive of an art-work composed of such elements, and foregoing the adventitious helps which may accrue to it from conventional idioms based on association of ideas, we have before us the concept of Absolute music, whose content, like that of every noble artistic composition, be it of tones or forms or colors or thoughts expressed in words, is that high ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... Roland is full of the spirit of militant Christendom, and there is no more constant thought in the poem than that of the glory of France. The virtue of the English heroes is the old Teutonic virtue. The events of the battle are told plainly and clearly; nothing adventitious is brought in to disturb the effect of the plain story; the poetical value lies in the contrast between the grey landscape (which is barely indicated), the severe and restrained description of the fighters, on ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... his idea, never speaking for effect, stripping himself of every adventitious pleasure in the service of his idea, he told her of the change that had come upon his aestheticism in the last year. He had been organist for three years at St. Patrick's, and since then had been interested ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... continued life, hence health, and many other things. Whichever of these ideas is easiest recalled will first appear on looking at a circle. The error of those who have discussed mythological symbolism has been to trace a connection of such adventitious ideas beyond the symbol to its original meaning; whereas the symbol itself is the starting-point. To one living in a region where venomous serpents abound, the figure of one will recall the sense of danger, the dread of the bite, and the natural hostility we feel to those ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... deposit consisting of the great majority of the contained bacteria and leucocytes, together with adventitious matter, such as dirt, hair, epithelial ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre

... amounts of "mineral matter" are too high, owing to the adventitious matters (dirt) ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron

... fairy-like proportions, they resemble a pair of tight trousers rather than the full flowing robe which we remember as so graceful and becoming to a woman. It will be observed that the general aim of all these adventitious aids is to give an impression of earth and the fullness thereof, to appear to have a bigger cerebellum, a more sensuous development of limb, and a greater abundance of flesh than can be either natural or true; but we are almost at a loss how to express the next point of ambition with which the ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... its companion works, "Heaven our Home," and "Meet for Heaven," needs no adventitious circumstances, no prestige of literary renown, to recommend it to the consideration of the reading public, and, like its predecessors, will no doubt circulate by tens of thousands ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous

... Excellencies will bear in mind that distressed circumstances in Rotterdam had at length driven me to the resolution of committing suicide. It was not, however, that to life itself I had any, positive disgust, but that I was harassed beyond endurance by the adventitious miseries attending my situation. In this state of mind, wishing to live, yet wearied with life, the treatise at the stall of the bookseller opened a resource to my imagination. I then finally made up my mind. I determined to depart, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... procedure," returned the bailiff, "if you sincerely desire the truth; for it would be an affront to God to perform a spurious miracle in His honour, and a wrong to the Catholic faith, whose power is in its truth, to attempt to give adventitious lustre to its doctrines by the aid of fraud ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... bring it about, and with those which were employed to traverse it. To adjust the pretensions and to settle the interests of so many princes and states as were engaged in the late war would appear, when considered simply and without any adventitious difficulty, a work of prodigious extent. But this was not all. Each of our Allies thought himself entitled to raise his demands to the most extravagant height. They had been encouraged to this, first, by the engagements which we had entered into with ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke

... describe the living representative of the noble House he could justly have bestowed upon him a much greater meed of praise. It is a rare conjunction to find one who is born great, seek also to achieve greatness; but this His Grace has done in an eminent degree. The adventitious circumstances of his birth placed him in a position only a few removes from Royalty itself, but not content with mere physical greatness, and realising that "the mind's the standard of the man," he has applied himself diligently ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans

... ill-disposed persons seek to pervert the public opinion, and to lead men's minds astray. The duchess, when travelling, was the faithful and active agent of her brother. The duke, to secure his stay in the ministry, will eagerly avail himself of every adventitious aid; within your kingdom he seeks the support of the parliaments and philosophers; without, he claims the succour of Germany and Spain. Your majesty is certainly master of your own will, and it would ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... universe. It will be remembered that among the early Greeks Anaxagoras had referred the creative and formative processes of nature to a non-natural or rational agency, which he called the Nous. The adventitious character of this principle, the external and almost purely nominal part which it played in the actual cosmology of Anaxagoras, betrayed it into the hands of the atomists, with their more consistently naturalistic creed. Better, these maintain, ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... of seedlings, adventitious buds, systematic latency and retrogressive evolution. Degressive evolution. Latency of specific and varietal characters in wheat-ear carnation, in the green dahlias, in white campanulas and others. Systematic latency of ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... sweepstakes—no plate. But his will be renown—everlasting renown; his will be fame which will not die with him—which will keep his reputation, albeit a tarnished one, still in the mouths of men. He wants all these adventitious excitements, but he has that within which is a greater excitement than all these. He is conscious that he is doing a deed to live by. If not riding for life, he is riding for immortality; and as the hero may perchance feel—for even a highwayman may feel like a hero,—when he willingly throws ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... theologically, belonged to the school of Calvin; in its spirit it was in line with the vein of mysticism which is met throughout the history of the Christian Church. In general respects the theology of Labadism was that of the Reformed Church of the Netherlands. Like so many other adventitious but zealous movements, Labadism centred in its millennial hopes. These, however, were rather an expression of the spirit of pietism which pervaded the doctrines of the church than a fundamental positive ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts

... adds enormously of course to the San Franciscan's native picturesqueness. Not that the Californian needs adventitious aid in this matter. Indeed this cosmopolitanism of atmosphere serves best as a background, these alien types as a foil, for the native-born. For the Californians are a comely people. No traveler has failed—at least no man has failed—to pay tribute in ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin

... almost written a psychology, what with his Treatise on the Passions and his letters and, besides, certain passages in his Meditations. The soul thinks and has passions. There are three kinds of ideas, the factitious, the adventitious, and the innate; the factitious ideas are those which the imagination forms; the adventitious ideas are those suggested by the external world through the intermediary of the senses; the innate ideas are those ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet

... of his adventitious aid, He ne'er ten pounds a week had made; Yet every Thespian brother Is now kept down, or put to flight, While he gets fifty pounds a night, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... a passion to which her sense of Mrs. Milray's strange unkindness lent defiance. The dance was still so new a thing then, that it had a surprise to which the girl's gentleness lent a curious charm, and it had some adventitious fascinations from the necessity she was in of weaving it in and out among the stationary armchairs and sofas which still further cramped the narrow space where she gave it. Her own delight in it shone from her smiling face, which was appealingly happy. Just before it should have ended, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... rapid sketch of a man rising to distinction without the adventitious aids of hereditary patrimony, wealth, or early friends, it requires little to be added to show the value of self-dependence. Such examples must encourage all whose ambitions are sustained by assiduity, temperance, self-reliance, and ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... facts might even get into the newspapers. Well? She herself had done nothing to be ashamed of, and if curiosity helped her to success, why, so much the better. In all likelihood it would help her; but she did not dwell upon this adventitious encouragement. A more legitimate source of hope revealed itself in Mrs. Strangeways' allusion to her personal advantages. She was not ill-looking; on that point there needed no flatterer's assurance. Her looks, if anything, had improved, and possibly she ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... Colonel Huntington wrote to Governor Trumbull, June 6th, as follows: "Long Island has the greatest proportion of Tories, both of its own growth and of adventitious ones, of any part of this colony; from whence some conjecture that the attack is to be made by that way. It is more likely to be so than not. Notwithstanding the vigilance of our outposts, we are sure there is ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston

... only catches a Tartar Silence in love betrays more woe Spare the persons while you lash the crimes Steady assurance, with seeming modesty Suspicion of age, no woman, let her be ever so old, ever forgive Take the hue of the company you are with Taking up adventitious, proves their want of intrinsic merit The present moments are the only ones we are sure of Those whom you can make like themselves better Timidity and diffidence To be heard with success, you must be heard with pleasure To be pleased one must please Trifle only with triflers; ...
— Widger's Quotations from Chesterfield's Letters to his Son • David Widger

... learning, and who could boldly draw upon a large fund of acquired knowledge for supplying the expenditure of far-fetched and extravagant images, which their compositions required. The book of Nature is before all men; but when her limits are to be overstepped, the acquirement of adventitious knowledge becomes of paramount necessity; and it was but natural that Cambridge and Oxford should prize a style of poetry, to which depth of learning was ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... same manner, and on the same principles, as he has acquired the knowledge of the real forms of nature, distinct from accidental deformity, he must endeavour to separate simple chaste nature from those adventitious, those affected and forced airs or actions, with which she is loaded by ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds

... use of an adventitious help to enlarge their city, which was by incorporating foreign cities and nations into their commonwealth; but this way is not without its mischiefs. For the strangers in Rome by degrees had grown so numerous, ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty

... me to offer to supply you with Prologue and Epilogue. Poetry never was my natural turn; and what little propensity I had to it, is totally extinguished by age and pain. It is honour enough to me to have furnished the canons of your tragedy; I should disgrace it by attempting to supply adventitious ornaments. The clumsiness of the seams would betray my gouty fingers. I shall take the liberty of reading your play once more before I return it. It will be extraordinary indeed if it is not accepted, but I cannot doubt but it will be, and very successful; ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... baldness. He wore a drooping brown moustache, and a lustreless brown beard, trimmed to an Elizabethan point. His skin was sallow; his eyes were big, wide apart, of an untransparent buttony brilliancy, and in colour dully blue. Taken for all in all, his face, deprived of the adventitious aids of long hair and Elizabethan beard, would have been peculiarly spiritless and insignificant, but from the complacency that shone like an unguent in every line of it, as well as from the studied picturesqueness of his costume, it was manifest that he posed as a unique and interesting character, ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... he had a strong magnetic influence over all brought into contact with him, and though of a naturally gentle temperament, he never hesitated to express censure if he was convinced it was deserved. In the pulpit the voice of the dean was deliberately monotonous, and he employed no adventitious gesture. He may be described as a High Churchman, but of an essentially rational type, and with an enthusiasm for religious liberty that made it impossible for him to sympathize with any unbalanced or inconsiderate ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... before, would have risked his life to obey orders of his officer, did more than an hour's reasoning to convince Maurice Frere of the hopelessness of resistance. His authority—born of circumstance, and supported by adventitious aid—had left him. The musket shot had reduced him to the ranks. He was now no more than anyone else; indeed, he was less than many, for those who held the firearms were the ruling powers. With a groan he resigned himself to his fate, and looking at the sleeve of the undress uniform he wore, it seemed ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... the natural eye and velvety to the touch, becomes beneath the microscope suggestive of the hide of a hairless Mexican dog. Religion is a beautiful, an enchanting thing if you do but look at it with the natural eye; but when you employ the adventitious aid of the skeptic's microscope you find flaws enough. It were doubtful if even our boasted American Government, of which you are so proud, could stand such an examination ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... drops lower, what fair city is this that rises in the east, throned like a queen above the silver Charles, many-towered and pinnacled, with clustering roof and taper spire? How proud she looks, yet modest, as one too sure of her innate nobility to need adventitious aid to impress others. Look at the aesthetic simplicity of her pose on the single hill, which is all the mistaken kindness of her children has left of the three mountains which were her birthright. Behold the stately avenues that stretch by bridge and road, radiating ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various

... right in her supposition. Brother and sister marrying daughter and father would not be well received in a narrow society like North Aston, where the restrictions of law and elemental morality were supplemented by an adventitious code of denial which put Nature into a strait waistcoat and shackled freedom of action and opinion with chains and bands of iron. Perhaps it was some such thought as this on his own part that made Edgar profess himself disgusted with this marriage, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... Wapping with a psalm of thankfulness. The Sea Queen was to sail on Friday, and so I had little time left; yet by a lucky chance I was enabled to dispose of my practice "on the nail," to use a convenient colloquialism, and, with that adventitious sum of money, equipped and fortified myself for my voyage. I paid two preliminary visits to the yacht, but found no one of importance on board, and it was not until the actual afternoon of our departure that I made the acquaintance of any more of ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson

... insignificance. For, judging of what you are by what you ought to be, I persuaded myself that you would not reject a reasonable proposition because it had nothing but its reason to recommend it. On the other hand, being totally destitute of all shadow of influence, natural or adventitious, I was very sure, that, if my proposition were futile or dangerous, if it were weakly conceived or improperly timed, there was nothing exterior to it of power to awe, dazzle, or delude you. You will see it just as it is, and you will treat it just ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... entertainments, and to subsist upon its own stock, is not the prerogative of every mind. There are indeed understandings so fertile and comprehensive, that they can always feed reflection with new supplies, and suffer nothing from the preclusion of adventitious amusements; as some cities have within their own walls enclosed ground enough to feed their inhabitants in a siege. But others live only from day to day, and must be constantly enabled, by foreign ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... felt. The Brahmans always recognized that the most holy and most jealously preserved scriptures could exist in various recensions and the Mahabharata shows how generations of respectful and uncritical hearers may allow adventitious matter of all sorts to be incorporated in a work. Something of the same kind happened with the Pitakas. We know that the Pali recension which we possess was not the only one, for fragments of a ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... the matter, however, is at least possible. Milton's theory as to the true mode of handling a biblical subject was, as I have said, to add no more dressing, or adventitious circumstance, than should assist the conception of the sacred verity. After he had executed Paradise Lost, the suspicion arose that he had been too indulgent to his imagination; that he had created too much. He would make a second experiment, in which he would enforce his theory ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... plant can be accomplished also by transplanting roots. A hickory root dug from the ground, divested of small rootlets, cut into segments a foot or more in length, and set perpendicularly in sand with half an inch protruding, will throw out shoots from adventitious buds. In my experimental work with hickory roots, in covered jars, surrounded by wet moss, but with the entire root reached by light, adventitious buds have started along the entire length of the root, and we may find this an economical way for root propagation, dividing up ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association

... see that I get my share of that plunder" snapped the unhappy tenderfoot. "Of course, right now, it may seem perfectly proper from your point of view to take advantage of certain adventitious ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... result? A few individuals would be out of sight in a moment; the mass at various distances would be struggling far behind them, and a large residuum would have been blown before it had advanced a furlong. Thus, by making men's adventitious opportunities equal, we should no more equalise the result for the sake of which the opportunities were demanded than we should give every cab-horse in London a chance of winning the Derby by allowing it on Derby Day ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

... An Oratorical Dictionary for the use of public speakers, was actually published in the first part of the nineteenth century. This contained a liberal amount of sonorous words derived from the Latin, such as "campestral," "lapidescent," "obnubilate," and "adventitious." Such words were supposed to ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... that in works of imagination and sentiment, for of these only have I been treating, in proportion as ideas and feelings are valuable, whether the composition be in prose or in verse, they require and exact one and the same language. Metre is but adventitious to composition, and the phraseology for which that passport is necessary, even where it may be graceful at all, will be little valued ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... free and independent ecclesiastical body, like the Presbyterian, Wesleyan, or Catholic churches, without further aid from the state. "I trust," said the impassioned advocate, "that when instead of the fictitious and adventitious aid on which we have too long taught the Irish establishment to lean, it shall come to place its trust in its own resources, in its own great mission, in all that it can draw from the energy of its ministers and its members, and the high hopes ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy

... time was coming, though it did not (and could hardly) come very quickly, when Fielding was to discard all kinds of adventitious aids and suggestions—all crutches, spring-boards, go-carts, tugs, patterns, tracings—and go his own way—and the Way of the Novel—with no guidance but something of the example of Cervantes directly and Shakespeare indirectly among the moderns, and ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... the block method the two contacts are made with uninjured surfaces, and the effect of reagents on both is similar. Thus no advantage is given to one contact over the other. The changes now detected in response are therefore due to no adventitious circumstance, but to the reagent itself. If further verification be desired as to the effect of the reagent, we can obtain it by alternate stimulation of the A and B ends. Both ends will then show the given change. I give below ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose

... Wolston, "that is not a normal career; there is no diploma required for it; it is an accident arising out of adventitious circumstances, sometimes fostered by ambition, but no course of study ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... Indoctrinated is one of a political school who holds to the validity of certain theories which have been made to justify a set of adventitious facts, as is eminently the case in our own great model, Leaphigh. We are peculiarly placed in this country. Here, as a rule, facts—meaning political and social facts—are greatly in advance of opinion, simply because the former are left chiefly to their own free action, and the latter is necessarily ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... warlike impulses, the blind infatuation and egoism of a feudal caste; it was not even the impatient and deliberately fanned envy and covetousness of a too prolific race close-cramped on a dreary and ungrateful soil: it was none of these that let loose the hateful war. All these causes, adventitious or fortuitous as they were, only settled the hour of the decision; but the decision itself was taken and written, probably ages ago, in other spheres which cannot be reached by the conscious will of man, ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck

... was urged, that from artificial or adventitious causes, the commerce between the United States and Great Britain had exceeded its natural boundary. It was wise to give such political advantages to other nations as would enable them to acquire their due share of the direct trade. It was also wise to impart some benefits to nations that ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... of sauces, or theory of mixed flavors: as to show why cabbage is reprehensible with roast beef, laudable with bacon; why the haunch of mutton seeks the alliance of currant-jelly, the shoulder civilly declineth it; why loin of veal, (a pretty problem,) being itself unctuous, seeketh the adventitious lubricity of melted butter,—and why the same part in pork, not more oleaginous, abhorreth from it; why the French bean sympathizes with the flesh of deer; why salt fish points to parsnip, brawn makes a dead-set at mustard; why cats prefer valerian to heart's-ease, old ladies vice versa,—though ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... through ages and scenes unknown; and, instead of supposing that the beginning of our story was nearly of a piece with the sequel, we think ourselves warranted to reject every circumstance of our present condition and frame, as adventitious, and foreign to our nature. The progress of mankind, from a supposed state of animal sensibility, to the attainment of reason, to the use of language, and to the habit of society, has been accordingly painted with ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... adventitious aid, we could now attack the cursed wretches in their stronghold, instead of our merely remaining on the defensive, waiting for them to assail us, as we had been forced to do ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson

... circumstance concerning which I can be brief; for, horrible as it is, I have no wish to dress it in any adventitious colours. Sir Francis Varney, although under another name, is an ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... usage. We should have a sort of respect for rules and principles so universal. Perhaps we should speak of the common ingredient as being of the essence of the transaction into which it entered, and should stigmatise the remaining apparatus of ceremony, which varied in different communities, as adventitious and accidental. Or it may be, we should infer that the races which we were comparing had once obeyed a great system of common institutions of which the Jus Gentium was the reproduction, and that the complicated usages of ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... following September, when revisited, this tree was found to have such a wealth of luxuriant foliage that the observer felt that the accuracy of his February records was challenged. However, closer inspection showed that growth had entirely taken place from adventitious buds, and that the dead buds and spurs were still in evidence. There were no nuts on the tree but otherwise the casual observer would not have suspected that the tree had been affected in any way. In all likelihood, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various

... customary to take off the scion of a vine three days before it is to be grafted so that the superfluity of moisture may drain out before the scion is inserted, or, if the graft is already in place, an incision is made in the stock a little below the graft from which the adventitious moisture may drain off: but this is not done with figs and pomegranates, for in all trees of a comparatively dry nature the graft is made immediately. Indeed, some trees, like the fig, are best grafted when the scion ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... singled out especially as showing the new method, which almost amounted to a new human language, as they are also those where Virgil breaks away most decidedly from imitation of the Greek idyllists. The fourth Eclogue unfortunately has been so long and so deeply associated with purely adventitious ideas that it requires a considerable effort to read it as it ought to be read. The curious misconception which turned it into a prophecy of the birth of Christ outlasted in its effects any serious belief in its historical truth: even modern critics cite Isaiah for parallels, and are apt to decry ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... suffused, not only with meaning, but with a meaning of love. The higher friendship brings a satisfaction of the heart, and a joy commensurate to the love. Its reward is itself, the sweet, enthralling relationship, not any adventitious gain it promises, either in the present, or for the future. Even if there were no physical, or moral, rewards and punishments in the world, we would still love and serve Christ for His own sake. The soul that is bound by this personal attachment to Jesus has a life in the eternal, ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black

... she might even be somewhat untidy, but her innate distinction remained—nay, gained, so he judged, by suggestion of rough usage endured. Her absolute absence of affectation, her unself-consciousness, her indifference to adventitious prettinesses of toilet, her transparent sincerity, were very entirely approved by ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... waiting for you. We call it "Hunt the Shovels." You have been instructed to draw shovels from the Brigade. The term covers a space of some thousand square metres intersected with hedges, bridges, rivers, dugouts, horseponds (natural and adventitious), any square metre of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various

... Bacchus were going through with their songs and pageants, and when they disappeared, it gained a louder key, like the "rolling river that murmuring flows and flows for ever," rising again on the ear, after the din of any adventitious noise has ceased. ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... should from the very beginning practise virtue, for true profit is never separated from heaven. He whose soul hath been dissociated from sin and firmly fixed on virtue, hath understood all things in their natural and adventitious states; he that followeth virtue, profit, and desire, in proper seasons, obtaineth, both here and hereafter, a combination of all three. He that restraineth the force of both anger and joy, and never, O king, loseth his senses under calamities, winneth prosperity. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... Venice," he was taking advantage of the popular sentiment aroused by the execution of Lopez, the Queen's physician, for a real or supposed participation in a plot against her Majesty's life. Shylock was presented the next season for the sake of adventitious popularity that would thus accrue to the piece. The character was played so as to depict all the worst traits of the Jew, and was scornfully laughed at at every representation. This is an index of the ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... you like is not transferable to another; for if you choose otherwise, there is no Hopes your Husband will ever have what you liked in his Rival; but intrinsick Qualities in one Man may very probably purchase every thing that is adventitious in [another.[1]] In plainer Terms: he whom you take for his personal Perfections will sooner arrive at the Gifts of Fortune, than he whom you take for the sake of his Fortune attain to Personal Perfections. If Strephon is not as accomplished and agreeable as Florio, Marriage to you ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... importance and the superiority which are assumed by those who have only riches or rank to boast of, he delights in London, where such men find their proper level, and where genius and ability always maintain an ascendancy over pomp, vanity, and the adventitious circumstances of birth or position. Born in mystery,[12] he has always shrouded himself in a secresy which none of his acquaintance have ever endeavoured to penetrate. He has connections, but they are unknown or only guessed at. He has occupations, amusements, and interests ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... of a ruby. The eyes of the Arab beauty are intensely black,[132] large, and long, of the form of an almond: they are full of brilliancy; but this is softened by long silken lashes, giving a tender and languid expression that is full of enchantment and scarcely to be improved by the adventitious aid of the black border of kohl; for this the lovely maiden adds rather for the sake of fashion than necessity, having what the Arabs term natural kohl. The eyebrows are thin and arched; the forehead is wide and fair ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... no Southern mansions and demesnes; no power of name and place. Would Mr. Thorold care? I believed not. I had no doubt but that his care was for myself alone, and that he regarded as little as I the adventitious circumstances of wealth and standing which I intended to cast from me. Nevertheless, I cared. Now, when it was not for myself, I did care. For Mr. Thorold, I would have liked to be rich beyond my riches, and powerful above my power. I would have liked to possess very much; ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell

... were, filled with the pride of family, Bucky thought them almost ideal companions for such a harebrained adventure as this. The ranger was a social democrat to the marrow. He had breathed in with the Southwest breezes the conviction that every man must stand on his own bottom, regardless of adventitious circumstance, but he was not fool enough to think all men equal. It had been his experience that some men, by grace of the strength in them, were born to be masters and others by their weakness to be servants. He ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine

... young lady, whose adventitious spirit had almost deserted her, attempted to repeat the word farewell, but failing in the attempt, only accomplished a broken and imperfect sound, and would have sunk to the ground, but for Dr. Rochecliffe, who ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... the skilled expert must necessarily be sharply contrasted types, and of the two it must be borne in mind that it is the rich shareholder who spends the money. While occupation and skill incline one towards severity and economy, leisure and unlimited means involve relaxation and demand the adventitious interest of decoration. The shareholder will be the decorative influence in the State. So far as there will be a typical shareholder's house, we may hazard that it will have rich colours, elaborate ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... could substitute physiological or chemical ones. These too only constitute a metaphorical language, but one familiar to us for a much longer time, and perhaps also simpler." All human discourse is metaphorical, in that our perceptions and thoughts are adventitious signs for their objects, as names are, and by no means copies of what is going on materially in the depths of nature; but just as the sportsman's eye, which yields but a summary graphic image, can trace the flight of a bird through the air quite ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana

... to its healthy influence on family life, and ultimately, as Galton has shown, worked great mischief by sterilising for centuries many of the gentlest and noblest in each generation; but this tendency was adventitious to Christianity, and would never have taken root on Palestinian soil. The cult of virginity has lasted on, with much else that belongs to the later ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... and we are disappointed, almost disgusted, when we find virtue unadorned. This false association has a double effect upon the conduct of women; it prepares them to be pleased, and it excites them to endeavour to please by adventitious charms, rather than by those qualities which merit esteem. Women, who have been much addicted to common novel-reading, are always acting in imitation of some Jemima, or Almeria, who never existed, and they perpetually mistake plain William and ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... example, is the egg-cell, plus an enormous aggregation of nutritive material, an egg-shell, and sundry other structures suited to the subsequent development of the egg-cell when separated from the parent's body. But all these accessories are, from our present point of view, accidental or adventitious. What we have now to understand by the ovum, the egg, or the egg-cell, is the microscopical germ which I have just described. So far then as this germ is concerned, we find that all multicellular organisms begin their existence in the same kind of structure, and that this structure is ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... her cheeks or the shape and softness of her chin. Those who were fastidious in their requirements might object to them that they bore no dimple; but after all, it is only prettiness that requires a dimple: full-blown beauty wants no such adventitious aid. ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... evidence of cognation is derived exclusively from the vocabulary. Grammatic similarities are not supposed to furnish evidence of cognation, but to be phenomena, in part relating to stage of culture and in part adventitious. It must be remembered that extreme peculiarities of grammar, like the vocal mutations of the Hebrew or the monosyllabic separation of the Chinese, have not been discovered among Indian tongues. It therefore becomes necessary in the classification of Indian languages into families ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various

... did not waste his precious opportunity. He had this advantage, that when he saw Bessie he saw only the fair face that he worshipped, and thought nothing of her adventitious belongings, while in her absence he saw her surrounded by them, and himself set at a vast conventional distance. He said that the four years since she left Beechhurst seemed but as one day, now they were together again ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... really black,—she wore bound tight round her perfect forehead, with one long love-lock hanging over her shoulder. The form of her head was so good that she could dare to carry it without a chignon, or any adventitious adjuncts from an artiste's shop. Very bitter was she in consequence when speaking of the head-gear of other women. Her chin was perfect in its round, not over long,—as is the case with so many such faces, utterly spoiling the symmetry of the countenance. But it lacked a dimple, and therefore ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... gentleman, for instance, to the correct employment of which a dictionary would be no guide, originally meant simply a man born in a certain rank. From this it came by degrees to connote all such qualities or adventitious circumstances as were usually found to belong to persons of that rank. This consideration at once explains why in one of its vulgar acceptations it means any one who lives without labor, in another without manual labor, and in its more elevated signification it has in every ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... converging causes. As the church of one of the two great preaching orders, it had a nave large beyond all proportion to its choir. That order being the Franciscan, bound by vows of poverty, the simplicity of the worship preserved the whole space clear from any adventitious ornaments. The popularity of the Franciscans, especially in a convent hallowed by a visit from St. Francis himself, drew to it not only the chief civic festivals, but also the numerous families who gave alms to the friars, and whose connection with their church was, ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin

... stage of the disease which is observed the second year or later, is a dying-back of the branches from the tips. This is followed by the development of numerous small, lateral branches from adventitious buds. These are short, producing thick clusters of small, unhealthy leaves, sometimes reduced to mere skeletons, so that the rosetted appearance of the tree is intensified. This goes on from year to year. The growth of the tree is checked and these abnormal branches are formed only ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume

... At once slender but tough roots emerge in radiating grapples, leaves unfold at the other extremity, and the plan of conquest has begun. During the early period of its life there is nothing singular in the growth of the plant In a few months, however, it sends out arching adventitious roots, which on reaching the mud grasp it with strong finger-like rootlets. These arching roots, too, send out from their arches other roots that arch, and the arches of these similarly repeat themselves, and so on, until the tree is underpinned and supported and stayed ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... thinking—This view is refuted by the following interpretation. The text addresses itself to a person who has formed the erroneous opinion that the quality of consciousness or knowledge does not constitute the essential nature of the knower, but belongs to it only as an adventitious attribute, and tells him 'Do not view or think the Self to be such, but consider the seeing and thinking Self to have seeing and thinking for its essential nature.'—Or else this text may mean that the embodied Self which is the seer of seeing and the thinker of thinking should ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... requisite sleights of overlooking, diverting, forgetting, and admitting deceptive maxims of palliation, that the art or habit is become almost mechanical. When fully matured, it appears like a wonderful adventitious faculty—a power of evading the sight, of not seeing, what is obviously and glaringly presented to view on all sides. There is, indeed, a dim general recognition that such things are; the hearing of a bold denial of their existence, would give an instant sense of absurdity, which would ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... they heard was an evangelistic address! The minister would look disappointed, feeling that he could have done as well himself. But she sometimes deprecated surface interest, and said that if the heart was right and the life consecrated, mission work would be well supported without any adventitious aid. ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... and tranquillity is seldom much lessened by long knowledge of the busy and tumultuary part of the world. In childhood we turn our thoughts to the country, as to the region of pleasure; we recur to it in old age as a port of rest, and perhaps with that secondary and adventitious gladness, which every man feels on reviewing those places, or recollecting those occurrences, that contributed to his youthful enjoyments, and bring him back to the prime of life, when the world was gay with the bloom of novelty, when mirth wantoned at his side, and ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge

... We thus cannot tell what its causality amounts to until its effect has actually supervened. The effect, then, or something beyond the thing is what makes the thing to be so far as it is a cause. Humism thus says that its causality is something adventitious and not necessarily given when its other attributes are there. Generalizing this, empiricism contends that we must everywhere distinguish between the intrinsic being of a thing and its relations, and, among these, between those ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... the number of trees there growing. Near the upper end of the worked portion of Pilgrim's Creek was a dense orchard that bore splendidly. But, alas! they grew over "pay dirt," and in consequence were ruthlessly uprooted. I am positive that the occurrence of these trees was quite adventitious; they did not appear to have been planted with any regard to order, nor as a rule were they found ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully

... the buffoon; and Voltaire perhaps thinks decency violated when the Danish usurper is represented as a drunkard. But Shakespeare always makes nature predominate over accident; and if he preserves the essential character, is not very careful of distinctions superinduced and adventitious. His story requires Romans or kings, but he thinks only on men. He knew that Rome, like every other city, had men of all dispositions; and wanting a buffoon, he went into the senate-house for that which the senate-house would certainly have afforded him. He was inclined to shew an usurper and a ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... concerns. Steeped in misery as I am—misery, alas! only too real—I shall be pardoned for seeking relief, however slight and temporary, in the weakness of a few rambling details. These, moreover, utterly trivial, and even ridiculous in themselves, assume, to my fancy, adventitious importance, as connected with a period and a locality when and where I recognize the first ambiguous monitions of the destiny which afterward so fully overshadowed me. Let me then remember. The house. I have said, was old and irregular. ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... may safely be advised that the straight road to declared success lies in a search for the vital forces, the critical agencies, and the profound principles that make for great results, not along the by-paths whose winding, superficial courses are turned hither and thither by adventitious conditions whose very nature ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... exemption from the demerit that would attach to the withholding or withdrawing from any person anything belonging or due to that person. With all possible confidence, however, in the innate vigour of these propositions, I cannot suppose that they do not require all possible adventitious strengthening to be qualified to displace the doctrine to which they are opposed. I proceed, therefore, to test somewhat further the adequacy of the description of justice which they involve by confronting ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... virtue, to which it is generally safe and easy to attain, even though the path lay over rocks and precipices, and were beset with fierce beasts and venomous serpents. A virtue is none the less to be desired for its own sake, because it has some adventitious profit connected with it: indeed, in most cases the noblest virtues are accompanied by many extraneous advantages, but it is the virtues that lead the way, and these merely follow ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca

... useful and profitable works—whether these be printed upon small or large paper, in the gothic, roman, or italic type; To consider purely the intrinsic excellence, and not the exterior splendour, or adventitious value, of any production, will keep us perhaps wholly free from this disease. Let the midnight lamp be burnt to illuminate the stores of antiquity—whether they be romances, or chronicles, or legends, and whether they be printed by Aldus or by Caxton—if a brighter lustre ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... straight eye, carry away a picture of that country which might be sold for large sums in coined silver. But as it was occasionally inexpedient to carry about measuring-chains a boy would do well to know the precise length of his own foot-pace, so that when he was deprived of what Hurree Chunder called adventitious aids' he might still tread his distances. To keep count of thousands of paces, Hurree Chunder's experience had shown him nothing more valuable than a rosary of eighty-one or a hundred and eight beads, for 'it was divisible and sub-divisible into many multiples and sub-multiples'. ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... Douglas's position, question his motives, or do aught that can be personally offensive to him. Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together on principle, so that our cause may have assistance from his great ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle. But, clearly, he is not now with us—he does not pretend to be, he does not promise ever ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various

... divest this concept of all extraneous or adventitious elements it will be found that such a sense of an undivided joint interest in a collective body of prestige will always remain as an irreducible minimum. This is the substantial core about which many and divers subsidiary interests cluster, but without which these other clustering interests ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... in man is of two kinds: natural and adventitious. Now the natural quality may be in the intellectual part, or in the body and its powers. From the very fact, therefore, that man is such by virtue of a natural quality which is in the intellectual part, he naturally desires his last end, which is happiness. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... by what you ought to be, I persuaded myself that you would not reject a reasonable proposition because it had nothing but its reason to recommend it. On the other hand, being totally destitute of all shadow of influence, natural or adventitious, I was very sure that, if my proposition were futile or dangerous—if it were weakly conceived, or improperly timed,—there was nothing exterior to it of power to awe, dazzle, or delude you. You will see it just as it is; and you will treat ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... is hidden only by the fact that the feeling is already informed and inspired with knowledge. Religious agnosticism, like all other forms of the theory of nescience, derives its plausibility from the adventitious help it purloins from the knowledge which ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... adventitious advantages are, they have been further increased by British energy and enterprise. By means of ship-canals, formed to avoid the obstructions to navigation caused by the rapids of the St. Lawrence, Niagara, and the Sault Sainte Marie, small vessels can load at ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... certainly a man of estimable qualities, and was eminently diligent and successful in his own business[749], which, doubtless, entitled him to respect. But he was peculiarly fortunate in being recorded by Johnson, who, of the narrow life of a printer and publisher, without any digressions or adventitious circumstances, has made an interesting and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... especially when they are bruised or injured; those which have the greatest tendency to do so are the Willows, Poplars, and Elms. Such buds and growths are called adventitious. By cutting off the tops or pollarding such trees, a very great number of adventitious branches can be made to grow. In this way the Willow-twigs used for baskets are formed. Adventitious buds form the clusters of curious thorns on the Honey-locust and the tufts of whip-like branches on the trunks and large limbs of ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar

... and the mock-suns are constituted of a double nature, a real subsistence, and a mere appearance;—of a real subsistence, because the clouds are the object of our eyes; of a mere appearance, for their proper color is not seen, but that which is adventitious. The like affections, natural and adventitious, in ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... him adventitious aid. The criminal replied with spirit, aiming at the flash, his bullet spattering against the back wall of the shaft. Hickey's next bullet rang with a bell-like note against the metal-work, Anisty's presumably went wide—though Maitland ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance

... musician than I; but by this time I had acquired another talent, which answered my purpose as well, and this was a skill in disputation. In all the foreign universities and convents, there are upon certain days philosophical theses maintained against every adventitious disputant; for which, if the champion opposes with any dexterity, he can claim a gratuity in money, a dinner, and a bed, for one night. In this manner therefore I fought my way towards England, walked along from city to city, examined mankind more nearly, ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith

... to be done is to present Chaucer stripped of all his adventitious matter, his translations, etc.; to analyse his own real productions, to deduce his province and his rank; then to compare him with his contemporaries, or with immediate prede- and suc- cessors, first as an Englishman, and secondly as a European; then with Spenser and with Shakespeare, between whom ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull

... made the boat fast and, soothing his conscience with a surmise that its owner would find it there in the morning, strode swiftly over to the train line that runs along the embankment, swung aboard an adventitious car and broke his first ten-franc piece in order to pay ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... whole, notwithstanding my past follies, I had a tolerably good opinion of myself, or rather good hopes for the future. I was certain, that there was more in me than the world had seen; and I was ambitious of proving that I had some personal merit, independently of the adventitious circumstances of rank and fortune. But how was ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... incredibly short time, their magnificent lines of steamers have proved so formidable a competitor that the great American lines in the Pacific will soon be compelled to stop their sailings. Their industries again, through the wise help of the State and other adventitious aids, are capturing foreign markets. But far more admirable is their foresight to save their country from any embroilment with other nations with whom they want to live in peace. And they realise that any predominant interest of a foreign country in their trade or manufacture is sure to lead ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose

... with a degree of gloom which is adventitious, and referable solely to painful associations; for intrinsically the situation is picturesque and beautiful, and the grounds have been arranged with consummate taste. This morning I noticed a quantity ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... To this I answer, quite the contrary, people are not so easy got out of their old forms as some are apt to suggest; they are hardly to be prevailed with to amend the acknowledged faults in the frame they have been accustomed to, and if there be any original defects or adventitious ones introduced by time or corruption, it is not an easy thing to be changed, even where all the world sees there is an opportunity for it. This slowness and aversion in the people to quit their old constitutions has in the many revolutions which have been seen in this kingdom ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper

... was surrounded unmanned the Spartan in her. She strove to please, no longer gave her performance for herself, like a machine, unerring and exact. Already in a few months, she was spoiled. She looked for adventitious successes. She said, "The audience is very cold at Birmingham," because she was not asked out to supper, and, "They do like artistes at Sheffield, gee!" because a gentleman had sent her champagne and ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... I am afraid the lecture will not have the aid of such pleasant adventitious attractions. It will be a pure scientific exposition, carefully classified, under the several divisions and subdivisions of Ichthyology, Entomology, Herpetology, and Conchology. But I agree with Doctor Johnson, that little is to be learned from lectures. For the most part those ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock

... the others. Grandeur, dignity, and force, distinguish the one species; ease, simplicity, and purity, the other. Both shine from their native, distinct, unborrowed merits, not from those which are foreign, adventitious, and unnatural. Yet those excellencies, which make up the essential and constituent parts of ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More

... present one. "A man who possesses such a fund within has need of little from without." He cannot be called poor so long as he has a roof to shelter him and a single suit of clothes. Yet the acquisition of knowledge was never with Wasson for its own sake, though a good deal of adventitious knowledge came to him incidentally, but always for the attainment of wisdom. He did not believe in the Emersonian doctrine of obtaining inspiration through nature. "That was not the way," he would say, ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... of the present wealth which was in the possession of some of the leading families of the nobility may have been purely adventitious, the result of the lucky accident of command and conquest amidst a wealthy and pliant people. The spoils of war were, it is true, not for the general but for the State; yet he exercised great discretionary power in dealing ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... deflects the energy to remaining parts of the tree. What is called too heavy pruning, whereby the tree throws out abundance of water-sprouts, is illustration of this fact: the tree is thrown into heavy growth of adventitious shoots. The tree may not produce more pounds of substance, or even more total feet in length, but new energy is ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey

... ideal of conduct took the form we have described. It was the ideal of a privileged class, and postulated for its realisation, not only a strenuous endeavour on the part of the individual, but also certain adventitious gifts of fortune, such as health, wealth, and family connections. These were conditions that actually obtained among members of the class concerned; so that the ideal in question was not a mere abstract "ought", but an expression of what, approximately at least, ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... this has been done, examination ought to be made of each cell to see that the plates are evenly spaced, that the separators (glass tubes or ebonite forks between the plates) are in position and vertical, and that there are no scales or other adventitious matter connecting the plates. The floor of the cell ought to be quite clear; if anything lies there it must be removed. (4) To mix the solution a gentle stream of sulphuric acid must be poured into the water (not the other ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... thoughtful and tranquil nature, long schooled by suffering, claimed or permitted, but with a resignation itself the measure of his past trials. Dear as his daughter might become to him, all he dared to ask of Heaven was that she might be restored to that truer self which lay beneath her false and adventitious being. If he could once see that the icy lustre in her eyes had become a soft, calm light,—that her soul was at peace with all about her and with Him above,—this crumb from the children's table was enough for him, as it was for the Syro-Phoenician woman ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various

... Leghorn, besides being admitted by the deputy to the presence of his housekeeper, had got to regard themselves as a little elevated above the more vulgar curiosity of the less cultivated girls of the port. Ghita herself, however, owed her ascendency to her qualities, rather than to the adventitious advantage of being a grocer's or an innkeeper's daughter, her origin being unknown to most of those around her, as indeed was her family name. She had been landed six weeks before, and left by one who passed for her father, at the inn of Christoforo Dovi, as a boarder, and had acquired all her ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... exquisite sense of comfort or convenience. He had a relish for luxury and splendor, but it was satisfied by rather gross contrivances. He scarcely knew a hard chair from a soft one, and he possessed a talent for stretching his legs which quite dispensed with adventitious facilities. His idea of comfort was to inhabit very large rooms, have a great many of them, and be conscious of their possessing a number of patented mechanical devices—half of which he should never have occasion to use. The apartments should be light and brilliant ...
— The American • Henry James

... ed. 1820, iii. 315-348), Wordsworth maintains that the appreciation of great poetry is a plant of slow growth, that immediate recognition is a mark of inferiority, or is to be accounted for by the presence of adventitious qualities: "So strange, indeed, are the obliquities of admiration, that they whose opinions are much influenced by authority will often be tempted to think that there are no fixed principles in human nature for this ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... one of the venerable trunks so placarded has recorded in annual lines the lifetime of the individual thus associated with it, one may question whether the next hand's breadth may not measure the fame of some of the names thus ticketed for adventitious immortality. Whether it be the man or the tree that is honored in the connection, probably either would live as long, in fact and in memory, ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... of his choice and adoption, receive him with open arms, and make him a participator with yourselves in the good things which you and your fathers have enjoyed for ages, and your claims to which are grounded on no better title than that of the emigrant; and which title is founded on the adventitious discovery of this continent by a Catholic and a foreigner, and on oppressions undergone by your fathers in their native lands. Wonder not, then, that the Irish Catholic is the best lover of this country, and that he feels himself at home here; for his sufferings in ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley

... verse—which approaches prose most nearly—is so much more difficult to write than rhymed verse, though it looks so much easier and more tempting to the amateur. Are we not justified, then, in taking the logical step further, and saying that prose, which strips itself of the last rags of adventitious ornament, and which tempts the amateur most of all, is the highest of all literary forms, the most difficult of all to handle triumphantly? May we not compare the music of it—that music which we get in ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... different from the doctrines with which the learned of other nations are acquainted; doctrines which, however speculative and subtle, still as they possess the advantage of being derived from a source so free from every adventitious mixture, may be equally founded in truth with the most simple of ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... and amiable that Mrs. Luscombe pretended to believe her, and said it was sweet of her to take it all off and go out that evening without any adventitious aids to beauty; and this she said in spite of the obvious fact that Flora had evidently put ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson

... so simple withal, and yet so noble in its design, and whose beauty, dependent on no adventitious helps or meretricious ornaments, but inherent in itself, was seen and felt by all, I saw, I thought, a type of the Gospel; while the many-pinnacled and richly-fretted Cathedral before me seemed the representative of the Papacy. As stands this arch, in simple but eternal beauty, beside ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... year 1782, the Trinitarian controversy received a fresh impulse from the appearance in it of a writer whose eminence in other branches of knowledge lent an adventitious importance to what he wrote upon this subject. In that year, Dr. Priestley published his 'History of the Corruptions of Christianity,' which, as Horsley says, was 'nothing less than an attack upon the creeds and established discipline of every church in Christendom.' ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... presented by a trip to his cell to get us some water, to remove his tall klobuk. He must have read in our glances admiration of his beauty mingled with a doubt as to whether it were not partly due to this becoming cowl and veil, and determined to convince us that it was nature, not adventitious circumstances, in his case. I think he must have been content with the expression of our faces, as he showed us the way to the most ancient of all the churches in Kieff,—in Russia, in fact,—built by Prince-Saint Vladimir immediately after his return from ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... attired, as I have already said, while at the time I had the pleasure of knowing him first he was very indifferently dressed. His face, too, had undergone some alterations. He had removed a bushy pair of whiskers which he sported in Glasgow, and had added to his adventitious characteristics a pair of green spectacles. It was these last that perplexed me most, in endeavouring to make out his identity. But he soon laid them aside, as being now of no further use—an operation which he accompanied by sundry jokes on their utility, and the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various

... between the genuine effort and the adventitious mistakes is perhaps the most difficult test which comes to our fallible intelligence. In the range of individual morals, we have learned to distrust him who would reach spirituality by simply renouncing the world, or by merely speculating upon its evils. The result, ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams



Words linked to "Adventitious" :   extrinsic



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