"Abstract" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Republican members of Parliament, is designedly homely in style, and the magnificence of Milton's diction is still further tamed down by the necessity of resorting to dictation. It is nevertheless a powerful piece of argument, in its own sphere of abstract reason unanswerable, and only questionable in that lower sphere of expediency which Milton disdained. In the following August appeared a sequel with the sarcastic title, "Considerations on the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church." The recipe is simple and efficacious—cease ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... sort of fairy) had produced a command out of a drawer almost as unexpectedly as in a fairy tale. But a command is an abstract idea, and it seemed a sort of "lesser marvel" till it flashed upon me that it involved the concrete existence ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... nature, and do not reason upon it; they obey their instinct without thought or philosophy. They know not how to unite the social sentiment with the idea of equality, which they do not possess; this idea being an abstract one. We, on the contrary, starting with the principle that society implies equality, can, by our reasoning faculty, understand and agree with each other in settling our rights; we have even used our judgment to a great extent. But in all this our conscience plays a small part, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... was reason in Tip's contention regarding Weston. Indeed, from Tim's account of events, I could see that the store had very thoroughly threshed out the whole case and that the problem was not one that could be solved by abstract reasoning. There was only one person to solve it, and ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... it can be said that these people have in their minds any real abstract idea of number, at all events beyond twenty. Each finger turned down and toe pointed to, in succession, seems to represent to their minds the article (e.g., a pig) which is counted, rather than a step in a process of mental addition. But this is a matter upon ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... which result from an attentive examination of the past. The law consists in this—that each of our principal conceptions, each branch of our knowledge, passes successively through three different states of theory: the theologic, or fictitious; the metaphysic, or abstract; the scientific, or positive. In other terms, the human mind, by its nature, employs successively, in each of its researches, three methods of philosophizing, the character of which is essentially different, and even radically opposed; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... philosophy, he felt his ears tingling and his face getting red, as they approached the drive. It was crowded. They were kept standing a minute or two at the crossing. He made a desperate effort to abstract himself wholly from the visible world, and retire in a state of serene contemplation. But it would not do; and he was painfully conscious of the stare of lack-lustre eyes of well dressed men leaning over the rails, and the amused look of delicate ladies, lounging in open carriages, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... shocked, and at first refused to have any part in the matter; but the old threat brought him to terms, and he at last agreed to Lewis' plans that they should contrive to abstract Seabrooke's letter to Dr. Leacraft from among the others laid ready for the post, and keep it back until ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... a night journey by rail is a difficult matter; you go like an arrow whistling through a cloud; it is traveling in the abstract. You cross provinces, kingdoms even, unawares. From time to time during the night, I saw through the window the comet, rushing down upon the earth, with lowered head and hair streaming far behind; suddenly glares of gaslight dazzled my eyes, sanded with the goldust of sleep; or the pale bluish ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... the same genus; to set aside as more or less discrediting one another those various special and concrete elements in which such opinions disagree; to observe what remains after the discordant constituents have been eliminated, and to find for the remaining constituent that abstract expression which holds true ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... MS. "Journal of Voyage intended by God's permission in the good boat Adventure from Fort Patrick Henry of Holston River to the French Salt Springs on Cumberland River, kept by John Donelson." An abstract, with some traditional statements interwoven, is given by Haywood; the journal itself, with some inaccuracies, and the name of the writer misspelt by Ramsey; and in much better and fuller shape by A. N. Putnam in his "History of Middle Tennessee." ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... with the ear is very interesting. Gurlt declares that this chapter alone provides striking evidence for Alexander's practical experience and power of observation, as well as for his knowledge of the literature of medicine. He considers that only a short abstract is needed ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... vertical bands of red (hoist side), blue, and red; centered on the hoist-side red band in yellow is the national emblem ("soyombo" - a columnar arrangement of abstract and geometric representation for fire, sun, moon, earth, water, and ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... wages—yes! And why shouldn't they? Their old masters understand them better—and treat them generally better. They know our interest in them is only an abstract sentiment, not a real liking. We show it at every turn. But we are nearing Redlands, and Major Reed will, I have no doubt, corroborate my impressions. He insists upon our staying at his house, although the poor old fellow, I imagine, can ill afford to entertain company. But he ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... shall be recovered, by the later statutes of king William: and any person bribing the returning officer shall alio forfeit 300l. But the members returned by him are the sitting members, until the house of commons, upon petition, shall adjudge the return to be false and illegal. And this abstract of the proceedings at elections of knights, citizens, and burgesses, concludes our enquiries into the laws and customs more peculiarly relative to the ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... small though they are, compared with the great events which are ruled by our heavenly Father's will, how much is involved in them as far as we are concerned! and we need not measure the controlling care of Providence by the abstract greatness or littleness of any event. Compared with His infinity, the fate of an empire would be not more worthy of His care than the least event of our lives; but it is love—the same wonderful love that can comfort and bless the dying-pillow of a little one, in which we want more practical ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... the faithful and undaunted partaker of the labors and patriotic warfare of Wallace, fell in the unfortunate field of Falkirk, in 1298. The celebrated Marquis of Montrose, in whom De Retz saw realized his abstract idea of the heroes of antiquity, was the second of these worthies. And, not withstanding the severity of his temper, and the rigor with which he executed the oppressive mandates of the princes whom he served, I do not hesitate to name as the third, John Graeme, of Claverhouse, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... drawn upon darkness and wind. It opens a moment later on the greenhouse in the sunshine of a snowy morning. The snow piled outside is at times blown through the air. The frost has made patterns on the glass as if—as Plato would have it—the patterns inherent in abstract nature and behind all life had to come out, not only in the creative heat within, but in the creative cold on the other side of the glass. And the wind makes patterns of sound ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... her underlying "attitude," that invested her words with a new horsepower of solace. And Saltman's best stenographer actually produced an argument that Hugo had altogether passed by. She thought it worth while to point out that these things were not a question of abstract morals at all, but only ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... now-a-days be chiefly aided by the study of mathematics, was supplied by literary exegesis and deontological discussions. Very few abstract subjects troubled the mind of the young, the chief aim of their education being, as I have said, decision of character. People whose minds were simply stored with information found no great admirers. Of the three services of studies that Bacon gives,—for delight, ornament, and ability,—Bushido ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... the successful meeting of one emergency always helps us in the next, and as it is quite impossible to tell what you may meet under those nut trees,—let me give you a little abstract of Catherine Douglass, before you read it and before I go. The said lady wishing to keep the door against sundry lords and gentle men who came with murderous intent against her sovereign; and finding no bar to aid her loyal endeavours,—did boldly thrust her own arm through ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... activity sometimes becomes so strong, that the faculties seem to go through their operations almost without conscious effort, while their facility of action becomes so much increased as ultimately to give unerring certainty where at first great difficulty was experienced. It is not so much the soul or abstract principle of mind which is thus changed, as the organic medium through which mind is destined to act in the present ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... and a half since Ant. Wood printed a notice of the reverend Thomas Powell, and more than a century since the inquisitive Oldys devoted eighteen pages to an abstract of his Human industry;—yet we search in vain for the name of Powell in the dictionaries of Aikin, Watkins, Chalmers, Gorton, &c.—It is even omitted in the Cambrian biography of his ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.15 • Various
... one-third of the profits so soon as any arise from the business, after paying the workmen's wages and goods furnished, but abstract from the stock-in-trade, excepting the interest thereof, which is to be deducted before ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... fortunately for Frank, was not a man of the heroic kind. Abstract right was less to him than expediency and he missed the point of the comparison between his position and King Solomon's. He thought it better that his baby should suffer than that Miss Lentaigne's anger should be roused. He declined ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... thought him dull, very frequently, when he was only balancing between jealous and sensitive tastes;—and ignorant of the actual, when, in fact, his ignorance simply arose from the decided preference which he gave to the foreign and abstract. He was contemplative—an idealist; I was impetuous and devoted to the real and living world around me, in which I was disposed to mingle with an eagerness which might have been fatal; but for that restraint to which my own distrust of all things ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... intrusion. The general knows best whether it would be politic to shoot a skilful surgeon and an Englishman, who is willing and able to heal the wounds of the loyal subjects of King Ferdinand as well as of rebels. My belief is, that although he may love liberty in the abstract, he is too much engaged in his professional duties to interfere in any ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... right cheek, turn to him the other also," He was ready to risk the possibility of being misunderstood by some prosaic hearer, that He might the more effectually arouse men to a neglected duty. His language was concrete, not abstract; He taught by example and illustration; He thought, and taught others to think, in pictures. How often is the phrase, "The kingdom of heaven is like unto——" on His lips! Moreover, His illustrations were always such as common folk could best appreciate. The birds ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... But we are talking of the theory in the abstract, not of any particular case. One hardly expects ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... life, liberty and pursuit of happiness by securing to them an equal right in the bounties of nature—and passing strange it certainly is that men who would not dream of denying this right in the abstract are ever ready to ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... with breasts and who made the thighs of women anvils for the spear handles of men!" To the same amiable theologian are also ascribed the "Kitab Nawazir al-Ayk fi al-Nayk" Green Splendours of the Copse in Copulation, an abstract of the "Kitab al-Wishah fi fawaid al-Nikah" Book of the Zone on Coition-boon. Of the abundance of pornographic literature we may judge from a list of the following seven works given in the second page of the "Kitab Ruju'a al-Shaykh ila Sabah fi 'l-Kuwwat al-Bah[FN351]" ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... perished morasses are in process of time produced, and by their long roots fill up the interstices till the whole becomes for many yards deep a mass of vegetation. This fact is curiously verified by an account given many years ago by the Earl of Cromartie, of which the following is a short abstract. ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... published writings of De Witt on "the properties of curves" and on "the theory of probabilities" show that the greatest of Dutch statesmen might have become famous as a mathematician had the cares of administration permitted him to pursue the abstract studies that he loved. Of the scientific achievements of Christian Huyghens (1629-95), the brilliant son of a brilliant father, it is difficult to speak in adequate terms. There is scarcely any name in the annals of science that stands higher than his. His ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... by abstract meditation, that the Spirit or Self is distinct from its three bodies (viz. the gross, subtle and causal bodies), and that it is a portion of the one Spirit of the Universe (Brahma), every man ought to worship K.rish.na by means of ...
— The Siksha-Patri of the Swami-Narayana Sect • Professor Monier Williams (Trans.)
... what to sense appears, Sense is sense ere 'tis mine or mine in me is. When I hear, Hearing, ere I do hear, hears. When I see, before me abstract Seeing sees. I am part Soul part I in all I touch— Soul by that part I hold in common with all, And I the spoiled part, that doth make sense such As I can err by it and my sense mine call. The rest is wondering what these thoughts may mean, That come to explain and suddenly are gone, Like ...
— 35 Sonnets • Fernando Pessoa
... my own knowledge, but I have every reason to believe that I came into this world a small reddish person, certainly without a gold spoon in my mouth, and in fact with no discernible abstract or concrete "rights" or property of any description. If a foot was not set upon me, at once, as a squalling nuisance, it was either the natural affection of those about me, which I certainly had done nothing to deserve, or the fear of the law which, ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... account of the Simla story, even though the old maid might conceivably have given her a jaundiced account. The Duchess knew nothing of Aileen, and was little influenced, so far as he had observed her, by considerations of abstract justice or propriety, affecting persons whom ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with regard to the North Pole had at this date reached a pitch which can only be described as fevered, though that word hardly expresses the strange ecstasy and unrest which prevailed: for the abstract interest which mankind, in mere desire for knowledge, had always felt in this unknown region, was now, suddenly, a thousand and a thousand times intensified by a new, concrete interest—a ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... dismiss these abstract reflections for a fresh and active resentment. This is the fifth or sixth dog that has passed my Spion, harnessed to a small barrow-like cart, and tugging painfully at a burden so ludicrously disproportionate to his size, that it would seem a burlesque, ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... had ceased grazing again, and once more stood with ears pricked, gazing up the slope. Its master understood. This was no moment to consider abstract problems, however they might interest him. Stern reality lay ahead of him, and he knew he was in for an unpleasant time. He linked his arm through his horse's reins, and, with head bent, trailed slowly up the incline, pausing and stooping ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... has been, however, begun with a sincere wish to do justice to the disinterested and the good; and, as the task has proceeded, and increased information on the subject has been gained, it has been continued with a conviction that, whatever may be the nature or merits of the abstract principles on which it was undertaken, the Insurrection of 1715 forms an episode in the history of our country as creditable to many of the ill-fated actors in its tragic scenes, as any that have been detailed in the pages of ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... Absolution (from sin) senpekigo. Absolve senkulpigi. Absolve (from sin) senpekigi. Absorb sorbi. Absorption sorbo. Abstain deteni sin. Abstemious sobrema. Abstinence deteno. Abstinent detenema. Abstract (abridgement) resumo. Abstract abstrakti. Abstracted abstrakta. Abstruse tre malklara. Absurd absurda. Absurdity absurdo. Abundance suficxego. Abuse trouzi. Abuse trouzo. Abyss profundegajxo. Acacia akacio. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... unacquainted with the literature of their country, whether for seeking in it pleasing relaxation, or for borrowing from it a magic style, a fluent elocution, a harmony, a pomp of expression, with which the most abstract meditations can no longer dispense to be received favourably by philosophers and men of taste. Very few literati, on the other hand, are unacquainted with philosophy and the sciences, and, above all, with natural knowledge; whether not to ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... of its policy. I should look for a triumph of principle, rather than of interest, were I not pained to observe how seldom political leaders in America are wont to address the conscience, and rest any cause upon abstract right. The fathers of the republic knew better than to leave the moral powers of the people unexercised; but their successors seem to lack such faculties themselves, or to doubt their existence in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... bred, in the worst sense of the words; and I fear that no education will change his original quality, or greatly modify his early bias. So while the wasting of his substance is a great wrong in the abstract, it may be a real blessing to him. Events in this life work out strangely to our human eyes, yet there is a Providence in them that ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... both of them the ordinary words for love and friendship are derived from the same monosyllabic root, sak. On this, according to the inflectional laws of the dialects, are built up the terms for the love of man to woman, a lover, love in the abstract, a friend, friendship, and the like. It is also occasionally used by the missionaries for the love of man to God and of ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... abstract right and wrong, like personal likes and dislikes, do not grow strongly where expediency and advisability and advantage have to rule; she was only going to do what she must in Holland; the debt must be paid, honour demanded ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... man (none of the Goukthrapples or Rentowels) maintained his character with the common people, although he preached the practical fruits of Christian faith as well as its abstract tenets, and was respected by the higher orders, notwithstanding he declined soothing their speculative errors by converting the pulpit of the gospel into a school of heathen morality. Perhaps it is owing to this mixture of faith and practice ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... the reader to the close of Lord Lindsay's letter on Giotto,[11] from which I have drawn most of the particulars above stated, for a very beautiful sketch of his character and his art. Of the real rank of that art, in the abstract, I do not feel myself capable of judging accurately, having not seen his finest works (at Assisi and Naples), nor carefully studied even those at Florence. But I may be permitted to point out one or two peculiar characteristics in it which ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... so much I lose! Sir, you have wronged me to amount beyond Acres, and gold, and life, which makes them rich. And compensation I demand of you, Such as a man expects, and none but one That's less than man refuses! Where's the maid You falsely did abstract? ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... upon the barbarous niceties that our youth are forced to learn in those trifling logical schools that are among us. They are so far from minding chimeras and fantastical images made in the mind that none of them could comprehend what we meant when we talked to them of a man in the abstract as common to all men in particular (so that though we spoke of him as a thing that we could point at with our fingers, yet none of them could perceive him) and yet distinct from every one, as if he were some monstrous Colossus or giant; yet, for all this ignorance ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... evil doers: the theatre is a temple where the beautiful is always worshipped; it makes a continuous appeal to the higher senses and natural passions. In this temple vice is punished, and virtue rewarded; the great social problems are presented. In this temple instruction is less abstract, and, therefore, more profitable for the crowd. The apostles of this temple are full of faith and courage; they have the souls of missionaries marching always ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... Enumeration.—Many authors are already engaged in this research, and employ a method which I consider very bad and very dangerous—the method of concepts. This consists in looking at real and concrete phenomena in their most abstract form. For example, in studying the mind, they use this word "mind" as a general idea which is supposed to contain all the characteristics of psychical phenomena; but they do not wait to enumerate these characteristics or to realise them, and they ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... One of the powers of the human mind on which we set great store is that of entertaining general ideas. This is where we think we have the advantage of the members of the brute creation. They have particular experiences which at the time are very exciting to them, but they have no abstract notions,—or, at least, no way of expressing them to us. We argue that if they really had these ideas they would have invented language long ago, and by this time would have had Unabridged Dictionaries of their own. But we humans do not have to be content with this hand-to-mouth ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... the narrative in some measure complete I shall here add a summary abstract of the latter part of the voyage, whereof I have not had time to draw out of my journals a full and particular account at large. Departing therefore from the coast of New Holland in the beginning of September 1699 we arrived at Timor ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... Stanley says: "Livingstone followed the dictates of duty. Never was such a willing slave to that abstract virtue. His inclinations impel him home, the fascinations of which it requires the sternest resolution to resist. With every foot of new ground he travelled over he forged a chain of sympathy which should hereafter ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... the priest of his tribe. I told him also how powerless European science would be to detect it. How he took it I cannot say, for I never left the room, but there is no doubt that it was then, while I was opening cabinets and stooping to boxes, that he managed to abstract some of the devil's-foot root. I well remember how he plied me with questions as to the amount and the time that was needed for its effect, but I little dreamed that he could have a ...
— The Adventure of the Devil's Foot • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Carter was. Just on that one subject, though; nice enough guy otherwise. Here, look at some of the drawings he made, working out his formulas. Nice designs, huh? Might make good wall paper or fabric patterns. Real abstract ... that's what people seem to like. See all those little letters scattered around among the lines? Different kinds of vanishing points, they are. Carter claimed the whole world was full of vanishing points. You don't know what a vanishing point is? ...
— Vanishing Point • C.C. Beck
... complexion of the natives represented to have been first seen, as they will be hereafter explained. [Footnote: La Cosmographie Universelle de tout le Monde, tom. II, part II, 2175-9. (Paris, 1575.)] This publication of Belleforest is the more important, because it is from the abstract of the Verrazzano letter contained in it, that Lescarbot, thirty-four years afterwards, took his account of the voyage and discovery, word for word, without acknowledgment. [Footnote: Hist. de la Nouvelle France, p. 27, et seq. (ed. 1609). In a subsequent portion of his history (p. 244) Lescarbot ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... ingredients, in their beer, under severe penalties: but few instances of convictions under this act are to be met with in the public records for nearly a century. To shew that they have augmented in our own days, we shall exhibit an abstract from documents laid ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... the attempt to represent abstract ideas by means of pictures. The picture then ceases to represent an object and represents an idea. This is called an ideogram. While it has certain very obvious limitations, it has one advantage over ...
— Books Before Typography - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #49 • Frederick W. Hamilton
... sensible, and in due proportion to the sight.' This definition is exactly suited to the taste of Meno, who welcomes the familiar language of Gorgias and Empedocles. Socrates is of opinion that the more abstract or dialectical definition of figure ...
— Meno • Plato
... invariably the same. Moreover, any of us who are accustomed to reason on moral questions, and can observe carefully the processes through which the mind passes, will notice that there is constantly going on a re-adjustment, so to speak, of our ethical opinions, whether we are reviewing abstract questions of morality or the specific acts of ourselves or others. We at one time think ourselves or others more, and, at another time, less blameable for the self-same acts, or we come to regard some particular class of acts in a different light from what we used to do, either modifying our ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... present day, the danger to monarchy in Britain would appear to lie, not in increasing love for equality, for which, except as regards the law, Englishmen have never cared, but rather entertain an aversion; nor in any abstract democratic theories, upon which the mass of Englishmen pour the contempt with which they view theories in general; but in the constantly increasing tendency of monarchy to become slightly absurd, from the ever-widening discrepancy ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... answered, "can be determined on mathematical lines. Bravery is a delightful quality in the abstract, but brave men are killed as easily as cowards. Tell me, have ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... were abundantly confirmed by the weekly bills of mortality for those weeks, an abstract of which, as they respect the parishes which. I have mentioned and as they make the calculations I speak of ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... that the more worldly of them would play with a popular faith of their own purposes, as doubly-minded persons have often done since, all the while sincerely holding the same ideas themselves in a more abstract form; while the good and unworldly men, the true Greek heroes, lived by their faith as firmly as St. Louis, or the ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... sympathy occurred between them. She freed herself in an instant from the apprehension and timidity that before oppressed her. Whatever might ensue, a vague conviction of having achieved a great object pervaded, as it were, her being. Some great end, vast though indefinite, had been fulfilled. Abstract and fearless, she gazed upon the dazzling visage with a prophetic heart. Her soul was in a tumult, oppressed with thick-coming fancies too big for words, panting for expression. There was a word ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... he is enabled to overwhelm his enemies, to resume his family position, and to recover his property. The return of several other Grecian chiefs was the subject of an epic poem by Hagias which is now lost, but of which a brief abstract or argument still remains: there were in antiquity various other poems of similar title and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... infirmity of purpose, of his double purpose. She had perceived that a word from her might help Grace's chance, and had led the man on till he had committed himself, at any rate to her. In doing this she had been actuated by friendship rather than by abstract principle. But now, when the moment had come in which she must decide upon some action, she paused. Was it right, for the sake of either of them, that an offer of marriage should be made at such a moment ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... meet this test? Granting (what few will dispute) that their intelligence at least equals that of the men, will they be as likely as men to look beyond the immediate social welfare problem to the governmental principle at stake? Will an abstract proposition hold its own in their minds against a ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson
... said that man might not relieve individuals by individual exertion: though he cannot by abstract theories—nay, even by practical action in the wide ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of the feminine of the past participle. This often becomes an abstract feminine noun, answering to the French termination -ee; armee in Mistral's language is armado. Examples of forms peculiar ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... science not merely as a vast body of abstract and immutable truths, ... but as possessing a yet deeper interest for the human race, when it is remembered that this science constitutes the language through which alone we can adequately express ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... does the selection of good and suitable material, contrivance for special purpose, expert workmanship, proper finish and so on, far more than mere ornament, and indeed, that ornamentation itself was rather an exuberance of fine workmanship than a matter of merely abstract lines. Workmanship when separated by too wide a gulf from fresh thought—that is, from design—inevitably decays, and, on the other hand, ornamentation, divorced from workmanship, is necessarily unreal, and quickly falls ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... Homer. Between the two epochs the Greek, Latin, Umbrian, and Keltic lauguages had time to acquire distinct individualities. Far earlier, therefore, than the Homeric "juventus mundi" was that "youth of the world," in which the Aryan forefathers, knowing no abstract terms, and possessing no philosophy but fetichism, deliberately spoke of the Sun, and the Dawn, and the Clouds, as persons or as animals. The Veda, though composed much later than this,—perhaps as late as the Iliad,—nevertheless preserves the record of the mental life of this period. ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... if we could learn to think of them, wherever they occur, simply as braces, we might have better success in their treatment. Our abominable achievements in this line spring from an attempt to hide the use of the thing in its abstract beauty. The straight three by four inch braces found under any barn-shed roof are positively more agreeable to look at than the majority of the distorted, turned, and becarved blocks of strange device that hang in gorgeous array upon thousands of "ornamental" houses. Besides these there are ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... could easily apply to it all our rules; but, broken as it is into hills and valleys, filled with stones here, with a bank of clay there, and a sand-pit close by, we are obliged to sacrifice to general convenience, often, some special abstract rule. ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... elaborated, resulted in a drainage of the fluid myths and the exteriorisation of a being entirely abstract. Designated first as Brahmanaspati, Lord of Prayer, afterward more simply as Brahma, he was assumed to have been asleep in the secret places of the sky, from which, on awakening, he created ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... gentleman, who had taken the chief part in the first publication, made an able abstract and a comparison with the Grebo and Mandenga tongues ("Western Africa," part iv. chap. iv.). M. du Chaillu further abridged this abridgement in his Appendix without owning his authority, and in changing the examples he did all possible damage. In ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... and as a very great Artist, I should require more time than is still allotted to me of man's brief span of life and far, far more power than that which was given to those who wrote of him in a hurry during his lifetime.... Do you wonder, then, that I should rather elect to regard Irving in the abstract, when called upon to suggest a fitting monument, than to promise a faithful portrait?... Let us be grateful, however, that a great artist is to be commemorated at all, side by side with the effigies of ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... overlooked, for example, by the illustrators. To be sure, the great majority of the artists who illustrated "Don Quixote" knew nothing whatever of Spain. To them a venta conveyed no idea but the abstract one of a roadside inn, and they could not therefore do full justice to the humour of Don Quixote's misconception in taking it for a castle, or perceive the remoteness of all its realities from his ideal. But even when better informed they seem to have no apprehension ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... him. He would not permit anyone to say that his suppression of the Taeping rebellion was a marvellous feat, and he evaded and resented all the attempts made by those in power to bring him into prominence as a national hero. Modesty is becoming as an abstract principle of human conduct, but Gordon carried it to an excess that made it difficult not so much for his fellow-men to understand him, as for them to hold ordinary workaday relations with him. This was due ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... wished and expected. The duty of an officer, the most imposing of all others to the inexperienced mind, because accompanied with so much outward pomp and circumstance, is in its essence a very dry and abstract task, depending chiefly upon arithmetical combinations, requiring much attention, and a cool and reasoning head to bring them into action. Our hero was liable to fits of absence, in which his blunders excited some mirth, and called down some reproof. This circumstance ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... would have to found his attack on the principle of abstract justice; he would never be able to persuade his father that he lacked any detail truly needful to his happiness. To go into details would be to ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... plain English, then let us have it as poetical as possible, and as unlike English; as ungrammatical, abrupt, involved, transposed, as the clumsiness, carelessness, or caprice of man can make it. If it be correct to express human thought by writing whole pages of vague and bald abstract metaphysic, and then trying to explain them by concrete concetti, which bear an entirely accidental and mystical likeness to the notion which they are to illustrate, then let the metaphysic be as abstract as possible, the concetti as fanciful and far-fetched as possible. If Marino and Cowley ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Captain made a deep impression upon the men. The desperation of our case, depressed finances, heavy hospital lists, and many other causes, independently of abstract justice, are fast removing that question beyond the ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... the ranges for fully a third of my time. The spirit of the mining population, as well as of the cattlemen, while not actually hostile, is one of indifference to religious thought. They care nothing whatever for it in the abstract, and have no use for any minister, unless it may be to marry their children or bury their dead. I am hence obliged to meet with them merely as man to man, and thus slowly win their confidence before I dare even approach a religious topic. For three long years I worked ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... erect, her supple figure fell into lines of indolently provocative grace; and the warm, golden notes welling from her throat seemed to be flung broadcast and indifferently to her listeners, as alms are often flung, without interest, toward abstract poverty and not to the poor breathing thing ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... depends on those aids which a rigid morality might disparage—the social state of a people whose integrity calls for the application of means the most certain to disseminate distrust and disunion, are facts which constitute reasons for political action that, however assailable in the mere abstract, the mind of statesmanlike form will at once accept as solid and effective, and to reject which would only show that, in over-looking the consequences of sentiment, a man can ignore the most vital interests ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... operators. They could tell precisely where Wilton, Pelham, and Little had been weak, as they termed it, and precisely what they should have done to render the enterprise a success. Still, running away, in the abstract, was not a popular idea in the squadron at the present time; but Sanford believed that he and his companions could enjoy all the benefits of an independent excursion without incurring any of its perils and penalties. Let him demonstrate his ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... the four men took small cognisance. The pudgy man did not curse the little man, nor did the little man swear, in the abstract. Eight widened eyes were fixed upon the center of the room ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... that upon which they have spent so many anxious hours, and do something different and better. It is my intention to teach you, step by step, how to lay on what you prepare for the brush: but not to say "get this or that oil," or "this or that colour," except in the abstract—red, orange, amber, yellow, ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... how little does any man know of his own personality,—of his personality in action? He may study himself; he may find out what his faculties, what his traits of character are, in the abstract as it were; but what they are in action, in movement,—how they appear to others,—he cannot know. The eye that looks around upon a landscape sees everything but itself. It is just as a man may look in the glass and see himself ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... appears to be one of the later writings of Plato, in which the style has begun to alter, and the dramatic and poetical element has become subordinate to the speculative and philosophical. In the development of abstract thought great advances have been made on the Protagoras or the Phaedrus, and even on the Republic. But there is a corresponding diminution of artistic skill, a want of character in the persons, a laboured march in the dialogue, and a degree of confusion and incompleteness in the general ...
— Philebus • Plato
... and value of these mineral products may be seen in the following abstract from the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... rest of the story is not droll, and is in no way connected with our present tale, it may be given in abstract.] ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... give me great pleasure and doubtless be altogether proper as a matter of abstract justice; but I fear rather impolitic. ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... written to you on the subject of our finances, I enclose you now an abstract of a paper on that subject, which Gouverneur Morris communicated to me. You will be a better judge of its merit than I am. It seems ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... to reason out the question. Abstract practical views interested her, and she had much depth and observation, more original than if she had read more and thought less. Of course, no conclusion was arrived at; but the two cousins had an argument of much enjoyment and ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... or the landscape chill and darken with remorse. It is impossible to think of Hawthorne without at the same time thinking of the few great masters of imaginative composition; his works, only not abstract because he has the genius to make them ideal, belong not specially to our clime or generation; it is their moral purpose alone, and perhaps their sadness, that mark him as the son of New ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... soil a small percentage of water will cause better germination than in a clay soil. While different seeds vary in their power to abstract water from soils, yet it seems that for the majority of plants, the best percentage of soil-water for germination purposes is that which is in the neighborhood of the maximum field capacity of soils for water, as explained in Chapter VII. Bogdanoff has estimated ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe
... attributes, to become infinitely wise and powerful and good. Hence their claim to suspend the course of nature, and to produce miraculous phenomena. For this purpose it was necessary that they should abstract themselves from every thing mortal, have no human passions or partialities, and divest themselves as much as possible of all the wants and demands of our material frame. Zoroaster appears indeed to have preferred morality to devotion, to have condemned celibacy and fasting, and to have ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... unto us on the glory of Narayana, that glory which is the highest and which is immutable. I heard it from him and have recited it to thee exactly as I heard it, O sinless one. This cult, with its mysteries and its abstract of details, was obtained by Narada, O king, from that Lord of the universe, viz., Narayana himself. Even such are the particulars of this great cult. I have, before this, O foremost of kings, explained it to thee in the Hari-Gita, with a brief reference to its ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... a crime. It might even be a virtue, and Madison be applauded for his courage in avowing a change of opinion, if he saw in the practical application of Hamilton's principles dangers that had not occurred to him when looking at them only as abstract theories. But the Federalists believed that Madison, governed by these purely selfish motives, sacrificed his convictions of what was best for the country that he might secure for himself a position on what he foresaw was the winning side. It is quite likely that ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... taste for women was a little raised by the pictures which Richardson had left in his imagination, Dora, with equal facility, turned into his new idea of a heroine—not his heroine, for she was engaged to White Connal—merely a heroine in the abstract. Ormond had been warned that he was to consider Dora as a married woman—well, so he would, of course. She was to be Mrs. Connal—so much the better:—he should be quite at ease with her, and she should teach him French, and drawing, and dancing, and improve his manners. He was conscious that ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... contending for their liberties and for a share in public honours." The reason for this I believe to be, that men deceive themselves more readily in generals than in particulars. To the commons of Rome it seemed, in the abstract, that they had every right to be admitted to the consulship, since their party in the city was the more numerous, since they bore the greater share of danger in their wars, and since it was they who by their valour kept Rome free and made her powerful. ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... in junior high school grades presents many difficulties which cannot be solved by a more or less abstract study of educational and industrial needs. Experimentation on an extensive scale, covering a considerable period of time, is necessary before definite conclusions can be drawn as to the limitations and possibilities of such work. It is with a full appreciation of this fact that the following ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... prospective advantages of such a mediator. Accustomed to her parents' extravagant denunciations, and her uncle's more repressed but practical contempt of them, the unfortunate girl early developed a cynical disbelief in the virtues of kinship in the abstract, and a philosophical resignation to its effects upon her personally. Believing that her father and uncle fairly represented the fraternal principle, she was quite prepared for the early defection and distrust of her vagabond and dissipated brother Stephen, ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... him, and seemed like to remain so. And what, after all, are the hearts that beat closest to our own but sealed books, which we open from time to time, at random; too often at the wrong page? But a ballroom is no fit place for abstract meditation. The lust of eye and ear, the pride of life, challenge the sense at every turn, till mere thought seems ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... other out; who know the cardboard and lath and plaster of the architectural arrangements or suspect the water-supply and drainage behind; talks where one knows that the other is shirking some practical conclusion, divagating into the abstract, and has to pick his way among hidden interests and vanities, or avert his eyes from moral vistas which he knows of.... "So-and-so is such a delightful talker—so witty and so wonderfully unprejudiced; I cannot understand ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... meadows down the stream were empty of human beings; and as for the wood, there would be no one but his own keeper in the wood. Doubtless that keeper would, from the abstract point of view, regard poaching with abhorrence. But he would perceive that his master was doing a real kindness to the Glazebrook trout by giving them that chance of making a sportsman-like end. At any rate the keeper would ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... a good poem, each word and thought enhances the value of those which precede and follow it; and every syllable has a loveliness which depends not so much on its abstract sound as on its position. Look at the same word in a dictionary, and you will ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... torch in one hand and with the other drags her victim, who personifies (but with no attempt at a likeness) Savonarola. Behind are the figures of Remorse, cloaked and miserable, and Truth, naked and unafraid. The statues in the niches ironically represent abstract virtues. Everything in the decoration of the palace points to enlightenment and content; and beyond is the calmest and ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... government and the institution to have in its management five government directors in a board of twenty-five. The tariff policy of Madison was sustained by the Southern party and opposed by the Federalists, especially in New England. Thus it became more a question of sectional interests than of abstract political economy. The capital of New England was invested in shipping, so that the exclusion of articles of foreign production was bound to injure, by a high tariff, New England's carrying trade. ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... adventures shocking every idea of verisimilitude, and serving only as a vehicle for the strange humor of the writer. The work is replete with evidences of Rabelais's learning. It would be useless to attempt giving any abstract or analysis of a book which is simply a wild chaos of material jumbled together with little regard to logic, order, or method of whatever sort. We shall better represent its character by giving a ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... Grey, Polynesian Mythology, p. 1 ff.; Taylor, New Zealand, chap. vi; cf., for Polynesia, W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, chap. xiii. The abstract ideas reported by Taylor are remarkable: from conception came increase, from this came swelling, then, in order, thought, remembrance, desire; or, from nothing came increase and so forth; or, the word brought forth night, the night ending in death. The significance ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... of fact, none of his listeners showed any inclination to cheer. War in the abstract was a thing to cheer about, but war in the concrete—war with its possibilities—thus brought home to each individual mind ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... him with his overcoat.] Surely I am too obnoxious in the abstract for your uncle to entertain such a ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... prove as ineffectual as repentance; for though we should render to God a perfect obedience for the remainder of our lives, still the sin we have committed is sufficient to procure our conviction and condemnation; for the wages of sin is death! Shall we, then, have recourse to the abstract mercy of God, as the foundation upon which to rest our hope of pardon? This is the Unitarian's plea: "I believe," he says, "that God is merciful; and I repose in his kindness, and trust he will have compassion ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various
... will not enter to-night on the abstract benefits of such an Establishment. I will rather take one of the ministers who was presented to one of the parishes of Mansoul, and shall thus let you see how that State Church worked out practically in one of its ministers at any rate. And the preacher and pastor I shall so take up was neither ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... marry Nigel arises from an abstract objection to marriage itself," said Mr. Ferrars, "it is a subject which we might talk over calmly, and ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... of a very uncommon order; her habits of thought and reading were profoundly speculative; she delighted in metaphysical subjects of the greatest difficulty, and abstract questions of the most laborious solution. On such subjects she incessantly exercised her remarkably keen powers of analysis and investigation, and no doubt cultivated and strengthened her peculiar mental faculties and tendencies by the perpetual processes ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... (he answered): it still remains for him to learn particulars—to know, that is, what things he has to do, and when and how to do them; or else, if ignorant of these details, the profit of this bailiff in the abstract may prove no greater than the doctor's who pays a most precise attention to a sick man, visiting him late and early, but what will serve to ease his patient's pains [2] ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... flounder desperately. Still, he assured himself, it had to be. And if it had to be that way it was better to have it so understood. Betty would never look at him again with that disturbing message in her eyes. He would not be troubled by a futile longing. But it hurt. He had never imagined how so abstract a thing as emotion could breed such an ache in a ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... home. The only point of importance not cleared up was that which related to the opening of the casket,—the disappearance of the contents; the lock had been unquestionably forced. No one, however, could suppose that some third person had discovered the hiding-place and forced open the casket to abstract its contents and then rebury it. The only probable supposition was that the man himself had forced it open, and, deeming the contents of no value, had thrown them away before he had hidden the casket and purse, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Terror, in Athenian garments, are endurable, and come, as the delicate critics express it, within the "limits of pleasurable sensation." But the scenes of their own St. Giles's, delineated by their own countryman, are too shocking to think of. Yet if we could abstract our minds from the fascinating colors of the picture, and forget the coarse execution (in some respects) of the print, intended as it was to be a cheap plate, accessible to the poorer sort of people, for whose instruction it was done, I think we could have no hesitation in conferring the palm of ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... from such an impeachment and declares that their language "combines wealth, grace, strength, and gentleness. It has expressions for abstract ideas, for Futurity, Eternity, and Existence, and enough numerical terms to express all possible combinations of our numerals." It might be noted in passing that it was these same Brazilian natives that the Portuguese ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... he must be certain that the 24th cup-and-saucer was a mere Irish bull—an empty piece of impertinence—a disgusting pleonasm—and a downright logical absurdity. For a 24th grand jury man is as much a metaphysical chimaera as an "abstract Lord Mayor," or a 30th of February. Not only, therefore, without reason, but even against reason, people have a superstitious regard to certain numbers: and Mr. Constable has a right to his superstition, which possibly may rest on this consideration—that 3 ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... alluded to, in the eighteenth Sonnet, as a worthy compeer of the country parson of Chaucer, &c. In the seventh book of the Excursion, an abstract of his character ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... this report the old rat was so much elated that he promptly detailed rats to go forth; and as he drew the mandatory arrow, and inquired who would go and steal the rice, a rat readily received the order and went off to rob the rice. Drawing another mandatory arrow, he asked who would go and abstract the beans, when once more a rat took over the arrow and started to steal the beans; and one by one subsequently received each an arrow and started on his errand. There only remained the scented taros, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... do him then the justice I have done since; for we students and abstract thinkers are apt too much, in our first youth, to look to the depth, of a man's mind or knowledge, and not enough to the surface it may cover. There may be more water in a flowing stream only four feet ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... asks this question: "Is a man who owns a horse, or a cow, or such things, destitute?" The Commissioners answer: "No, in the abstract; but better give him relief than to drive him to permanent destitution." On the 27th of May an inspector, who appears to have been in a state of worry and excitement, writes to head-quarters:—"Entirely deserted ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... appear, however, that Augustin cared much. In all the conceit of his false knowledge, he had that kind of inhumanity which drives the intellectual to make litter of the sweetest and deepest feelings as a sacrifice to his abstract idol. Not only did he not mind very much if his apostasy made his mother weep, but he did not trouble, either, to reconcile the chimeras of his brain with the living reality of his soul and the things of life. Whatever he found inconvenient, he tranquilly denied, content if he ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... foregoing paragraphs, relating to nervous impressions, their registry, and the consequences, that spring from them, I have given an abstract of views presented in my work on "Human Physiology," published in 1856, and may, therefore, refer the reader to the chapter on "Inverse Vision, or Cerebral Sight;" to Chapter XIV., Book I.; and to Chapter VIII., Book II.; of that work, for ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... chance to be somebody. Pearl was the happiest little girl in the world. Every night she brought home faithfully what she had learned at school, at least the interesting part of it, and when the day's work had been dull and abstract, out of the wealth of her imagination she proceeded ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... high-school students, college students, and specialists in psychology averaging middle age. Almost without exception it was found that clear and vivid images played a smaller part in the thinking of the older group than of the younger. More or less abstract ideas and concepts seemed to have taken the place of the ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... predispositions, as limiting the sphere of the will, and, consequently, of moral accountability, opens a very wide range of speculation. I can give you only a brief abstract of my own opinions on this delicate and difficult subject. Crime and sin, being the preserves of two great organized interests, have been guarded against all reforming poachers with as great jealousy as the Royal Forests. It is so easy to hang ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... know. I have no experience of women. In the abstract, it seems to me that every man has a right to some explanation from the woman ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... as landowner convinced him that slave labor was the least efficient of all. This conviction led him very early to believe in the emancipation of the slaves. I do not find that sentiment or abstract ideals moved him to favor emancipation, but his sense of fitness, his aversion to wastefulness and inefficiency made him disapprove of a system which rendered industry on a high plane impossible. Experience only confirmed these convictions of his, and in his will he ordered ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... be said in the way of abstract argument, for or against the theory of a wider democratizing of institutions in any civilized country, much trouble might well be saved to all European lands by recognizing this palpable fact, (for a palpable fact it is,) that some ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... supreme dominion, Machiavelli's great merit is that he looked afresh at the facts and discarded the old, worn formulas of the schoolmen; his great defect is that he set before his mind as a premise an abstract "political man" as far divorced from living, breathing, complex reality as the "economic man" of Ricardo. Men, he thought, are always the same, governed by calculable motives of self-interest. In general, he thought, men are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly and covetous, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... say that while pleasure, in the abstract, is a great, perhaps the greatest, good; pleasures, our actual pleasures in the ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... have a constitutional distaste for being recognized, but those of Brittany appear to visit their vengeance upon the members with which they are actually beheld. "See what thieves the fairies are!" cried a woman, on beholding one abstract apples from a countrywoman's pocket. The predatory elf at once turned round and tore out the eye that ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... against his own beneficent calling. No money-lender would ever get justice in a British court of law; easier for the camel to thread the needle's eye. That flagrant forgery would be accepted at sight by our vaunted British jury. The only chance was to abstract it before the ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... walking. Hazlitt proceeds to examine why this should be, and discovers a number of good reasons. But there is one reason, omitted by him, or perhaps left for the reader to infer, on which we may profitably spend a few minutes. It forms part of a big subject, and tempts to much abstract talk on the universality of the Fine Arts; but I think we shall be putting it simply enough if we say that an artist is superior to an "artiste" because he does well what ninety-nine people in a hundred are doing ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of any such man on the products of his genius is limited by a variety of circumstances; but, as a mere matter of abstract justice, the whole of it ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... contained members of popular choice; and the king, who was supported by the revenue of his demesnes, and by dues from his military tenants, does not appear at first to have imposed, by legislative authority, general taxes to provide for the security and good government of the community.—These were abstract notions, not prevalent in ages when the monarch was a lord paramount rather than a supreme magistrate. Many of the feudal perquisites had been arbitrarily augmented, and oppressively levied. These the Great Charter, in some cases, reduced to a certain ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... tubing or piping such as is used in the chemical laboratory or that often found attached to feeding bottles. Take about a foot of this and hold one end firmly. Abstract the air by means of the mouth, and it will be found that immediately the air is taken out the tube collapses. Now if the rubber be variable in thickness, here and there along these lines of least resistance will be found certain twists, and ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... This abstract doctrine required to be elucidated and fixed. From a hypothesis to concentrate and reduce it to a reality was the ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... chapbook, Hibernian Tales, as the "Black Thief and the Knight of the Glen," the Black Thief being Conall, and the knight corresponding to the King of Lochlan (it is given in Mr. Lang's Red Fairy Book). Here it attracted the notice of Thackeray, who gives a good abstract of it in his Irish Sketch-Book, ch. xvi. He thinks it "worthy of the Arabian Nights, as wild and odd as an Eastern tale." "That fantastical way of bearing testimony to the previous tale by producing ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.) |
