"Neuter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as 'masculine or feminine'? This necessity for endowing inanimate though active things, such as rivers, with sex, is obviously a necessity of a stage of thought wholly unlike our own. We know that active inanimate things are sexless, are neuter; we feel no necessity to speak of them as male or female. How did the first speakers of the human race come to be obliged to call lifeless things by names connoting sex, and therefore connoting, not only activity, but also life ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... something strange about her looks. It is difficult to describe. It was not that she was no longer a young woman, but there seemed to be something almost sexless about her. It was as though her secondary sex characteristics were no longer feminine, but—for want of a better word—neuter. ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... t y a m, as a neuter, is often used as an abstract, and is then rightly translated by truth. But it also means that which is, the true, the real; and there are several passages in the Rig-Veda where, instead of truth, I think we ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... as a sponge does water the impulses and motives of his contemporaries. The lurking secrets of the "new learning"—doctrines that made for damnation, such as the recrudescence of the mediaeval conception of an angelic neuter host, neither for Heaven nor Hell, not on the side of Lucifer nor with the starry hosts—were said to have been mirrored in his pictures. Its note is in Citta di Vita, in the heresy of the Albigenses, and it goes as far back as Origen. Those ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... safe from all the dreadful things that might happen to a child. Sometimes you seem like a sister, so really kind and so outwardly provoking. Often you are my comrade, and we are completely congenial, neuter entities. The thing is we have a satisfaction when we are together that we never could apart. There it is, Kate, the fact we can't get around. We're happier together than we ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... (to whatever class they may belong) are either masculines, feminines, or intermediates (neuter). All ending in N, P, S, or in the two compounds of this last, PS and X, are masculines. All ending in the invariably long vowels, H and O, and in A among the vowels that may be long, are feminines. So that there is an equal number of masculine and feminine terminations, ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle
... total defeat of the royalists. "I showed him evidently," said Cromwell, "how this success might be obtained; and only desired leave, with my own brigade of horse to charge the king's army in their retreat; leaving it in the earl's choice, if he thought proper, to remain neuter with the rest of his forces: but, notwithstanding my importunity, he positively refused his consent; and gave no other reason but that, if we met with a defeat, there was an end of our pretensions we should ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... the idea of God or mind is both personal and impersonal. Nor in ascribing, as appears to us, both these attributes to him, and in speaking of God both in the masculine and neuter gender, did he seem to himself inconsistent. For the difference between the personal and impersonal was not marked to him as to ourselves. We make a fundamental distinction between a thing and a person, while to Plato, by the help of various intermediate ...
— Philebus • Plato
... out with your common gender," screamed Sal. "My grammar don't read so. It says Masculine, Feminine Neuter and Grundy gender, to which last but one thing in the world belongs, and that is the lady below with the cast iron back and ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... fell out betwixt the protestors and resolutioners, Mr. Blair was at London, and afterward for the most part remained neuter in that affair; for which he was subjected to some hardships; yet he never omitted any proper place or occasion for the uniting and cementing these differences, none now in Scotland being more earnest in this ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... and the Laws of Nature; and declare for us against France, in case of the worst. What an attempt! Imperial Majesty has no money; Imperial Majesty remembers recent days rather, and his own last quarrel with France (on the Polish-Election score), in which you Sea-Powers cruelly stood neuter! One comfort, and pretty much one only, is left to a nearly bankrupt Imperial heart; that France does at any rate ratify Pragmatic Sanction, and instead of enemy to that inestimable Document has become friend,—if only she be well let alone. "Let well alone," says the sad Kaiser, bankrupt ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... a presumption, the Hollandish "Nieuws" occurs, as a neuter substantive, in the sense of "niewe tijding," or "nouvelles," and, of course, the English "news," as perfect as can be wished. It is true that the "Nieuws-Boek" now circulates under the modest name of "Nieuws-Papieren," or of "Nieuws-Verteller:" ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various
... before your mind. I remember well how many long years it was before I could look into the faces of some of the difficulties and not feel quite abashed. I fairly struck my colours before the case of neuter insects. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... old language there was no neuter gender, the gods must always appear either as female or male. For apparent reasons, in all the translations, through the pronouns and adjectives used, the more important ancient deities have all been made to appear ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... who had remained neuter in the first mutiny, and some of whom had even ranged themselves on our side,[26] formed a plot to throw us all into the sea, hoping to execute their design by falling on us by surprise. These wretches ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... of the vegetable and the animal kingdoms. It is seen in bone and muscle and fibrous tissue, and protoplasm may be said to contain within its cells the principles of both sexes. It is not sexless, but bi-sexual; not neuter but masculine-feminine. Every form of life has sex, and in some rare instances both sexes are present in one form. This does not mean that there is another phase of sex unclassified, but rather it proves the union in one Whole Entity of the ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... perversion of the natural instincts of woman which has led to the attempt to establish what has been called a "third sex,"[317] a type of woman in whom the sexual differences are obscured or even obliterated—a woman who is, in fact, a temperamental neuter. Economic conditions are compelling women to enter with men into the fierce competition of our disordered social State. Partly due to this reason, though much more, as I think, to the strong stirring ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... sake of correctness, particularly in an errata page, the alteration of the couplet I have just sent (half an hour ago) must take place, in spite of delay or cancel; let me see the proof early to-morrow. I found out murmur to be a neuter verb, and have been obliged to alter the line so as to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... inhabitants of these places the boon they were in quest of, saw and profited by the opportunity of dividing, by their means, the resources, and shaking the confidence, of the senate. After some negotiation, he told the Venetian envoy that he granted the prayer of his masters. "Be neuter," said he, "but see that your neutrality be indeed sincere and perfect. If any insurrection occur in my rear, to cut off my communications in the event of my marching on Germany—if any movement whatever betray the disposition of your senate to aid the ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... a neuter noun not personified, a writer should prefer of which to whose, unless ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... the man replied, "What is raining?": which question was the beginning of a violent quarrel and a lasting friendship. I will not touch upon any heads of the dispute, which doubtless included Jupiter Pluvius, the Neuter Gender, Pantheism, Noah's Ark, Mackintoshes, and the Passive Mood; but I will record the one point upon which the two persons emerged in some agreement. It was that there is such a thing as an atheistic literary style; that materialism may appear in the mere diction ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... him up for a moment. Was Providence neuter or masculine?—he risked it and left it neuter ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... Lo de la cita: That about the appointment. The neuter article lo, thus used instead of a word or phrase unexpressed, is equivalent to 'the affair,' 'the thing,' 'the ...
— Ms vale maa que fuerza • Manuel Tamayo y Baus
... the positive post around to the negative post. When the cords are of equal length, this point will always be in the person of the patient, about midway between the parts where the two electrodes are applied. This central point, or "point of centrality," is practically neuter—neither positive nor negative; and upon the two opposite halves of the circuit, the positive and negative qualities of the current are in greatest force nearest to the posts, and in least force nearest to the central point. At ...
— A Newly Discovered System of Electrical Medication • Daniel Clark
... true that, by means of the feminine termination, adjectives are changed into abstract nouns, but never into such as indicate an action; but always into such only for which, in Latin and Greek, the neuter of the adjective might be used. This, however, is here inadmissible. 2. To this must be added the constant use; as in Is. xxxvii. 31, 32: "And that which has escaped ([Hebrew: pliTt]) of the house of Judah, the remnant, taketh root downward, and beareth ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... one is very peculiar and surprising, which disfranchises all who stand neuter in a sedition; for it seems he would not have any one remain insensible and regardless of the public good, but at once join with the good party and those that have the right upon their side, assist and venture with them, rather than keep out ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch |
