"Abstract" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... October 1st, 1859, in my father's Diary occurs the entry: "Finished proofs (thirteen months and ten days) of Abstract on 'Origin of Species'; 1250 copies printed. The first edition was published on November 24th, and all copies sold ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... consistent regard to the solemnity of the subject were delivered within the walls of a vast and gloomy cavern. The schoolmen taught that all knowledge might be obtained from the assistance of the fallen angels. They were skilled in the abstract sciences, in the knowledge of precious stones, in alchymy, in the various languages of mankind and of the lower animals; in the Belles-Lettres, Moral Philosophy, Pneumatology, Divinity, Magic, History, and Prophecy. They could ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... the Method of 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 remain satisfied with the extremely ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... unpleasantness of mien, but now he wore neatly trimmed, old-fashioned whiskers, the sable moustache having disappeared; and his dress was half-clerical, a modification which had changed his expression sufficiently to abstract the dandyism from his features, and to hinder for a second ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... Every little, in a long strain, helped, and if he happened to affect her as a firm object she could hold on by, he wouldn't jerk himself out of her reach. People in difficulties held on by what was nearest, and he was perhaps after all not further off than sources of comfort more abstract. It was as to this he had made up his mind; he had made it up, that is, to give her a sign. The sign would be that—though it was her own affair—he understood; the sign would be that—though it was her own affair—she was ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... Street, which was the patrimony and whole estate of two children. With the rear house taken away, the income from the front would not be enough to cover the interest on the mortgage. It was one of those things that occasionally make standing upon abstract principle so very uncomfortable. I confess I never had the courage to ask what was done in their case. I know that the tenement went, and I hope—well, never mind what I hope. It has nothing to do with the case. The house ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... one's eye. I know not how many hours he sits there; but while I saw him he was a pattern of diligence and unwandering thought. He had taken himself out of the age, and put himself, I suppose, into that about which he was writing. Being deaf, he finds it much the easier to abstract himself. Nevertheless, it is a miracle. He is a thin, middle-aged man, in black, with an intelligent face, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... on the resolution by which Mr. Luttrell was seated with a summary of the arguments used in it, taken from the "Annual Register," which, as is universally known, was at this time edited by Mr. Burke. It is a very fair and candid abstract, which, in fact, puts the whole question on one single issue, "that the House of Commons is the sole court of judicature in all cases of election, and that this authority is derived from the first principles of our government, viz., the necessary independence of the three branches of the ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... accorded to Servia has worked beneficially is for my readers to judge. The abstract question of the advantages thus conferred admits of debate, and for my own part I believe the present miserable state of the province to be mainly owing to the European guarantee. She was not sufficiently enlightened to profit by ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... only to meet the needs of Ireland but the needs of the Imperial Parliament." This Bill, however, in his opinion, was ill-adapted to the latter purpose. It would be a block rather than a relief to the congestion of business. But these objections were "abstract and academic" in face of the ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... "almost the same as if she had participated" in it. The mutual relations of these persons, who are made to represent the whole of society, afford matter for infinite meditation, the artistic and moral abstract of which the author ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... somewhat barbarous tongue which was the official language till 1362, and with which our legal jargon is saturated. We find in Anglo-French many words which are unrecorded in continental Old French, among them one which we like to think of as essentially English, viz., duete, duty, an abstract formed from the past participle of Fr. devoir. This verb has also given us endeavour, due to the phrase se ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... meeting Redmond had given her no illusions; from Mabel Connemora, from what she herself had heard and seen—and experienced—she knew the street woman's life, and she could not live that life for herself alone. She could talk about it to Redmond tranquilly. She could think about it in the abstract, could see how other women did it, and how those who had intelligence might well survive and lift themselves up in it. But do it she could not. So she resolved upon suicide, firmly believing in her own resolve. And she was not one to deceive herself ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... would positively come as a relief. To say that they are lukewarm is only to fairly indicate a state of feeling which is rapidly degenerating into frigidity. They declare that the Bill is unworkable, and while maintaining their abstract right to demand whatever they choose, believe that, taking one consideration with another, the lot of autonomic Ireland would ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... sects. He looked upon their projects as childish and theatrical, that gave as little promise of changing the world's history as battles between tin soldiers on some nursery floor. He seemed no longer concerned with ideals, abstract rights, or "eternal verities." Those who misunderstood him or were little associated with him were horrified at what they thought was his cynical indifference to such glorious visions as liberty, fraternity, and ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... Congress and nearly the same members, and without questioning the wisdom or patriotism of those who stood in opposition, I venture to recommend the reconsideration and passage of the measure at the present session. Of course the abstract question is not changed; but in intervening election shows almost certainly that the next Congress will pass the measure if this does not. Hence there is only a question of time as to when the proposed amendment will go to the States for their action. And as it is to so go at all ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Thagaste. It does not 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 ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... position so admirably brought out by Browning in his 'Ring and the Book,' so it is also, I think, a truism that every man has (not always consciously) a philosophy. A philosophy is, after all, a point of view; it is not necessarily an abstract academic position; nor is it always a well-defined attempt to discover the ultimate purpose of things. It can be, and very often is, a point of view ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... rule. It offers itself in a great number of applications of calculation to the movements of the heavenly bodies, or to the physics of terrestrial bodies, and in general in the problems which lead to equations of a high degree. As soon as he wishes to quit the domain of abstract relations, the calculator has occasion to employ the roots of these equations; thus the art of discovering them by the aid of an uniform method, either exactly or by approximation, did not fail at an early period to excite the attention ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... realisation, in short, of the classical ideal of comedy—there had been nothing like Jonson's comedy since the days of Aristophanes. "Every Man in His Humour," like the two plays that follow it, contains two kinds of attack, the critical or generally satiric, levelled at abuses and corruptions in the abstract; and the personal, in which specific application is made of all this in the lampooning of poets and others, Jonson's contemporaries. The method of personal attack by actual caricature of a person on the stage is almost as old as the drama. Aristophanes so lampooned ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... love of God is more than either. With all their beauty, what do these abstract loves bring us? The country we love can give us a grave and a stone. Humanity crucifies its redeemers. Wolsey summed up the matter: 'Had I but served my God with half the zeal with which I served my king, He would not in mine age, have left ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... additional information regarding the architecture of Chichen-Itza and Uxmal, and his deductions therefrom—are contained in a communication to the Minister of the United States at Mexico, and are here given in abstract, as throwing light upon the discoveries that have been made, and the inferences which have been ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... fell upon him eagerly, but he could tell me nothing. He had left the Pottawatamies the day after the wedding, and had heard no rumors of any Englishman. I did not take him into my confidence. He had outlived the time when the abstract terms "ambition" and "patriotism" had meaning to him. The story of my hopes would have tinkled in his ears like the blarings of a child's trumpet. But in one matter he ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... whirled through her mind—as jeers, jibes, they came, a laugh behind them. A something somewhere was very commendable while it remained abstract! Having a fine large understanding about Ann had nothing to do with having Ann for a sister-in-law! "Calls" were less beautiful when responded to by one's brother! This (and this tore an ugly wound) was what came of helping people in their quests ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... be absurd to attribute to the Blackfoot of to-day any such abstract conception of the name of the Creator as that expressed in the foregoing quotation. The statement that Old Man was merely light personified would be beyond his comprehension, and if he did understand what was meant, he would laugh ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... at this point, and when it flowed on again, it was in a slightly varied channel, and gradually changed from the abstract into matters ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... which divide the House of Commons, and hold the destinies of the people in their hands." Of the speeches of these three leaders, and the arguments adduced by them, he accordingly attempts to give an abstract; though as his information must have been derived, we imagine, principally through the medium of an interpreter, this first essay at Parliamentary reporting is not particularly successful; and if we are to conclude, from his constant use of the phrase zemindars to denote the landed interest, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... with her little finger in her mouth, would ponder these sayings. They gave her a feeling of life again, and vivified things which had meant nothing to her. She managed to find some meaning in his struggling, abstract speeches. And they were the medium through which she came distinctly at ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... is the object of the Philosophy of Religion. This branch of study aims to pass beyond recorded facts and local adjustments in order to weigh the theoretical claims of religions, and measure their greater or less conformity with abstract truth. The formal or regulative laws of ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... I should judge that they were the product of his own seething imagination, and therefore impregnated with that pleasurable exultation which is experienced in all energetic exertion of intellectual power; that in the same mood he had generalized the causes of 160 the war, and then personified the abstract and christened it by the name which he had been accustomed to hear most often associated with its management and measures. I should guess that the minister was in the author's mind at the moment ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... all an accident, As everybody knows. Why sing of these? Nor would I rank with Sam that man who went Down into Aetna's womb—Empedocles, I think he called himself. Themselves to please, Or else unwillingly, they made their springs; For glory in the abstract, Sam made his, To prove to all men, commons, lords, and kings, That "some things may be done, ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... lingered in her heart with a sort of call to heaven, like distant Sabbath bells, although in her despair she had turned away from his voice. He was the only one who had spoken to her kindly. The murder, shocking though it was, was an absent, abstract thing, on which her thoughts could not, and would not dwell: all that was present in her mind was Jem's ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... 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 ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... ordination of Maoris, not only to the diaconate but also to the priesthood, in order that the Maori Christians might have an opportunity of receiving the Holy Communion at least once a quarter. But this the bishop would not do. He was favourable to such a policy in the abstract, but he and the missionaries themselves were so much impressed with the educational and social deficiencies of even the best of the Maori converts, that they shrank from their admission to Holy Orders. Selwyn had hoped that St. John's College would have ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... flexible sympathy had ended by falling into one current with that reflective analysis which tends to neutralize sympathy. Few men were able to keep themselves clearer of vices than he; yet he hated vices mildly, being used to think of them less in the abstract than as a part of mixed human natures having an individual history, which it was the bent of his mind to trace with understanding and pity. With the same innate balance he was fervidly democratic in his feeling for the multitude, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... foundation. "Otherwise," they thought, "psychology will be unable to move forward a single step, and may even obstruct every other branch of Natural History." Instances have not been wanting of physiology poaching on the preserves of purely metaphysical and abstract knowledge, all the time feigning to ignore the latter absolutely, and seeking to class psychology with the positive sciences, having first bound it to a Bed of Procrustes, where it refuses to yield its secret ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... our limited means, is not to be estimated by the narrow rules that we apply to men. No, we must not measure the ordinances of God by laws that are plausible in our own eyes. Justice is a relative and not an abstract quality; and, until we understand the relations of the Deity to ourselves as well as we understand our own relations to the Deity, we reason ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... choose. But we are talking of the theory in the abstract, not of any particular case. One hardly expects to find ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... that Orange won't hear of such a course. I see great dangers ahead for him, but I see no honourable way of avoiding them. When a man, careless of danger, unconcerned with profit, takes up the cause of God against the world, others may not follow, but they must admire him. Abstract sentiments of virtue do not charm me. Orange is a Roman Catholic, however, and therefore a practical idealist. The practical idealists of England are the Dissenters—mostly the Methodists. John Wesley was considered crack-brained by his contemporaries at Oxford; he was a greater ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... the Duke and I went for a walk. He kept his promise and did not bore me. We discussed all sorts of things, some interesting, and all in the abstract. We left personalities alone. At ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... affairs of life, was in his view the sum and substance of religion. The doctrine of the Atonement never commended itself to his reason, and his sense of justice was disturbed by the idea of the innocent suffering for the guilty. He moreover thought it had a pernicious tendency for men to rely on an abstract article of faith, to save them from their sins. With the stern and gloomy sects, who are peculiarly attracted by the character of Deity as delineated in the Old Testament, he had no sympathy. The Infinite One was ever present to his mind, as a loving Father to ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... before he will consent to live it. The Englishman just lives ahead, not aware that there is a problem; or convinced that, if there is one, it will only be solved "by walking." The philosopher proceeds from the abstract to the concrete. The Englishman starts with the concrete, and may or, more probably, may not arrive at the abstract. No general rules are of any use to him except such as he may have elaborated for himself out of his own experience. ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... of this kind in England too. However, I once heard a German professor say that the English boy outdid the German in gesunder Menschenverstand (sound common sense), but that the German wins in the race when it comes to the abstract knowledge (Wissen) that he and his countryfolk prize above all the treasures of the earth. No one who knows both countries can doubt for a single moment that the professor was right, and that he stated the case as fairly as it can be stated. ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... shadow, the old waddie remembering rides and thirsts of far away and long ago. He was a wonderful storyteller, and most of his pictures tell stories. He never generalized, painting "a man," "a horse," "a buffalo" in the abstract. His subjects are warm with life, whether awake or asleep, at a particular instant, under particular conditions. Trails Plowed Under, prodigally illustrated, is a collection of yarns and anecdotes saturated with humor and humanity. It incorporates the materials ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... weekly publication of the same size as the Scientific American and contains articles too long or too technical for the parent paper. Lectures and Papers read by famous scientists before learned societies are published in full or in abstract; articles from foreign papers, otherwise inaccessible to those who read English only, are translated; and original articles on technical subjects are a few of the valuable features ...
— Wholesale Price List of Newspapers and Periodicals • D. D. Cottrell's Subscription Agency
... Plato, and Socrates, but recent times have been the real cradle of aesthetics as a science. Modern philosophy was the first to recognize that beauty in art is one of the means by which the contradictions can be removed between mind considered in its abstract and absolute existence and nature constituting the world of sense, bringing back ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... systematically with the prongs and hoes of regular study, of example, and precept; and, being a vigorous sprout when she was transplanted, she has made good use of her opportunities, and, behold! early mental salad, and very fine! You men theorize, ratiocinate, declaim, dogmatize about abstract propositions, and finally get your feet tangled and stumble over facts right under your noses, that women would never fail to pick up and put aside. The soul of Thales possesses you all, whereas we who sit at the cradle, and ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... because they had not enough of the language of those countries to understand so much as they have related. Objects falling under the observation of the senses might be clearly known; but every thing intellectual, every thing abstract—politicks, morals, and religion, must be darkly guessed. Dr. Johnson was of the same opinion. He upon another occasion, when a friend mentioned to him several extraordinary facts, as communicated to him by the circumnavigators, ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... From an abstract point far outside the boundaries of these rural counties, it is easy enough to condemn the frame of mind that lets such things take place. But the fact is that people in rural local governments and those who elect them often have even more respect and love for ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... peculiarity of the Indian dialects, is the abundant use which they allow of figurative language, a result of their total want of terms expressive of abstract, and purely spiritual ideas. To clothe these in words, they must have recourse to figures, chiefly metaphor and allegory, hence arises so much of what an American writer calls "the picturesque brilliancy" of the savage tongues. To express the term "prosperity," for example, the Indian will ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... the cheap severity of abstract ethics! My wife was very plain, never had my ruffs properly starched, and knew nothing about cookery. Why, there was a buck I had shot in Hogley Woods, a magnificent pricket, and do you know how she had it sent up to table? However, it is no matter now, for it is all ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... abstract wisdom of the terms of the Sherman- Johnston "memorandum" has little to do with that of Sherman in agreeing to it. Any person at all acquainted with the politics of the dominant part at that time would have known that it was at least unwise to introduce political questions at all. Besides, ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... which Page now prepared to play his part in what was probably the greatest diplomatic drama in history. The materials with which this drama concerned itself were such apparently lifeless subjects as ships and cargoes, learned discourses on such abstract matters as the doctrine of continuous voyage, effective blockade, and conditional contraband; yet the struggle, which lasted for three years, involved the greatest issue of modern times—nothing less than the survival of those conceptions ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... their short-lived pleasure. These several kinds of persons are foul objects steeped skin and all in lewdness. The lustful love, for instance, which has sprung to life and taken root in your natural affections, I and such as myself extend to it the character of an abstract lewdness; but abstract lewdness can be grasped by the mind, but cannot be transmitted by the mouth; can be fathomed by the spirit, but cannot be divulged in words. As you now are imbued with this desire only in the abstract, you are certainly well fit to be ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... however, in whom the blood of the Moors was stronger than the faith in their new religion, which, however good in the abstract, was ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... is a public-spirited body; its contribution to the general life is not only abstract and literary; for many of its members are identified with modern movements toward better citizenship. Miss Balch, besides her work on municipal committees, is connected with the Woman's Trade Union League, and is interested in the great movement ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... prose in Castilian, but he must needs employ Galician for his Cantigas de Santa Maria. The Portuguese nobles, with King Diniz (reigned 1279-1325) at their head, filled the idle hours of their bloody and passionate lives by composing strangely abstract, conventional poems of love and religion in the manner of the Provencal canso, dansa, balada and pastorela, which had had such a luxuriant growth in Southern France in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. A highly elaborated metrical system mainly distinguishes ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... while physical force is on the side of the brute," said Julius, "no abstract recognition of equality ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... upon abstract points, between Saint Aldegonde, Leoninus, and Doctor Gaill, then ensued, during which the Prince, who had satisfied himself as to the result of the conference, retired from the apartment. He afterwards had a private convention with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... from the abstract to the concrete, and draw upon my note-book for illustrations of this theory that the Chinese are a self-taxing ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... of her object, the Gy readily promises; and as the characteristic of this extraordinary people is an implicit veneration for truth, and her word once given is never broken even by the giddiest Gy, the conditions stipulated for are religiously observed. In fact, notwithstanding all their abstract rights and powers, the Gy-ei are the most amiable, conciliatory, and submissive wives I have ever seen even in the happiest households above ground. It is an aphorism among them, that "where a Gy loves it is her pleasure to obey." It will be observed that in the relationship of the sexes ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... style, with an insight not less clear, than I at present possess. My judgment was stronger than were my powers of realizing its dictates; and the faults of my language, though indeed partly owing to a wrong choice of subjects, and the desire of giving a poetic colouring to abstract and metaphysical truths, in which a new world then seemed to open upon me, did yet, in part likewise, originate in unfeigned diffidence of my own comparative talent.—During several years of my youth and early manhood, I reverenced those who had re- introduced the ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... my state, thou perfect model Of heaven itself, and abstract of the angels, Forgive the late disturbance of my soul! I'm clear by nature, as a rockless stream; But they dig through the gravel of my heart, And raise the mud of passions up to cloud me; Therefore let me conjure you, do not go; 'Tis ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... window with Rosa for a few words of consultation, and then asking for pen and ink, sketched out a line or two of agreement. In the meantime Mrs. Billickin took a seat, and delivered a kind of Index to, or Abstract of, the ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... to rise above them into some more nebulous region in our search for the Absolute. Love, Light, and Spirit are for us names of God Himself. And observe that St. John does not, in applying these semi-abstract words to God, attenuate in the slightest degree His personality. God is Love, but He also exercises love. "God so loved the world." And He is not only the "white radiance" that "for ever shines"; He can "draw" us to Himself, and "send" His Son to ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... earth, is a great and marvelous work, whether it be the work of an abstract God, or whether it be the work of ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... him at once the right hand of fellowship, and to the moment of his decease, that cordiality was never withdrawn. I had read so much of poetry, and sympathized so much with poets in all their eccentricities and vicissitudes, that, to see before me the realization of a character, which in the abstract most absorbed my regards, gave me a degree of satisfaction which it would be difficult ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... "Abstract of Proceedings of the Proceedings Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, During the Year ...
— Washington's Masonic Correspondence - As Found among the Washington Papers in the Library of Congress • Julius F. Sachse
... through unknown seas and traces for him in the heavens an unerring path to his appointed haven. And had not mathematicians toiled for so long, and, to uninstructed observers, apparently so fruitlessly, over the abstract relations of lines and surfaces, it is probable that but few of our mechanical inventions would have seen ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... in short, bewildering himself as much as ever his great namesake has done with theories and schools. But, Clemency, who was his good Genius - though he had the meanest possible opinion of her understanding, by reason of her seldom troubling herself with abstract speculations, and being always at hand to do the right thing at the right time - having produced the ink in a twinkling, tendered him the further service of recalling him to himself by the application ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... a difference in deeper ethics, it did not extend to the surface of things by which men live. It explained; but did it excuse, especially in the eye of abstract ethics? Had not these men broken the law, and is not the upholding of the law important in its moral effect on ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... called the mover of nature, divided it into two, one congenial to man's happiness, the other inimical to his welfare; these they deified in the same manner as they had before done nature with her various parts. These abstract, metaphysical beings, became the sole object of their thoughts; were the subject of their continual contemplation; they looked upon them as realities of the highest importance: thus nature quite disappeared; ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... road. You reject abstract theories, and have little consideration for cheapness and plenty. Your chief care is the interest of the producer. You desire to emancipate him from external competition, and reserve the national market ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... hurried to the window. And Anna was conscious of a few moments of exquisite emotion. After all, life had still its pulsations. The joy of being loved thrilled her as nothing before had ever done, a curious abstract joy which had nothing in it at that moment ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... now to speak; and as it is curious and important, not merely on account of the geographical knowledge it conveys, but also from the insight it gives us into the commercial transactions of the countries which he visited, we shall give rather a full abstract of it, availing ourselves of the light which has been thrown upon it by the learned and ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... evident that we have here a case of the type: the similarities of various persons are amalgamated, their differences cancelled, and in the resulting percept those traits emphasized which have particularly pleased or interested us. This, in the abstract, may serve for a description of the origin of an idea of character quite as well as of an idea of physical form. But the different nature of the material — the fact that a character is not a presentation to sense, but a rationalistic synthesis ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... emeritus Professor Swan,[7] of St. Andrews, and his later friend, Professor P. G. Tait. It is a curious enough circumstance, and a great encouragement to others, that a man so ill equipped should have succeeded in one of the most abstract and arduous walks of applied science. The second remark is one that applies to the whole family, and only particularly to Thomas Stevenson from the great number and importance of his inventions: holding as the Stevensons did a Government appointment, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ratlike eyes, but he was sure that they would sell out for no small sum, and in so far as he could remember there had been in his pockets, when he came here, not more than five or six louis. Doubtless the old Michel had managed to abstract those in his daily offices about the room, for Ste. Marie knew that the clothes hung in a closet across from his bed. He had seen them there once when ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... such travail of the spirit as I endured during the fevered days when I was engaged on the poem. It was not as if I wanted to say that snow was white or grass was green. I could do that without a dictionary. It was a question now of the loftiest sentiments, of the most abstract truths, the names of which were very new in my vocabulary. It was necessary to use polysyllables, and plenty of them; and where to find rhymes for such words as "tyranny," "freedom," and "justice," when you had less than two ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... is in general overlooked by those who either write English history or comment upon it. Most writers of or upon English history proceed either upon servile principles, or upon no principles: and a good Spirit of English History, that is, a history which should abstract the tendencies and main results [as to laws, manners, and constitution] from every age of English history, is a work which I hardly hope to see executed. For it would require the concurrence of some philosophy, with a great deal of impartiality. How idly do we say, in speaking of the events ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... ANYONE or ANYTHING? Only he is worthy of respect who does not harm his fellows; and of those who do not harm their fellows there are but few. To this point you must pay attention—you must teach him words of variable import, words more abstract, as well as ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... not go against the age," said Campbell; "it would be absurd to do so. I only spoke of what was right and wrong on abstract principles; and, to tell the truth, I can't help liking the mixture myself, though ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... honestly; "I don't. Babe hasn't the make-up for a professional woman in any line. She is too self-centred, too impetuous. She needs something to humanize her womanhood, not make an abstract thing of her. I'd rather see Babe a gentle, loving woman than the greatest light ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... marble or bronze of well-known statues ranged along the corridors—a forlorn troupe of nude and shivering divinities. The immense hall below, with its violent frescos and its brand-new Turkey carpets, was panelled in oak, from which some device of stain or varnish had managed to abstract every particle of charm. A whole oak wood, indeed, had been lavished on the swathing and sheathing of the house, With the only result that the spectator beheld it steeped in a repellent yellow-brown from top to toe, against which no ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... opportunity of education before every one, that even his servants must go to school! He is not one of those who can see needs that are far away but not those that are right at home. His belief in education, and in the highest attainable education, is profound, and it is not only on account of the abstract pleasure and value of education, but its power of increasing actual earning power and thus making a worker of more value to ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... children's studies, and never attempted to link them to the things of every-day life. But while this claim might be justified to some extent, it was by no means sufficient to cover the facts of the case. The truth is, it was quite as much the teachers' duty to link these abstract studies with concrete facts, as it was ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... ever entirely to shatter the faith of such men, and however they may be wronged by individuals of the opposite sex their subjective attitude toward woman in the abstract is one of chivalrous respects. As far as outward appearances were concerned Little Eva might have passed readily as a paragon of all the virtues. As yet, there was no sign nor line of dissipation marked upon her ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... follows a long account, the monotonous details of which may properly be omitted. It records the sale, to nearly sixty different purchasers, of the goods indicated in the abstract which ensues. In this abstract, the amounts are given in pieces of eight and reals; these were at that time the ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... redoubled fury, and once or twice I detected a stealthy exchange of glances between Captain Courcy and the two travellers. Thus far their plans had worked out beautifully; I was, to all appearance, entirely in their power, and it would be easy for them during the night to abstract the note. The one point in my favour was that they believed I knew nothing of the plot, and I took pains not to undeceive them. I laughed at the captain's jokes, and applauded his stories, though half expecting every moment ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... be influenced by it to the full extent to which it is capable of influencing human nature—except through this medium. We may hold that just because it is Divine, it must be eternally true, omnipresent in its gracious power; but even granting this, it is not known as an abstract or eternal somewhat; it is historically, and not otherwise than historically, revealed. It is achieved by Christ, and the testimony to Christ, on the strength of which we accept it, is in the last resort ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... last the ceremony ended, some of the performers were so hoarse from incessant singing that they could hardly speak. [Footnote: Compare the account of La Harpe with that of the Chevalier de Beaurain; both are in Margry, VI. There is an abstract in ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... and henceforth I shall never cease to pray that your resolution may prove fortunate in all respects. You no longer require my direction in your studies, but I will suggest that it might be expedient for you to give more attention to positive and less to abstract science. Remember those noble words of Sir David Brewster, to which, I believe, I have already called your attention, 'If the God of love is most appropriately worshipped in the Christian temple, the God of nature may be equally honored in the temple of science. Even from its lofty minarets ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... most thorough-paced Utilitarians who go these extreme lengths? These lengths, extreme as they are, are legitimate deductions from tenets held in common by the most moderate and cautious as well as by the most reckless of the sect. Crime in the abstract is condemned not less vehemently by the latter than by the former; but by both equally it is condemned on account, not of its inherent vileness, but solely of its observed results. If the results were different, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... her attention had been absent, and how little account she could give of what had passed by her like the wind; but she need not have been at a loss, for Agatha, with sparkling eyes and clasped hands, burst out into a very able and spirited abstract of the speech, and the future it portrayed, showing perhaps more enthusiasm than the practised public speaker thought it prudent ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... that, as the best iron is not made into nails, so the best men are not made into soldiers. With our Western civilisation, the best men and steel and soldiers found them an easy victim. There are no people in the world who have a higher regard for abstract justice and right than the Chinese. It is admitted by every man who has had large commercial dealings with them that there are no people who have a greater regard for straightforward, honest dealing. In our dealings with them, as regards this campaign, ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... the evidence of that operation, or the nature of that cause, requires a long chain of reasoning from the most extensive physical principles. Our present subject of investigation requires no such abstract distant media, by which the effect is to be connected with its cause; the actual operation in general is the object of our immediate observation; and here we have only to reason from less to more, and not to homologate things which may, to men ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... delight in the joyous business of living. But the strong current which lifted him so buoyantly was an emotion which no shyness or stiffness hampered in the expression—in its essence an exultant patriotism of race. Democracy meant to him in this stage of his development, not any abstract theory of government, but the triumph of ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... a truth that bodies in space attract each other with a force that varies inversely as the square of the distance between them. Fact is concrete, and is a matter of physical experience: truth is abstract, and is a matter of mental theory. Actuality is the realm of fact, reality the realm of truth. The universe as we apprehend it with our senses is actual; the laws of the universe as we comprehend them with ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... the knowledge of your name and address. I have drawn airy images of you, but they do not become incarnate, and I am not sure that I should recognize you in the brief moment of passing. Your nature is not of those which are instantly legible. As an abstract power, it has wrought in my life and it continually moves my heart with desires which are unsatisfactory because so vague and ignorant. Let me offer you personally, my gratitude, my earnest friendship, you would laugh if I were to ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... more by token that he was very rich and knew wonder-well how to entertain whomsoever he deemed deserving of honour. But Messer Betto had never been able to win and to have him, and he and his companions believed that this betided for that Guido, being whiles engaged in abstract speculations, became much distraught from mankind; and for that he inclined somewhat to the opinion of the Epicureans, it was reported among the common folk that these his speculations consisted only in seeking if it might be ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... afternoon to decline going to church, on the ground that he was going to tea at Mr. Lunn's, whose pretty daughter Sally had been an early flame of his, and, when the church-goers were at a safe distance, to abstract the guineas from their wooden box and slip them into a small canvas bag—nothing easier than to call to the cowboy that he was going, and tell him to keep an eye on the house for fear of Sunday tramps. David thought it would be easy, too, to get to a small thicket ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... Waverley is first presented to us is, as a delineator of human character. When we regard him in this light, we are struck at once by the fertility of his invention, and the force, novelty, and fidelity of his pictures. He brings to our minds, not abstract beings, but breathing, acting, speaking individuals. Then what variety! What originality! What numbers! What a gallery has he set before us! No writer but Shakspeare ever equalled him in this respect. Others may have equalled, perhaps ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... poets personify abstract things, and not poets only but sculptors[7] and painters too. All the great things of the world are ...
— Plays of Near & Far • Lord Dunsany
... of the Story.—However abstract the thinking of civilized man may become, "all our intelligence," to quote Ladd's "Outlines of Physiological Psychology," "is intelligence about something or other, ... resting on a basis of sensations and volitions." Difficult as it is and difficult as ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith
... of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the center of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... extirpation of the stomach is considered by most surgeons entirely unjustifiable, as there is seldom hope of cure or prospect of amelioration. La Tribune Medicale for January 16, 1895, gives an abstract of Langenbuch's contribution upon total extirpation of the stomach. Three patients were treated, of whom two died. In the first case, on opening the abdominal cavity the stomach was found very much contracted, presenting extensive carcinomatous infiltration on its posterior surface. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... government came a pure democracy, social and political—it came of individual interest and neighborly love and of no abstract philosophical theory or of protest against oligarchy; it came from the application, voluntary for the most part, of "older institutions and ideas to the transforming influence of land," free land; and such has been the result, says Professor Turner, [Footnote: See ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... probably has a close connection with the scarcity of organic beings in that part of the ocean. After the elaborate paper by Ehrenberg, on the phosphorescence of the sea, it is almost superfluous on my part to make any observations on the subject. (8/8. An abstract is given in No. 4 of the "Magazine of Zoology and Botany.") I may however add, that the same torn and irregular particles of gelatinous matter, described by Ehrenberg, seem in the southern as well as in the northern hemisphere to be the common cause of this phenomenon. The particles were so minute ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Mensheviki, and Social Revolutionists) and the Bolsheviki or revolutionary Socialists. The Cadets were the first to gain the upper hand, but were soon swept away, for they strove to satisfy the soldiers, workers and peasants with abstract, political ideals. The Mensheviki and Social Revolutionists succeeded ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... a name which any advantageous distinction has made eminent, but some latent animosity will burst out. The wealthy trader, however he may abstract himself from publick affairs, will never want those who hint, with Shylock, that ships are but boards. The beauty, adorned only with the unambitious graces of innocence and modesty, provokes, whenever ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... the parent of civil wars. It shakes the foundations of states. Jansenism can excite only theological quarrels and wars of the pen. The Reformation attacked the power of the Church; Jansenism was concerned exclusively with abstract questions. The Jansenist disputes sprang from problems of grace and predestination, fate and free-will—that labyrinth in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... Roy savagely. Not that the abstract fact of the bells ringing was of any moment to him, but he was in a mood to be angry with everything. "Here, you!" continued he, seizing hold of a boy who was running by, "what be them ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... is because he was able to give his narrative the reality of a travel-book instead of the insubstantial quality of a dream. He leaves the reader with the feeling that he is moving among real places and real people. As for the people, Bunyan can give even an abstract virtue—still more, an abstract vice—the skin and bones of a man. A recent critic has said disparagingly that Bunyan would have called Hamlet Mr. Facing-both-ways. As a matter of fact, Bunyan's ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... avaro (III. 287), is barely mentioned. Perhaps Vicente felt that he would have been too much of an abstract type, ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... much to say for themselves. There is an ancient heresy which tells us that, on most occasions, ladies are prone to have the last word; but certain it is that they are making themselves heard now. On the special subject of her so-called "Rights" the abstract Woman was, I knew, prodigiously emphatic—how emphatic, though, I was not quite aware, until having seen from the top of a City-bound omnibus that a lady whom I will describe by the Aristophanic name of Praxagora would lecture at the Castle Street Co-operative Institute. I went and co-operated ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... highest sphere is action from the general or abstract thoughts which we have been able to work up by the apperceiving activity of the mind. In this sphere we have a special name for those thoughts which influence us directly and lead us to action: we call such thoughts ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... feeling to affect his judgment. He thought only of what was good for the Soudan, and he was convinced that the only way to restore law and order there was to place Zebehr in power. One of the faults of our system of party government is that the Cabinet does not consider so much what is right in the abstract, as what will most affect the public mind. The national hatred of slavery is, in England, rightly very strong; but circumstances alter cases. The Cabinet could not face public opinion, although the public were at that time ill-informed, and ignorant of many important elements in ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... is believed to be rather abstract than practical, whether slavery ever can or would exist in any portion of the acquired territory even if it were left to the option of the slaveholding States themselves. From the nature of the climate and productions in much the larger portion ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... best to wean him from the fatal habit. She even ventured to abstract his brandy bottle and dilute its contents. On being detected, she underwent a personal correction which was not soon forgotten. The poor creature, indeed, underwent every sort of humiliation from her worthless husband, which she bore in silence, hoping ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... were true Englishmen. John Bull has suffered the idea of the Invisible to be very much flattened out of him. Jonathan is conscious still that he lives in the world of the Unseen as well as of the Seen. To move John, you must make your fulcrum of solid beef and pudding; an abstract idea will ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... 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 sum; while it ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... is unsatisfactory. The hero's surrender to the lust of the flesh, undoubtedly suggested by Goethe's Faust and consistent in Goethe's poem, is foreign to the conflict of this play, which, not being human, as is that of Faust, but an abstract antagonism of general historic principles, should have been solved without the interference of the mere creature weaknesses of the hero and the mere creature sympathies of the reader. Immermann planned to untie the knot in a second part, which was to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... precisely how much of casual, dogged pluck was enshrined in that soldierly phrase. It struck the note of courage and command. It was Lance incarnate. It steadied him, automatically, at a crisis when his shaken nerves might not have responded to any abstract ethical appeal. He closed his eyes a moment to collect himself; swayed, the merest fraction—then deliberately ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... pronominal base used in compounds; Dak wa pronominal prefix some, something. Prefix wo (wa-|-o) forms abstract ...
— The Dakotan Languages, and Their Relations to Other Languages • Andrew Woods Williamson
... into what manner of place fate has brought him. The walls are pasted with appropriate advertisements: "Some Account of the Pope's Bull," "A Cock and Bull Story," "Theatre Royal, Haymarket—John Bull" "To be Sold by Auction, the Bull Inn," "Abstract of the Act against Bull-baiting," and so on. In Libra Striking the Balance (same year), a dishonest tradesman has been detected in using false weights and measures. The beadle holds up a pair of scales, one of which weighs very much heavier than the other. ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... she conscientiously set about to do them good, if they would be done good to. Mrs. Francis's heart was kind, when you could get to it; but it was so deeply crusted over with theories and reflections and abstract truths that not very many people knew that she ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... more familiar to me than things I'd never seen before. Especially afterwards. But while things were remembered, persons, I found by-and-by, were completely forgotten. Or rather, while I remembered after a while generalities, such as houses and men, recognising them in the abstract as a house, or a man, or a horse, or a baby, I forgot entirely particulars, such as the names of people and the places I had lived in. Words soon came back to me: names and facts were lost: I knew the world as a whole, not my own old ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... termination 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 to ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... instantly of his favor, and not at all from badness of heart. Beggars, especially genteel beggars, ought never to show themselves, but to ask for charity through the newspapers. One can love one's neighbors in the abstract, or even at a distance, but at close quarters it's almost impossible. If it were as on the stage, in the ballet, where if beggars come in, they wear silken rags and tattered lace and beg for alms dancing gracefully, then one might ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the testimony of God and the reasonings of men; the words of the Spirit and human inferences. Faith in the testimony of God, and obedience to the commandments of Jesus, are their bond of union, and not an agreement in any abstract views or opinions upon what is written or spoken by divine authority. Hence all the speculations, questions, debates of words, and abstract reasonings, found in human creeds, have no place in their religious fellowship. Regarding Calvinism and Arminianism, Trinitarianism ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... excitement in which the public shared. What little Venice imbibes of these things is from outside influence, after due lapse of time. A prosperous, luxurious city of merchants and statesmen, she was too much bound up in the transactions and sensations of actual life to develop any abstract and thoughtful ideals. ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... made abstract substantives, by adding the termination ness; and a few in hood or head, noting character or qualities: as white, whiteness; hard, hardness; great, greatness; skilful, skilfulness, unskilfulness; godhead, manhood, maidenhead, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... is pointed out, is concerned with a unique event. History never repeats itself. If nothing else, the mere circumstance that every event has a date and location would give historical facts an individuality that facts of the abstract sciences do not possess. Because historical facts always are located and dated, and cannot therefore be repeated, they are not subject to experiment and verification. On the other hand, a fact not subject to verification is not a fact for natural ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... earthquake had seriously affected it; and it was with some concern and anxiety that he thought he could detect certain slight alterations of shape, here and there. Not, of course, that it mattered to him, in the abstract, how much or how little the island had altered in shape, provided—but this was a very big proviso—that it had not so seriously affected his dockyard as to damage the cutter, or caused the treasure-cave to collapse to such an extent as to obliterate its situation, or bury the treasure ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... not the result of new research; nor is it an abstract resuming historical and critical discoveries on its subject up to date. Of this latter there are several already before the British public; the former, as I said, it was not for me to attempt. Nor do I feel my book to be altogether even what it ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... auspices, and had soon come to a decision that it would be a good thing and a just to lock up all the Brownbies in the great jail of the colony at Brisbane. He probably knew nothing of law or justice in the abstract, but he greatly valued law when exercised against those he hated. The western fence of which mention has been made ran down to the Mary River, hitting it about four miles west of Medlicot's Mill; so that there was a considerable portion ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... stamping on them the most hateful character possible, are said to be, these men, in very truth, are. I do not mean that all of them are hateful personally, any more than all the Inquisitors, or all the buccaneers. But the position which they occupy, and the abstract excellence of which they are in arms to vindicate, is that which the united voice of mankind habitually selects as the type of all hateful qualities. I will not bandy chicanery about the more or less of stripes or other torments ...
— The Contest in America • John Stuart Mill
... History and Antiquities of the Cathedral of Salisbury, &c. (1723, 8vo.), it is printed, and described as "An Architectonical Account of this Cathedral", by "an eminent gentleman". Part of the same report was printed in Wren's Parentalia (1750); and a short abstract of it will also be found in Dodsworth's Salisbury Cathedral (written by the late Mr. Hatcher), p. 172. In a communication from the last named gentleman in 1841, when he was engaged upon his History ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... my dear Geraldine. We'll play chess every night, if you like. I don't care much for the game in the abstract, I admit; but I am never tired of admiring your judicious play, or the exquisite ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... preaching against the absent wrong-doer, no haranguing evil in the abstract, but there was never lacking a definite and personal denouncement of present and personal sin. One tremendous word loomed large before his hearers, nor could any misunderstand when he talked about SIN, and the arousing thought was ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... 'Hige-meethum' (2910) is glossed by H. as dat. plu. ( for the dead). S. proposes 'hige-meethe,' nom. sing. limiting Wiglaf; i.e. W., mood-weary, holds head-watch o'er friend and foe.—B. suggests taking the word as dat. inst. plu. of an abstract noun in -'u.' The translation would be substantially the same ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... receiving this remark as abstract philosophy, rather than as having a personal meaning. 'But I think I should consider pounds, shillings, and pence a very fair reward, if I only had enough ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... tendencies, and enables us to correctly value and define their nature. Faculties of kindred qualities may be grouped together, and their antagonisms represented in the opposite arc of the circle. Let us employ a circle to represent mind. The conception of the abstract quality of good, requires contrast with one of a converse nature, bad, (see Fig. 69). Opposite faculties may be portrayed in the same manner. The functions of the cerebrum and spinal system ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... your liberality towards men of great parts and small fortunes, and give you broad hints that I mean myself. And I was just going on in the usual method to peruse a hundred or two of dedications, and transcribe an abstract to be applied to your Lordship, but I was diverted by a certain accident. For upon the covers of these papers I casually observed written in large letters the two following words, DETUR DIGNISSIMO, which, for aught I knew, might contain some important ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... completely 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 ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra |
