"Disquisition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mind, taking the brilliance out of the indirect but extraordinarily personal impact of the man himself. They embalmed the Cid and set him up in the church with his sword in his hand, for all men to see. What sort of legend would a technical disquisition by the archbishop on his theory of the angle of machicolations have generated in men's minds? And what can a saint or a soldier or a founder of institutions leave behind him but a legend? Certainly it is not for the Franciscans that ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... system of the universe, he endeavours to deduce from the phenomena of the material world conclusions not only unsupported by legitimate theory, but repugnant to the principles of the highest authority in metaphysical disquisition. But while we condemn his speculative notions as degrading to human nature, and subversive of the most important interests of mankind, we must admit that he has prosecuted his visionary hypothesis with ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... company had had about enough of this disquisition. They listened very decorously, and the Professor, who agrees very well with me, as I happen to know, in my views on this business of realism, thanked me for giving them ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Sarasvati, made her appearance at Pushkara for the sake of the Grandsire and for gratifying the Munis. (At another time), O king, many Munis, mustering together at Naimisha, took up their residence there. Delightful disquisition occurred among them, O king, about the Vedas. There where those Munis, conversant with diverse scriptures, took up their abode, there they thought of the Sarasvati. Thus thought of, O monarch, by those Rishis performing a sacrifice, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... at all adventures, it is sure to lead him out of his way, and sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some malignant power over his mind, and its fascinations are irresistible. Whatever be the dignity or profundity of his disquisition, whether he be enlarging knowledge or exalting affection, whether he be amusing attention with incidents, or enchaining it in suspense, let but a quibble spring up before him, and he leaves his work unfinished. ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... wondered to find my self disappointed; the rather, because I think it a Subject every way agreeable to your Design, and by being left unattempted by others, seems reserved as a proper Employment for you; I mean a Disquisition, from whence it proceeds, that Men of the brightest Parts, and most comprehensive Genius, compleatly furnished with Talents for any Province in humane Affairs; such as by their wise Lessons of Oeconomy to others have made it evident, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... to be thoroughly read without a strong effort. His gems are of the purest ray, but they lie embedded in a hard crust of reasoning and disquisition; and on the first morning, Louis, barely strong enough yet for a battle with his own volatility, looked, and owned himself, dead beat by the ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was passed to prevent persecution for what was not witchcraft. Why it ceased, we cannot tell, as we cannot tell the reason of many other things.' Dr Cullen, to keep up the gratification of mysterious disquisition, with the grave address for which he is remarkable in his companionable as in his professional hours, talked, in a very entertaining manner, of people walking and conversing in their sleep. I am very sorry I have no note of this. We talked of ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... I enter any farther into this Disquisition, I cannot but here take notice, that it were to be wish'd, our Chymists had clearly inform'd us what kinde of Division of Bodies by Fire must determine the number of the Elements: For it is nothing ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... otherwise, before the time of their service. They have generally no previous preparation, or possible knowledge of the matters to be tried, or what is applicable or inapplicable to them; and they decide in a space of time too short for any nice or critical disquisition. The Judges, therefore, of necessity, must forestall the evidence, where there is a doubt on its competence, and indeed observe much on its credibility, or the most dreadful consequences might follow. The institution ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... her church dignitaries, her scholars. Then there are love-poems in all tones and tempers, the noblest of them all, "One Word More," being Browning's most direct and personal tribute to his wife. And we see in its keenest form his intellectual delight in subtle disquisition. The doctrine of immortality as it appeals to the mind of the cultured, dissatisfied pagan Cleon; the miracle of Lazarus as it is brooded over by the Arab physician Karshish; the balancing of faith and doubt in the clever casuistry of Bishop Blougram—these ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... relations. The incident referred to is that of the so-called "Tweedmouth Letter," which was an autograph letter from the Emperor to Lord Tweedmouth, First Lord of the British Admiralty at the time, dated February 17, 1908, and containing among other matters a lengthy disquisition on naval construction, with reference to the excited state of feeling in England caused by Germany's warship-building policy. The letter has never been published, but it is supposed to have been prompted by a statement made publicly by Lord Esher, Warden of Windsor ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... you with an account of the speculations of these latter, and the state of the parties which they represent? The complication is not a little curious, and may form, perhaps, a subject of graver disquisition. The July fetes occupy, as you may imagine, a considerable part of their columns just now, and it is amusing to follow them one by one; to read Tweedledum's praise, and Tweedledee's indignation—to read, in the Debats how the King was received with shouts ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ever were born and came to anything. The advertised story is a kind of mother-hen who gathers under her wings a numerous brood of biographical chicks. Quantities of recondite erudition are poured out on the slightest provocation. Nat's unquestioned superiority to his schoolmates evokes a disquisition for the encouragement of dull boys, in which we are told that "the great philosopher, Newton, was one of the dullest scholars in school when he was twelve years old. Doctor Isaac Barrow was such a dull, pugnacious, stupid fellow, etc., etc. The father of Doctor Adam Clarke, the commentator, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... are, wherein the Professor, or, as he here, speaking in the third person, calls himself, 'the Wanderer,' is not once named. Then again, amidst what seems to be a Metaphysico-theological Disquisition, 'Detached Thoughts on the Steam-engine,' or, 'The continued Possibility of Prophecy,' we shall meet with some quite private, not unimportant Biographical fact. On certain sheets stand Dreams, authentic or not, while the circumjacent waking Actions ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... person, either finds or acknowledges his wants upon this head, or in the least desires to have them supplied. Proper words in proper places, make the true definition of a style. But this would require too ample a disquisition to be now dwelt on: however, I shall venture to name one or two faults, which are easy to be remedied, with a very ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... your end has been attained. That it is not the end which I should wish you to propose to yourself, you will be aware." He had visited Scott at Lasswade as early as 1803, and in recording his impressions notes that "his conversation was full of anecdote and averse from disquisition." The minstrel was a raconteur and lived in the past, the bard was a moralist and lived in ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... not like his cultivated opponent with the conventional "Ladies and Gentlemen," but with the ominously intimate, "My Fellow Citizens,"—Lincoln is saying, "I am not master of language; I have not a fine education; I am not capable of entering into a disquisition upon dialectics, as I believe you call it; but I do not believe the language I employed bears any such construction as Judge Douglas puts upon it. But I don't care about a quibble in regard to words. I know what I meant, and I will not leave this crowd in doubt, if I can explain ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... throat for a disquisition which would have been intolerable to the unprincipled reader, when a very curious thing arrested the attention both of Moriarty and myself—the strangest coincidence, perhaps, within the personal experience of either of us—a conjuncture, in fact, which for a moment threw us both staggering ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... expedition, (he observes in the Preliminary Disquisition to the latter work), has been questioned; but if the primordial history of every nation but one is tinctured with the fabulous, and if from among the rest a choice is necessary to be made, it must be allowed that the traditions of Greece are less inconsistent than those of the more distant ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... the most irritating of his creditors, George Henry indicted his masterpiece. He admitted his obligation, he expressed his satisfaction at paying an interest which made it a good investment for the creditor, and then he entered into a little disquisition as to the creditor's manner and scale of thought and existence, followed by certain mild suggestions as to improvements which might be made in the character under observation. He pledged himself to return at any time the favor extended him, and promised also never to mention it after ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... pushed by his evil destiny, and thought he would make yet another application. So he took a short cut down one of the garden lanes, and as the Prince and the Reverend Mr. MacWhirter, his tutor, came along once more engaged in pleasant disquisition, behold the fellah was once more in their way, kneeling at the august Bluebeard's feet, yelling out for justice as before, and thrusting his petition ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... century, he would probably have gone back for his idols to an earlier one; and yet his remarks on taste and criticism are of a catholic nature, although his just application of their canons have this chronological boundary. We have no room, however, for his disquisition on these elegant subjects; neither can we follow our accomplished clergyman into his disquisitions on fiction, history, biography, philosophy, and its pleasures, nor the 'domestic interiors' of taste and learning. We had intended to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... day, the road was deserted, and every sound came sharply through the air. Mr. Carstyle was in the midst of a disquisition on Diderot, when he raised his head and ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... "After the disquisition on myself above cited, you will be prepared to understand the changes through which this wonderful ego et me ipse ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... in it; and yet, my dear Sir, if I may presume to know your character, I am morally assured, I should hazard little in stating a case to you, not as a party in the dispute, but as a judge, and trusting my appeal upon it to your good sense and candid disquisition in this matter; you are a person free from as many narrow prejudices of education as most men; and, if I may presume to penetrate farther into you, of a liberality of genius above bearing down an opinion, merely because it wants friends. Your son,—your dear son,—from whose sweet and open temper ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... of the epistle of Sappho to Phaon is next considered; but Sappho and Ovid are more the subjects of this disquisition, than Pope. We shall, therefore, pass over it to a piece of more importance, the epistle of Eloisa to Abelard, which may justly be regarded, as one of the works on which the reputation of Pope will stand ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... of, as is the fact, mainly by statesmen, diplomatists, prize courts, generals and admirals. This is, however, a wide field, into which I must not stray. I have even avoided the pleasant by-paths of disquisition on contraband, privateering, and the Declaration of Paris generally, into which some of your correspondents have courteously invited me. I fear we are as yet far from having disposed of the comparatively simple question as to the operations ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... "Allegories of the Laws" he takes the verse of the Bible not so much as a text to be amplified and interpreted, but as a pretext for a philosophical disquisition. The allegories indeed are only in form a commentary on the Bible; in one aspect they are a history of the human soul, which, if they had been completed, would have traced the upward progress from Adam to ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... moments they mixed it up good and hot. Say! it was a circus with all the monkeys loose and the band playing seventeen tunes all at once! But finally Grant had his say and treated the Presbytery to a pretty full disquisition of his own theology, and when he was done my pity was transferred from Boyle to him, for it seemed that on every doctrine where Boyle was a heretic Grant had gone him one better. And I believe the whole ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... winter, chose the same subject for an essay, submitted to Mr. Dugald Stewart, whose prelections on ethics he was then attending. Some time later he again illustrated the same opinions more at length in a disquisition before the Speculative Society; and, indeed, he always adhered to them. One of the last historical books he read, before leaving Abbotsford for Malta in 1831, was Colonel Tod's interesting account of Rajasthan; and I well remember the delight he expressed on finding his views confirmed, as ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... his opinion where it was neither wished nor wanted; and felt as happy in the exchange as a boy when he gets his first new watch, which actually goes when wound up, and has real hands and a true dial-plate. But besides this subject for legal disquisition, Bartoline's brains were also overloaded with the affair of Porteous, his violent death, and all its probable consequences to the city and community. It was what the French call l'embarras des richesses, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... indifferent to me." "You are a man," returns his monitor, quoting the famous line of Terence; "and nothing that belongs to any other man ought to be indifferent to you." The physical calamities of life are not omitted; and there is in particular a disquisition on the advantages of having the itch, which, if not ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... muscles of his arms, through his big, strong hands, through fogs and fumes and singular, quiet tumults that raged within him. She lessoned him on the things he knew so well, and she was always wrong. She lectured him on those things which she did know, but the unending disquisition, the perpetual repetition, the foolish, empty emphasis, the dragging weightiness of her tongue made him repudiate her knowledge and hate it as ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... Christians, that are wholly sway'd by the Sense of a Religious Duty, must be supernaturally assisted, and are Proof against all Temptations. But These have always been very scarce, and there are no Numbers of them any where, that one can readily go to. It would perhaps be an odious Disquisition, whether, among all the young and middle-aged Women who lead a Monastick Life, and are secluded from the World, there are Any that have, abstract from all other Motives, Religion enough to secure them from the Frailty of the Flesh, if they ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... to your own conclusions respecting the date of its erection, and "putting the colophon" to this disquisition respecting the principal public buildings at Caen, it is high time to assure you how faithfully I am ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... models. Sophocles, Euripides, Pindar, the great lyricists, Plato, Demosthenes, Thucydides, Hyperides, all the great classics, these are the true models for the young orator. Agamemnon cannot restrain himself and even bursts into verse in the course of this disquisition on the decadence ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... master. In 1615 he was elected Lumleian lecturer at the College of Physicians, and three years later was appointed physician extraordinary to King James I. In 1628, twelve years after his first statement of it in his lectures, he published at Frankfurt, in Latin, "An Anatomical Disquisition on the Motion of the Heart and Blood," in which he maintained that there is a circulation of the blood. Moreover, he distinguished between the pulmonary circulation, from the right side of the heart to the left through the lungs, and the systemic circulation from the left side of the heart to ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... dramatic order of development. There is, for instance, an episodical chapter of upwards of thirty pages, describing commercial England in a state of panic, which is very nearly as appropriate as a disquisition on the Primary Rocks, or an inquiry into the origin of the Cabala would be, but which is so palpably introduced for the purpose of displaying the author's financial erudition, that he feels himself called upon to apologize in a brief preface for its intrusion. In the concluding chapters, too, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... warm friend of your undertaking, to suggest, that the substance of knowledge is far more valuable than its technicalities; and that the vigour of the youthful mind is but wasted on barren learning, and its ardour is quenched in dry disquisition. ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... requires, that we should now enquire into the Original of the Franks, and trace them from their first Habitations, or (as it were) their very Cradles: In which Disquisition 'tis very much to be admired, that no mention has been made of them by Ptolomy, Strabo, or even by Tacitus himself, who of all Writers was most accurate in describing the Names and Situations of all the German Nations: and 'tis plain, the Franks were a German ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... ridiculous, of course, when a mind that is properly trained in clear thinking by the diligent perusal of the classics strips it of its pseudo-scientific rags and shows it straight out from the shoulder, in the fire of common sense and sound religion. And here is the point of my disquisition: ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... of that day, as a rule, may be spoken of in two classes. Either the preacher would read a passage of Scripture in Latin, and throw in here and there a few remarks by way of commentary, or else the sermon was a long and dry disquisition upon some of the (frequently very absurd) dogmas of the schoolmen; such as, whether angels were synonymous with spirits, which of the seven principal angels was the chief, how long it took Gabriel to fly from heaven to earth at the Annunciation, at what time of day he appeared, how he was ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... indignation. Her back was very much up, indeed, in the moral sense indicated by her mother, and as these inauspicious moods of hers were apt to last the longer the longer they were reasoned with, her mother prudently refrained from further disquisition. She bade her go about her ordinary business as if nothing had happened, and Bessie did go about these duties with a quiet practical obedience to law and order which bore out the testimony to her good common-sense. She ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... des Koenigthums bei den Gothen' (Berlin, 1859), has condensed into a small compass a large amount of useful disquisition on Cassiodorus and his copyist Jordanes. The relation between these two writers was also elaborately discussed by von Sybel in his thesis 'De Fontibus Libri Jordanis' (Berlin, 1838), and by Schirren, in his monograph 'De Ratione quae inter Jordanem et Cassiodorum ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... encouragement, Dumas launched out into a disquisition on the history of the duello through the ages that was nearly as long as one of his own serials. In the middle of it, a member of the jury, anxious to be in the limelight, ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... the pictures for which his grand halls are merely the frames. No doubt I could make fine speeches about these paintings; but who, not seeing them, would be the wiser, after the best description and the choicest critical disquisition? In fact, our travellers themselves found it pleasanter, after a while, to yield to the guidance of the Custode, and to enjoy the stupider marvels of the place, than to do the set and difficult admiration of the works of art. So, ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... already noticed, can be produced by a slight rarefaction of the hydrogen in the air, so that, though no spirit could be photographed as such, a code and language might be established by means of the effect produced on the air by the spirit's mind. I am so interested in the subject of my disquisition that I had almost forgotten that your spirits are still subject to the requirements of the body. Last time I dined with you; let me now ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... fair, at the outset, to observe that the writer does not seem to claim that his article is a disquisition on the game of chess; that it is not so may, at once, be granted; but, it is unfortunate that even as a record of what it purports to be, viz., "The Chess Masters of the Day," a few lines will ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... herself Anna Ella Carroll. I commend her answer on the doctrine of the war power to those who have been following that phantom and misleading the people, and I recommend it to another individual, a friend of mine, who gave a most learned disquisition on the writ of habeas corpus and against the power of the President to imprison men. He will find that answered. I am not surprised at this. The French Revolution discovered great political minds in some ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... in which the joys of the shell, as Ossian has it, were not forgotten. 'Others apart sate on a hill retired,' probably as deeply engaged in the discussion of politics and news as Milton's spirits in metaphysical disquisition. At length signals of the approach of the game were descried and heard. Distant shouts resounded from valley to valley, as the various parties of Highlanders, climbing rocks, struggling through copses, wading brooks, and traversing thickets, approached more and more near to each other, and compelled ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... reader, that I am going to carry my forbearance so far as to let you, too, off the remainder of that geological disquisition, you are certainly very much mistaken. A discourse which would be quite unpardonable in social intercourse may be freely admitted in the privacy of print; because, you see, while you can't easily tell a man that his conversation bores you (though some people just avoid doing ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... Doctor was delivering an impromptu disquisition upon the peculiarities of the one-horned rhinoceros and the slight resemblance given by the folds of its monstrous hide to the shell of a turtle, that Ramball followed the two boys and made signs to them to come to the other end of ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... every flower, and listened to a disquisition on every plant, I was permitted to depart; but first, with great pomp, he plucked a polyanthus and presented it to me, as one conferring a prodigious favour. I observed, on the grass about his garden, certain apparatus of sticks and corn, and asked ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... a general disquisition to the table, at last turned to Arthur Balfour and said, with ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... creating the historical novel, he was the first to throw a poetic glamour over European annals. In 1803 Wordsworth visited Scott at Lasswade, near Edinburgh; and Scott afterward returned the visit at Grasmere. Wordsworth noted that his guest was "full of anecdote and averse from disquisition." The Englishman was a moralist and much given to "disquisition," while the Scotchman was, above all things, a raconteur, and, perhaps, on the whole, the foremost of British story-tellers. Scott's Toryism, too, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... in our Boston newspapers quite so amusing as the very friendly and sympathetic report of Prof. Harris' most elaborate and laborious comments on the SYLLOGISMS, which reminds one of Hopkinson's metaphysical and elaborate disquisition on the nature, properties, relations, and essential entity of a salt-box. We do not laugh at the professor as we did at Daniel Pratt, the "Great American Traveller," whose travels are now ended; for, aside from his metaphysical follies, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... disquisition, no argument is to be taken from contingent circumstances, (which, however, are often found here as well as in the case of marbles); such only are to be employed as are general to the subject, and arise necessarily from the nature ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... in deciding whether a body sinks or floats. Yet in the case of the flat body it is not altogether inappropriate to say that the water resists penetration and thus supports the body. The modern physicist explains the phenomenon as due to surface-tension of the fluid. Of course, Galileo's disquisition on the mixing of air with the floating body is utterly fanciful. His experiments were beautifully exact; his theorizing from them was, in this instance, altogether fallacious. Thus, as already intimated, his paper is admirably adapted to convey a double lesson to ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the greatness of his abilities, and his unrivalled genius. Never was distinction more nobly earned. Of every species of literary composition he is equally a master. He excels alike in the most abstruse metaphysical disquisition, and in the warmest and most spirited painting. His rhetoric is at once ornamented and sublime. His satire is polished and severe. His wit is truly Attic. Luxuriant in the extreme, his allusions are always striking, and always happy. But to enumerate his talents, ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... the volcanoes of Peru and New Spain. Had I given the physical description of a single province, I could have treated separately everything relating to its geography, mineralogy, and botany; but how could I interrupt the narrative of a journey, a disquisition on the manners of a people, or the great phenomena of nature, by an enumeration of the productions of the country, the description of new species of animals and plants, or the detail of astronomical observations. Had I adopted ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... denies the possibility of disproving it, and points out that the assumption that it has occurred is a necessary part of the doctrine of Evolution. The fourteenth lecture, on "Schoepfungs-Perioden und Schoepfungs-Urkunden," answers pretty much to the famous disquisition on the "Imperfection of the Geological Record" ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... what she had heard of him as a highly intellectual man, from the faint indications of character which she had herself noticed in their conversation, Miss Rothesay expected that he would have dived deeply into theological disquisition. She had too much penetration to look to him for the Christianity of a St. John—it was evident that such was not his nature; but she thought he would surely employ his powerful mind in wrestling with those knotty points of theology which might furnish ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... for a disquisition upon African Latin. It is sufficient here to say that the two main features of the style of Apuleius are its archaism and its extreme floridity. It has been asserted that this strange style is of purely African growth,[4] and that it owes much of its ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... have seen a white, black, red, and yellow fog," and went off into a disquisition about optics, mediums, reflections, refractions, and ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Multiplepoinding is the safest REMEDIUM JURIS in the whole; form of process. I have known it conjoined with a declarator of marriage.—Your beef is excellent,' he said to my father, who in vain endeavoured to resume his legal disquisition; 'but something highly powdered—and the twopenny is undeniable; but it is small swipes—small swipes—more of hop than malt-with your leave, I'll try ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... tradition emphasize their opinion in every possible way—so do their opponents. You pick up two newspapers from Toulouse, for instance, and it is quite on the cards that the leading article of each will be a disquisition upon the philosophy of religion, the one, the "Depeche" of Toulouse, militantly, and often solently atheist; the other as ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... meanings, the term "Biology" which denotes the whole of the sciences which deal with living things, whether they be animals or whether they be plants. Some little time ago—in the course of this year, I think—I was favoured by a learned classic, Dr. Field of Norwich, with a disquisition, in which he endeavourved to prove that, from a philological point of view, neither Treviranus nor Lamarck had any right to coin this new word "Biology" for their purpose; that, in fact, the Greek word "Bios" had relation only to human life and human affairs, and that a different word was employed ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... have again been diving into my lamented friend's note-book, which I may say en passant is the most remarkable volume I have ever come across. And in it I find, under the heading of 'Africa,' a most clever and scholarly disquisition on 'the site of ancient Ophir,' the place from which it is recorded that David obtained gold for the building of Solomon's temple. I need not inflict upon you the various arguments and authorities which are cited in the endeavour to identity the position of this most interesting spot; suffice ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... have here omitted a long, uninteresting, and inconclusive disquisition on the supposed Terra Australis, as altogether ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... men who, not possessing a tenth part of his intellectual powers, hardly ever address the House of Commons without producing a greater impression than was produced by his most splendid and elaborate orations. His luminous and philosophical disquisition on the Reform Bill was spoken to empty benches. Those, indeed, who had the wit to keep their seats, picked up hints which, skilfully used, made the fortune of more than one speech. But "it was caviare to the general." ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... A disquisition or a discussion between two or more persons, on the manner in which the Wandering Jew has spent his life. One period, perhaps, trying over and over again to grasp domestic happiness; then a soldier, then a statesman, &c., at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... Scot into a rather learned disquisition as to the merits and probable prospects of a hill as compared with a low-lying region, during which Hans Marais turned to Gertie. Being so very tall, he had to stoop as well as to look down at her pretty face, though Gertie was by no means short for her age. Indeed, she was as tall as average ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... and his fellows, which was 'of the Bye.' He described this latter, and tried to point out that the former was closely cognate to it. In order to mask the difficulty, nay, the impossibility, of doing this successfully on the evidence which he possessed, he wandered off into a long and wordy disquisition on treasonable plots in general, ending abruptly with that of Edmund de la Pole. Then, for the first time, Coke faced the chief difficulty of the Government, namely, that there was but one witness against Raleigh. He did not allow, as indeed he ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... Confession, in which we said that the Church is the congregation of saints, they have condemned and have added a long disquisition, that the wicked are not to be separated from the Church, since John has compared the Church to a threshing-floor on which wheat and chaff are heaped together, Matt. 3, 12, and Christ has compared it to a net in which there are both good and bad fishes, Matt. 13, 47. It is, verily, a ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... mind of a certain professor of chemistry, whose lectures on light and heat I once was rash enough to attend, who, after a long dry disquisition which had nearly put us all to sleep, used to arouse our attention to the "beautiful effects" produced by certain combinations, which he would proceed to illustrate, as he said, by a "little experiment." But, somehow or other, these little ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... particulars here, as well as in chemistry and natural philosophy, and botany and mineralogy; or, when it comes to practice here, will he be content, after all, with the old line of argument, and elegant disquisition, with the old generalities and subtleties of definition, which required no collection of particulars, which were independent of observation, or for which the popular accidental observation sufficed? 'Better travels, I suppose, had the Stoics ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... immemorial," said Judge Asher Carruth, of London, "Southern people have been lavish in bestowing titles. I think there is something in the Southern temperament which explains this. I didn't start out on this, however, for a philosophical disquisition, but rather to tell how a certain Kentucky gentleman established valid title to the rank of Colonel. He went to Cincinnati once with a friend, who enjoyed many acquaintances there; and who introduced him to every one as Colonel Brown. Everything went along smoothly until finally one ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... looked over the Forth to Fife, and the walls of which were so temptingly covered with books, his real life work had begun. No treat was greater, no honour more esteemed, than a visit to that study and a learned disquisition there on its owner's favourite ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... England had sent among us, and to the correctness and wisdom of current foreign opinion. In the next novel, "The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish," his feelings are still more fully expressed. In this work he puts into the mouth of one of the characters, a physician, an elaborate disquisition upon the degeneracy of man in America. In the course of it the leech informs his opponent that the science and wisdom and philosophy of Europe had been exceedingly active in the investigation of this matter of colonial inferiority, that they ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... and so jejune, so clear-sighted and so exasperating. But here again, in reality, it is not the question at issue that is interesting—one learns more of the true nature of Love in one or two of La Bruyere's short sentences than in all Beyle's three hundred pages of disquisition; but what is absorbing is the sense that comes to one, as one reads it, of the presence, running through it all, of a restless and problematical spirit. 'Le Beylisme' is certainly not susceptible of any exact definition; ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... of the angelus might catch him. His children before bedtime knelt all in a row to ask his blessing. If he had been to Asuncion, he probably remarked that the people under those accursed priests were naught but animals and slaves, and launched into some disquisition he had heard in the solitary cafe which Asuncion then boasted. In the latter case, after much of the rights of man and the duties of hospitality, he generally presented you with a heavy bill for Indian corn and 'pindo'* which ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... Launceston and Gisors, and still less am I about to inquire into the relationship between the Norman and the Cornish fortresses. The lapse of twenty years has materially weakened my recollection of the latter, nor would this be a seasonable opportunity for such a disquisition: but the subject deserves investigation, the result of which may tend to establish the common origin of both, and to dissipate the day-dreams of Borlase, who longed to dignify the castellated ruins of the Cornish peninsula, by ascribing them to the ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... that diocese eighteen years of his life were spent. In the course of them he published the Querist (1735-1737), an Essay on the Social State of Ireland (1744), and, in the same year, Siris, which contains the bishop's famous recipe for the use of tar water followed by much philosophical disquisition. The remedy, which was afterwards praised by the poet Dyer in The Fleece, became instantly popular. 'We are now mad about the water,' Horace Walpole wrote; 'the book contains every subject from tar water to the Trinity; however, all the women read it, and understand it no ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... minister could, in that reign, be called prime minister. An immense load of business fell on him; and that load he was unable to sustain. In wit and eloquence, in amplitude of comprehension and subtlety of disquisition, he had no equal among the statesmen of his time. But that very fertility, that very acuteness, which gave a singular charm to his conversation, to his oratory and to his writings, unfitted him for the work of promptly deciding practical questions. He was slow ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "Aids to Reflection"; but he becomes inspired by the sound of his own silver voice, and pours out wisdom like a sea. Had he a domestic Gurney, he might publish a Moral Essay, or a Theological Discourse, or a Metaphysical Disquisition, or a Political Harangue, every morning throughout the ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... allowed by the learned to have seen the system of Moses, if I may so call it, who was in great reputation at that time in the heathen world, as we find by Diodonis, Justin, Longinus, and other authors; for the rest, the wisest among them laid aside all notions after a Deity, as a disquisition vain and fruitless, which indeed it was, upon unrevealed principles; and those who ventured to engage too far fell into ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... woman can see it before you begin to tell her about it!" retorted the Captain, which brought a "Good! good! hit him again!" from the whole party. At this, Master George commenced reading the Captain a disquisition upon the best mode of acquiring the French language. Supper was brought-in old Tom Baker's best flourish-and the party begun to discuss its merits with great gusto. What the little, chivalrous fellows lacked in physical ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... has left us, as an episode of his great work, a disquisition on the probable effects that would have followed, if Alexander the Great had invaded Italy. Posterity has generally regarded that disquisition as proving Livy's patriotism more strongly than his impartiality or acuteness. Yet, right or wrong, the speculations of the Roman writer ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... its history is, of course, mere surplusage, and serves no other purpose than to divert the attention of your readers from yourself. About two thirds of your apology is occupied with an historical disquisition, which has as much to do with your vindication as the question respecting the existence of a lunar atmosphere. I will not, however, withhold from you whatever benefit you may derive from either your logic or your history, but will give ...
— A Letter to the Hon. Samuel Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill. • Hancock
... sonnets of Shakspeare as a sort of homage to the Genius of Christian Europe, necessarily exacted, although voluntarily paid, before he was allowed to take in hand the sceptre of his endless dominion." And he ends his charming disquisition in these words;—"An English mind that has drunk deep at the sources of Southern inspiration, and especially that is imbued with the spirit of the mighty Florentine, will be conscious of a perpetual freshness and quiet beauty resting on his imagination and spreading gently ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... Jeffersonians scented monarchical dangers, but with this exception the country got its uniform coinage peacefully enough. The weights and measures did not fare so well. They obtained a long report from Jefferson, and a still longer and more learned disquisition from John Quincy Adams thirty years later. But that was all. We still use the rule of thumb systems inherited from our English ancestors, and Washington's uniform standard, except for the two reports, has gone no further than ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... endured. Is it necessary, absolutely necessary, that the milkman should howl? In some parts of town milkwomen distribute their wares without howling. They do, certainly, wear very short petticoats, but that is matter, as Aristotle says, for a separate disquisition. On the other hand, milkwomen exist who howl as loudly as milkmen. We cannot but fear that without these noises it would be difficult to attract the notice of servants. If this pessimistic view be correct, sweeps and milkmen will howl while London is a city inhabited. And even if we could secure ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... 'Excicumacriosos;' and let him as often move the hoop to his mouth, and spit through the middle of it, and then plant the herb again." "I divide," observes Pictet, "the formula thus: exci cuma criosos, and translate it, 'See the form of the girdle.'" After a long and learned disquisition on the component words Pictet adds—"The process of cure recommended in this formula is of a character altogether symbolical. Girdles (cris), which we shall meet with again in formula No. 27, seem to have performed ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... delighted with the rich tones and the classic teachings of the gifted colloquist, except his equally gifted competitor for conversational laurels, who, notwithstanding his enforced admiration, sat uneasily under the prolonged disquisition, anxiously waiting for an opportunity to take his place in the picture. At length a titillation seizing the olfactory nerve of Mr. Preston, he paused to take a pinch of snuff, and Mr. Davis immediately filled up the vacuum, taking ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... any kind of prison-discipline disquisition in "H. W." that does not start with the first great principle I have laid down, and that does not protest against Prisons being considered per se. Whatever chance is given to a man in a prison must be given to a man in a refuge ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... fit to adopt these forms, in imitation of some of the methods of treating diseases in those times; though, of course, his transcendent power did not require their agency. Rost, in his Commentaries on Plautus, has very learned disquisition on the meaning of the ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... mildly preached about being steadfast to the old faith, avoiding investigation in anything new, while from the gentle, spiritually minded Prof. Mill was heard an eloquent disquisition on the promises and the ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... in some cases really more effective. A very good example was on an occasion when the old charge of "Byzantinism" was flung at the present regime, to which he replied, not by a historical excursus or political disquisition, but by humorously deprecating a comparison of the good, kindly, steady-going, hard-working old privy councilors and other state officials of Berlin with fanatics, conspirators, and assassins who played leading parts at Constantinople during the ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... attained perception, but when he was unawares and all of a sudden subjected to this question by Tai-yue, he soon found it beyond his power to give any ready answer. And when Pao-ch'ai furthermore came out with a religious disquisition, by way of illustration, and this on subjects, in all of which he had hitherto not seen them display any ability, he communed within himself: "If with their knowledge, which is indeed in advance of that of mine, they haven't, as yet, attained perception, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... supposed to be exhibited upon excavation. The writer has witnessed the opening of many of these mounds, and has seen the fragments of an occasional skeleton, found near the surface. Without stopping here to enter upon a disquisition on the hypothesis assumed, that these mounds, as they are termed, are as much the results of natural causes, as any other prominences on the surface of the globe: I will only remark, that it is a fact well known to frontier men, that the Indians ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... On the contrary, ours is the more intellectual by much; we have far greater knowledge, far greater means for making it such. In fact, the fault of our meal is—that it is too intellectual; of too severe a character; too political; too much tending, in many hands, to disquisition. Reciprocation of question and answer, variety of topics, shifting of topics, are points not sufficiently cultivated. In all else we assent to the following passage from ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... discussing this question of physics to arguing with the licentiate as to the morality of his action. Brandolaccio, who did not find their scientific disquisition entertaining, interrupted it with the remark that the sun was just going ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... the present moment. It is the duty of those who have any means of contributing to the public stock of knowledge, not only to do so, but to do it at the time when it is most likely to be useful. If the nature of the disquisition should appear to the reader hardly to suit the form of a pamphlet, my apology must be, that it was not originally intended for ...
— Nature and Progress of Rent • Thomas Malthus
... with old port, youth and fun, responded "Friends, fellow countrymen, brothers, (this last expression was challenged as he was an only son) I am indeed proud of my Dublin education, we have something, however better before us than a disquisition on the excellence of the various systems of continental courses, to be brief, I now challenge any here present to meet me on the classics, astronomy, the cubic root or glass to glass, you have your choice." "Glass to glass," ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... discussed passage. It dealt with no present difficulties, though it did suggest an entertaining theory as to the authorship of such and such a psalm. It opened out no heart before its own vision. It neither created nor deepened nor satisfied a single desire. It might as well have been a disquisition on the fate of the lost ten tribes of Israel, or a treatise on the properties of the differential calculus, or a discussion of the politics of the planet Mars for any application it had to the need ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... never was produced but by real grievances. My answer was, that the people of Ireland did suffer real misery, which, as was frequently the case, they would impute to Government, however little founded such an idea would be. This, he said, would lead us at length into a disquisition on the state of Ireland, on which subject he intended, before I went, to have a long conversation with me, but that he was now ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... Rushen, but my little sketch may perhaps get you close to that side of Manx life whereon I wish to speak to-day. I want to tell the history of religion in Man, so far as we know it; and better, to my thinking, than a grave or solid disquisition on the ways and doings of Bishops or Spiritual Barons, are any peeps into the hearts and home lives of the Manx, which will show what is called the "innate religiosity" of the humblest of the people. To this end also, when I ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... works. There is an older King John, in two parts, of which the former is a re-cast:—perhaps a juvenile work of Shakspeare, though not hitherto acknowledged as such by the English critics. See the disquisition appended to this Lecture.] and Henry the Eighth at a later period, as ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... But when Boswell suggested that perhaps experience might increase our estimate of human happiness, Johnson returned to his habitual pessimism. "No, sir, the more we inquire, the more we shall find men less happy." The talk soon wandered off into a disquisition upon the folly of deliberately testing the ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... Albrecht von Scharffenberg (about 1280), the Holy Grail is to be removed from a sinful world and to be carried to the East to be given to Feirefiz, half brother to Parzifal.[34] The meeting of Feirefiz with the knights furnishes the poet an opportunity of bringing in a learned disquisition on Prester John and his dri India die witen, and finally this mythical monarch offers his crown to Parzifal, who henceforth is called Priester Johanni. In the poem of "Lohengrin", of unknown authorship, the knight when about to depart declares he has come from India where ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... constitutes the prominent subject of these volumes. Nevertheless, the old topic of logic proper, or deductive reasoning, is not omitted, and the first passage to which we feel bound, on many accounts, to give our attention, is the disquisition on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... before the unhappy business was finally disposed of. A Treasury solicitor was given the chance of his career by the medico-legal disquisition which cleared up an extraordinary record. The annals of the disease which predisposed Theodore Siddle to crime went back many years. He was a fairly wealthy man by inheritance, and adopted the profession of chemistry as a hobby. ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... disappointed fiend, yet I was unable to overcome my repugnance to the task which was enjoined me. I found that I could not compose a female without again devoting several months to profound study and laborious disquisition. I had heard of some discoveries having been made by an English philosopher, the knowledge of which was material to my success, and I sometimes thought of obtaining my father's consent to visit England for this purpose; but I clung to every pretence of delay and shrank ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... the feudal system, by taking from the poorer sort of people all their little subsistence, and conferring it on a set of stamp officers, distributors and their deputies.—But I must proceed no farther at present.—The sequel, whenever I shall find health and leisure to pursue it, will be a "disquisition of the policy of the stamp act."——In the mean time, however, let me add, These are not the vapours of a melancholy mind, nor the effusions of envy, disappointed ambition, nor of a spirit of opposition to government: but the emanations of ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... idea of a divided parentage, to place together any materials he might have for the illustration of the Waverley Novels in general; he suggested in particular, that, instead of drawing up a long-promised disquisition on the Gypsies in a separate shape, whatever he had to say concerning that picturesque generation might be introduced by way of comment on the character of Meg Merrilies. What Scott's original conception had been I know not; he certainly gave his reviewal all ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... to show that even writers and friends there could be a trifle irksome in comment. My mother amused me sometimes by telling me how she had written warringly to this noted critic (a cherished acquaintance), when he had printed a disquisition upon "Monte Beni" which did not hit the bull's-eye. But the last supplementary chapter in the Romance was due to his fainting desire for more revelation,—a chapter which my father and mother looked upon as ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... their studies under the direction of the galley sergeants, in working, in the port of Toulon, the dormant navigation on board a vessel in dock. If notes were pleasing to me, I could here seize the opportunity of making some very learned remarks. I should, perhaps, go into a profound disquisition, but I am about to paint the paradise of these bacchanalians; the colours are prepared—let ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... HOMER's contemporaries. If I could only keep him engaged, he would forget the blow that had descended upon him, and would regain his usual equanimity. A question as to whether he thought Achilles liked sage with his pork, cunningly led him on to a long disquisition, till, in a quarter of an hour, he was quite a changed man, and set out ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 8, 1890 • Various
... soon be able to weigh impartially the grounds of the dispute between the partisans of ideal beauty on the one hand, and the beauty which exists in nature on the other." But here is a mistake in initio; for is not the Ideal, too, Nature? We should have rather expected a disquisition to elucidate this point; but our author prefers passing away from the real question to indulge in a little severity on the admirers of the Ideal, which Ideal we are persuaded he never understood; for he considers evidently that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... In this event its influence in promoting the progress of population in this fifth continent, will be prodigious, and in all probability before the expiration of many years, give an entirely new impulse to the tide of population: and here it may not be altogether irrelevant, to enter into a short disquisition on the natural superiority possessed by those countries which are most abundantly intersected with navigable rivers. That such are most favourable for all the purposes of civilized man, the history of the world affords the most satisfactory proof ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... mediocrity. At Plassans his voice was considered thick, his movements heavy. He generally wandered from the question at issue, rambled, as the wiseacres expressed it. On one occasion particularly, when he was pleading in a case for damages, he so forgot himself as to stray into a political disquisition, to such a point that the presiding judge interfered, whereupon he immediately sat down with a strange smile. His client was condemned to pay a considerable sum of money, a circumstance which did not, however, seem to cause Eugene the ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... desire of pushing the conversation any farther; and the rest of the company coming in to tea, the disquisition about ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... incident to artificiality, the conventional forms of writing, are patent. Only in passages do we recognize that beauty or truth, that reality and genuineness, which so often wholly pervade a poem, a story, a memoir, or even a disquisition: at some point, the flow incident to wilful instead of soulful utterance becomes apparent;—ambition, pride of opinion, love of display somewhere manifest themselves. It has been said that the chief element of Hume's mental power ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... paper, purporteth to be, in some wise, a disquisition on Beaux, and, by our faith, we had well-nigh forgotten it. Retournons a nos moutons, as the ancient lawyers used to say (and many a tyro, in the interim, hath said the same) when they grew so entangled in the mazes of Jack Shepherd ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Zealander will edit this manuscript, I think I should write that lovely name over and over again for a page or so. If the New Zealander should exercise his editorial discretion, and delete my raptures, it wouldn't matter; but I might furnish him with the text for an elaborate disquisition on the manners and customs of English lovers. Let me be reasonable about my dear love, if I can. My dear love—do I dare to call her that already, when, for anything I know to the contrary, there may be another evangelical curate ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... topic that they got out the encyclopaedia and found to their joy that there was quite a lengthy and learned disquisition on the subject. So they read it again and again, even learning the more abstruse sentences by heart. Next day they were observed to chuckle whenever they caught each other's eye, and at lunch they were unusually cheerful ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... and he himself believed, according to the Pythagorean opinion, that the soul of Homer was transfused into him, which Persius observes in his sixth satire—postquam destertuit esse Maeonides. But this being only the private opinion of so inconsiderable a man as I am, I leave it to the further disquisition of the critics, if they think it worth their notice. Most evident it is that, whether he imitated the Roman farce or the Greek comedies, he is to be acknowledged for the first author of Roman satire, as it is properly so called, and ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden |
