"Ascribe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not only nothing, but nothing at all in point of power, as I have seen proved by much experience. But it is remarkable that the evil all deem themselves powerful, and the good all think themselves powerless. This is because the evil ascribe everything to their own power or shrewdness and malice, and nothing to the Lord; whereas the good ascribe nothing to their own prudence, but all to the Lord who is almighty. Evil and falsity together are not anything for the further reason that they have no spiritual life. ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... player is indirectly compensated by the improved standing of the game. I quote in this connection Mr. A. G. Mills, ex-President of the League, and the originator of the National Agreement: "It has been popular in days gone by to ascribe the decay and disrepute into which the game had fallen to degeneracy on the part of the players, and to blame them primarily for revolving and other misconduct. Nothing could be more unjust. I have been ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... cliff, formed of solid rock without masonry and very much blackened by smoke from former fires. As, however, there is evidence that since its destruction or abandonment by its builders this ruin has been occupied as a camping place by the Apache, it is doubtful to which race we should ascribe this discoloration of the ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... their condemnation of a state of things, "highly discreditable to our Government, and totally incompatible with the religion we profess." Such a service as this, preceding the creation of the college, led Pitt's other friend, Wilberforce, in the discussions on the charter of 1813, to ascribe to Lord Wellesley, when summoning him to confirm and revise it, the system of diffusing useful knowledge of all sorts as the true foe not only of ignorance but of vice and of political and ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... that it would seem very absurd that motion should be ascribed to that which contains and locates, and not rather to that which is contained and located, that is the earth. Emend. I also add that it is not more difficult to ascribe motion to the contained and located, which is the earth, than to that which ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... 1868.—We came to Kabwabwata, and I hope I may find a way to other underground houses. It is probable that they are not the workmanship of the ancestors of the present occupants, for they ascribe their formation invariably to the Deity, Mulungu or Reza: if their forefathers had made them, some tradition ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... pressure on the human frame shows itself in intolerable symptoms of weariness and an extreme difficulty of breathing. The natives call this malady the Puna or the Soroche; and the Spanish Creoles give it the names of Mareo or Veta. Ignorant of its real causes they ascribe it to the exhalations of metals, especially antimony, which is extensively used in the mining operations. The first symptoms of the veta are usually felt at the elevation of 12,600 feet above the sea. These symptoms are vertigo, dimness of sight and hearing, pains in the ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... a bloody and arduous single combat; at which intelligence Sancho was aghast and thunderstruck, trembling for the safety of his master because of the mighty deeds he had heard the squire of the Grove ascribe to his; but without a word the two squires went in quest of their cattle; for by this time the three horses and the ass had smelt one another out, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Sir Robert Walpole's return to the King's service. Yet had Walpole defeated a plan of Sunderland that @would in future have exceedingly hampered the successor, as it was calculated to do; nor do I affect to ascribe Sir Robert's victory directly to zeal for the Prince: personal and just views prompted his opposition, and the commoners of England were not less indebted to him than the Prince. Sunderland had devised a bill to restrain the crown from ever adding above six peers to a number limited., ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... all times in my life I need the full command of what powers of speech I possess, disturbed health so threatens to interfere with them, that I fear I shall often inadequately express myself. Any failure in my response you must please ascribe, in part at least, to a greatly disordered nervous system. Regarding you as representing Americans at large, I feel that the occasion is one on which arrears of thanks are due. I ought to begin with ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... have asserted that things impossible by the ordinary laws of material causation are possible by faith in God. I do not perceive, if we allow these words to have any meaning whatever, that we can ascribe to them any ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... adopted it. Traces of the same conception appear among the remotest and rudest nations. The Caribbeans have a myth to the effect that the whole race of men were doomed to be mortal because Carus, the first man, offended the great god Tiri. The Cherokees ascribe to the Great Spirit the intention of making men immortal on earth; but, they say, the sun when he passed over told them there was not room enough, and that people had better die! They also say that the Creator attempted to make the first man and woman ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... criminate so severely the great man whom we revere, we might fairly retort on the conduct of him whom you adore; but we scorn such advantages, and confining ourselves to the real object in question, we maintain that the morals of your gospel have by no means that perfection which you ascribe to them; it is not true that they have introduced into the world new and unknown virtues: for example, the equality of men in the sight of God,—that fraternity and that benevolence which follow from it, were ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... weak and sensitive eyes. It is far better to shade the eyes and admit the sunlight into the room, since its rays cause chemical changes to take place, which favor the return of health. Many invalids can ascribe their recovery to the influence of a sun bath. There are, however, conditions in which the patients should be screened from the light. In such cases a little arrangement of the curtains or shutters will accomplish all that ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... could think of a few answers to that one, too. Raid the mental hospitals and jails. Do that often enough and you would have a crew that would make any pirate chief proud. Though piracy was, of course, too mean an ambition to ascribe to this boy. Did he want to rule a whole planet—or maybe an entire system? Or more? I shuddered a bit as the thought hit me. Was there really anything that could stop a plan like this once it got rolling? During the Kingly Wars any number of types with a couple of ships and less brains than ...
— The Misplaced Battleship • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... of life; its roots lie deep, as if to get away from the plow, but it seldom infests cultivated crops. Then its stalk is so full of milk and its pod so full of silk that one cannot but ascribe good intentions to it, if it does ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... in my opinion, is neither desirable nor practicable. It is certainly possible for the king to maintain a chosen political corps, as long as he can maintain himself, which shall act in his interests and do his bidding; but it is folly to ascribe the attributes that belong to a peerage to such a body of mercenaries. They resemble the famous mandamus counsellors, who had so great an agency in precipitating our own revolution, and are more likely to achieve a similar disservice to their master than any thing ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Archer, evidently perceiving the uselessness of trying to ascribe the actions of foreigners ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... can only be explained by motives so malignant and contemptible, that I blush to ascribe them ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... could Mrs. Ransom's motive be (if the woman sleeping yonder is Mrs. Ransom) for so tremendous a sacrifice as this you ascribe to her? The rescue of her sister from some impending calamity? That would argue a love of long standing and of superhuman force; one far transcending even her natural affection for the husband to whom she has just given her hand. Such a love under such circumstances ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... told of attention to small things. There was a peg for everything, and everything seemed to be on its peg. Nothing littered the well-scrubbed floor or defiled the well-brushed hearthstone, and it did not require a second thought on the part of the beholder to ascribe all this to the tidy little middle-aged woman, who, with an expression of deep anxiety on her good-looking countenance, attended to the wants ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... which the ancients formed of genius. They confined it to particular objects or departments in art. But there is a tendency among men of genius to ascribe a universality of power to a master-intellect. Dryden imagined that Virgil could have written satire equally with Juvenal, and some have hardily defined genius as "a power to accomplish all that we undertake." But literary history will detect this ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... knows, that when Julian the Apostate was at Daphne, a suburb of Antioch, to consult Apollo, the god, notwithstanding all the sacrifices offered to him, continued mute, and only recovered his speech to answer those who inquired the cause of his silence, that they must ascribe it to the interment of certain bodies in the neighbourhood. Those were the bodies of Christian martyrs, amongst which was that ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... me?" he said, coloring and looking a little uneasy, "or, rather, will you ascribe it to the friendly interest I feel in you, if I ask whether Mr. Kerby realizes a comfortable income by the practice of his profession? Don't," he went on anxiously, before I could reply—"pray don't think I make this inquiry from a ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... verse following (some ascribe it to Giraldus Cambrensis) could adore both the sun rising, and the sun setting, when he could so cleanly honour King Henry II, then ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... perfect master of the elegances he so much admired, "the late Duke of Marlborough possessed the graces in the highest degree, not to say engrossed them. Indeed he got the most by them, and contrary to the custom of profound historians, who always assign deep causes for great events, I ascribe the better half of the Duke of Marlborough's greatness to those graces. He had no brightness, nothing shining in his genius. He had most undoubtedly an excellent plain understanding, and sound judgment. But these qualities alone ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... connected by affinity with the unfortunate Monmouth, and with that Leslie who had unsuccessfully commanded the Scotch army against Cromwell at Dunbar. Melville had always been accounted a Whig and a Presbyterian. Those who speak of him most favourably have not ventured to ascribe to him eminent intellectual endowments or exalted public spirit. But he appears from his letters to have been by no means deficient in that homely prudence the want of which has often been fatal to men of brighter genius and of purer virtue. That prudence ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... zeal, and it pleases me that you are a faithful knight, sans peur et sans reproche. I do not ascribe its poverty to the German nation, who have as much spirit and genius as any nation, the mental development of which has been retarded by outward circumstances, which prevented her rising to an equality with her neighbors. We shall ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... religious teachers and writers attribute to Adam and Eve, in their first state, an amount of knowledge, and a perfection of righteousness, which the Scriptures nowhere ascribe to them, and which, if they had possessed them, would have rendered it impossible, one would think, that they should have yielded so ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... pistol here—it's Joe Rainey's pistol—and here is something my astute friend overlooked; one of the cartridges is out—the rest are there—one is clear out, not shot, exploded, with the shell left, but clear out. How did that happen? Do you believe Mitchie Miller did that? Are you going to ascribe to him such devilish cunning as that? No, gentlemen, the hand that placed that pistol by the porch slipped the cartridge out first. The hand that placed that pistol there depended upon the story of three shots being fired, ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... Heine's, on the other hand, the question of heredity has apparently only an indirect bearing upon his Weltschmerz. To what extent was his long and terrible disease of hereditary origin, and in what measure may we ascribe his Weltschmerz to the sufferings which that disease caused him? The first of these questions has been answered as conclusively as seems possible on the basis of all available data, by a doctor of medicine, S. Rahmer, in ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... unlucky." Another man's nose is perpetually on the grind-stone; he also has "bad luck." No matter if he follows inclination rather than judgment, if he fails, as he might know he would did he but exercise one-half the judgment he does possess, yet he is never willing to ascribe the failure to himself—he invariably ascribes it to bad luck, ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... self-love. In that case, I shall have as bitter quarrels with her as I have with you, mon cher abbe;—for Rochefoucault is a man I detest, or rather, I detest his maxims—the duke himself, they say, was the most amiable man of his day. Only conceive, that such a man should ascribe all our virtues to self-love ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... Carrolton, where a tailor made him a fine uniform. Purchasing a horse of the gentleman with whom he stayed, he bade him good-bye, and sprang into the saddle. The sun had just set, and the whole west glowed with the beauty which we ascribe to the Golden City. In the midst of the gold hung the new moon like a ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... though my joys and enlargements were not so overflowing and sensible, yet I have had habitual real communion with God from that day to this"—the latter end of the year 1743—"and I know myself, and all that know me see, that through the grace of God, to which I ascribe all, my conversation has been becoming the gospel; and let me die whenever it shall please God, or wherever it shall be, I am sure I shall go to the mansions of eternal glory," &c. This is perfectly agreeable to the ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... of false information, or enable any man to conceive that so many groundless reports should be propagated, as every man of eminence may hear of himself. Some men relate what they think, as what they know; some men of confused memories and habitual inaccuracy, ascribe to one man what belongs to another; and some talk on, without thought or care. A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... reach, if they are not dreaded, they are, at least, respected for their valour. It is said that they never fly in battle, and that they always beat an equal number of the other islanders. But, besides these advantages, their neighbours seem to ascribe a great deal to the superiority of their god, who, they believed, detained us at Ulietea by contrary winds, as being unwilling that we should visit an island under his ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... men killed and eighty-four wounded, many of them mortally; one officer only has suffered, being badly wounded. She was commanded by Citizen Denain, capitaine de vaisseau, to whose obstinacy they ascribe ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... accuracy are the only merits which an historical writer may ascribe to himself; if any merit, indeed, can be assumed from the performance of an indispensable duty. I may therefore be allowed to say, that I have carefully examined all the original materials that could illustrate the subject which I had undertaken to treat. Should I ever complete ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... in 1804. Her parents belonged to the religious Society of Friends, and carefully cultivated in their children, the peculiarities as well as the principles of that sect. To this early training, we may ascribe the rigid adherence of Mrs. Mott, to the beautiful but sober ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... attention to the fact that two sun dogs, strangers to him, were chasing along with the sun all the forenoon. Signs of trouble, boy—sure signs!" He sorted his cards. It was more of the Squire's regular line of humor to ascribe to Eli various ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... your money, you must win it back again; that is the fashion in my country—we no lend; that is not the fashion." I have observed that these Frenchmen are fatalists. Good luck, or ill luck is all fate with them. So of their national misfortunes; they shrug up their shoulders, and ascribe all to the inevitable decrees of fate. This is very different from the Americans, who ascribe every thing to prudence or imprudence, strength or weakness. Our men say, that if the game was wrestling, playing at ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... voice, corresponding to the individuality of each, was God's way of speaking with them. And as the same voice sounded differently to each one, so did the Divine vision appear differently to each, wherefore God warned them not to ascribe the various forms to various beings, saying: "Do not believe that because you have seen Me in various forms, there are various gods, I am the same that appeared to you at the Red Sea as a God of war, and at ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... the members of the medical profession ascribe to cheerfulness the very highest of health-giving powers, we are led to think that the wise words quoted above possess a foundation of scientific fact. "Faith, hope and love," says Charles G. Ames, ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... "Thank you, I am very well off; I have four cakes of Windsor, and two bars of yellow for washing." She laughed at my reply, and asked me whether I would walk home and take a bit of dinner with her. I was astonished at this polite offer, which my modesty induced me to ascribe more to my uniform than to my own merits, and, as I felt no inclination to refuse the compliment, I said that I should be most happy. I thought I might venture to offer my arm, which she accepted, and we proceeded up High Street on our ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... outside the disc," responded Gazen, "else I should ascribe it to a small comet. It may be due to an aurora in Mars as a writer in Nature has suggested, or to a range of snowy Alps, or even to a bright cloud, reflecting the sunrise. Possibly the Martians have seen the forest fires in America, and ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... and they could make room for this only by simplifying the machinery. Yet, while they were delivering each his own message, they accepted the model of the "well-made play"; and it is to this that we may ascribe the artificiality we begin to discern even in such masterpieces of dramaturgic craftsmanship as the 'Gendre de ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... their efficacy, and then the sacred rites had as little power in arresting the progress of this deeply rooted malady as the prayers and holy services subsequently had at the altars of the greatly revered martyr St. Vitus. We may, therefore, ascribe it to accident merely, and to a certain aversion to this demoniacal disease, which seemed to lie beyond the reach of human skill, that we meet with but few and imperfect notices of the St. Vitus' dance in the second half of the fifteenth ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... alive to compile a deity from all the deities worshipped by mankind, a deity who will be more magnificent than any of them, and yet so weakly human that he'll become a byword for laughter the world over—and we'll ascribe to him all sorts of jokes and vanities and rages, in which he'll be supposed to indulge for his own diversion, so that the people will read our book and ponder it, and there'll be no ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... inventive music is the most arbitrarily distributed, and the most evanescent. But it is the more important to dwell on its necessity, inasmuch as both good and bad poets are tempted to ignore it. The good poet prefers to ascribe his success to higher qualities; to his imagination, elevation of thought, descriptive faculty. The bad poet can more easily urge that his thoughts are too advanced for mankind to appreciate than that his melody is too sweet for their ears to catch. And when the ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... assertion of Marmont's is the more curious as it was to his alleged treachery that Napoleon when at Fontainebleau chose to ascribe his defeat.] ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... commission was wrung from him, under protest, appointing Gloucester, Arundel, and twelve other Peers and prelates, a permanent council to inquire into the condition of all the public departments, the courts of law, and the royal household, with absolute powers of redress and dismissal. We need not ascribe to Chaucer's Parliamentary exertions in his patron's behalf, nor to any malpractices in his official conduct, the fact that he was among the earliest victims of the commission. In December 1386, he was dismissed from both his offices in the port of London; but he retained his pensions, and drew ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... and its results attributed with feverish ingenuity to any cause but the true one. The very speed with which the antidote pervades the body politic and expels the old poison helps these untiring propagators of error to suppress the history of recuperation, and to ascribe the cure of the patient to a treatment which, if applied long enough, would have killed him. The Conservative party appear to have now reached this amazing conclusion: that they and Lord Milner were the authors of the South ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... little proud, a little fastidious: and perhaps, with her native delicacy and beauty, she had a right to these feelings; but I think it was a total mistake to ascribe them to me. I never evaded the morning salute, which Paulina would slip when she could; nor was a certain little manner of still disdain a weapon known in my armoury of defence; whereas, Paulina always kept it clear, fine, and bright, and any rough German ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... teaching that the believer cannot lose his faith by any, even the worst, sin he may commit. They speak of believing fornicators, believing adulterers, believing thieves, believing misers, believing drunkards, believing slanderers, etc. The very teaching which Catholics falsely ascribe to Luther is an accepted dogma of their own Church. Their charge against Luther is, at best, the trick of crying, "Hold thief!" ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... Mythuses to me? Or is the God present, felt in my own heart, a thing which Herr von Voltaire will dispute out of me; or dispute into me? To the "Worship of Sorrow" ascribe what origin and genesis thou pleasest, has not that Worship originated, and been generated; is it not here? Feel it in thy heart, and then say whether it is of God! This is Belief; all else is Opinion,—for which latter whoso will let him ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... on the circulation Mrs. Gullick was about to ascribe to alarming intelligence will never be known; for Maitland, growing a little more pallid than usual, ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... ankle. So strictly is its visitation confined to the city proper, that in none of the neighboring villages, nor even in a distant suburb, is it known. Physicians have vainly attempted to prevent it by inoculation, and are at a loss to what cause to ascribe it. We are liable to have it, even after five days' stay; but I hope it will postpone its appearance until after ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... hare but to the tortoise, so the meed of success in study is to him who is not in haste, but to him who proceeds with a steady and even step. It is not to a want of taste or of desire or of disposition to learn that we have to ascribe the rareness of good scholars, so much as to the want of patient perseverance. Grammar is a branch of knowledge; like all other things of high value, it is of difficult acquirement: the study is dry; the subject is intricate; it engages not the passions; and, if the great end ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... you please. Excellent! Excellent! We will try again. Practice of this kind makes for perfection, you know, Parrot. Good, good—very good! If you should be spoiled in the making, Parrot, you will not in your old age ascribe it to any paltry desire on my part to spare the rod, ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... now schooled himself to accept what he called his "fate," and was able to maintain a calm, indifferent demeanour before his men. Of course he never for a moment, during all that time, thought of crying to God for mercy, for as long as a man continues to ascribe his sins and their consequences to "fate," he is a rampant and wilful, besides being an ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... are profane in their gorgeous egotism. We are the braggarts, and ascribe egotism to God Himself; while we are the sole objects of interest in the universe. God was and is on our account only; and when men fancy that they have found a way of running things without Him, they shove Him out entirely. I put it plainly, and it ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... foliage and green pasture give an English character to the scenery, and are very refreshing, after continually looking at the everlasting paddy fields, which constitute the principal features of the sea coast of China. It is to this circumstance that I ascribe the exaggerated accounts we have of the beauty of the island of Ku-lang-so. It forms, however, a very pleasant promenade, and may be enjoyed without interruption from the inhabitants. The city of Amoy is built on a low neck of land. The ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... the faith the prince and queen ascribe (Replied Eumaeus) to the wandering tribe. For needy strangers still to flattery fly, And want too oft betrays the tongue to lie. Each vagrant traveller, that touches here, Deludes with fallacies the royal ear, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... flourished in Babylonia and Assyria can hardly be placed in the same category with those we have so far been considering. Still, to the popular mind the achievements of the human mind were regarded as due to the workings of hidden forces. Strange as it may seem, there was an indisposition to ascribe everything to the power of the gods. Ea and Nabu, although the general gods of wisdom, did not concern themselves with details. These were left to the secondary powers,—the spirits. Hence it happens that by the ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... was no use fighting against this false fate. I don't know even if I was sure myself where the truth of the matter began. The conviction that it would end disastrously had been driven into me by all the successive shocks my sense of security had received. I began to ascribe an extraordinary potency to agents in themselves powerless. It was as if Schomberg's baseless gossip had the power to bring about the thing itself or the abstract enmity of Falk could put my ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... lower Descending, hope, perchance, to rise again,— Say—shall not He in holiness as power Transcend the creature whom His gifts sustain! And here, if sneering casuist blaspheme, And to divided nature's sovereign, Ascribe, in nature's opposite extreme Like eminence, and nature's God aver In evil, even as in good, supreme,— Heed not, or ask if man's Artificer With His own work, in virtue matched, can prove At once more ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... die mysteriously are unwanted girls, and in nearly every case the parents promptly ascribe the death to the bite of a scorpion, and are ready to produce some more or less poisonous insect in support ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... the vicar, "whether we should ascribe these striking resemblances to unconscious plagiarism or ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and despoil them of that their fair fortune, for it is of the wont of envy that it falleth not but upon the rich. So, one day of the days, as he stood in the mosque, after the mid-afternoon prayer, he came forward into the midst of the folk and said, "O my brethren, O ye of the True Faith, ye who ascribe unity to God, know that in this our quarter there be two men dwelling, strangers, and most like you are acquainted with them. Now these twain spend and squander wealth galore, passing all measure, and in my belief they are none other ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... righteously in his sight; that he restore peace to our beloved country, healing its bleeding wounds, and securing to us the continued enjoyment of our right of self-government and independence; and that he graciously hearken to us, while we ascribe to him the power and glory ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... City of the Sun, that they did not make this exception. And they defend themselves by the opinion of Socrates, of Cato, of Plato, and of St. Clement; but, as you say, they misunderstand the opinions of these thinkers. And the inhabitants of the solar city ascribe this to their want of education, since they are by no means learned in philosophy. Nevertheless, they send abroad to discover the customs of nations, and the best of these they always adopt. Practice makes the women suitable for war and other duties. Thus they agree with Plato, ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... is nothing I would conceal from you that I think you ought to know, or that would make you happier to know; and if I have any reserve from you, it is for your sake, and you must ascribe it to the tenderness of my regard ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... and its peculiarities, as given by Farquhar himself, I could only make out, by studying a little medical book I had with me, that "a swelling of the legs, and sometimes of the body, might result from either heart, liver, or kidney disease." But I did not know to what to ascribe the disease, unless it was to elephantiasis—a disease most common in Zanzibar; nor did I know how to treat it in a man who, could not tell me whether he felt pain in his head or in his back, in his ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... ascribe the praise, unless Spenser may divide it with him, of having first discovered to how much smoothness and harmony the English language could be softened. He has speeches, perhaps sometimes scenes, which have all the delicacy of Rowe, without his effeminacy. He endeavours indeed ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... on a column, And on the great church-window painted 285 The same, to make the world acquainted How their children were stolen away, And there it stands to this very day. And I must not omit to say That in Transylvania there's a tribe 290 Of alien people who ascribe The outlandish ways and dress On which their neighbors lay such stress, To their fathers and mothers having risen Out of some subterraneous prison 295 Into which they were trepanned Long time ago in a mighty band ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... has been extreme. They ascribe all to the ghost, and tell frightful stories of murders having been committed there long ago. Of late, however, they are beginning to suspect that it is I that am haunted; and, as I have never given them any satisfactory account of myself, they are whispering that I am ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... the masterful tendency, which was present all the time and consciously present, but so bound up with the other motive of helpfulness that it did not attract attention to itself. Now if our psychology makes us cynics, and leads us to ascribe the whole motivation of the helpful act to the mastery impulse, and therefore to regard this as working in the unconscious, we are fully as far from the truth as when we uncritically assumed that helpfulness was the ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... understand each other. It was miserable to hear these men—I am sure they were good men—prattling like bib-and-tucker babies about Irish affairs, and speaking of Gladstone as possessing a quality which we Catholics only ascribe to the Pope. Ha! ha! They think that vain old cataract of verbiage to be infallible. He knows nothing of the matter, does not understand the tools he is working with, any one of whom could buy and ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... shall I be separated from my St. Julian? I am almost angry with you for apologizing for your kind monitions and generous advice. If my breast glows with any noble sentiments, it is to your friendship I ascribe them. If I have avoided any of the rocks upon which heedless youth is apt to split, yours is all the honour, though mine be the advantage. More than one instance do I recollect with unfeigned gratitude, in which I had passed the ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... to ascribe some impressive origin, some dramatic birth, to the beliefs that are dearest to him. But if we trace back through Christian and Jewish lineage the idea of immortality, we are quite unable to discover the time or place ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... published in connexion with this work, and also by the abundance of fruit that has followed in the hearts of the saints, for which, from my inmost soul, I desire to be grateful to God, and the honour and glory of which not only is due to Him alone, but which I, by His help, am enabled to ascribe to Him. ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller
... sentence be spoken, I know that my fate will meet with sympathy, and that my memory will be honoured. In speaking thus, accuse me not, my lords, of an indecorous presumption. To the efforts I have made in a just and noble cause, I ascribe no vain importance—nor do I claim for those efforts any high reward. But it so happens, and it will ever happen so, that they who have tried to serve their country, no matter how weak the effort may have been, are sure to receive the thanks and ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... personifying instinct which belongs to the childhood of nations as of individuals. This tendency leads to the attributing of conscious life to things inanimate. A like tendency may impel the savage and the child to ascribe mind to the lower animals. The fact that language, in its earlier stage, was charged with personal life and activity, is itself the work of the personifying instinct. When nature is thus personified, where there is ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... afforded great Matter of Speculation to the Curious. I have heard various Conjectures upon this Subject. Some tell us that C is the Mark of those Papers that are written by the Clergyman, though others ascribe them to the Club in general: That the Papers marked with R were written by my Friend Sir ROGER: That L signifies the Lawyer, whom I have described in my second Speculation; and that T stands for the Trader or Merchant: But the Letter ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... and Huguenot and loyal pamphleteers alike laid the crime at the door of Catharine de' Medici.[678] But there is no sufficient evidence to substantiate the accusation, and we must not unnecessarily ascribe this base act to a woman already responsible for too many undeniable crimes.[679] The death of so gallant and true-hearted a nobleman, a faithful and unflinching friend of the Reformation from the time when it first began to spread extensively among the higher ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... reply to the question, What ought to be the Christian's attitude to Christ's command of non-resistance to evil by force? consists in declaring that they do not deny the command of non-resisting evil, but recognize it; but they only do not ascribe to this command the special exclusive value attached to it by sectarians. To regard this command as the indispensable condition of Christian life, as Garrison, Ballou, Dymond, the Quakers, the Mennonites and the Shakers do now, and as the Moravian brothers, ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... Dr. Darwin conceived that the religious feeling of man might have grown out of the natural emotions of fear,[1] love, gratitude, &c., when once men began to question as to the explanation of the phenomena of life, and to ascribe the forces of nature to the possession of a spirit such as he himself was conscious of: and with much more positive intent, Mr. H. Spencer has also, after most painstaking inquiries, formulated what he conceives to be the origin of religious belief in man. He refers us to the early ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... He will ascribe his rebuffs to a passing whim on the part of his beloved, to a momentary lapse in her customary humour, to her food, to a desire on her part to test him, to transitory evil influences from outside, to the thermometer, the barometer, the moon!—in fact to anything, except to the possibility that she ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... it was made subservient to the bustle, animation, and picturesque effect of their works. When we find, therefore, any remains revived in the pictures of Rembrandt, who was surrounded by compositions of a vulgar and low cast, we can only ascribe it to the taste and genius of this great painter. In the design just mentioned, the idea of the Disciples, as if struck with astonishment and awe at the bursting forth of the divinity of Christ, is admirably conceived. As the heads are taken from the people of his country, they of ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... bottom of such defences and apologies for his holiness to be partly self-love, partly narrow and limited thoughts of him, drawing him down to the determinations of his own greatest enemy, carnal reason. Since men will ascribe to him no righteousness, but such an one of their own shaping, and conformed to their own model, do they not indeed rob him of ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... whereon to feed. Who knows whether he also did not—a little through goodness of heart, and greatly through the tactics that make good politicians complain of the unpleasantnesses attached to their greatness—ascribe to himself imaginary defects, so as to let some compassion, under the form of blame, mix with the malice that hemmed him in on all sides; and whether he did not think it well to make use of this means, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... country of the Dongarpur and Pertabgarh States of Rajputana, where numbers of them are still settled; the name Bagaria would appear to indicate that they are supposed to have immigrated thence into Gujarat. The Dhusar Banias ascribe their name to a hill called Dhusi or Dhosi on the border of Alwar State. The Asatis say that their original home was Tikamgarh State in Bundelkhand. The name of the Maheshris is held to be derived from Maheshwar, an ancient town ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... absurdity to regard as an effort of piety the invention of the form of the arch itself, of which one of the earliest and most perfect instances is in the Cloaca Maxima. And thus in the case of spires and towers, it is just to ascribe to the devotion of their designers that dignity which was bestowed upon forms derived from the simplest domestic buildings; but it is ridiculous to attribute any great refinement of religious feeling, or height of religious aspiration, to those who furnished ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... and leaves us to "perform these follies." Some ascribe it to man's superiority. Or as briefly summed up by a delightful member of their sex, who when declaiming against the possibility of the future being made visible, said, "With all apologies to you, I must say I am not so profoundly stupid as to believe in these things; ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... to, rationale; accounting for &c. v,; palaetiology1, imputation, derivation from. filiation[obs3], affiliation; pedigree &c. (paternity) 166. explanation &c. (interpretation) 522; reason why &c. (cause) 153. V. attribute to, ascribe to, impute to, refer to, lay to, point to, trace to, bring home to; put down to, set down to, blame; charge on, ground on; invest with, assign as cause, lay at, the door of, father upon; account for, derive from, point out the reason &c. 153; theorize; tell how ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... man witnesseth) it doth alwayes burne. Wherefore, if we will giue credit vnto them, euen this mountaine also, sithens it is couered with snowe, and yet burneth, must be a prison of vncleane soules: which thing they haue not doubted to ascribe vnto Hecla, in regard of the frozen top, and the fine bottome. And it is no marueile that fire lurking so deepe in the roots of a mountaine, and neuer breaking forth except it be very seldome, should not be able continually to melt the snowe couering the toppe of the sayd mountaine. [Sidenote: ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... sickness, fasting, stripes, and prison-penance, and naturally credulous and imaginative, is it strange that in some measure he yielded to this miserable delusion? Let those who would harshly judge him, or ascribe his fall to the peculiar doctrines of his sect, think of Luther, engaged in personal combat with the Devil, or conversing with him on points of theology in his bed-chamber; or of Bunyan at actual fisticuffs with the adversary; or of Fleetwood and Vane and Harrison millennium-mad, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... show of hereditary right. His age, his appearance, and all that was known of his character, conciliated public favour. He was in the bloom of youth; his person and address were pleasing. Scandal imputed to him no vice; and flattery might without any glaring absurdity, ascribe ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the campaigns of 1811-1812 fell but a little short of mine. I do so the more readily because he bore my own patronymic, and was after a fashion my kinsman; and I make bold to say that in our calling Captain Alan McNeill and I had no rival but each other. The reader may ascribe what virtue he will to the parent blood of a family which could produce at one time in two distinct branches two men so eminent in a service requiring the rarest ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... b are harmonious; those in classes b and c, on the other hand, are practically irreconcilable. The result of this conflict of testimony has been to discredit Sebastian Cabot and to lead many scholars to believe that he tried to ascribe to himself what his father did. Other critics reluctant to bring so serious a charge against a man who held honorable positions in Spain and later in England believe that the material in class c relates to the second voyage—that of 1498, and that by a mistake it was in the minds of ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... lynchers is a laudable yearning to "protect Southern womanhood," despite the plain fact that only a very small proportion of the blackamoors hanged and burned are even so much as accused of molesting Southern womanhood. On the other hand, some of the negro intellectuals of the North ascribe the recurrent butcheries to the Southern white man's economic jealousy of the Southern black, who is fast acquiring property and reaching out for the prerogatives that go therewith. Finally, certain white Northerners seek a cause in mere political animosity, arguing that the Southern white hates ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... was tutor to my daughters in Paris; I have had long talks about scores of them with poor Ary Scheffer, who was their best friend. I have gone back to Italy after ten years, and found the best men I had known there exiled or in jail. I believe they have the faults you ascribe to them (nationally, not individually), but I could not find it in my heart, remembering their miseries, to exhibit those faults without referring them back to their causes. You will forgive my writing this, because I write it exactly as I write ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... the passage cited by Mr. Feis from the essay OF PHYSIOGNOMY:—[13] "Therefore do our designs so often miscarry.... The heavens are angry, and I may say envious of the extension and large privilege we ascribe to human wisdom, to the prejudice of theirs, and abridge them so much more unto us by so much more we endeavour to amplify them." If there were no closer parallel than that in Montaigne, we should be bound to take it ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... depth of thought, or breadth of view, or philosophy, or sagacity, or knowledge of human nature, or experience of human life—though these additional gifts he may have, and the more he has of them the greater he is,—but I ascribe to him, as his characteristic gift, in a large sense, the faculty of expression. He is master of the two-fold [Greek text], the thought and the word, distinct but inseparable from each other. . . ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may soon pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... in Jesus Christ, although, in this world, he is not able perfectly to do that which is good. Falckner says: "I conceive this doctrine of free will as follows: All the good which I will and do I ascribe to the grace of God in Christ and to the working of His good Spirit within me, render thanks to Him for it, and watch that I may traffic with the pound of grace, Luke 19, which I have received, in order that more may be given unto me, and that I may receive grace for grace ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... The women do not wear their hair so, but cropped; nor do the boys, till they approach manhood. Some few men, women, and children, were seen, who had hair like ours; but it was obvious that these were of another nation; and, I think, we understood they came from Erronan. It is to this island they ascribe one of the two languages which they speak, and which is nearly, if not exactly, the same as that spoken in the Friendly Islands. It is therefore more than probable that Erronan was peopled from that nation, and that by long intercourse with Tanna ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... somewhat at hazard) it is possible to ascribe Aesop, about whom nothing is known except that he wrote the fables which have been imitated from generation to generation. The collection that we possess under his name is one of these imitations, perpetrated long after his ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... I will not say what honour I ascribe Unto your friendship, nor in what dear state I hold your love; let my continued zeal, The constant and religious regard, That I have ever carried to your name, My carriage with your sister, all contest, How much I stand affected ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... a l'outrance one minute, and sworn friends the next—with general principles of honour and justice, but which were occasionally warped according to circumstances; with all the virtues and vices so heterogeneously jumbled and heaped together, that it was almost impossible to ascribe any action to its true motive, and to ascertain to what point their vice was softened down into almost a virtue, and their virtues from mere excess degenerated into vice. Their names were O'Connor, Mills, and Gascoigne. The other shipmates of our hero it will be better to introduce ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and (in both senses) "infernal" taste gave them their reputation, the abundant use of pure spring water both internally and externally works the cure, assisted by the mountain air of the "Bad," and we sapiently ascribe the credit to the salts. Nine-tenths of our cells are still submarine organisms, and water ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... doubt generally the case on such occasions,' said I. 'But in future, Mr. Hattersley, when you see her looking flat, or crying for "nothing" (as you call it), ascribe it all to yourself: be assured it is something you have done amiss, or your general misconduct, that ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... to exert all that I possessed in her favour. Every one was pleased, and expressed admiration at the peculiar elegance of her attire, and asked who was the modiste she employed, and Madame Bathurst never failed to ascribe all ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... alkali, which was probably formed from the earth, air, and water, or from some of these combined together; and perhaps also from a small quantity of inflammable matter which adhered accidentally to the magnesia. Whenever Chemists meet with this salt, they are inclined to ascribe its origin to some animal, or putrid vegetable, substance; and this they have always done, when they obtained it from the calcarious earths, all of which afford a small quantity of it. There is, however, no doubt that it can sometimes be produced independently ...
— Experiments upon magnesia alba, Quicklime, and some other Alcaline Substances • Joseph Black |
