"Attribute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the boy soon learns that the true spirit of manly sport is the farthest removed from that of the footpad and the blackguard. Appreciation of successful opponents and consideration for the vanquished can be made effectually to supplant the cheap, blatant spirit which seeks to attribute one's defeat to trickery and chance and uses one's victory as an occasion for bemeaning the vanquished. The presence of a capable director of play is sure to eliminate this evil which has crept in under the sanction of vicious ideals and through gross neglect of boys' play on the ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... 1998-2001 and contracted by 2.3 percent in 2002, in response to regional contagion and an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth desease. On a per capita basis, real income has stagnated at 1980 levels. Most observers attribute Paraguay's poor economic performance to political uncertainty, corruption, lack of progress on structural reform, substantial internal and external debt, and deficient infrastructure. Aided by a firmer exchange rate and perhaps a greater confidence ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the rack that the blood could not flow. Yet he bore all this terrible agony with a brave spirit, and did not utter a cry. Various causes have been assigned for the severity of this torture inflicted on poor Campanella. Some attribute it to the malice of the scholastic philosophers, whom he had offended by his works. Others say that he was engaged in some treasonable conspiracy to betray the kingdom of Naples to the Spaniards; but it is probable that his Atheismus ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... know me intimately from close association will attribute any vice to me sooner than arrogance, and will acknowledge that I am closer to the Socratic utterance, 'This alone I know, that I know nothing,' than to this, 'I yield to none.' But if they imagine that I have ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... not Being mind? and is not Being capable of being known? and, if this is admitted, then capable of being affected or acted upon?—in motion, then, and yet not wholly incapable of rest. Already we have been compelled to attribute opposite determinations to Being. And the answer to the difficulty about Being may be equally the answer ...
— Sophist • Plato
... crime with which he was charged with a face of preternatural innocence, declaring that he was shocked that any one should attribute to him such a heinous offence as purposely leaving four sharp alder prongs under a lady's blankets. Nobody—bar none—had a greater respect for the sex ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... life will be in accepting her place. If she can forget herself, or, at least, remember that it makes no real difference what others think of her, she will soon gain the quiet ease which is sometimes even more winning than beauty. This will be an attribute of character, and every person's influence is needed in society who commands interest by essential rather than non-essential qualities. Then, if she is a wall-flower she is sure to have time to relieve the misery of some other wall-flower, ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... Whether, indeed, derived from the quarterings of the knights' shields, or from what other source, I know not; but there is one magnificent attribute of the coloring of the late twelfth, the whole thirteenth, and the early fourteenth century, which I do not find definitely in any previous work, nor afterwards in general art, though constantly, and necessarily, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... Treasury Bench owing to the marked shortage of Members from Ireland. Hitherto, whenever the Government has seemed to be in danger, Mr. REDMOND'S followers have trooped over from Dublin to the rescue. But to-day most of them are absent. Some attribute their defection to chagrin at their shortsightedness in resisting the appointment of Mr. CAMPBELL as Lord Chancellor of Ireland. As Attorney-General they fear he will exert a much more potent influence in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... while a slight blush rose to his cheeks, "I will tell you, that though to my father's sternness and avarice I attribute many of my faults, I yet always had a sort of love for him; and when in London I accidentally heard that he was growing blind, and living with an artful old jade of a housekeeper, who might send him to rest with a dose of magnesia the night after she had coaxed him to make a will in her favour. ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... features of events, and do not, except within a very limited range, reason from one phase to another. Man is called divine by his own kind because he has done things so far above what the brute has accomplished that it is regarded as a divine attribute. But he has done these things because he was endowed with a memory which enabled him to retain a consciousness of things, and to follow up the stored knowledge, or the accumulated essences of events which materialized in his remarkable works. Would it ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... a theme for poetry; and, while disdaining to imitate Burns' poetry slavishly, and some of them not writing in verse at all, they found in Scottish subjects ample scope for the exercise of their genius; and in some measure to his influence we may attribute the fictions of Mrs Hamilton and Miss Ferrier, Scott's poems and novels, Galt's, Lockhart's, Wilson's, Delta's, and Aird's tales and poetry, and much of the poetry of Campbell, who, although he never writes in Scotch, has embalmed, in his "Lochiel's Warning," "Glenara," "Lord Ullin's Daughter," ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... promised that no negotiations should take place, however secret and confidential, that were not laid before her Majesty. "He has the chief administration among the States," said Herle, "and to his credit and dexterity they attribute the despatch of most things. He showed unto me the state of the enemy throughout the provinces, and of the negotiation in France, whereof he had no opinion at all of success, nor any will of his own part but to please the Prince of Orange ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... It is not ready for that which sails tomorrow and carries this. Little & Co. acknowledge a debt of $607.90 due to you 1st of April, and just now paid me; and regret that their sales have been so slow, which they attribute to the dulness of all trade among us for the last two years. You shall have the particulars of their account from Munroe's statement of the account between you and me. Munroe & Co. have a long apology for not ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... enjoyment in the mere sense of life. The effete matter in the blood and the fatty degeneration of the muscles, the results of inactivity, imperfect respiration, and F. Po, were soon consumed by the pure oxygen of the highland air. I can attribute this superiority of the Congo region only to the labours of an old civilization now obsolete; none but a thick and energetic population could have cleared off the forest, which at one time must have covered ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... all determinations of this nature [Footnote: See Appendix I]. In order to attain this purpose, we shall endeavour to follow a very simple method: we shall analyse that complication of mental qualities, which form what, in common life, we call Personal Merit: we shall consider every attribute of the mind, which renders a man an object either of esteem and affection, or of hatred and contempt; every habit or sentiment or faculty, which, if ascribed to any person, implies either praise or blame, and may enter into any panegyric or ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... the Vatican I read in 'Galignani' the agreeable intelligence that my mare Lady Emily had beat Clotilde at Newmarket, which I attribute entirely to my ex voto of a silver horse-shoe, which I vowed, before I went to Naples, to the Virgin of the Pantheon in case I won the match; and, as I am resolved to be as good as my word, I have ordered the horse-shoe, which ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... vehicles and steamboats, the adding of third and fourth cylinders, to the invention of the turbine with its development and the accompanying development of the reciprocating engine to hold its place, is one long attribute to the inventive ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... author wholly avoids the use of psychological terms, seeking to limit himself to a strictly objective presentation of results, it is clear from an unpublished manuscript (thesis for the Doctorate of Philosophy, deposited in the Library of Harvard University) that he would attribute to monkeys simple forms ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... exercise of his duties. Posterity may perhaps like these qualities in an editor of memoirs and diaries; for such were Mr Neeld's favorite subjects. Sometimes he fell into a sore struggle between curiosity and discretion, having impulses in himself which he forbore to attribute ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... for a civil or of a religious community or society may be the performance of a long series of services which, for centuries, it has rendered to its members, the zeal and success with which it discharges its functions, the feelings of gratitude they entertain for it, the importance they attribute to its offices, the need they have of it, and their attachment to it, the conviction imprinted in their minds that without it they would be deprived of a benefit upon which they set more store than upon any other. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... followed, may not be always as successfully executed, so not one of the King's Cooks cou'd make a Pudding like Sir John; nay, tho' he made a Pudding before their Eyes, yet they out of the very same Materials could not do the like. Which made his old Friends the Monks attribute it to Witchcraft, and it was currently reported the Devil was his Helper. But good King Harry was not to be fobb'd off so; the Pudding was good, it sate very well on his Stomach, and he eat very savourly, without the least Remorse ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... shall always attribute my recovery to you, at all events; and so will my good mother, who I hope will some day be able to thank you in person for all that you've ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... these investigations make it look rather as if some influence on the part of the earth tends, on the contrary, to extinguish them. Mrs. Maunder, so far, prefers to call the influence thus traced an apparent influence only, for, as she very fairly points out, it seems difficult to attribute a real influence in this matter to the earth, which is so small a thing in comparison not only with the sun, but even with ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... bourgeoisie does not become the supreme passion of the working-man, the inevitable consequence is drunkenness and all that is generally called demoralisation. The physical enervation and the sickness, universal in consequence of the factory system, were enough to induce Commissioner Hawkins to attribute this demoralisation thereto as inevitable; how much more when mental lassitude is added to them, and when the influences already mentioned which tempt every working-man to demoralisation, make themselves felt here too! There ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... which urges us to pray. It is the feeling that our existence and welfare are in the hands of a superior power; not an inexorable fate, not an immutable law; but a Being having at least so far the attribute of personality that he can show favor or severity to those who are dependent upon Him, and can be regarded by them with feelings of hope and fear, and reverence and gratitude."[58] The feeling of moral obligation—"the law written in the heart"—leads man ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... quarrel with the world is only a quarrel with himself. But so strong is this inclination to lay blame elsewhere and take credit to ourselves, that when we are unhappy we say it is the fault of this woman or that man. Especially do women attribute their ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... in hand, I would fain make a few observations at the outset, by way of bespeaking a right understanding. The volumes which I have already published have met with a reception far beyond my most sanguine expectations. I would willingly attribute this to their intrinsic merits; but, in spite of the vanity of authorship, I cannot but be sensible that their success has, in a great measure, been owing to a less flattering cause. It has been a matter of marvel, to my European readers, that a man from the wilds of America ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... not, therefore, attribute much value to the theory of Mr. Wright, that the May festival was, in its earliest form, "a religious celebration, though, like such festivals in general, it possessed a double character, that of a religious ceremony, and of an opportunity for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... pleasure, and the riders know it too. Now and then a sailor will utter some fierce imprecation upon wind or sea, but it is in the impotence of despair, and not in the conscious, boastful mastery which the land-songs attribute to him. What, then, does the sailor sing?—and does he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... came when I felt I could hold him no longer, although that escapade was forgiven, and I determined to send him to his mother—not without misgivings about what she might have still to suffer. He wrote to me occasionally. His health was never good, and I attribute the craving for drink and excitement a good deal to physical causes; but at the same time I am sure that he could have withstood it by a more resolute will. The will is the character—it is the real man. When people say that the first thing in education is to break the will, ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... my thoughts; but now that my suspicions are raised, that low, choking sound comes back to me in a strangely persistent way, and I seem to see a well-remembered form in the stooping figure of this beggar. Oh, I hope the good God will forgive me if I attribute to this disappointed man a wickedness ...
— A Difficult Problem - 1900 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... prudent measures to avoid the threatening storm." Many places of retreat were offered me; but I was not free in my mind to accept of any, nor to embarrass anybody, nor involve in trouble my friends and my family, to whom they might attribute my escape. I took the resolution of continuing in Paris, of living there in some private place with my maids, who were trusty and sure, and to hide myself from the view of the world. I continued thus for ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... swill,"—a proverb which would serve admirably the purpose of those who desire to join in the general sarcasm expended upon Bavarian beer-drinking, since almost every word in it seems to express so exactly some characteristic which North Germans and others are disposed to attribute to Bavarians. ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... although I had now been knocking about at sea for more than three years, and had met with many queer experiences, I had never, thus far, heard a sound that I could not reasonably account for and attribute to some known source; yet on this particular night—my second night alone in the longboat—I was sitting comfortably enough in the stern-sheets, steering by a star—for I had no lantern wherewith to illuminate my ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... over the body of Christ. For another chapel, lower down, he executed a panel-picture containing Our Lady, S. Jerome, and S. Bartholomew. On these two works he bestowed no little labour; but he went on deteriorating from day to day. I do not know to what I should attribute his misfortune, for poor Raffaellino was not wanting in industry, diligence, and application; yet they availed him little. It is believed, indeed, that, becoming overburdened and impoverished by the cares of a family, and being compelled to use for his daily needs whatever he earned, not to ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... this article surprised her, and she saw that while much curiosity was indulged concerning the authorship, one of the editors ventured to attribute it to a celebrated and very able writer, whose genius and erudition had lifted him to an enviable eminence in the world of American letters. The criticisms were excessively flattering, and the young author, gratified ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... use of it, not to excuse certain sins, but for the purification of the body, provided that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness."[28] This interpretation of John's baptism makes it look very like the baptisms and other purificatory rites of the heathen. The Gospels attribute to John a message, richer and more powerful, but essentially the same; and the criticism of Jesus confirms the account. The great note in his preaching is judgement; the Kingdom of God is coming, and it begins with judgement. Again, it is like Amos—"The axe is ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... permitted to help himself in that way, the lion can not have much fear of man," observed Wilmot; "and his lurking abroad in the night takes away much from the nobleness of disposition which you are inclined to attribute to him." ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... was neglected by the succeeding age, the subject of violent extremes of opinion in the eighteenth century, and so lightly esteemed by some that Hume could doubt if he were a poet "capable of furnishing a proper entertainment to a refined and intelligent audience," and attribute to the rudeness of his "disproportioned and misshapen" genius the "reproach of barbarism" which the English nation had suffered from ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger
... paid off, but now, besides being very much beaten, he had the world to begin again, with a load of debt which this untoward accident would much increase. The man himself knew not to what cause to attribute it; and he was as ignorant who were his enemies; for two of them had blackened their faces, and to the third he ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... then understood. Russian authors are still fonder of telling us that from the commencement of the campaign a Scythian war plan was adopted to lure Napoleon into the depths of Russia, and this plan some of them attribute to Pfuel, others to a certain Frenchman, others to Toll, and others again to Alexander himself—pointing to notes, projects, and letters which contain hints of such a line of action. But all these hints at what happened, both from ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the image of Sibyll, thus beset with thoughts of danger, embarrassment, humiliation, disgrace, ruin, Lord Hastings recalled the words of Gloucester; and the stately image of Katherine, surrounded with every memory of early passion, every attribute of present ambition, rose before him; and he slept at last, to dream not of Sibyll and the humble orchard, but of Katherine in her maiden bloom, of the trysting-tree by the halls of Middleham, of the broken ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and scope of the intellect itself, to comprehend the act itself of intellection. Aristotle's entire system of philosophy rests upon his book of psychology and that, I think, rests on his statement that the same attribute cannot at the same time and in the same connexion belong to and not belong to the same subject. The first step in the direction of beauty is to understand the frame and scope of the imagination, to comprehend the act itself ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... Harvey has surrounded herself, I, for one, should not have been led to observe her closely. There is no object in nature which has not its own peculiar signification; which does not correspond to some quality, affection, or attribute of the mind. This is true of gems; and it is but natural, that we should look for those qualities in the wearer of them to ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... passing, I do not like that newly coined expression, loyalisme: I much prefer to keep to the good old French word loyaute.) And certainly, if there is one thing that the story {183} of France has taught me to regard as an attribute of the French race, it is loyalty, it is the heart's memory. I recall, gentlemen, those fine lines which Victor Hugo applied to himself, as explaining the ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... metopes and triglyphs of the Doric order. This is surmounted by a sharp conical dome, having large mouldings running round its base, and on the summit something like an imitation of flame. There is here again so strange a mixture of style and ornament, that one knows not to what age to attribute the monument as a whole. The square mass below is solid, and the Ionic columns which are seen on each of its faces are half-indented in the rock itself. The dome is of masonry, and on the eastern side there is a square aperture in it. Generally speaking, the sight of this monument rather confirms ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... out before he was born, as Nelson's and Gladstone's were! I have considered that possibility too, and rejected it. I cannot cite all the stories about Caesar which seem to me to show that he was genuinely original; but let me at least point out that I have been careful to attribute nothing but originality to him. Originality gives a man an air of frankness, generosity, and magnanimity by enabling him to estimate the value of truth, money, or success in any particular instance ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... has no right to punish such an offense on the ground that it deserves punishment. No man has, or ever had, the right to wield the awful attribute of retributive justice; that is, to inflict so much pain for so much guilt or moral turpitude. This is the prerogative of God alone. To his eye, all secrets are known, and all degrees of guilt perfectly ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... hasty conceit, and say in his heart: "Well, he is a lucky fellow. If he knows all about it, it is more than I do. I don't know what oxygen IS, or hydrogen, either. I don't even know whether there are any such things at all. I see certain effects in my experiments which I must attribute to some cause, and I call that cause oxygen, because I must call it something; and other effects which I must attribute to another cause, and I call that hydrogen. But as for oxygen, I don't know whether it really exists. I think it very possible that it is only an ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... may depend on the diverse nature of the soil, but upon its real cause it is not as yet possible to frame any very well grounded hypothesis. Nevertheless, the cause of this predominance of the red and yellow tints upon the surface of ancient Pyrois is well known.[A] Some have thought to attribute this coloring to the atmosphere of Mars, through which the surface of the planet might be seen colored, as any terrestrial object becomes red when seen through red glass. But many facts are opposed to this idea, among others that the polar snows appear ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... it seemed to her that no single one of these celebrated nations could claim pre-eminence over the others, as having most contributed to form the Englishman of her own time, who unquestionably derived from each of them some worthy attribute of his character. Thus," she said, "the Englishman had from the ancient Briton his bold and tameless spirit of freedom; from the Roman his disciplined courage in war, with his love of letters and civilization in time of peace; from the Saxon ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... Servants, is a tragedy, the scene of which is laid in Persia. This play was brought upon the stage in a style of princely magnificence. The dresses were of rich material, profusely ornamented with gold and silver, the kind indulgence of the audience, for once, not being asked to attribute an extraordinary value to professional tinsel. The author is said to have laid out four hundred pounds for this occasion. Brennoralt, also a tragedy, was first published under the title of The Discontented ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... has been very good. However, I do not attribute it to any unusual change of temperament; simply the cold, wet weather. I anticipate a catastrophe very shortly if she is kept indoors ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... her side. Several other Ants passed her without taking any notice, but soon one came up, examined her carefully with her antennae, and carried her off tenderly to the nest. No one, I think, who saw it could have denied to that Ant one attribute of humanity, the quality ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... the Earl was at Merton"— probably January 11-26, 1236,—clandestinely, but with connivance of mother, to Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester; divorced 1237; livery of her estates granted to brother John, May 5, 1241; therefore died shortly before that date. Most writers attribute to Earl Hubert another daughter, whom they call Magotta: but the Rolls show no evidence of any daughter but Margaret. Magotta, or Magot, is manifestly a Latinism of Margot, the French diminutive ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... affairs, of course, but they prove to one who has watched him as I have that his nature is fickle and capricious. I confess that when I heard you say, just now, that his letters of late had been rarer and less ardent, I could not wholly attribute it to the reason which so quickly satisfied you. As a rule, these intensely ardent feelings are not of long duration, and I know well both the intensity and the brevity of Horace's attacks of love. It was for this very reason that I so resented the idea of his marrying ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... and by appeals to reason expressed by an eloquence the more to be admired because it was unaffected and unadorned—the name which ought to be associated with the success of these measures is the name of Richard Cobden. Without scruple, Sir, I attribute the success ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... depth, when it again turned, taking an ascending direction to the next nearest hole. I have no doubt that all their little habitations communicate with each other. The greater part of the people were sick to-day, and I was inclined to attribute their indisposition to the meat of the bull which had ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... expropriations and bequests the experiment has been many times tried, and always with the same results. The wealth that could not be assimilated and administered has always left the receiver or grasper in all essentials poorer than he was before. Wealth is an attribute of personality. It is not interchangeable like the parts of a standardized machine. The futility of dispossessing the middling rich would be as marked as ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... passages which show the character of Emerson's intellect better than anything else he has written. His insight into nature, like that of the primitive mind as we find it in the Greek poetry, the instinctive investment of the great mother with the presence and attribute of personality, the re-creation from his own resources of Pan and the nature-powers, the groping about in that darkness of the primeval forest for the spiritual causes of the things he felt,—all this is to me ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... of mountain which we are now considering, is that of the eruptive kind. But there is much of this eruptive matter in the bowels of the earth, which, so far as we know, never has produced a volcano. It is to this species of eruption that I am now to attribute the formation of many insulated mountains, which rise in what may be termed low countries, in opposition to the highlands or alpine situations. Such is Wrekin in Shropshire, which some people have supposed to have been a volcano. Such are the hundred little mountains ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... ill-aimed, at least the recoil was prodigious. It is unreasonable to attribute principally to the violence of the Liberator the new and determined rally of the South in defense of slavery,—Calhoun and his followers had far wider grounds for their action than that,—but undoubtedly that ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... confirmed in their reality; as, on the other hand, it is difficult for the most cool-headed impostor long to personate an enthusiast, without in some degree believing what he is so eager to have believed. It was a natural attribute of such a character as the supposed hermit, that he should credit the numerous superstitions with which the minds of ordinary Highlanders are almost always imbued. A few of these are slightly alluded to in this stanza. The River ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... from the priests and from the superstitions of the dark ages. They believe in the fairies still, and attribute all kinds of powers to them. Look at the Tuam News of yesterday evening. Perhaps the English people would hesitate before conferring self-government on the poor folks who read that paper, if they could only see the rag ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... to attribute this faculty for enjoying and describing scenery to the influence of antiquity alone, for, save the younger Pliny, I know of no Roman under the Empire who possessed it, and, besides, we do not know how far Pius II. was acquainted with Roman ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... words, on which all the persons seated rose, and with that peculiar mildness of look and manner which I have before noticed, and which is, in truth, the common attribute of this formidable race, they saluted me according to their fashion, which consists in laying the right hand very gently on the head and uttering a soft sibilant monosyllable—S.Si, ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... (dry powdered form), especially valuable in destroying the worms when berries are almost ready for market, and on which it is dangerous to use arsenical poisons. I never was troubled with the currant worm cane borer. I attribute the absence of this dreaded insect to my keeping all old wood cut out, which is generally ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... other agency to which we could attribute this transportation is that of shore ice and icebergs, which probably did once exist on Lake Tahoe; but the limitation of the pebbles to the western, and especially the northwestern shores, is in exact accordance with the laws of glacial transportation, but contrary to those of floating ice ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... life shall flow Here on this globe until the final fruit And harvest. As it were until the glow Of the great blossom has the attribute In essence, color of eternal things, And shows no rim between its hues which suit The infinite sky's. Then if the dead earth swings A gleaned and stricken field amid the void What matters it to you, a ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... water can be easily understood. The activity of any power is very apt to alarm when that power is controlled by no intelligence. It is the unthinking nature of the force that strikes the terror. Death and the dark would lose much if they lost this attribute. The water bubbled over the saddle. The horse drifted like a chip. To my eyes, a few feet above this flood, the water seemed to lift on all sides, not unlike the sloping rim of some enormous yellow dish, in which I was moving ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... of their bodies. Under my touch these were more like rubber than flesh. Noticeable among all are the large calves of their legs, the size of the tendons of their lower limbs, and the strength of their toes. I attribute this exceptional development to the fact that they are not what we would call "horse Indians" and that they hunt barefoot over their wide domain. The same causes, perhaps, account for the only real deformity I noticed in the Seminole physique, namely, the diminutive toe-nails, and ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... head impatiently, and the expression of his face was not pleasant. Still, no one would attribute anything but the friendliest motive to ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... Necessity be the everlasting Residence of the supreme Being, whom no Evil can approach. That great and first Cause has created an infinite Number of Worlds, and no two of them alike. This vast Variety is an Attribute of his Omnipotence. There are not two Leaves on the Trees throughout the Universe, nor any two Globes of Light amongst the Myriad of Stars that deck the infinite Expanse of Heaven, which are perfectly alike. And whatever you see ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... although this last work has occasioned me the most bitter persecution, literature does not appear to me to be less a source of enjoyment and respect, even for a female. What I have suffered in life, I attribute to the circumstances which associated me, almost at my entry into the world, with the interests of liberty, which were supported by my father and his friends; but the kind of talent which has made me talked of as a writer, has always been to me a source of greater pleasure than pain. The ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... El-Mednah—that is, in 1803-4. Yet he has wives and young children. His principal want is a pair of new eyes; and the train of thought is, "I can't see when older men than myself can." The same idea makes the African ever attribute his sickness and death to sorcery: "Why should I lose life when all around me are alive?"—and this is the idea that lies at the bottom of all witch-persecution. Two pair of spectacles were duly despatched to him after our return to Cairo; and M. Lacaze there exhibited a capital ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... attribute not to any difference in the people of the two countries, not to an aptitude for letter writing among us which is wanting with the Americans, but to the greater convenience and wider accommodation of our own post-office. As I have before stated, and will ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... double-headed eagle in silver filigree; eleven peach stones on each side, one set representing eleven apostles with an article of the creed underneath, the other set eleven virgins with the name of a saint and her special attribute on each. Some of these intaglios are still in a private ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... of conduct adopted in this emergency by Pitt and his great rival Fox, Pitt has one manifest advantage on his side, that it is impossible to attribute the course which he took to any personal motive, or any desire for the retention of official power; while it is equally impossible to doubt that Fox was in no slight degree,[116] and that Lord Loughborough, the prince's chief adviser on points of law, was wholly influenced by the hope of supplanting ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... evil—worthy but unintelligent. How can men in the trenches, foul with dirt and vermin, stench forever in their nostrils, callous to death and suffering, wallowing like pigs in a trough, compulsorily obscene, be ennobled? Courage is the commonest attribute of man, a universal gift of Nature that he may exist in a world bristling with dangers to frail human life; never to be commended, only to be remarked when absent. If men lose it in the city, the sedentary life, they recover it quickly in the camp. The exceptions, the congenital ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... have wings is uncertain. Barney Murphy, of Kerry, thought they had; for several seen by him a number of years ago seemed to have long, semi-transparent pinions, "like thim that grows on a dhraggin-fly." Barney's neighbors, however, contradicted him by stoutly denying the good people the attribute of wings, and intimated that at the time Barney saw the fairies he was too drunk to distinguish a pair of wings from a pair of legs, so this branch of the subject must ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... of the anxiety felt by a few leading Frenchmen, there was general confidence, and it was not until after the catastrophe that details like those enumerated were recalled. It is customary to attribute Napoleon's zeal for war to the fiery counsels of Maret. But there is no necessity to seek any scapegoat. In reality the outlook in 1812 was better than in 1809. Napoleon's spirits were higher, his conscripts were not visibly ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... similar to this by his famous hypothesis of a statue to which various feelings were successively imparted. Its first feeling was supposed to be one of fragrance. But to avoid all possible complication with the question of genesis, let us not attribute even to a statue the possession of our imaginary feeling. Let us rather suppose it attached to no matter, nor localized at any point in space, but left swinging IN VACUO, as it were, by the direct creative FIAT of a god. And let us also, to escape entanglement with difficulties ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... philosophers tell us, is a peculiar attribute of man—but as Shakespeare found 'tongues in trees and sermons in stones,' this true poet endows all nature not merely with human sensibilities but with human functions—the jay laughs, and we find, indeed, a little further on, that the woodpecker laughs also; ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... attribute of God which is not either borrowed from the passions and powers of the human mind, or which is not a negation. Omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, infinity, immutability, incomprehensibility, and immateriality, are all words which designate properties and powers peculiar ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... may find Greek deities represented with wings, carrying in their hands lions or griffins, bearing on their heads lofty crowns. But as Greek art progressed it grew out of this crude symbolism... What the artists of Babylonia and Egypt express in the character of the gods by added attribute or symbol, swiftness by wings, control of storms by the thunderbolt, traits of character by animal heads, the artists of Greece work more and more fully into the scultptural type; modifying the human subject by the constant addition of something which is above the ordinary levels of humanity, until ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... in this mould are peculiarly apt to be misled. They perceive a certain beauty in the picture of weakness leaning upon strength, but they attribute its soothing influence to the wrong element of the combination. A thoughtful analysis would show them that their feelings consisted of pity for the weak figure and admiration for the strong one, and that ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... think it is not at all improbable that this Plutocracy, pretending to be a Bureaucracy, will be attempted or achieved. Our wealthy rulers will be in the position which grumblers in the world of sport sometimes attribute to some of the "gentlemen" players. They assert that some of these are paid like any professional; only their pay is called their expenses. This system might run side by side with a theory of equal wages, as absolute as that once laid down by Mr. Bernard Shaw. By the theory of the State, ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... Pons or Madame Hulot. He himself was individualized by his knobbed cane abroad, and his Benedictine habit and statuette of Napoleon at home; but every single one of his creations seems to have in some shape or other a cane, a robe or a decorative attribute, which distinguishes each individual, as if by a badge, from every other member of the company in the ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... of all this? Why the disaster? Why this man saved and that man lost? Who has arranged that my husband should live a few short happy years in the world, and the happiest days in those years with me these last few weeks, and then be taken from me?" I heard no one attribute all this to a Divine Power who ordains and arranges the lives of men, and as part of a definite scheme sends such calamity and misery in order to purify, to teach, to spiritualize. I do not say there ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... perfection and happiness is only to contrive an outward organization in which his social sympathies shall have free play. Comte, as we might expect, rises above these imperfect theories, in so far as he refuses to attribute all the evils of humanity to its external circumstances; but he does not get rid of the essential error which was common to them all, the error of seeking for the explanation of the higher life of humanity in the ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... christened and died. This is all I know." The miracle is not one that will find much credit nowadays. But the devout custom was at least simple and intelligible enough, though it afforded an excellent occasion to attribute witchcraft to the one among those maidens who was not of Lagny ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... many parts are not modified by use and disuse during the life of the individual, I differ widely from you, as every year I come to attribute more and more to such agency. (271/2. This seems to refer to page 329 of Mr. Galton's paper. The passage must have been hastily read, and has been quite misunderstood. Mr. Galton has never expressed ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... I spoke in a very ordinary voice. And I don't know why you should attribute such ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... we would visit you and Mother this week. I shall go next week however and if Julia is not too much fatigued, or too lazy, with her travelling will take her along. You know I never give any one credit with being fatigued; I always attribute the feeling to another cause.—I hope you are all well. Give my kindest regards to Mother ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant
... this period that I attribute the inception, if not the execution, of the forgery of the Toscanelli correspondence, if, as I believe, it was a forgery. Christopher's unpleasant experiences before learned committees and commissions had convinced him that unless he were armed with some authoritative ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... time known highest cultivation. Our own Best Society is represented by social groups which have had, since this is America, widest rather than longest association with old world cultivation. Cultivation is always the basic attribute of Best Society, much as we hear in this country of an "Aristocracy ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... motives supply the defects of divine; with Felix, he would make divine motives supply the defects of human. He would make this shameless woman feel that nothing on earth is more odious than a woman destitute of honor, that modesty is an attribute of the sex; that an attachment, uncemented by virtue, can not long subsist; that those who receive illicit favors are the first, according to the fine remark of a sacred historian, to detest the indulgence: "The hatred wherewith 'Ammon, the son of David,' hated his sister, ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... the attribute of Justice. Some have regarded that as the fundamental quality of the Divine character. I am not sure that it is so. I think Love and Wisdom are equally fundamental. In a former age the idea of Divine Justice overshadowed all other conceptions ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... the only Reality is intelligence eternal, pure, self-luminous, non-dual, non- changing, and that everything else is fictitiously superimposed thereon. That this self-luminous Reality possesses no other attribute to be learned from scripture is admitted; for according to your opinion also scripture sublates everything that is not Brahman and merely superimposed on it. Nor should it be said that we must have recourse to the Upanishads ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... accumulating habitually in the sigmoid flexure of the colon may cause a hydrocele, or a varicocele, by pressing on the spermatic veins of the left side. It is quite true that these two last-named affections appear more frequently on the left side than on the right; and it seems to me much more rational to attribute them to the above-mentioned circumstance than to the fact that the left spermatic veins open, at a disadvantageous right angle, ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... in the defence. The chief gave me his rifle, and I picked off a few of the leading assailants, and aided in the defence of the village. The enemy were beaten off with very heavy loss, and the chief was pleased to attribute their ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... that don't fool any one," I says; "but if we was to drink the half of Sandy's winnings, even at your robber prices, we'd all be submerged to the periscope. It looks to me," I goes on, "like the bazaar-robbing genius is not exclusively a male attribute or tendency." ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... tells us that the Shushwap Indians of British Columbia attribute supernatural powers to twins, and believe: "They can make good and bad weather. In order to produce rain they take a small basket filled with water, which they spill into the air. For making clear ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... to attribute in part to Fanny's early training her early joylessness. In her early days,—so at least I have understood,—it was thought right even by some good people of our "persuasion," to lose no opportunity of treating the little natural waywardnesses of children with a severity ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... political, and economic policy of the country solely in order that "invested wealth" might be read "into the constitution" as a favored and protected class of property. Mr. Justice White closed by saying that by this act the Supreme Court had "deprived [the Government] of an inherent attribute of its being."[16] I might go on into endless detail, but I apprehend that these cases, which are the most important which have ever arisen on this issue, suffice for my purpose.[17] I contend ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... phenomenon in question is without doubt more complicated than it appears, and the causes to which we attribute it are certainly powerfully modified by the general character of the objects in which they reside. Most of the German botanists give this explanation, others suppose that it forms at first or during its continuance a special matter, in which the luminous property resides; ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... attribute becomes a title, or is emphatically applied to a name, it follows it: as, Charles the Great; Henry the First; Lewis the Gross."—Webster cor. "Feed me with food convenient for me."—Prov., xxx, 8. "The words and phrases necessary to exemplify ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... motive which he could assign for such a visit, he felt pretty certain that the squire came to revive, in his own person, a subject which he had before proposed to him through his daughter. There was no other earthly object to which he could attribute his visit; but of course he made up his mind to receive him with every courtesy. At length Folliard entered, and, before Reilly had time to ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... through sickness, misfortune or other good causes. He has given all he has, he cannot give more. Even though liabilities were stacked up mountain-high against him, he cannot be held morally responsible, and his creditors must attribute their losses to the misfortune of life—a rather unsubstantial consolation, but as good a one as the ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... those residences), repair thereafter with greater courage to their ministry to souls; and the results of their work thus correspond to their fervor. But, of all the means that they have employed, we must attribute their good fortune in winning souls to their exposing the most blessed sacrament in our churches, thus stimulating the devotion and respect with which it should be regarded; celebrating with solemn processions the feast of Corpus [Christi]; and inviting ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... entrance portal which to-day lacks its old drawbridge before mentioned. Surrounding the edifice is a deep, unhealthful, mosquito-breeding moat which is all a mediaeval moat should be, but which is actually no great attribute to the place considering its disadvantages. One wonders that it is allowed to exist in so stagnant a condition, as the running waters of the near-by Eure might readily be made use of to change all this. The site of the chateau at the confluence of the ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... minimum. We must for this purpose suppose the system gradually to run through all conceivable changes, with the earth and moon as near as possible, and as far as possible, and in all intermediate positions; we must also attribute to the earth every variety in the velocity of its rotation which is compatible with the preservation of the moment of momentum. Beginning then with the earth's velocity of rotation at its lowest, we may suppose ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... lower Poitou, monsieur. Men there are like their country—sullen and sad." And then she stopped suddenly, her eyes fixed on the window, whilst her colour came and went. She had not the gift that cynics assert is a special attribute of the sex, and was a bad dissembler; and I here venture to say such women make the best of wives, even though life's passage with them may be at times ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... I do? Stay; one more argument suggests itself to me. When you see a Straight Line—your wife, for example—how many Dimensions do you attribute to her? ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... may we attribute the honor of this visit?" says Algy, turning away from the window to meet her, and setting her a chair. Bobby gives her a kiss, and the Brat a lump of taffy, concerning which it would be invidious to predicate which were the stickier; so ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... allowed the white men to obtain a footing in their country, a proof of which they think they see in the greater mortality that has recently prevailed among them. This, however, they at other times attribute to the God of the Christians, whom they also denounce, accordingly, as a cruel being, at least to the New Zealander. Sometimes they more rationally assign as its cause the diseases that have been introduced ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... Shelley's writings may give a photograph of his intellectual self; but Shakespeare's plays give no clew to his character. He is all. He grovels in Falstaff; he towers in Prospero. He smites all strings that have music in them. He baffles us like a spirit, hiding himself in darkness. To attribute the authorship of the plays to Bacon is, to my thought, not to rid us of our difficulty, but rather to increase difficulty. Bacon we know. He was jurist, statesman, natural philosopher. Add to these the possibility of his having written ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... advantages I possess are merely those of riches, how little should I be flattered by any appearance of preference! and how ill can I judge with what sincerity it may be offered! happier in that case is the lowly Henrietta, who to poverty may attribute neglect, but who can only be sought and caressed from motives of purest regard. She loves Mr Delvile, loves him with the most artless affection;—perhaps, too, he loves her in return,—why else his solicitude to know my opinion of her, and why so sudden his alarm when ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... of rugged yet symmetrical features, stamped with prison pallor, but also stamped with a stronger imprint of refinement. A man palpably out of place, no doubt. A square peg in a round hole; a man with every natural attribute of a master of men. Some act of rage or passion, perhaps, some non-adjustment to an unjust environment, had sent him to the naval prison, to escape and become a pirate; for that was the legal ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... intellectual touch. "Phenomena," for instance,—how plastic to cover whatever one does not understand! "Law,"—how ready to explain away the inexplicable! Up to this point death had struck me as a most unfortunate phenomenon. Its personal disabilities I found it easy to attribute to some natural law with which my previous education had left me unfamiliar. Now, standing baffled there in that incredible manner half of tragedy, half of the absurd,—even the petty element of the undignified in the position ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... backgammon, reversi, and piquet, all well played, on dinners well digested, snuff gracefully inhaled, and tranquil walks about the town. Nearly all Alencon believed this life to be exempt from ambitions and serious interests; but no man has a life as simple as envious neighbors attribute to him. You will find in the most out-of-the way villages human mollusks, creatures apparently dead, who have passions for lepidoptera or for conchology, let us say,—beings who will give themselves ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... delight and triumph, such a sense of relief and freedom, as was undoubtedly the case—and yet that men bore the former and made no sign, waited for the latter with indescribable longing, but without any attempt to bring it about. Perhaps we must attribute this partly to that law-abiding instinct inherent in the ordinary Englishman: yet I think still more to the fact that as a rule, at all times, in all respects, the majority of the nation are indifferent. There were men who died at the stake in defence of the free Gospel. There were men who ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... moment might arrive. Rebellion threatened in the city itself. If he went out boldly to attack the oncoming rebels his own troops might go over to the enemy, or deliver him into their hands; if he stayed in the city the people would naturally attribute it to pusillanimity, and probably open the gates to ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... my letter of June the 29th, to have them furnished with the evidence on behalf of the captors, as to the place of capture. Yet to this day it has never been done. The brig Fanny was alleged to be taken within five miles from our shore; the Catharine within two miles and a half. It is an essential attribute of the jurisdiction of every country to preserve peace, to punish acts in breach of it, and to restore property taken by force within its limits. Were the armed vessel of any nation to cut away one ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... having apprised his father of his purposed visit. Count Tristan received him with ill-concealed embarrassment; but the young viscount was too ingenuous himself, and therefore too unsuspicious of others, for him to attribute his father's discomposure to any source but surprise at his unexpected appearance. If Maurice noted an absence of pleasure in the count's constrained greeting, he was too much accustomed to the formal and undemonstrative manners ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... to the last illustration, Flacius declared: "Strigel, accordingly, holds that we have the faculty to desire and receive the food, i.e., the benefits of God. Forsooth, you thereby attribute to corrupt man a very great power with respect to spiritual things. Now, then, deny that this opinion is Pelagian." (209.) "Your statements agree with those of Pelagius, yet I do not simply say that you are a Pelagian; for a good man may fall into an error which he does not see." Pelagius ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... commander.) "As I was saying to Barker, as matters stand in this regiment, some half a dozen at least of the men referred to as its 'representative officers' are apparently resentful of my arrest of Lieutenant Lanier, and attribute my course to pique, because he saw fit to show himself at the hop I declined to permit him as officer-of-the-guard to attend. You think, possibly, that because men like Captain Snaffle, Lieutenant Crane, and one or two of that set have been ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... the 'grand chasserot' remained seated, poured out a small glass of brandy, and slowly filled his pipe. Surprised to see that he was remaining at home, Julien rose and began to pace the floor, wondering what could be the reason of this unexpected change. As suspicious people are usually prone to attribute complicated motives for the most simple actions, he imagined that Claudet, becoming aware of the jealous feeling he had excited, had given up his promenade solely to mislead and avert suspicion. This idea irritated him still more, and halting suddenly in his walk, he went ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... have fallen, are not so lost to every impulse of honour as to be ready to welcome back in triumph the prime cause of their degradation, the man of December and of Sedan. Titania, in the Midsummer Night's Dream, idealizes the weaver, and invests him with every noble attribute, and then as soon as she regains her senses, turns from him with disgust and exclaims, "Oh, how mine eyes do loathe thee now." So it was and so it is with Paris and Napoleon, "None so poor to do him ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... suspect that Mrs. Downe Wright could intend to level innuendoes; but the allusion struck her; she felt herself blush; and, fearful Mrs. Downe Wright would attribute it to a wrong motive, she hastened to join in the eulogium on the Benmavis family in general, ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... principle, another would just as naturally refer to a personal and more complex deity:—that which in one instance would form the very nature of a superior being, in the other would form only an attribute—swell the power and amplify the character of a Jupiter, a Mars, a Venus, or a Pan. It is in the nature of man, that personal divinities once created and adored, should present more vivid and forcible ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... physicians in Provins, he will understand not only that the demand of the Sieur Rogron is senseless, but also that the grandmother of the minor had grave cause to instantly remove her from her persecutors. Here are the facts. The report of these physicians attribute the almost dying condition of the said minor to the ill-treatment she has received from the Sieur Rogron and his sister. We shall, as the law directs, convoke a Family Council with the least possible delay, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... was by Critias or Euripides; nowadays all agree in attributing it to Critias; nor does the style of the long fragment resemble that of Euripides. The question is, however, of no consequence in this connexion: whether the drama is by Critias or Euripides it is wrong to attribute to an author opinions which he has put into the mouth of a character in a drama. Moreover, Sisyphus was a satyric play, i.e. it belonged to a class of poetry the liberty of which was nearly as great as in comedy, and the ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... Sunday by the Rev. Mr. McClave. And again, to the contrary, Tabitha insisted with growing fervour that the servant was a gentleman, possessed of all the qualities that word implied, plus the most desirable attribute of all others to ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... for us in Germany no inconsiderable danger. We Germans are inclined to indulge in every sort of unpractical dreams. "The accuracy of the national instinct is no longer a universal attribute with us, as in France." [J] We lack the true feeling for political exigencies. A deep social and religious gulf divides the German people into different political groups, which are bitterly antagonistic to each other. The traditional feuds ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... is none of my Business to judge what others do: As to myself, I place no Confidence in these Things, I attribute nothing to them; but I put my Confidence in Purity of Mind, ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... is pure." But apply the principle to Hinduism. Alas! the Pantheon is almost a pandemonium. Krishna, who in these days is the chief deity to at least a hundred millions of people, does not possess one elevated attribute. If, in the circumstances, society does not become a moral pesthouse it is only because the people continue better than their religion. The human heart, though fallen, is not fiendish. It has still its purer instincts; and, ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... attribute the rare tract entitled Lauacrum conscientie omnium sacerdotum, which consists of fifty-eight leaves, and was printed in Gothic letter at Cologne, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... made her sick with disgust. 'Why, my dear, I had to! The Academie is attained by talent, of which you have none, or a great name, or a high position. You had none of these things. So I came to the rescue.' And that there might be no mistake about it, that he might not attribute what she said only to the exasperation of a woman wounded and humiliated in her wifely pride and her blind maternal devotion, she recalled the details of his election, and reminded him of his famous remark about Madame Astier's veils that ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... of tradition, handed down to them from generation to generation? "In the same manner," says Adair, "they sing on certain other religious celebrations, ailyo ailyo, which is the Hebrew el for God, by his attribute of omnipotence." They likewise sing hewah, hewah, He chyra, the "immortal soul." Those words sung at their religious rejoicings are never uttered at any other time, which must have occasioned the loss of their divine hymns. They on some occasions sing Shilu yo—Shilu he—Shilu wah. The three ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... all your objections,' he replied. 'I will assume the initiative, and attribute your acceptance of a challenge to such causes as will excuse you to the public. Some story may easily be devised which will cover the real motives for ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... might have, would not be derived from his patronage of it, but from the Author of all spiritual good; so I say to the reader, with respect to myself, that I disclaim all praise on account of any part I may have taken in the promotion of this great cause, for that I am desirious above all things to attribute my best endeavours in it to the influence of a superior Power; of Him, I mean, who gave me a heart to feel—who gave me courage to begin—and perseverance to proceed—and that I am thankful to Him, and this with the deepest feeling of gratitude and humility, for ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... faulty part. It is true that in this and numberless similar situations a man's movements may be guided by his observation of omens; but if, after obtaining good omens, he has success in trapping, he does not attribute the successful operation of the trap to any, activity other than its purely mechanical movements; though it may be, and probably in some such cases is, true that the Kayan believes the omen bird to have somehow intervened to direct the animal ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... attribute to which I shall invite your attention. The speaker must possess moral courage, and to possess it he must ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... the Opposition. In office he proved a capable administrator of unimpeachable integrity, with a remarkable capacity for labour. It could not be said of him, however, that he possessed the essential qualities of a leader. Not only was he destitute of that mysterious personal attribute known as 'magnetism,' but he was disposed to be arbitrary and dictatorial. His political supporters respected and perhaps feared him, but it cannot be said that he ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... these poor creatures have stolen a few trifling articles from below. I don't like to break the harmonious feeling which now exists between us for the sake of a few worthless things, but I know that it does more harm than good to pass over an offence with the natives of these regions, for they attribute our forbearance to fear." ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... everybody in Uglitch, the tocsin having been sounded, and the population having gathered around the murdered boy, where they put to death a good many who were suspected of complicity with the murderers. But in publishing it abroad in Russia, Boris deemed it prudent to attribute it, some say to a fever, others to an accidental fall upon a knife with which the boy had been playing; and lest the people of Uglitch should embarrass the minister by insisting upon a different diagnosis of the boy's last illness, that prudent official ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston
... de Sallenauve.—No, Monsieur le ministre. I do not attribute my absence to either your influence or your suggestions; it was necessitated by imperious duty, and it had no other instigation or motive. But, as to the part you have really taken in the denunciation set on foot ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... luminiferous; and to this ether—in unison with it—the whole body vibrates, setting in motion the unparticled matter which permeates it. It is to the absence of idiosyncratic organs, therefore, that we must attribute the nearly unlimited perception of the ultimate life. To rudimental beings, organs are the cages necessary to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... immediately voted without discussion; some say with enthusiasm; and that it was executed in like manner, so long as the danger was at hand. Others attribute the consent of the assembly to a sentiment of submission alone; which, indeed, in the presence of absolute power, is apt to ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... which went direct to the brain, and the effects of which—for neither Arbaces nor his creature, the witch, wished to place themselves within the power of the law—were such as caused those who witnessed them to attribute them to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... forgive all! When he still hesitates, how could I condemn? Take advantage of the delay he grants you; weep, pray, obtain from his mercy the softening of your heart towards those unfortunates. Forgive, and let the light of day shine for them once more. When you seized the attribute of Divine vengeance they denounced your name from the depth of their jails in their bitter anguish, and their shrieks and moans drowned your prayers. Now end those sufferings, and God shall ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... approach that her eyes became smiling and animated. But here in this dear valley every moment appeared an age of pleasure; she saw him all day and was therefore all day happy,— resembling, she often thought, that people of Zinge[273] who attribute the unfading cheerfulness they enjoy to one genial star that rises nightly ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... during recent discussion about silver, to attribute the alleged demonetization of that metal to the action of the Paris monetary conference. In 1867, when this conference was in session, as already stated, sixteen ounces of silver were worth more than one ounce of gold. Fifteen and one-half ounces of silver ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... The first line speaks of the man, Ulysses, and designates his main attribute by a word, which may be translated versatile or resourceful, though some grammarians construe it otherwise. Thus we are told at the start of the chief intellectual trait of the Hero, who "wandered much," and ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... dear father and mother, I repeat these generous sayings, only because they are the effect of my master's goodness, being far from presuming to think I deserve one of them; so I hope you will not attribute it to my vanity; for I do assure you, I think I ought rather to be more humble, as I am more obliged: for it must be always a sign of a poor condition, to receive obligations one cannot repay; as it is of a rich mind, when it can ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... to see it,' replied Holt. 'The Indians call him "the forest man," and the Lower Canadians the "bourgeois;" they attribute to him a sagacity almost human; the Crees and Ojibbeways fancy him an enchanted being, and will enter into conversation with him when ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... gentleman who wrote has a further interest in the matter; for he believes that King John was innocent, not only on this point, but as a whole. He thinks King John has been very badly treated; though I am not sure whether he would attribute to that Plantagenet a saintly merit or merely ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... many occasions manifested the remnants of a sense of honour. This creature set himself deliberately and successfully to corrupt it. He was a parasite, a nerveless, bloodless thing without a single human attribute. He and that woman were alike responsible ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... smaller than in the former cases, when it varied between thirty and forty per cent. Must we attribute this result to the difficulties to be overcome? Can the Mason-bees have lost their way in the maze of the forest? It is safer not to give an opinion: other causes intervened which may have decreased the number of those who returned. I marked the insects ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... of the aboriginal languages, numbering over four hundred, some philologists are inclined to attribute them all to a common origin, the Basque tongue being one of the two or three in Europe which have a like peculiarity. In the languages of the American Indians one syllable is piled upon another, each with a distinct root-significance, ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... would consider satisfactory; for we have just had to contend with a Revolt of Islam, and we still find in Russia exactly the qualities which you recognised and described. We have a great statesman whose methods and eloquence somewhat resemble those you attribute to Laon and Prince Athanase. Alas! he is a youth of more than seventy summers; and not in his time will Prometheus retire to a cavern and pass a peaceful millennium ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... girl's ideas could be of any value to an artist like him, though, if we may believe men, they all draw from us their best inspirations. Perhaps, after all, it is the destiny of us girls, in some unconscious way, with the finer instinct which men attribute to us, to spend our lives in winding up Linda's ball of yarn for ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... "Cortesia fu lui esser villano." This is the foulest blot which Dante has cast on his own character in all his poem (short of the cruelties he thinks fit to attribute to God). It is argued that he is cruel and false, out of hatred to cruelty and falsehood. But why then add to the sum of both? and towards a man, too, supposed to be suffering eternally? It is idle to discern in such barbarous inconsistencies any thing but the writer's ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... his team down to a trot by the time they reached the clearing, for there the going was perilous, and besides, it was just as well that his father should not witness any signs on Billy Jack's part of the folly that he was inclined to attribute to the rising generation. So steadily enough the bays trotted up the lane and between long lines of green cordwood on one side and a hay-stack on the other, into the yard, and swinging round the big straw-stack that faced the open shed, and was flanked on the right by the cow-stable and ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor |
