"Unessential" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... observed the Philosopher, "consists in avoiding the unessential. I have a friend who never yet to my knowledge reached the end of a story. It is intensely unimportant whether the name of the man who said the thing or did the deed be Brown or Jones or Robinson. But she will worry herself into a fever trying to recollect. 'Dear, dear me!' she ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... based my action at the inquest. Leaving that half-hour and its occurrences out of the question, I resolved to answer such questions as might be put me as truthfully as I could; the great fault with men situated as I was usually being that they lied too much, thus committing themselves on unessential matters. But alas, in thus planning for my own safety, I forgot one thing, and that was the dangerous position in which I should thus place Mary Leavenworth as the one benefited by the crime. Not till the inference ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... and the aurochs," says Buffon, "differ only in unessential characteristics, and are, by consequence, of the same species as our domestic cattle, so that I believe all the pretended species of the ox, whether ancient or modern, may be reduced to three—the bull, the buffalo, and ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... going to describe that most turbulent afternoon. The details are unessential to the main point, which was our decision. Counsel was appointed by the court from among the numerous ex-lawyers. The man who took charge of the defence was from New York, and had served some ten years in the profession before the gold fever took ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... given us before. Sharp wrote sometimes, I have no doubt, with the thing he describes before him but oftener, it would seem, from notes, and oftenest, I take it, from memory. Sometimes it is best to write thus from memory. The unessential will fade out, the essential remain; but with Sharp the trouble is that the first observation has often been hurried. He was content with the beauty that he saw when he first noticed the incident; he did not wait to observe what in the further actions of ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... now understood among men, be the latest evolutionary form of a series of mistakes, fallacies, and illusions, if its germ be a blunder, and its present form only the result of progressive but unessential refinements on that blunder, the inference that religion is untrue—that nothing actual corresponds to its hypothesis—is very easily drawn. The inference is not, perhaps, logical, for all our science itself is the result of progressive refinements ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... rendered possible by the fact that the duties of the police are not confined to matters affecting crime and public order—matters which the whole community consider essential, and in regard to which any police negligence is counted a serious charge—but are extended to unessential matters which a considerable section of the community, including many of the police themselves, view with complete indifference. It is impossible to regard seriously a conspiracy to defeat laws which a large proportion of citizens regard as ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... and was so faint that at times she could decipher it only under direct sunlight. She had succeeded, however, in making a copy, verbatim except for occasional improvement in the grammatical form of a sentence, or now and then the omission, for brevity's sake, of something unessential. The narrative has since been severely abridged to bring it within the limits of ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... century hand may be fairly understood by a comparison of ordinary German and Roman type. In the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries the writing of each century may be discerned, while the general tendency is towards complication, use of abbreviations and contractions, and development of unessential parasitic forms of letters. ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... forms of military doctrine, and the greatest of these is frightening. Ares, the god of war, has two satellites, Terror and Affright. Fear is the Gorgon's head. The serpents are very real, very effective, in their way, but logically they are unessential tresses. The Gorgon stares you out of countenance, and that suffices. The object is the removal of an obstacle. Killing and wounding are but means to an end. Hand-to-hand fighting is rare, and it would be easy to count the ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... swears by her. Those awesome Archives! The reports of the Council of Ten alone stretch away through vasty halls of death. And then people talk of writing history! How fortunate that the exact details of royal, political and military events are as unessential as they are unattainable! Real history consists mainly of the things that haven't happened—the millions of everyday lives, sunrise and sunset, ships and harvests, the winds and the rain, and the bargains in the market-place. The reading of ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... phenomena of the universe. On the other hand, if the teleologist assert that this, that, or the other result of the working of any part of the mechanism of the universe is its purpose and final cause, the mechanist can always inquire how he knows that it is more than an unessential incident—the mere ticking of the clock, which he mistakes for its function. And there seems to be no reply to this inquiry, any more than to the further, not irrational, question, why trouble oneself about matters which are out of ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... fact that a large number of women are not sick, are not good for nothing, are not childless, and, therefore, do not consult physicians; but the reasoning which shall judge and weigh the facts presented, assigning to each its proper value, and, discarding unessential elements, shall draw a just conclusion, is not ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... made light of the assemblage of evil spirits at Boolabong which had seemed so important to Jacko, he by no means did regard the news as unessential. Of Nokes's villany he was convinced. Of Boscobel he had imprudently made a second enemy at a most inauspicious time. Georgie Brownbie had long been his bitter foe. He had prosecuted and, perhaps, persecuted Georgie for various offenses; but as Georgie was supposed to be as ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... modes of studying whatever books are suitable for the end. One man has to read in Chemistry, another in Law, another in Divinity, and so on. For each and all of these, there is a profitable and an unprofitable mode of working, and the speciality of the matter is unessential. ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... the name applies. Thus a particular complexion, colour, height, creed, nationality cannot form any part of the intension of the term 'man.' But among the attributes common to a class we cannot distinguish between essential and unessential, except by the aid of definition itself. Formal logic cannot recognise any order of priority between the attributes common to all the members of a class, such as to necessitate our recognising some as genera and differentiae ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... not undervalue the importance of any Truth. We utter no word that can be deemed irreverent by any one of any faith. We do not tell the Moslem that it is only important for him to believe that there is but one God, and wholly unessential whether Mahomet was His prophet. We do not tell the Hebrew that the Messiah whom he expects was born in Bethlehem nearly two thousand years ago; and that he is a heretic because he will not so believe. And as little do we tell the sincere Christian ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... effusions. From all these circumstances in combination arose, first, Pulci's determination to write a poem of a mixed order, which should retain for him the ear of the many, and at the same time give rise to a poetry of romance worthy of higher auditors; second, his banter of what he considered unessential and injurious dogmas of belief, in favour of those principles of the religion of charity which inflict no contradiction on the heart and understanding; third, the trouble which seems to have been given him by ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... helped him over many dangers. His discrimination had none of the hair-splitting sophistry of the ancient teachers. He despised useless subtleties, and, with admirable tact, let go what seemed to him unessential; but, if he was not to lose his faith or his reason, he could do nothing, after all, but found the new doctrine on words and conditions of life fifteen hundred years old, and in some cases he became the victim of what his adversary Eck called ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... which is healthy in as far as it insists on truth, has become unhealthy, in as far as it confounds truth with familiarity, and predominance of unessential details. There are other truths besides coats and waistcoats, pots and pans, drawlng-rooms and suburban villas. Life has other aims besides these which occupy the conversation of "Society." And the painter who devotes years to a work representing ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... learned, much to his surprise, from Arthur Berkeley, that Ernest was angry at his treatment of the Schurzian leader: 'My dear Le Breton, I enclose cheque for eight guineas, for your two articles. I hope you didn't mind the way I was obliged to cut them up in some unessential details, so as to suit the policy of the paper. I kept whatever was really most distinctive as embodying special information in them. You know we are above all things strictly moderate. Please send us another ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... earlier in life. At the same time, one could trace in all this the influence of the decay of the musical and dramatic life of the period, which Spontini, situated as he was in Berlin, was well able to witness. The surprising fact that he saw his chief merit in unessential details showed plainly that his judgment had become childish; in my opinion this did not detract from the great value of his works, however much he might exaggerate their value. In a sense I could ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... nowadays are without furniture that nobody uses, chairs that nobody ever sits on, books that nobody ever reads, ornaments that nobody ever wants, pictures that nobody ever looks at; an accumulation of unessential objects that does credit chiefly to the activity of manufacturers and merchants catering to our modern lust for unnecessary expenditure. Not so many centuries ago one or two books made quite a respectable ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... material elements—then your son-in-law, black though he is, shows far more fair than black, possessing, in fact, this abstract kind of beauty to that degree that his colour is forgotten. In short, "delighted" here seems to mean, lightened of all that is gross or unessential. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various
... sonata, op. 2, No. 2, Largo; the unessential details omitted in the following (in order to economize space) appear, of course, in the original,—to which the student ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... information. We are only to infer that he deals with the gospels arbitrarily; accepting them, or rejecting them, as they accord or disagree with his preconceptions. Indeed, this is what "essential Christianity" must always be. What each picker and chooser likes is "essential." What he does not like is unessential, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... mood of the mind, often something in itself accidental and transitory, while that of the latter is to convey the impression made upon the mind by something outside of it, but taken up into the mind and idealized (that is, stripped of all unessential particulars) by it. The one would fain set forth your view of the thing (modified, perhaps, by your breakfast), the other would set forth the very thing itself in its most concise individuality. Subjective poetry may be profound and imaginative if it deal with the primary emotions ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... for a young writer can only follow the German plan of conjuring things up "from the depths of his inward consciousness." The moment our author quits this sure ground, her touch becomes uncertain and her colors inharmonious. Character-painting is unessential to a romance, belonging as it does properly to the novel of actual life, in which the romantic element is equally out of place. Fielding, accordingly, the greatest artist in character since Shakspeare, hardly admits sentiment, and never romance, into his master-pieces. Hawthorne, again, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... depravity in the eyes of the next generation. The novel may become a classic, because it represents human nature, or even the whimsicalities of a period; but the illustrations of the artist only provoke a smile, because he has represented merely the unessential and the fleeting. The interest in his work is archaeological, not artistic. The genius of the great portrait-painter may to some extent overcome the disadvantages of contemporary costume, but if the costume of his period is hideous and lacks the essential lines of beauty, his work is ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... or not the U-bars act with the horizontal and diagonal steel to form truss systems is relatively unessential; in all probability there is some such action, which contributes somewhat to the total strength, but at most it is of minor importance. Mr. Godfrey's points as to fallacy of truss action seem to be well taken, ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... then, is the age, and our contemporaries are the people, that bring into prominence the little worries, that cause the tempest in the teapot, that bring about the worship of the intangible, and the magnification of the unessential. If we had lived in another epoch we might have dreamt of the eternal happiness of saving our neck, but in this one we fret because our collar does not fit it, and because the button that holds the collar has rolled under ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... force. Movements are not only duplicated, but reproduced a hundred times in miniature, in one denomination after another; special talent is restricted to a narrow field; buildings and church-plants are multiplied, but lie largely disused; sects and communities are at loggerheads on unessential points; all this—and the world is not being saved! The Church fails to see openings for aggressive work; it fails to seize strategic points; it does not carry a well-knit local organization, with a husbanding ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... an aunt of his had called his mysterious preservation from death—he seemed to see everything in this room in another light. Everything which had once been to him important had become, if not worthless, then unessential. ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... relieved on one point. Dr. MacRae does not pick out his own clothes. He leaves all such unessential trifles to ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... where from year to year have dwelt men of the same class, education, income, tastes, and circumstances generally, and so bringing from generation to generation nearly the same requirements, with the unessential changes brought in from time to time by new wants or individual fancies, here and there putting out a bay-window or adding a wing, but always in the spirit of the original building, and the whole ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... began Ned, "will include much more than I saw or knew myself, but it all comes from authentic sources. I shall omit names, since they are unessential. ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... to Phillis. This appears to have been the exact extent to which he 'altered S. Tassoes Italian' in order to connect it with 'M. Watsons Latine Amyntas' and 'to make them both one English.'[227] Certain other changes were, however, introduced upon other considerations. Various unessential points were omitted, notably in connexion with Tirsi, whose topical character disappears; the name Nerina is altered to Fulvia; frequent allusions are introduced to the nymph Pembrokiana, to whom among other things is ascribed the rescue of the heroine from the ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... these relations, and through studying the masterpieces brought home by the Crusaders, Venetian artists recovered the antique feeling for pure form, and founded a school which was classical in spirit, Christian only in external and unessential features. The learning and literature which the Eastern Empire inherited from Rome and Athens had no attraction for Venetian merchant princes. But north of the Alps, and especially at Paris, the thirteenth century saw an increasing interest in the Greek language, and in Greek books, so far as they ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... then lay thinking of this cavalry business. It is a subject which thought does not simplify, but, like other great things, makes it complicate and recede from its votaries. To know essential details from unessential details is the study in all arts. Details there must be; they are the small things that make the big things. To apply this general order of things to this arm of the service kept me awake. There is first the riding—simple enough if they catch you young. ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... While the words pecunia, danaro, dinero, and argent, are all derived from unessential qualities, the German word for money, Geld, corresponds with the essential quality of money, since it denotes that which is of value everywhere (gilt). On the other hand, nummus and {GREEK SMALL ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... savage societies, and to a sort of natural exogamy produced by practically the same set of conditions as I have already described. Mr. Lang's totemism began in the primary groups, and began with exogamy as a necessary part of it. "Unessential to my system," says Mr. Lang, "is the question how the groups got animal names, as long as they got them, and did not remember how they got them, and as long as the names according to their way of thinking indicated an essential and mystic rapport between each ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... the normal syllogistic form are said to constitute differences of Figure (see Sec. 2); and the processes by which they are shown to be unessential differences are called Reduction ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... domestic life was not happy, his wife, Xantippe, being a noted shrew. His failure to provide for the material welfare of his family, though quite natural in a man to whom all material things seemed unessential, must have sorely tried her patience. But Socrates bore her scolding with resignation. Indeed, he seemed to regard it as furnishing an opportunity to practice the philosophic patience that ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... imagine myself sitting in an office and dealing with such unessential things as stocks and bonds.... And I'm ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... time of which our human chronologies hardly afford us a unit of measure. I will not pretend to say how we ought to estimate this time, in millions or in billions of years. For my purpose, the determination of its absolute duration is wholly unessential. But that the time was enormous there can be ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... fond of snuff, in "Kidnapped," and, in the "Master of Ballantrae," Sir William Johnson, the English Governor. They are the work of a mind as attentive to details, as ready to subordinate or obliterate details which are unessential. Thus Mr. Stevenson's writings breathe equally of work in the study and of inspiration from adventure in the open air, and thus he wins every vote, and ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... sixty-seven miles to go, and in case we did not happen on the narrow descent to the Hut, the food was apportioned to last for five days. Everything unessential was stripped off the sledge, including dip-circle, thermometers, hypsometer, camera, spare clothing and most of the medical ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... have said in relation to the earlier edition, the author has succeeded in an unusual degree in telling the story of English History in an interesting and suggestive manner, keeping clear of the prevailing fault of loading his pages with unessential names and dates. ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... us, though undismaid: long is the way And hard, that out of Hell leads up to Light; Our prison strong, this huge convex of Fire, Outrageous to devour, immures us round Ninefold, and gates of burning Adamant Barr'd over us prohibit all egress. These past, if any pass, the void profound Of unessential Night receives him next Wide gaping, and with utter loss of being 440 Threatens him, plung'd in that abortive gulf. If thence he scape into what ever world, Or unknown Region, what remains him less Then unknown dangers and as hard escape. But I ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... education, Mrs. Grey had made it a life's enterprise to order, adjust, and settle the character of her daughters; and when we use the word character, as Mrs. Grey understood it, we mean it to include both face, figure, dress, accomplishments, as well as those more unessential items, mind and heart. ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... have taught us the new colour vocabulary. Gordon Craig was perhaps the first to show us the stage made suggestive by insisting on the importance of clever lighting to produce atmosphere and elimination of unessential objects, the argument of his school being that the too detailed reproducing of Nature (on the stage) acts as a check to the imagination, whereas by the judicious selection of harmonics, the imagination is stimulated to its utmost creative capacity. ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... doctor. What use? He would see the thing through. In the solemnity of the night he was glad that an experience tremendous and supreme had been vouchsafed to him. He knew now what the will to live was. He saw life naked, stripped of everything unessential. He saw life and death together. What caused his lip to curl when the thought of the Felons' dinner flashed through his mind was the damned complacency of the Felons. Did any of them ever surmise that they had never come within ten miles of life itself, that they were attaching importance to ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... more sublime speculations. But at all periods the idea that it was possible to know God and the universe was allied to the idea that all ceremonies as well as all worldly effort and indeed all active morality are superfluous[169]. All alike are unessential and trivial, and merit the attention only of those who know nothing higher. Human feelings and interests qualified and contradicted this negative and unearthly view of religion, but still popular sentiment as well as philosophic thought during the whole period of which we know ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... course he laughed good-naturedly at what he called my foolery. Yet I could distinctly remember that in my Adam Strang adventure I had frequently played chess. The trouble was that whenever I came back to consciousness in solitary, unessential and intricate details faded ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... from a different angle, his vision broadening to a wider perspective as they climbed together, Forbes loitering on familiar ground that Pete might not lose the trail and find himself entangled in some unessential thicket by the way. ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... elaboration if their merit depends on extreme licence, for instance. Next, that a man who had a standard of proportion could see wherein the deviations of his sketched figure were essential to the effect he wished it to produce, and wherein they were unessential. Then, if he drew the normal figure large, he would be able to deviate from it in exactly the right places and to the right degree to reproduce the desired effect. But to do this he must also have ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... light of &c. (underestimate) 483; catch at straws &c. (overestimate) 482. Adj. unimportant; of little account, of small account, of no account, of little importance, of no importance &c. 642; immaterial; unessential, nonessential; indifferent. subordinate &c. (inferior) 34; mediocre &c. (average) 29; passable, fair, respectable, tolerable, commonplace; uneventful, mere, common; ordinary &c. (habitual) 613; inconsiderable, so-so, insignificant, inappreciable. trifling, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... shall not do so, is for the reason that while theoretically I recognize the important part that breeding plays in all animal production, for the practical proposition of producing poultry products at the lowest possible cost, a knowledge of the technical science of breeding is unessential and may, by diverting the poultryman's time to unprofitable ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... book is characterized by directness of treatment, by the selection, so far as possible, of the most interesting and practical matter, and by the omission of what is unessential. ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... how a girl can marry a man she doesn't love. She can do it more easily than she can stay at home, watch half her friends marry, and feel herself slowly ossifying into something worthless and unessential. It takes more courage to sit quietly, wait for what may never come, and observe without misgiving the man you might have had making some other woman's life ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... as we are aware—which has passed the stage of discussion, and is about immediately to take action and carry out the work. The institutions of economic justice are no longer novelties; we can follow a well-proved precedent, the example of Freeland, and we intend to follow that example, with a few unessential modifications rendered necessary by the special characteristics of the American country and people. On the other hand, we lack experience; and as, notwithstanding our well-known 'go-ahead' habits, we would rather have advice before than ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... stared slightly at the unessential query. "Don't know,—one of the river miners, I reckon. It's an urgent case. I'll go and get everything ready. You'd better," he added, with an ominous glance at her gray frock, "put something over ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... no doubt but the Succession War, and Marlborough, would have brought it to a happy issue: in the mean while, it is said to have succeeded at last, somewhat on the sudden, by a kind of accident. This is the curious mythical account; incorrect in some unessential particulars, but in the main and singular part of it well-founded. Elector Friedrich, according to Pollnitz and others, after failing in many methods, had sent 100,000 thalers (say 15,000 pounds) to give, by way of—bribe we must call it,—to the chief opposing Hofrath at ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... the writer seizes on the one or two salient points of each game, omitting what is unessential. This requires judgment and the effort to do it is a ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... penetrating and sympathetic imagination that gave him his unerring grasp of character, that enabled him to seize upon the significant elements of a personality, to divine the attitude and the gesture that should reveal it, to eliminate the unessential, to present to us the man. This is the imagination of the portrait-painter, and Saint-Gaudens has shown it again and again, in many of his reliefs and memorial tablets, above all in his portrait statues. He showed it conclusively in so early a ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... a person who sees everything in its wrong proportions," she answered. "He mistakes the essential for the unessential, and vice versa. He can never recognize the beauty in art or nature, because he can never get any further than the unpleasant details. One might call him a mental earth-worm who has only the smallest possible outlook. Mr. Berry, for instance, has never, I feel sure, felt the charm of India ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... strangeness is not in the nature of a thing, but in its relation to something extrinsic—in this case an unessential observer." ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... to be no resisting force, and the crushed attitude of the man before her plainly told that she was still the unlowered, the unapproachable being in his eyes. With her pride unhurt, her belligerency was unessential. For a moment more she continued to let him suffer. She might have relieved it now—she even wanted to—but the old savage spirit was still unappeased, and a devil of the feud ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... heathen. But from the very beginning the Church of England has retained the traces of her early origin, when Gregory the Great was Pope, when the claim to be universal bishop was deemed untenable, when even the ritual of the Mass was still in unessential details flexible. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... any variation as to the person of the Judge, or the court over which he presided, or the time at which the incident might have taken place, or the degree of insult and personal violence exhibited, is unessential, and proves only the inaccuracy in detail of various accounts, all of which combine, independently of those minute circumstances, to establish the main point. To this argument it might also be added, that the very circumstance ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... house; and as he walked he never turned around for curious gaze. Often, often have I, in my readings in the Eastern philosophy, endeavored to analyze and to emulate this Oriental calm, this dismissal from the soul of things small, things unessential and things unavoidable. An enviable character, ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... the child for the pleasurable relief of her distended breasts; and, while in civilization more subtle pleasures and intelligent reflection render this massive physical satisfaction comparatively unessential to the act of suckling, in more primitive conditions and among animals the need of this pleasurable physical satisfaction is a real bond between the mother and her offspring. The analogy is indeed very close: the erectile nipple corresponds ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... read all the notes. In one school edition of a play there are nearly twice as many pages of introduction and unclassified notes as of the text. Such an edition adds to the difficulties of the work by confusing essential and unessential matters. ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... shall be found so large as to make it manifest that any reference to the country would simply be a matter of form, Ministers will not, we take it, feel warranted in putting the country to great trouble and expense for the sake of that unessential formality. ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... communicated itself to me. I kept on repeating to myself, "They will not sign, they will not sign," and intellectually I believed my own words. And yet I was continually imagining the war already over and what I merely thought seemed unessential and irrelevant. The stress of wild hopes and mental agitation became ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... curriculum by culling out of it everything which is unessential, we may next consider whether something may not be done to aid the medical student toward the acquirement of real knowledge by modifying the system of examination. In England, within my recollection, it was the practice to require of the medical student attendance ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... illuminated the profoundest mysteries of our sinful souls is not the light of the generating stations, which exposes the depths of our infatuation where our mere cleverness is permitted for a while to grope for the unessential among invincible shadows. ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... is an element in perfect art. A picture, a poem, should be as true as nature itself; but at the same time it should lay stress on whatever forms the unique character of its subject by drawing out all its essential manifestations, and by rejecting everything that is unessential and accidental. The picture or the poem will thus emphasize its idea, and give us that ideal truth which ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... formation of the same organ in the Animal Kingdom, it furnishes us at the same time with the means, by the comparison of these various forms, of recognising the truly essential, the type of these organs, and separating therefrom everything unessential. In this, developmental history serves it as a check or test. Thus, as the idea of development is not that of mere increase of size, but that of progress from what is not yet distinguished, but which potentially contains the distinction in itself, ...
— Facts and Arguments for Darwin • Fritz Muller
... French knots, and elaborate little buttonholes that would never see a button, a large and fine piece of embroidery on which she had been working for many months. She had that decadent love of minute finish in the unessential so often seen in persons of ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... The least, and on regarding him again Would not have had him in another place, He fitted with an unfamiliar grace The coffin where I could not see him then As I had seen him and appraised him when I deemed him unessential ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... of the Mainz Manuscript, which, as stated, was erroneously believed to be the identical German copy presented to the Emperor. The Latin text of the editio princeps, embodied in the Book of Concord, had likewise undergone some, though unessential, changes. These alterations became much more extensive in the Latin octavo edition of 1531 and in the German revision of 1533. The Variata of 1540 and 1542, however, capped the climax as far as changes are concerned, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... he died, 1797, Prussia was riding to a fall; and disregarding plain measures for her own safety, she had reached the sad place where the sturdy old Prussian spirit of prudence and independence had become so compromised that Prussia almost deemed it unessential to ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... providential that the published statement of the Governor-General can be checked not only by an account which Rizal secretly sent to friends, but also by the candid memoranda contained in the untruthful executive's own secret folios. While some unessential details of Rizal's career are in doubt, not a point vital to establishing his good name lacks proof that his character was exemplary and that he is worthy of the hero-worship which has come ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... because it is able to see, beneath the chaotic litter and unessential debris of "matter," the eternal idea of "matter" and because it is able to see, under the lamentable repulsiveness and offensiveness of so much actual flesh and blood, "the eternal idea of flesh ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... adoration of a wafer. Preaching is nowhere regarded as the leading duty of the clergy, but to say mass. By exalting the eucharist into an expiatory sacrifice, the partaking of the elements by the people came to be considered quite unessential, and is generally neglected. They need not understand, nor even hear the language of the officiating priest. It is enough, if they see and adore. A bell warns them when to make the needful genuflections and crosses. Nor can there be a reasonable doubt, that the adoration ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... would be almost impossible to revive sufficient interest; the precious inspiration would have been wanting. Yet Carlyle manfully accomplished his task, and I am inclined to think that the second writing was better than the first; that he probably left out what was unessential, and made a more condensed narrative,—a more complete picture, for his memory was singularly retentive. I do not believe that any man can do his best at the first heat. See how the great poets revise and rewrite. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... of drawing in each picture when we come to deal with them separately, and it is better to recognise in the outset that, in pursuit of a certain definite end, Signorelli is careless of what seems to him unessential at the moment. ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... adhering undeviatingly to principle, using the judgment of a consummate strategist to decide upon the action to be taken at any given moment. He had an astonishing faculty of discarding everything that was unessential and fastening on the thing that really mattered in any situation. His strength in counsel lay in the rare combination of these qualities of the trained lawyer with the gift of intuition, which women claim as their distinguishing characteristic; and ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... certain phases of De Quincey's outward life, are yet far from personally representing him, even to the eye. They satisfy curiosity, and that is about all. As to the real character of the man, they are negative and unessential; they represent, indeed, his utter carelessness as to all that, like dress, may at pleasure be put on or off, but "the human child incarnate" is not thus brought before us. For, could we but once look upon his face in rest, then should we forget these ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... most men accustomed to self-analysis; that they are seldom aware what it is that constitutes the inspiring power of their beliefs. Generally, at least in the first instance, they take their creed in gross, without distinguishing between essential and unessential elements. They confuse, in one general consecration of reverence, its primary principles, and the local and temporary accidents of the form in which it was first presented to them, and they are as ready to accept battle a l'outrance for some useless outwork as for the ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... philosophers, but lately brought into special prominence, that the physical processes are complete in themselves, and would go on just as they do if consciousness were not at all implicated. Consciousness, on this view, is a kind of by-product inexpressible in terms of force and motion, and unessential to the molecular changes going on ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... better like plain English, to find the terms needed for signifying, describing, expounding the Thought which, lurking as at the bottom of your mind, under a crowd of thoughts, rises up, in all circumstances, to meet and answer the name——a fairy; the Thought, which when all accidental and unessential attributes liable to be attracted to the fairy essence have been stripped away, remains; the substrate, absolute, essential, generic notion, therefore—a fairy; that Thought, which whencesoever acquired, and held howsoever, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... or in music and literature — he retained a vital faith in the Christian religion. He reacted against the Calvinism of his youth to almost as great a degree as did some of the New England poets. He at times felt keenly the narrowness and bigotry of the church — the warring of the sects over the unessential points.* In his thinking he found no place for the rigid and severe creed which dominated his youth. He gave up the forms, not the spirit, of worship. He lived the abundant life, and all of the roads which he traveled led to God. His faith ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... little tale which Giovanni Verga wrote and which supplied the librettists, G. Targioni-Tozzetti and G. Menasci, with the plot of Mascagni's opera. Sententious as the opera seems, it is yet puffed out, padded, and bedizened with unessential ornament compared with the story. This has the simplicity and directness of a folk-tale or folk-song, and much of its characteristic color and strength were lost in fitting it out for music. The play, which Signora Duse ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... tragedy: it is more extraordinary still that he succeeded. The interest of the play never ceases for a moment; the simple situation is exposed, developed, and closed with all the refinements of art; nothing is omitted that is essential, nothing that is unessential is introduced. Racine has studiously avoided anything approaching violent action or contrast or complexity; he has relied entirely for his effect upon his treatment of a few intimate human feelings interacting among themselves. The strain and press of the outer world—that outer world which plays ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... dress of the native has been modified, and himself warned in strong terms against rival sects of Christianity; all by the same man, at the same period of time, and with the like authority. By what criterion is the convert to distinguish the essential from the unessential? He swallows the nostrum whole; there has been no play of mind, no instruction, and, except for some brute utility in the prohibitions, no advance. To call things by their proper names, this is teaching superstition. It is unfortunate to use the word; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of her own quenchless pride. This is not an amiable attitude, nor is it historically true that this was Charlotte Bronte's constant aspect. But I will venture to say that her amiabilities, her yielding moods, are really the unessential parts of her disposition, and that a certain admirable ferocity is the notable feature of her ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... cheerer light! Of all material beings first and best! Efflux divine! Nature's resplendent robe! Without whose vesting beauty all were wrapt In unessential gloom; and thou, O Sun! Soul of surrounding worlds! in whom best seen ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... I deem it unessential to verify Mr. Booth's statistics. The exact strength of the population of the realm of misery, be it one, two, or three millions, has nothing to do with the efficacy of any means proposed for the highly desirable end of reducing it to a minimum. The sole question ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... myself; generally over a good cigar after a satisfactory dinner. At such times I open my Marcus Aurelius, my pocket Epicurus, my translation of Plato's "Republic." At such times I agree with them. Man troubles himself too much about the unessential. Let us cultivate serenity. Nothing can happen to us that we have not been constituted by Nature to sustain. That foolish farm labourer, on his precarious wage of twelve shillings a week: let him dwell rather on the mercies he enjoys. Is ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... that Malay can be written or spoken without the least difficulty, without a word of Sanskrit or Arabic, and described the foreign elements in Malay as "extrinsic and unessential."[14] But several words of the first necessity are Sanskrit. It would be difficult to speak Malay intelligibly, while avoiding the use of the relative pronouns yang (Sansk. yas, ya, yat, who, which) and mana (Sansk. mna, measure), or of the common auxiliary sudah (Sansk. ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... he notes that the greater part of the cones, all those of small size, are made up of finely divided rock, which may have been more or less cemented by the processes of change which go on within it. It is thus clear that the lava flows are unessential—indeed, we may say accidental—contributions to the mass. In the case of Vesuvius they certainly do not amount to as much as one tenth of the elevation due to the volcanic action. The share of the lava in Vesuvius is probably greater than the average, for during the ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... were thrown back with severe losses. On August 11, 1915, Von Scholtz's group occupied the bridgehead at Vilna, which had been stubbornly defended until the Russian retreat had progressed far enough to make its further possession unessential. The same forces succeeded in crossing the Gac River, south of the Nareff, capturing during three days' fighting almost 5,000 men. Von Gallwitz with his army stormed on the same day Zambroff and then pressed on through ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... emphasized this, and this idea of saving has served the purpose of awakening an interest in the whole theory and purpose of work. There is a better understanding of values, and of the difference between the essential and the unessential, and we see that not all labor that commands pay is useful labor. Many things that the public knew but little about before are becoming better understood. Industry, finance, business, taxes, transportation, have all to some extent become popular subjects. The present high cost of living raises ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... consciousness. It was not because of self-confidence or of failure to recognize what was before him. He knew very well what was implied in following such a man as Starr King, but he was so little concerned with anything so comparatively unimportant as self-interest or so unessential as personal success that he was unruffled and calm. He indulged in no illusion of filling Mr. King's place. He stood on his own feet to make his own place, and to do his own work in his own way, with such results as came, and he ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... Hamlet goes to England and immediately upon his return avenges his father's murder, and, still nearer the type, Malcolm and Donaldbane flee and Malcolm returns and avenges his father's murder. But the matter of type is, in this connection, unessential. There is no doubt that the Hamlet story exerted an influence on the Hroar-Helgi story, nor can there be any doubt that the Macbeth ...
— The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf • Oscar Ludvig Olson
... objection to these memory-systems that they substitute a wholly artificial association of ideas for a natural one. The habit of looking for accidental or arbitrary relations of names and things is cultivated, and the power of logical, spontaneous thought is injured by neglecting essential for unessential relations. These artificial associations of ideas work endless mischief by ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford |
