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Diversify   Listen
verb
Diversify  v. t.  (past & past part. diversified; pres. part. diversifying)  To make diverse or various in form or quality; to give variety to; to variegate; to distinguish by numerous differences or aspects. "Separated and diversified on from another." "Its seven colors, that diversify all the face of nature."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Diversify" Quotes from Famous Books



... of men and things. He could be uproariously funny on occasion, and even sing his "Jolly Doctor Luther" at table to a congenial company; but he was often very dignified, and always gentlemanly. The bits of doggerel with which he was wont to diversify his conversation are spoken of by all his friends as irresistibly ludicrous, and he seems to have indulged in this pastime from a boy, as he did in those of caricaturing and parodying. Mr. Fields ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... place, yet recollecting, (not without some degree of shame,) that I owe you a letter upon an old account, I think it my part to write first. This, indeed, I do not only from complaisance but from interest; for living on in the old way, I am very glad of a correspondent so capable as yourself, to diversify the hours. You have, at present, too many novelties about you to need any help from me to drive ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... days, when the very air is perfumed with pleasant odours, and every thing that presents itself to the eye gives fresh occasion to the devout admirer to praise and adore the Great Creator, who hath given such wisdom and power to man to diversify nature in such various instances, and (for his own use, pleasure, and profit,) to assist her in all her operations." This worthy clergyman might have applied to the delights of a garden, the sacred words of scripture:—"her ways are ways of pleasantness, ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton

... writers, it would appear that although these Bats live chiefly upon fruits, they occasionally, like many other frugivorous animals, diversify their diet with animal food, devouring insects of various kinds, caterpillars, birds' eggs, and even young birds, while there seems to be some reason to believe that one species even feeds upon shell-fish which it ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... among the world's largest producers and exporters of coffee, cocoa beans, and palm-kernel oil. Consequently, the economy is highly sensitive to fluctuations in international prices for coffee and cocoa and to weather conditions. Despite attempts by the government to diversify, the economy is still largely dependent on agriculture and related industries. The agricultural sector accounts for over one-third of GDP and about 80% of export earnings and employs about 85% of the labor force. A collapse ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... occasional causes. In fine, as he supposes with great reason that all souls are simple and indivisible, it cannot be apprehended how they can be compared with a pendulum, that is, how by their original constitution they can diversify their operations by using the spontaneous activity bestowed upon them by their Creator. It may clearly be conceived that a simple being will always act in a uniform manner, if no external cause hinders it. If it were composed of several pieces, as a machine, ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... the father! That man of gentle virtues and invincible benignity! placable and mild—an idolator of peace! Surely, said I, it is a dream. For many days have I been vexed with frenzy. Its dominion is still felt; but new forms are called up to diversify ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... the active verb, is often called the Active Voice, and that of the passive verb, the Passive Voice. These terms are borrowed from the Latin and Greek grammars, and, except as serving to diversify expression, are of little or no use in English grammar. Some grammarians deny that there is any propriety in them, with respect to any language. De Sacy, after showing that the import of the verb does not ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... he said it would rain, and off we went in an open carriage, a drive of seven miles, up hill and down dale, among mountains and around ponds (lakes they called them), in the midst of rich lands and pretty mansions, with occasionally a castle, and once a ruin, to diversify the scenery. ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell

... business talent of this good little man to the enjoyments of us youngsters, who, perched along in a row on a low seat in front of the pulpit, attempted occasionally to diversify the long hour of sermon by sundry small exercises of our own, such as making our handkerchiefs into rabbits, or exhibiting, in a sly way, the apples and gingerbread we had brought for a Sunday dinner, or pulling the ears of some discreet meeting-going dog, who now and then would soberly ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... extinguished can lead to nothing but indifference or contempt. Be ever young and ever new to him. He may weary you,—that often happens,—but you must never weary him. The faculty of being bored without showing it is a condition of all species of power. You cannot diversify happiness by the cares of property or the occupations of a family. If you do not make your husband share your social interests, if you do not keep him amused you will fall into a dismal apathy. Then begins the SPLEEN of love. But a man ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac

... festivity was renewed the next day; or rather, every day following the celebration was a continued feast, which the fairy Perie Banou knew how to diversify, by new delicacies, new concerts, new dances, new shows, and new diversions; which were all so gratifying to his senses, that Ahmed, if he had lived a thousand years among men, could ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.

... and so may a mechanic. A physician may spend all his waking-hours in visiting patients, and feel little more than healthy fatigue. The reason is that in all these employments, and in fact in most of the employments of life, there is so much to diversify, so many little incidents constantly occurring to animate and relieve, and so much bodily exercise, which alternates with, and suspends the fatigues of the mind, that the labors may be much longer continued, and ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... came, perforce, a change in Jennings's method of farming. Years ago Frank had besought him to diversify his crops, to study his soil, to take advantage of the information the agricultural college and the Government were ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux

... to the effects produced, or the different qualities that may be remarked: all these varieties in man flow from the individual properties of his soul, or from the particular modification of his brain. It is thus, that wit, imagination, sensibility, talents, &c. diversify to infinity the differences that are to be found in man. It is thus, that some are called good, others wicked; some are denominated virtuous, others vicious; some are ranked as learned, others as ignorant; some are considered ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... the whole, what was effected in these three expeditions, served only to shew how large a field was reserved for future and more persevering examination. Their results had, indeed, enabled geographers to diversify the vacant uniformity of former charts of this ocean by the insertion of some new islands. But the number, and the extent of these insertions, were so inconsiderable, that they may be ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... would probably seem very foolish and childish to a modern audience, but they helped to enliven and diversify the lives of our ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... this agreement, Harvey went forward with his efforts to put Virginia's agricultural economy on a sound basis. The principal problem was to force the planters to diversify. Many tears are shed for the poverty of the planters of Virginia, and their customary indebtedness to English creditors is usually cited as proof of their poverty. But this "poverty" was not based on the inability of the planter to raise enough ...
— Virginia Under Charles I And Cromwell, 1625-1660 • Wilcomb E. Washburn

... which she so often presents them with! Forgetful of the natural aim of the sexual appetite, civilization has transformed it into artificial enjoyment, and has invented all possible means to increase and diversify it. ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... condition. As commonly used, the refrain, or burden, not only is limited to lyric verse, but depends for its impression upon the force of monotone—both in sound and thought. The pleasure is deduced solely from the sense of identity—of repetition. I resolved to diversify, and so heighten the effect, by adhering in general to the monotone of sound, while I continually varied that of thought: that is to say, I determined to produce continuously novel effects, by the variation of the application ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

... one endeavor more to diversify the form of this disgusting argument. He has thrown out a speech composed almost entirely of challenges. Challenges are serious things; and as he is a man of prudence as well as resolution, I dare say he has very well weighed those challenges before he delivered ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the challenge, and the debate took place, with the result that he was for the most part treated with respect, since he convinced his hearers that agriculture was something he knew more about than did the landlords. He showed farmers how to diversify crops and raise vegetables and fruits, and if grains would flow in cheaper than they could raise them, why then take the money they received from vegetables and buy grain! It was an uphill fight, but Cobden threw his soul into it, and knew that some ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard

... towards the shore. The ground almost everywhere, even on the hills, is boggy, with numerous swamps, rivulets and pools. The peat in some places is as much as six feet in thickness; it forms the only fuel on the island, for not a single tree occurs to diversify the landscape, and few of the bushes exceed a foot in height. The general tint of the grass and other herbage at this season is a dull brownish-green. Bays and long winding arms of the sea intersect the country in a singular manner, and the shores ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray

... ample testimony of its ancient magnificence: Its extent might, I suppose, easily be found by following the walls among the grass and weeds, and its height is known by some parts yet standing. The arch of one of the gates is entire, and of another only so far dilapidated as to diversify the appearance. A square apartment of great loftiness is yet standing; its use I could not conjecture, as its elevation was very disproportionate to its area. Two corner towers, particularly attracted our attention. Mr. Boswell, whose inquisitiveness is seconded by great activity, scrambled ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson

... Country, and Mankind." This altruistic ideal was to find practical application in efforts to enhance the comfort and attractions of homes, to maintain the laws, to advance agricultural and industrial education, to diversify crops, to systematize farm work, to establish cooperative buying and selling, to suppress personal, local, sectional, and national prejudices, and to discountenance "the credit system, the fashion system, and every other system ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck

... hill, but by broad levels ascending to the upland meadows. It is a beautiful illustration of the law of obedience, the flow of a river; the path for a sick man, a highway down which an acorn cup may float secure with its freight. Its slight occasional falls, whose precipices would not diversify the landscape, are celebrated by mist and spray, and attract the traveller from far and near. From the remote interior, its current conducts him by broad and easy steps, or by one gentle inclined plane, to the sea. Thus by an early and constant yielding to the inequalities of the ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... as were the rights of citizens of the Roman republic. Let them deal with this most difficult and subtle problem of social politics so as to secure to the man who labors his just share of the fruits of his labor. Let them improve even upon the protective policy we have pursued, so as to diversify our industries and plant in all parts of our country the workshops of millions of well-paid contented citizens. Let them do what we have not been able to do since the war—restore our commerce to every port and protect it under our flag in ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... for the extreme beauty and wildness of the Southern Carpathians. The characteristics of the scenery are due to the broken forms of the crystalline rocks, the singular occurrence of sharp limestone ridges, and the deep forest-clad valleys, traversed by mountain torrents, which everywhere diversify the scene. ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... transmute, commute, metamorphose, substitute, turn, convert, modify, transfigure, vary, diversify, qualify, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... furious Particles of the Lion. But upon turning this Plan to and fro in my Thoughts, I observed so many unaccountable Humours in Man, that I did not know out of what Animals to fetch them. Male Souls are diversify'd with so many Characters, that the World has not Variety of Materials sufficient to furnish out their different Tempers and Inclinations. The Creation, with all its Animals and Elements, would not be large enough to supply ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... rests on a scene of beauty and quietness. Far away to the northward and westward, and still farther away, stretches an immense plain. Rolling hillocks, like the waves of the sea after a storm, and at long intervals, a few stunted shrubs, alone diversify the prospect. Vast, unmeasured, Nature's unenclosed meadow, the prairie, is spread out! The tall grass waves gently and rustlingly to the breeze; and down upon it settles the moonlight, in a dim silver-gossamer veil, like that which to the mind's eye is thrown over the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... quantity of provisions, the usual articles wherewith to traffic with the possessors of the soil. The Oswego—as my red brothers know—is principally formed by the confluence of the outlets of those numerous lesser lakes that diversify and adorn the vast space of country that lies between the Great Ocean and the Lake of Storms[B]. Its course is northward, and, after whirling and foaming along the narrow and obstructed channel that nature seems to have grudgingly lent for its passage, it finds repose in the small harbour ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... the Virgin[153] and the Saints, show this characteristic throughout, and the Fool's remark which pleased Lamb, "Hazy weather, Master Noah!" was a strictly legitimate and very much softened descendant of the kind of pleasantries which diversify the sacred drama of the Middle Ages in all but its ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... individuals together, as they sometimes were, with other miscellaneous ones to diversify the group, and, for the time being, it made the Custom-House a stirring scene. More frequently, however, on ascending the steps, you would discern—in the entry, if it were summer time, or in their appropriate rooms, if wintry or inclement weather—a row ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Shire must then flow parallel with the Zambesi, from which Morumbala seems distant only twenty or thirty miles. All around to the southeast the country is flat, and covered with forest, but near Senna a number of little abrupt conical hills diversify the scenery. To the west and north the country is also flat forest, which gives it a sombre appearance; but just in the haze of the horizon southwest by south, there rises a mountain range equal in height to Morumbala, and called Nyamonga. In a clear day another range beyond this may be seen, which ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... pierced to make a shorter way between Naples and Puteoli; thence stretched an extensive plain, set in a deep amphitheatre of hills, and bounded by the sea. Vineyards and maizefields, pine-trees and poplars, diversify its surface, and through the midst of it runs a long, straight road, dwindling till it reaches the shore at the hamlet of Bagnoli. Follow the enclosing ridge to the left, to where its slope cuts athwart plain and sea and sky; there close upon the coast ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... doesn't much diversify—but I prefer the bevel to the level on all occasions. All I knows is," she proceeded, "that it is a shame for any young lady, as is a young lady, to take a liking to a Papist, because we know the Papists are all rebel; and would cut our throats, only for the protection ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... was marked by their peculiar dialects; [39] but each, after their own, allowed a just preference to the pure and perspicuous idiom of Mecca. In Arabia, as well as in Greece, the perfection of language outstripped the refinement of manners; and her speech could diversify the fourscore names of honey, the two hundred of a serpent, the five hundred of a lion, the thousand of a sword, at a time when this copious dictionary was intrusted to the memory of an illiterate people. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... the hills, and out of sight of the lake, is reached at 11 P.M. Could but a little civilised art, as whitewashed houses, well-trained gardens, and the like, vary these evergreen hills and trees, and diversify the unceasing monotony of hill and dale, and dale and hill—of green trees, green grass—green grass, green trees, so wearisome in their luxuriance,—what a paradise of beauty would this place present! The deep blue waters of the lake, in contrast with the vegetation and large brown rocks, ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... Canon. The architecture is not self-assertive. Its aim is not to produce edifices complete and satisfying in their own proportions but rather to harmonize buildings with landscape, to adjust courts and pavilions to the slope of the hillside and diversify the groves of fir and bamboo with shrines and towers as fantastic and yet as natural as the mountain boulders. The reader who wishes to know more of them should consult Johnston's Buddhist China, a work which combines in a rare degree ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... that the city at large is the instructress of Greece, and that individually each person among us seems to possess the most ready versatility in adapting himself, and that not ungracefully, to the greatest variety of circumstances and situations that diversify human life. That all this is not a mere boast of words for the present purpose, but rather the actual truth, this very power of the state, unto which by these habits and dispositions we have attained, clearly attests; for ours is the only one of the states now existing which, on trial, approves itself ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... by rivers; where, though its chase affords an endless resource to the sportsman, its venison scarcely equals in quality the inferior beef of the lowland ox. In the glades and park-like openings that diversify the great forests of the interior, the spotted Axis troops in herds as numerous as the fallow deer in England: but, in journeys through the jungle, when often dependent on the guns of our party for the precarious supply of the table, we found the flesh of the Axis[2] and the Muntjac[3] ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... women, the country would have rung with denunciations of Catholic bigotry. But the Baptist beetle-browed can for months plan the death of a man who has exposed their hypocrisy and the assassination is taken as one of the few "occurrences" which diversify life in ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... bottle to home for nerves. But 'tennyrate in a few minutes he wuz talkin' quite glib about home and the children and I felt richly repaid for all my trouble. And with such little agreeable talk and eppisodin' did I try to diversify the weariness ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... who had been so sociable all the way from Villeneuve was reinforced by other Englishmen, whom we found on the much more crowded boat to which we had to change. Our company began to diversify itself: there were French and German parties as well as English. We changed boats four times in the tour of the lake, and each boat brought us a fresh accession of passengers. By-and-by there came aboard a brave ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells

... sufficient to bear a man's weight, and very slippery. Adown the slopes there are tiny rivulets, which exist only for the winter. Bare, brown spaces of grass here and there, but still so infrequent as only to diversify the scene a little. In the woods, rocks emerging, and, where there is a slope immediately towards the lake, the snow is pretty much gone, and we see partridge-berries frozen, and outer shells of walnuts, and chestnut-burrs, heaped or scattered among the ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... emptying fast, the pensions shut up, the walks on the mountain-side are wholly our own. Two days ago the snow fell thickly, and what a sight were the mountains next morning in a glowing sun! These changes I expect will diversify the whole month, and inside this warm, pleasant room Sarianna and I read, and don't require "the devil to find some missing ill for idle hands to do." You have much more to enjoy with all that good music thrown in, and I am glad for you. We get books and papers ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting

... experimentally establish. Moreover—besides the utter inconsequence of such purely relative ideas as often and rare—it is far more reasonable that an eternal, personal author of creation should watch over his work to shape and diversify it at his pleasure, than that, after a single act, he should relapse into inertia like the Hindu Brahmin. To concentrate the whole evidence of design in one original act, ages upon ages ago, with no opening for after interference, undermines belief in a personal designer, simply because ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... vines, and are higher and more rocky. Numerous dwellings cut in the rocky face of the hills remind one of the same appearance on the borders of the Loire; but in no other respect can the clay-coloured river claim resemblance with that crystal though sand-encumbered stream. Several bold rocks diversify the prospect here,—one called the ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... cultivated. It is a succession of kitchen gardens, which seem to be well-kept immense fields sown with clover, which yield four or five crops a year. The roads near the town are bordered with long rows of mulberry trees, which diversify the view ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne

... demonstrated to himself by his own trial; and a local county agent was employed for the supervision of the work. It soon became apparent that merely trying to circumvent the depredations of the boll weevil would not solve the problem and that instead of raising only cotton as a cash crop the farmer must diversify his crops so as to raise more of the foodstuffs consumed on the farm and to have other products for sale. This involved the application of the demonstration method to the growing of corn, legumes, hogs, etc., in short, it involved the whole field of farm management and agricultural practice. The ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson

... critic, writing pleasantly of him and his work, in the London Spectator said lately: "His books are delightful reading, with no monotony except a monotony of brilliance which an occasional lapse into dulness would almost diversify." ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various

... always looks on nature with the eye of a true painter and the imagination of a true poet, has represented with delightful force and vividness some of those accidents of light and shade that diversify an English meadow. ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... be a constant surprise to some employers that servants should insist on having the same human wants as themselves. Ladles who yawn in their elegantly furnished parlors, among books and pictures, if they have not company, parties, or opera to diversify the evening, seem astonished and half indignant that cook and chambermaid are more disposed to go out for an evening gossip than to sit on hard chairs in the kitchen where they have been toiling all day. The pretty chambermaid's anxieties about her dress, the minutes she spends at her small and ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... trickles in slender currents during the dry seasons, while when it rains there are freshets, and roaring muddy torrents come tearing down, bringing disaster and destruction everywhere. Moreover, these floods and freshets, which diversify the general dryness, wash away from the mountain sides, and either wash away or cover in the valleys, the rich fertile soil which it took tens of thousands of years for Nature to form; and it is lost forever, and until the forests grow again it ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... persuaded, therefore, that I shall be excused in sparing the dulness of another winter's diary, and confining myself exclusively to those facts which appear to possess any scientific interest, to the few incidents which did diversify our confinement, and to such remarks as may contribute to the health and comfort of any future sojourners ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... nature. But the "Lake Poets," as Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge and others were once derisively termed, have linked the Lake District with the language of the nation. Windermere Lake is eleven miles in length, and one mile in breadth. Numerous islands diversify its surface, one of which (Belle Isle) we have already referred to. Its depth in some parts is about 240 feet. "The prevailing character of the scenery around Windermere is soft and graceful beauty. It shrinks from approaching that wildness and sublimity which characterise ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... before other men had placed it to their lips. The vicissitudes of all seasons occurred in one, and, before my spring had closed, I had felt the winter's gloominess and cold. The scattered and separated experiences that diversify and mark the passage of the "threescore years and ten," were collected and thrust into the narrow period of my nonage. Within that boundary, existence was condensed. It was the time of action and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... of Congress to regulate the alloy and value. In this instance, also, the new provision is an improvement on the old. Whilst the alloy and value depended on the general authority, a right of coinage in the particular States could have no other effect than to multiply expensive mints and diversify the forms and weights of the circulating pieces. The latter inconveniency defeats one purpose for which the power was originally submitted to the federal head; and as far as the former might prevent ...
— The Federalist Papers

... much company. "Never mind," said Sparkle, "we are company enough among ourselves; the morning is fine, the curricle not arrived, and we shall find plenty of conversation, if we do not discover interesting character, to diversify our promenade. Travelling spoils conversation, unless you are squeezed like an Egyptian mummy into a stage or a mail-coach; and perhaps in that case you may meet with animals who have voices, without possessing the power of intellect ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... this last effect of their escapades, they were, in the instance I am about to record, more than satisfied. They had gone, on a fine, clear, winter day, along the coast of the Firth of Forth towards Cramond; and, to diversify their amusements, they took with them a gun, which was carried by S——th, with the intention of having a shot at any wild bird or barn-door fowl that might come conveniently within his range. Of this kind of game they had fewer chances, and the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various

... the Neversink's sailing from home—nearly three years before the time here spoken of—some of the seamen had clubbed together, and made up a considerable purse, for the purpose of purchasing a theatrical outfit having in view to diversify the monotony of lying in foreign harbours for weeks together, by an occasional display on the boards—though if ever there w-as a continual theatre in the world, playing by night and by day, and without intervals between the acts, a man-of-war is that theatre, and her planks ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... of Tudor and Stuart needlework are to be found the exquisitely embroidered book-covers which date from Queen Elizabeth's girlhood until the time of Charles II. They were always of diminutive size, and many stitches diversify their covering; oftentimes they were liberally embroidered with seed-pearls, and in these instances most frequently this fashion has been their salvation. A book somehow always seems to be a more sacred thing than a picture, and the costly ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes

... fix attention on the exhaustion of the writer. He certainly could endure such fatigue for no more than a single epistle. The schoolboy, when forced to it, seldom holds out for more than half a page, though he employs every contortion of shoulder, tongue, and leg to ease and diversify the struggle. ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer

... five days almost nothing occurred to diversify the ordinary task of the day, which, I must own, was dull enough. I rose to my task by seven, and, less or more, wrought it out in the course of the day, far exceeding the ordinary average of three leaves per day. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... and rice were the only articles of food to be obtained to diversify our stock fare of pickled pork and salt horse from the neighbouring inhabitants of this northern portion of the domain of the Ruler of the Universe, and Emperor of the Sun, Moon and Stars; for our French allies ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson

... money, not usually subject to great yearly fluctuations in price, and one which the Negroes know how to raise. The landlord therefore demands his rent in cotton, and the merchant will accept mortgages on no other crop. There is no use asking the black tenant, then, to diversify his crops,—he cannot under this system. Moreover, the system is bound to bankrupt the tenant. I remember once meeting a little one-mule wagon on the River road. A young black fellow sat in it driving listlessly, his elbows on his ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... Rupert Hick, near Maidstone, who encountered and had the luck to kill the first of these monsters of whom history has any record. He was walking knee high in bracken across an open space in the beechwoods that diversify Lieutenant-Colonel Hick's park, and he was carrying his gun—very fortunately for him a double-barrelled gun—over his shoulder, when he first caught sight of the thing. It was, he says, coming down against the light, so that he could not see it very distinctly, and as it came it ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... ever fix'd on one beautiful Object, would be apt to abate the Satisfaction, at least in our present State. Variety relieves and refreshes. It is so in the natural World. Hills and Valleys, Woods and Pasture, Seas and Shores, not only diversify the Prospect, but give much more Entertainment to the Eye, that can successively go from one to the other, than any of them could singly do. And could we see into all the Conveniencies of things, how well they are fitted to each other, and the common ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill

... marvel to me is that none of the young couples do it. They could enjoy the world, see life, amuse the company, and come back fresh to their own characters, instead of giving themselves a dose of Africa without a savage to diversify it: an impression they never get over, I'm told. Many a character of the happiest auspices has irreparable mischief done it by the ordinary honeymoon. For my part, I rather lean to the second plan ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... militants surrendered under an amnesty program designed to promote national reconciliation. Nevertheless, residual fighting continues. Other concerns include Berber unrest, large-scale unemployment, a shortage of housing, and the need to diversify ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... Within. Indeed, I now live with him wholly ; he has himself appropriated me a place, a seat, a desk, a table, and every convenience and comfort, and he never seemed yet so earnest to keep me about him. We read together, write together,- chat, compare notes, communicate projects, and diversify each other's employments. He is all goodness, gaiety, and affection; and his society and kindness are more precious to Me than ever. Fortunately, in this season of leisure and comfort, the spirit of composition proves ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay

... unclouded radiance over open space, failed to throw a beauty not their own on those sluggish waters. Broad and muddy, their stealthy current flowed onward to the sea, without a rock to diversify, without a bubble to break, the sullen surface. On the side from which I was looking at the river, the neglected trees grew so close together that they were undermining their own lives, and poisoning each other. On the opposite bank, ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins

... remarks, in one of his novels, that good humour gives to a plain face the same charm as sunshine lends to an ugly country. I agreed entirely with him, as I looked first on Salisbury Plain, without one gleam to diversify its gloomy extent, and then on Mrs. Swift's unmeaning face, the stern rigidity of which never relaxed into a smile, and contrasted it with the cheerful light of dear Mrs. Hatton's radiant, though ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton

... expression that hardly varied in the face of the youngest novice and that of the septuagenarian "mother." The strangers were shown through the dormitories, the kitchen, the laundry, the garden, the community-room, where embroidery, painting and study diversify the labors of the broom and the dishcloth, and everywhere the same exquisite neatness struck the eye. Everything used in the house was of the coarsest description—the linen like sack-cloth, but speckless; the delf as thick and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... met, but has ceded the honour of naming the battle to its more euphonious neighbour. Gaugamela is situate in one of the wide plains that lie between the Tigris and the mountains of Kurdistan. A few undulating hillocks diversify the surface of this sandy track; but the ground is generally level, and admirably qualified for the evolutions of cavalry, and also calculated to give the larger of two armies the full advantage of numerical superiority. The Persian King (who before he came to the throne, had proved ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... hitherto related may be classed among those little personal oddities which agreeably diversify the surface of society, and, though they may sometimes annoy us, yet keep our daily intercourse fresher and livelier than if they were done away. By an occasional hint, however, I have endeavored to pave the way for stranger ...
— Monsieur du Miroir (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... countries' positions in the world economy, diversify and create new opportunities in trade relations, enhance participation in decision-making at the international level, provide ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... instincts and habits to be formed after birth, under the influence of that very environment in which they are to operate; and also needful, since children are long incapable of providing for themselves and compel their parents, if the race is not to die out, to continue their care, and to diversify it. To be born half-made is an immense advantage. Structure performed is formed blindly; the a priori is as dangerous in life as in philosophy. Only the cruel workings of compulsion and extermination keep ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... the story was, as has already been indicated, a heritage from the times of Gomberville, La Calprenede, and the Scuderys when miscellaneous material of all sorts from poetry to prosy conversations was habitually used to diversify the narrative. Mrs. Haywood, however, employed the letter not to ornament but to intensify. Her billets-doux like the lyrics in a play represent moments of supreme emotion. In seeking vividness she too often fell ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... easily be explained those natural appearances which diversify the surface of the earth for the use of plants and animals, and those objects which beautify the face of nature for the contemplation of mankind. Such are, the distinctions of mountains and valleys, of lakes and rivers, of dry barren deserts and rich watered plains, of rocks ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton

... rising out of the deep ocean! How green the ground looks under those tall trees, and how intensely blue the lagoon in the centre! It is a lovely-looking spot—quite a fairy land. I hope that we shall be put on shore there, though I would rather have a few hills and valleys to diversify the scene, if we are to remain ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston

... "Caracteres." It started, probably, with the jotting down of social remarks at long intervals. Then, I think, La Bruyere, always extremely fastidious, observed that the form of his writing was growing to resemble too much that of La Rochefoucauld, and so he began to diversify it with "portraits." These had been in fashion in Paris for more than a generation, but La Bruyere invented a new kind of portrait. He says, on the very first page of the "Caracteres," "you make a book ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... the peoples living on the high plateau of Tibet beyond the titanic Himalayas. Here is a vast region only one-twentieth of which is covered with vegetation. Chains of mountains with snow-capped peaks encircle it, and spurs from the main ranges, together with lesser ridges and isolated elevations, diversify ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson

... fifth. The advantages of such an arrangement are obvious. Banished mostly to the flanks the double ramp left four stages clear both at front and back, providing an ample promenade. On the other three it showed itself just sufficiently to "furnish" the building and diversify its aspect without in any way encumbering it. The whole structure terminated in a chapel placed on the central axis of the tower, and surmounted by a cupola. The inscriptions mention the dome covered with leaves of chiselled gold which crowned at Babylon that ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... a slight row to diversify the monotony of our military life. Young Premium, the son of the celebrated loan-monger, has bought in; and Dormer Stanhope, and one or two others equally fresh, immediately anticipated another Battier business; but, with the greatest desire ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... fresh attacks. One British writer insisted that Federal America had done nothing either to extend, diversify, or embellish the sphere of human knowledge, and could produce nothing to bring her intellectual efforts into any sort of comparison with those of Europe. "Noah Webster, we are afraid," said he, "still occupies the first place in criticism, Timothy Dwight and Joel Barlow in poetry, and Mr. Justice ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... which, rising in the Cordilleras, falls into the Plata, to the south of which rises a number of step-like terraces, sterile during the heats of summer, but covered with verdure after the rains of spring. Huge boulders, brown grass growing in tufts, and low spine-covered bushes, diversify the surface. In this inhospitable region transitions from heat to cold are very great. Now the traveller is panting under the intense heat of the sun's rays; and anon an icy blast rushes across the plain, compelling him to draw close around ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... of civil society, must take a particular course, in order to reap the advantages of his nature. He is, withal, in a very high degree susceptible of habits; and can, by forbearance or exercise, so far weaken, confirm, or even diversify his talents, and his dispositions, as to appear, in a great measure, the arbiter of his own rank in nature, and the author of all the varieties which are exhibited in the actual history of his species. The universal characteristics, in the mean time, to which we have now ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... were unobserved amid the burst of green things overhead and underfoot. Originally it must have been an unpromising stretch of land, running, as it does, in a dead level along the Arno. Yet there is earth and water; and a good deal can be done with such materials to diversify the surface. More might have been accomplished here. For in the matter of hill and dale and lake, and variety of vegetation, the Cascine are not remarkable. One calls to mind what has been attained at Kew Gardens in an identical situation, and ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... to multiply this little scene by forty or fifty, and you have an idea of the loading of that steamer on the high seas. Of course you must diversify the picture a little, for in one place you have a man hanging over the side with a trunk in mid-air, barely caught when in its descent, and almost too heavy for him by reason of his position. In another ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne

... succeed in finding in the commonwealth of bugs the natural enemy of the pest they were after, but Dr. Knapp, with the wisdom which prefers prevention to cure, seized the opportunity of teaching cotton-growers to diversify their cultivation. The consequence was that the cotton crop itself is gradually responding to the treatment. Many other crops are adding their quota to the produce of the Southern farms, and an all-round improvement, moral as well as material, is accompanying ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett

... we sat down under a clump of beech trees, near a grassy ascent, winding among the thick foliage, contrived by the opulent owner to extend and diversify the rides in his noble domain. Eugenio was playing around us, picking the wild flowers, and running up to ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... volume anonymously. This was followed by the Judgment of Hercules (1741), and by the Schoolmistress (1742). In 1745 he undertook the management of his estate, and began, to quote Dr. Johnson's quaint description, 'to point his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his walks, and to wind his waters; which he did with such judgment and such fancy, as made his little domain the envy of the great and the admiration of the skilful; a place to be visited by travellers and copied by designers.' On this ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... aquatic reeds diversify the surface, and are well tenanted by the crocodile and hippopotami, the latter of which keep staring, grunting, and snorting as though much vexed at our intrusion on their former peace and privacy. We now ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke



Words linked to "Diversify" :   diversification, modify, motley, variegate, specialise, branch out, alter



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