"Infinitesimal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Corthell beyond doubting or denial. Not a single inflection of his low-pitched, gently modulated voice was wanting; not a single infinitesimal mannerism was changed, even to the little tilting of the chin when he spoke, or the quick winking of the eyelids, or the smile that narrowed the corners of the eyes themselves, or the trick of perfect repose of his whole body. Even ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... a sort of undefined, painful unbelief. To me, somehow, there is no other side of the ocean. And looking out on its boundless space, covered with the blue vault lighted by millions of worlds and floating over, to me, bottomless waters, I feel so lost in space, such an infinitesimal atom, that the doctrine of the sparrow that falls seems a chimera, and a God inconceivable. I wonder if this is not so with others. I wonder if all of us do not shrink from this immensity and take refuge ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... bride in the Canticles. "Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee." She was killingly dressed in the rural-simplicity style. All her robes and sashes were of purest white; and a knot of field-daisies and grasses, with French dew-drops on them, twinkled in an infinitesimal bonnet on her little head, and her hair was all creped into a filmy golden aureole round her face. In short, dear reader, she was a perfectly got-up angel, and wanted only some tulle clouds and an opening ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... conceded to Brandenburg the leadership of the Protestant states of northern Germany.[Footnote: Another source of weakness in Saxony was the custom in the Wettin family of dividing the inheritance among members of the family. Such was the origin of the present infinitesimal states of Saxe-Weimar, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... he knew was death though he had no name for it, and his immature defenses sprang into action, tried in vain to block the memory, to thrust Death back into its Pandora's Box. He impeded the flood by an infinitesimal fraction of a second, and then full awareness came and with it an understanding of the terrible thing that had happened, the thing that he?—yes, ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... Slowly he tore the letter in two, the halves into quarters, the quarters into infinitesimal squares. He took a pinch of them and extended his arm, dropping the particles of paper upon the current of the wind. They rose, fell, eddied, swam, and rose again, finally to fall on the roofs below. Again and again he repeated this act, till not a single ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... his master's study, he paused for an infinitesimal length of time on the threshold, as if conscious of something being amiss, then went into the room beyond, and, without a glance in the direction of the rug, which had been carefully relaid on the spot where his master had fallen, began to make such arrangements for the night as he ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... to bring a certain comfort to the tailor, as did a chart upon the wall showing the infinitesimal amount of time that steam had been applied to manufacturing processes compared to the centuries of hand labor. Human progress is slow and perhaps never more cruel than in the advance of industry, but is not the worker comforted by knowing that other ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... that this earth belongs to them,—to the human race alone. It does not,—no more than the United States belong to Rhode Island. Human life is not a ten-thousand-millionth of the life on the planet, nor the race of men more than an infinitesimal fraction of the creatures which it nourishes. A swarm of summer flies on a field of clover, or the grasshoppers in a patch of stubble, outnumber the men that have lived since Adam. And yet we assume the dignity of lords and masters of the globe! Is not this a flagrant delusion of self-conceit? Let ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... in a large perfumatory, we have come to the conclusion that it cannot be so applied, simply because when the essence of pine-apple is smelled at, the vapor produces an involuntary action of the larynx, producing cough, when exceedingly dilute. Even in the infinitesimal portions it still produces disagreeable irritation of the air-pipes, which, if prolonged, such as is expected if used upon a handkerchief, is followed by intense headache. It is obvious, therefore, that the legitimate use of the essence of pine-apple (butyric ether) cannot be adapted with benefit ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... reply. Lady Selina glanced at him sharply. She herself was by no means a beauty. But neither was she plain. She had a long, rather distinguished face, with a marked nose and a wide thin-lipped mouth. Her plentiful fair hair, a little dull and ashy in colour, was heaped up above her forehead in infinitesimal curls and rolls which did great credit to her maid, and gave additional height to the head and length to a thin white neck. Her light blue eyes were very direct and observant. Their expression implied both considerable knowledge of the world ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and checking up your bank account, and dovetailing scraps of parish registers and land-patents and county records into an irrefutable pedigree, and seeing that your clothes were pressed, and looking over the newspapers—and what with other infinitesimal avocations, each one innocent, none of any particular importance, and each consuming an irrevocable moment of the allotted time—until at last you found that living had not, necessarily, any climax at all.... And ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... and customs, and arts, and institutions, and literatures. Man, the evolving savage, as Tylor, Lubbock, and others have proved for us, slowly putting off his brute aspect derived from his early ape-like ancestors, learned by infinitesimal degrees the use of fire, the mode of manufacturing stone hatchets and flint arrowheads, the earliest beginnings of the art of pottery. With drill or flint he became the Prometheus to his own small heap of sticks and dry leaves among the tertiary ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... A moment of suspended animation followed Byrne's words. The sorceress with the spoon ceased stirring the mess in the iron pot, the very trembling of the other's head stopped for the space of breath. In this infinitesimal fraction of a second Byrne had the sense of being really on his quest, of having reached the turn of the path, almost ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... There was a tiny gas range, a convenience not often enjoyed as gas was a luxury not as a rule afforded in Bohemia. The floor was of octagonal, terra cotta tiles and there was a high mullioned window over the infinitesimal sink. Long-handled copper skillets and stew pans were ranged along the walls, suspended from hooks; and a strangely colored china press filled with an odd assortment of dishes ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... street lined on either side by rows of kneeling children, clad in Dame Nature's brown suit alone; each little figure holding up a long-stemmed flower—red hybiscus, creamy tuberose, or snowy gardenia—the imploring faces raised in silent entreaty to the white strangers for the infinitesimal coins which suffice to purchase a sheaf of blossom. Changing lights and shadows sweep across the glancing emerald of the rice-filled vale, darken the purple rifts of mountain gorges, or intensify the luminous azure of soaring crests. Wayside fruit-stalls make gay patches of colour among green ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... of speech, or civilisation, or culture, or refinement in pleasures, or joy of life. From their collective force Humanity gains much in material prosperity. But it is only the material result that it gains, and the man who is poor is in himself absolutely of no importance. He is merely the infinitesimal atom of a force that, so far from regarding him, crushes him: indeed, prefers him crushed, as in that case he ...
— The Soul of Man • Oscar Wilde
... training-school for caste. The Brahmins are the "gold" employees, white American citizens with all the advantages and privileges thereto appertaining. But—and herein we out-Hindu the Hindus—the Brahmin caste itself is divided and subdivided into infinitesimal gradations. Every rank and shade of man has a different salary, and exactly in accordance with that salary is he housed, furnished, and treated down to the least item,—number of electric lights, candle-power, style of bed, ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... whole tone "scale" which can have no other rationale than a violent extension of the enharmonic principle.[A] With a certain quality of kaleidoscope, there is besides (in the harmonic manner of Cesar Franck) an infinitesimal kind of progress in smallest steps. It is a dangerous form of ingenuity, to which the French are perhaps most ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... natural, motherly instruction of babyhood cannot be transplanted bodily into the primary school, where the teacher has fifty or sixty children who are beyond the two most fruitful years which the kindergarten demands. Besides, the teachers of the lower grades cannot introduce more than an infinitesimal number of kindergarten exercises, and at the same time keep up their full routine of primary studies ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... surrendering some of your intensity on that subject, as in hundreds of cases, come to some such church as the Brooklyn Tabernacle, where, while we adhere to the fundamentals of the Gospel, we do not care a rye straw for the infinitesimal differences between evangelical denominations—putting one drop of water on the brow, if that is enough baptism, and if not, then plunging the candidate clear out of sight, if that is preferred—not caring whether you believe you have been foreordained ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... such slightly increased development of the legs is transmitted to the offspring of the bird, which in turn develops its already improved legs by its individual efforts, and transmits the improved tendency. Generation after generation this is repeated, until the sum of the infinitesimal variations, all in the same direction, results in the production of the long-legged wading-bird. In a similar way, through individual effort and transmitted tendency, all the diversified organs of all creatures have been developed—the ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... and the jump out of warp was something not even a veteran took lightly. Rip's round face thinned while they watched. Jellico was still functioning. But if the Captain collapsed the whole responsibility for the snap-out would fall directly on Shannon. An infinitesimal error would condemn them to almost hopeless ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... to his love, but for the present he and Harold were content to go through life never saying anything about themselves to anybody. In fact, they hardly ever thought of Henrietta. She would have been astonished if she had known what an infinitesimal difference she made in ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... named Gabriel Jean Anne Victor Benjamin George Ferdinand Charles Edward Rusticoli, Comte de la Palferine. The Rusticolis came to France with Catherine de Medici, having been ousted about that time from their infinitesimal Tuscan sovereignty. They are distantly related to the house of Este, and connected by marriage to the Guises. On the day of Saint-Bartholomew they slew a goodly number of Protestants, and Charles IX. bestowed ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac
... face to face with the facts as they are. The cabinet will fall amid a general outcry, there will be a few riots, but we shall have peace ... and peace, as you, monsieur, were saying a moment ago, peace without dishonour, at the price of an infinitesimal sacrifice of self-esteem, which will make France greater ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... That infinitesimal dose of The World which Master Ripton Thompson had furnished to the System with such instantaneous and surprising effect was considered by Sir Austin to have worked well, and to be for the time quite sufficient, so that Ripton did not receive a second invitation to Raynham, and Richard had no ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... layers. It was not because my hand got moist, for it did not. No evaporation was going on there, nor any condensation either. Nor did noticeable bubbles form because there was no motion in the mass which might have caused the infinitesimal droplets to collide and to coalesce into something perceivable to ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... in expression (if such a term may be allowed) one from the other; reflecting the various characters of their inhabitants by such fine varieties of effect in the furniture-features generally common to all, as are often, like the infinitesimal varieties of eyes, noses, and mouths, too intricately minute to be traceable. Now, the parlor of Mr. Thorpe's house was neat, clean, comfortably and sensibly furnished. It was of the average size. It had the usual side-board, dining-table, looking-glass, scroll ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... soup in which the quantity of meat was gradually diminished as war went on, as well as the amount of potatoes for which at a later period turnips and carrots were, to a large extent, substituted; and in the evening in good camps there was some sort of thick soup given out or an apple, or an almost infinitesimal piece ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... be calculated to a nicety, there being no moves of which the consequences cannot be foreseen, that we note in contemporary master play a tendency to simplify the middle-game by exchanging pieces, as soon as there is an infinitesimal advantage in the pawn position (compare ...
— Chess Strategy • Edward Lasker
... joint-heiresses; but that Lady Temple—the most incredible part of the story—had blown up the whole affair, made her way into the penetralia of the asylum, and rescued two female 'prentices, so nearly whipped to death that it took an infinitesimal quantity of Rachel's homoeopathy to demolish one entirely, and that the virtuous public was highly indignant that there was no inquest nor trial for manslaughter; but that it was certain that Rachel had been extremely ill ever since. Poor Rachel, there must be some grain of truth ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Edie,' cried Harry demonstratively, 'that's an infinitesimal fraction of Pi; that's a minute decimal of this great, sneering, ugly aggregate "society" that we have to deal with whether we will or no, and that rends us and grinds us to powder if only it can once get in the thin end of a chance. Take shaky bitter old Miss Catherine for your unit, multiply ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... in removing an infinitesimal speck from his left cuff. "Ah," he commented, "the Canned Meat Trust. What have you been doing ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... reveal your gratitude by giving them out again; for the wise man is aware that we retain spiritual qualities only as we give them away. Let your light shine. To him that hath shall be given. The exercise of wisdom brings wisdom; and at the last the infinitesimal quantity of man's knowledge, compared with the Infinite, and the smallness of man's Sympathy when compared with the source from which ours is absorbed, will evolve an abnegation and a humility that will lend a perfect ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... he had killed one ten paces in front of it. In fact this sort of shooting is extremely difficult till the sportsman understands it. The inexperienced hand firing across a line of buck will not kill once in twenty shots, as an infinitesimal difference in elevation, or the slightest error in judging distance—in itself no easy art on those great plains—will spoil his aim. A Boer almost invariably gets immediately behind a herd of running buck, and fires at one about half-way down the line. Consequently ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... was finished Catherine came forward to the infinitesimal dressing-table, and stood a moment before the common cottage looking-glass upon it. The candle behind her showed her the outlines of her head and face in shadow against the white ceiling. Her soft brown hair was plaited high above the broad white ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... much in eliminating crime. The merely intellectual training received in these institutions has little salutary influence upon conduct. Nothing can be mope deplorable than that sectarian bickerings, respecting infinitesimal points in the sanctions of morality, should result in the children of England receiving hardly any moral instruction whatever. Conduct, as the late Mr. Matthew Arnold has so often told us, is three fourths of life. ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... with the speed of light. The young man's mental revolution was over and done with in a second's time; the pause was infinitesimal. Almost as she finished her last remark, Mr. Carstairs's daughter turned from the rail and took a step forward upon the deck, as though to jog her host toward that promised tour of the yacht which ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... watergates. Their local importance is comparatively small. They are important or not according to whether they are on trade routes, and easily accessible. An infinitesimal part of the trade that flows through New Orleans originates or terminates there. The back country gets the bulk of the business. The development of the harbor is for the service of the interior. It is ...
— The Industrial Canal and Inner Harbor of New Orleans • Thomas Ewing Dabney
... with a great, and what seemed to us, an unappeasable curiosity as to what we were going to see. It was not a very big ship, in spite of the grandiloquent descriptions in the advertisements, or the lithograph wherein she cut grandly and evenly through huge waves to the manifest discomfiture of infinitesimal sailing craft bobbing alongside. She was manned entirely by Germans. The room stewards waited at table, cleaned the public saloons, kept the library, rustled the baggage, and played in the band. That is why we took our music ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... be alive. The air was full of noteworthy work done by the older men of the place and of hopes that one might find a way to get a little working power one's self. One longed to be a doer of the word, not a hearer only, a creator of his own infinitesimal fraction of the product, bound in God's name to ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... two, bringing conscience to bear, and being very uncomfortable sometimes when you do. But as for recognising the mystic solemnity of all these days of yours in that they are welded together, and are all tending to one end, and that each passing moment contributes its infinitesimal share to the awful solemn whole—that has seldom entered your minds, and for a great many of you it has never had any effect in restraining or ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... said, "you have accused me of obstructing the measures of the government for the defense of the country. Sir, I am trying to save the whole human race from a danger in comparison with which that of war is infinitesimal—a danger which is rushing down upon us with appalling speed, and which will strike every land on the globe simultaneously. Within seven months not a warship or any other existing ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... alien; coldly, deadly, alien. He was a tiny spark of life in a hostile sea of Nothing and there was no one to help him. The Nothing outside was waiting day and night for the most infinitesimal leak or crack in the walls; the Nothing that had been waiting out there since time without beginning and would wait for time ...
— The Nothing Equation • Tom Godwin
... a flashing bit of vivid blue, shot from a tall pine, jeering shrilly at Butch; out on the lake, a trout leaped above the water for an infinitesimal second, its shining scales gleaming in the sunshine. From the cook-tent, where old Hinky-Dink grumbled at the frying pan, the appetizing odor of frying fish assailed the football ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... obstacle to any material improvement in our mathematical teaching. Professor Perry, in his opening address to the Engineering Section of the British Association at Belfast, expressed an opinion that the average boy of fifteen might be got to the infinitesimal calculus. As a matter of fact the average English boy of fifteen has only just looked at elementary algebra. But every one who knows anything of educational science knows, that by the simple expedient of throwing overboard all that non-educational, mind- sickening and ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... small, diminutive, little, narrow, short, tiny, inconsiderable, mean, paltry, slender, trifling, infinitesimal, microscopic, petty, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... tremor, oblivious to all that but a short time before had constituted their lives. They forgot the presence of the city on the other side of the mountain; the existence of humanity, of which they were infinitesimal parts.... Completely alone, penetrating each other through their pupils! Thus, thus forever! There was a crackling sound in the dark, like dry branches creaking before ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... body seemed too small to hold her joy; she simply could not bring her mind to leave it. She rushed off a short distance and brought some infinitesimal atom of something not visible to our coarse sight, but very important in hers. This she arranged carefully, then slipped into the nest and moulded it into place by pressing her breast against it and ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... united by any force. Thus the two ions are, in a way, dissociated. Clausius, who was the first to represent the phenomena by this symbol, supposed, in order not to shock the feelings of chemists too much, that this dissociation only affected an infinitesimal fraction of the total number of the molecules of the salt, and ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... time without any help from Tuly. The linkage fairly snapped together and shrank instantaneously to a point. Hilton thought of Terra and there it was; full size, yet occupying only one infinitesimal section of a dimensionless point. The multi-mind visited relatives of all eight, but could not make intelligible contact. If asleep, it caused pleasant dreams; if awake, pleasant thoughts of the loved one so far away in space; but that was all. It visited ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... of the microscopic fungus—a mere infinitesimal ovoid particle, which finds space and duration enough to multiply into countless millions in the body of a living fly; and then of the wealth of foliage, the luxuriance of flower and fruit, which lies between this bald ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... to myself: Be no longer a Chaos, but a World, or even Worldkin. Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called To-day; for the Night cometh, wherein ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... one of the most important points of tiger shooting—i.e., that of taking up such a position as will enable you to fire to right or left without moving your body, or rather I should say without moving it more than in a most infinitesimal degree, for, as I have previously shown, it is movement of any kind which alone readily attracts the attention of an animal. It is evident that, if you sit facing the point from which the tiger is expected, though ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... is this by which the Indestructible is apprehended. That which cannot be seen nor seized, which is without origin and qualities, without eyes and ears, without hands and feet, the eternal, all-pervading, omnipresent, infinitesimal, that which is imperishable, that it is which the wise regard as the source of all beings' (Mu. Up. I, 1, 5; 6).—Here the doubt arises whether the source of all beings which is spoken of as characterised by invisibility, &c. be the pradhana ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... animals show, unmistakably, that they are, in a measure, fully conscious of certain phenomena in the economy of nature, and while I am not prepared to state that any element of worship enters into their regard, I yet believe that an infinitesimal increase in the development of their psychical beings would, undoubtedly, lead some of them to a natural religion such as ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... the East End as teachers and savants. They do not understand the simple sociology of Christ, yet they come to the miserable and the despised with the pomp of social redeemers. They have worked faithfully, but beyond relieving an infinitesimal fraction of misery and collecting a certain amount of data which might otherwise have been more scientifically and less expensively collected, they have ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... here, that as I sang the first four lines, the loveliest feet became clear upon the black pedestal; and ever as I sang, it was as if a veil were being lifted up from before the form, but an invisible veil, so that the statue appeared to grow before me, not so much by evolution, as by infinitesimal degrees of added height. And, while I sang, I did not feel that I stood by a statue, as indeed it appeared to be, but that a real woman-soul was revealing itself by successive stages of imbodiment, and ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... word, because they live more than we. Let us envy them, if at all, because they have more than we to give to God and men, and answer with a fuller and more eager impulse to the breath of inspiration, and can throw a less infinitesimal weight into the scale ...
— Strong Souls - A Sermon • Charles Beard
... their unsuccessful fellows. In the case of the hawks, the effect of the few meals on the entire rapacious family or order would certainly be nil; and it is impossible to believe for a moment that the comparatively infinitesimal amount of blood sucked by mosquitoes can. serve to invigorate the species. The wonder is that the machinery, which accomplishes nothing, should continue in such perfect ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... considerably; it was the triumph of the unexpected. The two doctors who made the autopsy were obliged to confess that they could not discover the faintest trace of any kind of foul play; their most exquisite tests and reagents failed to detect the presence of poison in the most infinitesimal quantity. Death, they found, had been caused by a somewhat obscure and scientifically interesting form of brain disease. The tissue of the brain and the molecules of the grey matter had undergone a most extraordinary ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... sexual value put upon her by the males of that society. The three squaws who walk behind the Indian, and whom he has captured in battle or bought for a few axes or lengths of tobacco, and over whom he exercises the despotic right of life and death, are probably all three of infinitesimal value in his eyes, compared with the value of his single, free wife to one of our ancient, monogamous German ancestors; while the hundred wives and concubines purchased by a Turkish pasha have probably not even an approximate value in his eyes, when compared with the value which thousands ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... those in the centre. Unfortunately, however, this is an optical impossibility and the field is always spherical in shape. Some makers succeed in giving a larger central area that is in focus at one time than others, and although this may theoretically cause an infinitesimal sacrifice of other qualities, it should always be sought for. Successive zones and the entire peripheral ring should come into focus with the alteration of the fine adjustment. This simultaneous sharpness of the entire circle is an indication of the perfect ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... a stepping-stone to vice, a gradual initiation into desperate play. Just as addiction to absinthe is imbibed by potions quite innocuous in the beginning, so the new Casino at Nice schools the gamester from the outset, slowly and by infinitesimal degrees preparing him for ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... and silence dwarfs even thought. The things which are great, which have significance, which have meaning to the human mind are lost in such a world. Life itself becomes infinitesimal. ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... that if the Pope got the money it would not be expended for the benefit of Christendom; moreover, he did actually hand over four thousand pounds. In fact, he took the Church as he found it. There was but one almost infinitesimal curtailment of ecclesiastical privileges in his reign, necessitated by political considerations and accepted by the Pope, whereby the right of Sanctuary was withdrawn in ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... Maud and Elsie went down on their knees, and travelled slowly across the floor, pushing infinitesimal creases before them, while the others pulled and strained to make the most of the advantage thus given. It was a lengthy business, and the crawling operation was repeated several times over before the first ring could be induced to catch over its ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... allness of God under a different form; and this brings us to the very heart of the matter. We must at length face the one conclusion which does not land us in self-contradiction—viz., that in the act of creation God limits His own infinity, no matter to how infinitesimal an extent. On the alternative supposition we have ultimately to think of God and man either as All plus something or All plus zero—which is absurd. Mr. Chesterton has rendered useful service by insisting ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... drawer, and proceeded to investigate her finances rather anxiously. She had come away with nothing but the money that happened to be in her purse, and her little string of pearls, her one jewel, upon which a pawnbroker, realizing her utter ignorance of values, had made her an infinitesimal advance. The lessons she was taking were expensive, and she knew that she must save for a time of need not far in the future. It was tantalizing to know that the generous allowance from her mother was accumulating untouched in a Frankfort bank, because she did not dare to draw upon it ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... muttered Crane; then he shivered. Had the imbecile's talk of voices got on to his nerves? Surely a voice had whispered derisively in his ear, "Which one is the poor, weak devil?" And in answer within his soul Crane knew that the margin was indeed of infinitesimal narrowness. Cass, hastened in his temptation, yielding to the first insane impulse, not knowing that the damnation of a friend hung on his act, had fallen. He, Crane, in full knowledge that two innocent lives might ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... his way, and leaned his back against a huge birch-tree. The ragged, ancient, sweet-smelling bark felt familiar and friendly to his touch. Here he stood, sniffing the still air with discrimination, testing with initiated ears every faint forest breathing. The infinitesimal and incessant stir of growth and change and readjustment was vaguely audible to his fine sense, making a rhythmic background against which the slightest unusual sound, even to the squeak of a wood-mouse, ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... to hold on to the limber and think at the same time of the great game of which I had become an infinitesimal part. I was sitting on the right hand side of the limber close to the wheel and, before long, the effort to think and hold on at the same time was too much for me, and I fell into a fairly sound sleep, Sergeant ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... of the Delaware point to the increase of their business, infinitesimal as it is, compared to the ever multiplying production of British shipyards. But whence does this increase arise? From the demand of our people for carrying grain, cotton and other products to Europe, and bringing back merchandise therefrom ...
— Free Ships: The Restoration of the American Carrying Trade • John Codman
... Carrie Samstag, even in her lovely pink night-dress, a crone with pain, and the cables out dreadfully in her neck, began by infinitesimal processes to swing herself gently to the side of the bed, unrelaxed inch by unrelaxed inch, softly and with the cunning ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... there was the question of contraband. Orders were very precise on the subject; the Cabinet had limitless power since the opening of the war; if there was any smuggling it was infinitesimal, and, as to foodstuffs, Switzerland regretted she could not import more for her own needs. The Government had established a monopoly and forbidden re-exportation, but supplies were not up to the normal. The route ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Cork 1827), F.R.S., is a Senior Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, and a distinguished writer on mathematical subjects, especially on the differential, integral, and infinitesimal calculuses. ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... the instrument, we find the fluid swarming with animals of various shapes and magnitudes. Some are darting through the water with great rapidity, while others are pursuing and devouring creatures more infinitesimal than themselves. Many are attached to the twig by long delicate threads, several have their bodies inclosed in a transparent tube, from one end of which the animal partly protrudes and then recedes, while others ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... spray. Two things especially struck the observers: the water made but little curve or sweep on passing over the edge, and then rushed down to the abyss at almost lightning speed, shivering itself to infinitesimal particles on striking any rock or projection at the side. Its behaviour was, of course, due to its weight, and to the fact that on Jupiter bodies fall 40.98 feet the first second, instead of sixteen feet, as on earth, and at correspondingly increasing ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... equability of temper; his exceeding gentleness, kindness, forbearance, lovingness, charity; his loyalty: to friends, to convictions, to promises, half-promises, infinitesimal fractions and shadows of promises; (There was a requirement of him which I considered an atrocity, an injustice, an outrage; I wanted to implore him to repudiate it; Fred Grant said, "Save your labor, I know him; he is in doubt as to whether he made ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... humanity, are repellant to the ethical sense; and that those who persistently advocate them as beneficial to human or animal life MUST JUSTIFY THEIR CLAIMS BY RESULTS.... Even admitting that experiments on animals have contributed to the relief of human suffering, such measure of relief is infinitesimal compared with the pain which has been ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... of boughs would be dry, but the night would be his, and the good, cool ground, and the soughing of the pines, and the sweet, infinitesimal and innumerable sounds of the breathing, sleeping earth. He found the place and threw himself down. Why, here were green boughs under him, not the dried remains of what he had placed there! Kitty—it was Kitty, dear, gay, joyous, various Kitty, who had done this thing, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... contemplation will preserve something of the same freedom and impartiality in the world of action and emotion. It will view its purposes and desires as parts of the whole, with the absence of insistence that results from seeing them as infinitesimal fragments in a world of which all the rest is unaffected by any one man's deeds. The impartiality which, in contemplation, is the unalloyed desire for truth, is the very same quality of mind which, in action, is justice, and in emotion is that universal ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... notice of him; this gradually encouraged him to take more notice of other people, when he found, not altogether to his surprise, that the majority of those passing through the Park at that late hour were hardly of his own class. So much the more infinitesimal were the chances of his being recognised or even suspected for what he was. There were young men in straw hats, there were red-coated soldiers, and there were girls. They all filled the schoolboy with their fascinating possibilities. ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... be need to put this law in motion. The children of the Dawn, remember, will not be the puny self-ridden creatures that we are. They will not say, 'Is this what I want to do?' but 'Shall I, by doing this, be (a) harming or (b) benefiting—no matter in how infinitesimal a degree—the ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... perish. This Mr. Wallace calls, the survival of the fittest. They will transmit their superior size, or swiftness, or better color, or whatever superiority they possess, to their offspring. The process will go on in successive generations, each adding an infinitesimal quantity to the stock gained by the past generation; just as breeders of improved stock increase the weight of cattle by breeding from the largest; or breeders of race-horses increase the speed by breeding from the swiftest. In this way varieties from the ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... with infinitesimal eyes and went out of the room. He had the air of wishing to wipe the perspiration from his brows and to exclaim, "Quelle femme!" But if he had any such wish he mastered it until the door ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... Rene answered, "we will fight again when summer comes." There was no delay, however, in the division of the spoils. The Burgundian treasure was distributed among Rene's allies, and the ignorant soldiers received articles worth many times their pay, which they, in many cases, disposed of for an infinitesimal ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... the infinitesimal particles of sachet powder settled in the lining of his nose. He became serious, and was conscious of a growing feeling of dislike; he began to be upset over the whole matter. But his conscience compelled him to persist in his ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... tremendous combination of brain, nerve, muscle, material, machinery and capital depends for its movement and remuneration upon but two sources of income—circulation and advertisements—the unit measurements of which are infinitesimal—for the most part represented by wholesale prices; from one-half a cent to two cents per copy for the daily newspaper, and in like proportion for the weeklies and monthlies; and by from one-tenth of a cent to one cent per line per thousand of circulation for advertising space. Verily, in a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... where you seem to see a speck of something in motion, is an immense mass-meeting. Look sharper, and you will see a mite brandishing his mandibles in an excited manner. That is the great Mr. Soandso, defining his position amid tumultuous and irrepressible cheers. That infinitesimal creature, upon whom some score of others, as minute as he, are gazing in open-mouthed admiration, is a famous philosopher, expounding to a select audience their capacity for the Infinite. That scarce discernible pufflet of smoke and ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... most part, but two kinds of men living in it, living on opposite sides of the same truths glaring at each other. On the one hand the anaemically spiritual, broad, big, pallid men, and on the other the funny, infinitesimal, provincial, matter cornered, ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... measuring a couple of inches across and weighing about three ounces avoirdupois, rust-red in colour with purple streaks and yellow mottlings, is now lying before me. The mineralogist would tell me that its commercial value is naught, or something infinitesimal; which is doubtless true enough, as tens of thousands of tons of the same material lie close to the surface under the green turf and golden blossoming furze at the spot where I picked up my specimen. The lapidary would not look at it; nevertheless, it ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... sense. There is no reason why Chinese sentences should not be dissected, by those who take pleasure in such operations, into subject, copula and predicate, but it should be early impressed upon the beginner that the profit likely to accrue to him therefrom is infinitesimal. As for fixed rules of grammatical construction, so far from being a help, he will find them a positive hindrance. It should rather be his aim to free his mind from such trammels, and to accustom himself to look upon ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... as we pass from printed matter to life itself, as soon as we throw a glance at society, we are struck by the infinitesimal part played by the Government. Balzac already has remarked how millions of peasants spend the whole of their lives without knowing anything about the State, save the heavy taxes they are compelled to pay. Every day millions of transactions are made without Government intervention, ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... observed her more closely in the broad daylight, on the deck of the steamer, however, I began to see that her face was marked by innumerable small lines, which followed the shape of her features like the carefully traced shadows of an engraving; they crossed her forehead, they made labyrinths of infinitesimal wrinkles about her eyes, they curved along the high cheek-bones and the somewhat sunken cheeks, and they surrounded the mouth and made shadings on her chin. They were not like ordinary wrinkles. They looked as though they had been drawn with infinite precision and care by the hand of ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... he happened to be in the booking office of the Gare du Nord one morning and overheard a very beautiful girl say: "Then we shall sail from Southampton day after to-morrow." Of a truth, it is the infinitesimal things that count heaviest. ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... now at the dinner-table at Gosford, sardonically watching a real "fashionable lady" who had arrived in the afternoon and was sitting next Lord Wemyss at the farther end—with a wonderful frizzled head, an infinitesimal waist sheathed in white muslin and blue ribbons, rouged cheeks, a marvelous concatenation of jewels, and a caressing, gesticulating manner meant, at fifty, to suggest the ways of "sweet and twenty." The frizzled head drew nearer and nearer to Lord Wemyss, the fingers flourished and pointed; ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... impatient and eager for the trial. He gave a glance at the fastenings of his skates and then, sweeping around to the starting-place, he skated slowly at first but with ever-increasing speed. As he reached the gilt chair he paused for the infinitesimal part of a second as a horse does at a hurdle, and then, with one clean spring, was over safely. As he slid along the smooth ice, unable to check his impetus, he could hear the applause of the spectators on the shore and the exclamations and ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... feeling and expression is good, however accompanied. Otherwise, the pianoforte is not much to my mind. All its intervals are false, and temperament is a poor substitute for natural intonation. Then its incapability of sustaining a note has led, as the only means of producing effect, to those infinitesimal subdivisions of sound, in which all sentiment and expression are ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... means desirable that results, other than those which are always due to such practice, should in any way be hastened. For such results might easily be only an infinitesimal part of what should really take place. Indeed, in the matter of occult development, partial results are, more often than not, the cause of considerable delay in complete development. Contact with such forms of spiritual life corresponding to partial ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... exposure of all canker, and as this can be done with equal certainty with the aid of the hot iron, there can be no necessity for performing it. The pain of cauterizing cankered tissue, which is a necessary operation, is infinitesimal (canker largely destroying sensation), compared with the pain produced in the totally unnecessary process of tearing healthy horn from a ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... were hopeful of the success of her undertaking, while at times even her undaunted spirit must have doubted. In John Howard's time the prisons of England had been distinguished for vice, filth, brutality, and suffering; and although some little improvement had taken place, it was almost infinitesimal. Old castles, or gate-houses, with damp, dark dungeons and narrow cells, were utilized for penal purposes. It was common to see a box fastened up under one of the narrow, iron-barred windows overlooking the street, with the inscription, ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... from the purely reflex, through the consensual, to the voluntary. Taking the case Mr. Bain cites, it is manifest that from a heat of such moderate degree that the withdrawal from it is wholly voluntary, we may advance by infinitesimal steps to a heat which compels involuntary withdrawal; and that there is a stage at which the voluntary and involuntary actions are mixed. But the difficulty of absolute discrimination is no reason for neglecting the broad general contrast; any more than it is for confounding light ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... object between his thumb and forefinger, "is the finest cambric needle. I will take upon the point of it an invisible portion of the substance I speak of." Here he carefully picked out a pill from the basin, and as carefully placed it upon the table, where he detached an infinitesimal atom of it and held it up on the point of the needle. "This particle," he said, "is so small that it cannot be seen except with the aid of a microscope. I will now place needle and all on the machine and touch ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... free on the loose one hundred meter cable that attached it to its anchor, and which had had fifteen meters of slack when the ship first began its infinitesimal ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... dark wall of the east, and presently his eyes picked out a dot against its background, infinitesimal like the light of a firefly, but not to be ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... manner not to be defined a subtle change was taking place in the wilderness. Nothing definite could be instanced. Each morning of that Indian summer the skies were as soft, the sun as grateful, the leaves as gorgeous in their blazonment, yet each morning an infinitesimal something that had been there the day before was lacking, and for it an infinitesimal something had been substituted. The change from hour to hour was not perceptible; from week to week it was. The stillness grew in portent; the forest ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... Figures, in high relief, everywhere—animal, human and divine; a riot of impossible forms, impossibly intertwined; ghoulish in any aspect, and in moonlight hideously so:—bewildering, repellent, frankly obscene. But even while his cultured eye rejected it all, some infinitesimal fragment of himself knew there was symbolic meaning in that orgy of sculpture, could one ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... returned toward the house, there stole over her a pleasant weakness, a childlike and tremulous trust; and she felt the soft air more keenly, smelled more delicate fragrances, heard a multitude of infinitesimal sounds that had not reached ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... totality, would ruin it. Absolute unity brooks no degrees—as well might you claim absolute purity for a glass of water because it contains but a single little cholera-germ. The independence, however infinitesimal, of a part, however small, would be to the Absolute as ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... unfortunate fellow, not near so black as he was painted; but we will try and avoid personalities altogether in talk, won't we? We will range the fields of science, dear madam, and communicate to each other the pleasing results of our studies. We will, if you please, examine the infinitesimal wonders of nature through the microscope. We will cultivate entomology. We will sit with our arms round each other's waists on the pons asinorum, and see the stream of mathematics flow beneath. We will take refuge in cards, and play at "beggar my neighbour", ...
— English Satires • Various
... thing was infinitesimal. Ever since man learned how to liberate intra-atomic energy, the vortices of disintegration had been breaking out of control. Such accidents had been happening, were happening, and would continue indefinitely ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... will be wrangling—for woman will fret About anything infinitesimal small: Like the Sage in our Plato, I'm 'anxious to get On the side'—on the sunnier side—'of a wall.' Let the wind of the world toss the nations like rooks, If only you'll leave me at peace with ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... error by the complicated imperfections of their own science. But he who loves greatly possesses in his intuition the capacities of all instruments of observation which man has invented and applied to his use. The lenses of his eyes can magnify the infinitesimal detail to the dimensions of common things, and bring objects to his vision from immeasurable distances; the labyrinth of his ear can choose and distinguish amidst the harmonies and the discords of the world, muffling ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... must set limits to our wishes, curb our desires, moderate our anger, always remembering that an individual can attain only an infinitesimal share in anything that is worth having; and that, on the other hand, everyone must incur many of the ills of life; in a word, we must bear and forbear—abstinere et sustinere; and if we fail to observe this rule, no position of wealth or power will prevent us from ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the nervous system, and therefore its material substance, which we have already settled to be only our way of docketing molecular disturbances. The same vibrations, therefore, form the substance remembered, introduce an infinitesimal dose of it within the brain, modify the substance remembering, and, in the course of time, create and further modify the mechanism of both the sensory and motor nerves. Thought and ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... how is it possible for him to pay her back short of ruining himself? Haven't you ever felt that if the whole world was yours to give you'd give it gladly? Why complain then when afterwards you are only asked to give that infinitesimal portion of the world that happens at the moment to be yours? If a man is ruined for his wife, if cares shorten his life, even then he has done far, far less than he once said he was willing and eager ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... rest of my summer along these gray canals, especially since Bob's development brings a daily surprise. Only to-day I caught sight of him half hidden in an angle of a wall, surrounded by a group of little tots who were begging him for paper pin-wheels which a vender had stopped to sell, an infinitesimal small coin the size of a cuff button purchasing a dozen or more. When I again looked up from a canvas each tot had a pin-wheel, and later on Bob, that much poorer in pocket, sneaked back and promptly ...
— The Parthenon By Way Of Papendrecht - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... that neither about the lady's person, nor in the appearance of the railway carriage, was there the slightest sign of struggle or even of resistance. Only the look in the poor woman's eyes spoke of sudden terror, of the rapid vision of an unexpected and violent death, which probably only lasted an infinitesimal fraction of a second, but which had left its indelible mark upon the face, otherwise so ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... foot the little body in his arms stiffened suddenly. As one who saw the supreme achievement of a life-time swept away by some one careless joggle of an infinitesimal part, the Little Girl stared up agonizingly into her father's face. "Oh, I don't think—'buzzed' was the word!" she began convulsively. ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... a mission mad enough to measure up with the antics of the frantic citizens of Jerusalem. It will not be even a glorious defeat. You will be swallowed up in an immense calamity too tremendous to offer publicity to so infinitesimal a detail as the death of one Philadelphus Maccabaeus. Agrippa has deserted the city and when a Herod lets go of his own, his own is not worth the holding. The city is torn between factions as implacable as the sea and the land. The conservatives are either dead or ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... molecules; whence there is no reason to doubt that each, small as it is, may have a molecular structure sufficiently complex to give rise to the phenomena of life. And, as a matter of fact, by patient watching of the place at which these infinitesimal living particles were discharged, our observers assured themselves of their growth and development into new monads. In about four hours from their being set free, they had attained a sixth of the length of the parent, with the characteristic cilia, though at first they were ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... Nevertheless, as I got into my jacket and put on my hat in the suffocation of the cloak-room I was still under an exhilarating spell. I belonged, for time never so little, to the giant machine of which the fifth floor of Parsons' is only an infinitesimal humming, singing part. I had earned seven cents! Seven cents of the $4,000,000 paid to Lynn shoe employees were mine. I had bought the right to one piece of bread by the toil of my unskilled labour. ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... end all the efforts of men who entrust to others the troublesome execution of humane intentions! The scales of earthly justice are poised in their quivering equilibrium, not by huge hundred-weights, but by infinitesimal grains, needing the most wary caution, the most considerate patience, the most delicate touch, to arrange or readjust. Few of our errors, national or individual, come from the design to be unjust; most of ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... exist, save as an incident of the past. Through the curtain of smoke which oozed upward through his mustache at regular intervals, his eyes gleamed alert, interested, concentrated upon a problem compared to which Willy was only an infinitesimal insect. ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... life:—cleaning pans, washing jars, sorting herbs, scouring pails, running numberless infinitesimal errands, doing everything that nobody else liked, hard-worked from morning to night, and called up from her hard pallet to recommence her toil before she had realised that she was asleep. Ursula's temper, too, did not improve with time; and Parnel, the associate and contemporary ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... minutes later the Big Three were in Brandon's private study; staring intently into a screen of ground glass upon which played flickering, flashing lights, while the black-haired physicist manipulated micrometer dials in infinitesimal arcs. ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... you there," he replied; "you are getting your own infinitesimal world confused with the real overwhelming majority; you haven't an idea how it feels and, in particular, of what it thinks of you, smoking and gambling and damning your fate. It may be largely envy—personally I am convinced it is—but they have you ticketed straight ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... piece of paper. "A letter! ay, now I mind me; it was received on the morning of the gale, when I was absorbed in delicate investigations. It is still legible. From poor dear Casimir! It is as well," he chuckled, "that I have educated him to patience. Poor Casimir and his correspondence—his infinitesimal, timorous, idiotic correspondence!" ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... became the most comfortable of sleeping-places. Murgatroyd remained in his cubbyhole, his tail curled over his nose. There were comforting, unheard, easily dismissable murmurings now and again. They kept the feeling of life alive in the ship. But for such infinitesimal stirrings of sound—carefully recorded for this exact purpose—the feel of the ship would have ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... be understood by this? Should he sprinkle his pages with sympathetic adjectives, so many to the paragraph, as the country compositor sprinkles commas? Surely not. The little gentlemen are not quite so infinitesimal as that. There have been many tellers of jokes, and the greater of them, it is recorded, never smiled at their own, not even in the crucial moment when the audience ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London |
