"Abortive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... present occasion Tim Flaherty had outstayed his usual time, and was still in the kitchen when Ben reached home. They did not at first hear him, but when he made his last abortive attempt, and the shoes came clattering down, they ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... where, joining the archbishop and other refugees, they used every available means to injure the commercial credit of the Medici in that city. Their attempts greatly annoyed Piero; but by his friends' assistance, he was enabled to render them abortive. Diotisalvi Neroni and Niccolo Soderini strenuously urged the Venetian senate to make war upon their country, calculating, that in case of an attack, the government being new and unpopular, would be unable to resist. ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... subject, which had suffered interruption through his abortive little act of mercy. "You knew my uncle in Italy. It seems strange, Benjulia, that I should never have ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... of Vulcan, he said that surely she was like a daughter of Venus, though Sievewright's wife was an ugly shrew, as he remembered to have heard afterwards. He made a long face, but, in truth, felt scarcely more sorrowful than a mute at a funeral. These first passions of men and women are mostly abortive; and are dead almost before they are born. Esmond could repeat, to his last day, some of the doggerel lines in which his muse bewailed his pretty lass; not without shame to remember how bad the verses were, and how good he thought them; how false ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... as a monthly minstrel show. How pool tables were introduced and a restaurant started. How the movement to introduce beer was defeated by a small majority. How, after due discussion, they adopted some seemingly hard policies, such as the exclusion of all Negroes and Chinamen. How Squeaks led an abortive attempt to disqualify all Jews. How the gymnasium became the focal centre of all the boys in the neighbourhood. How they organized a strong-arm squad of a dozen club members who acted as police, and without offense, because they were of themselves. At the end of the first six months, the House ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... lips; had he uttered it, he might have cast himself at the same moment on the body of Huish, might have picked him up, and flung him down, and wiped the cabin with him, in a frenzy of cruelty that seemed half moral. But the moment passed; and the abortive crisis left the man weaker. The stakes were so high—the pearls on the one hand—starvation and shame on the other. Ten years of pearls! the imagination of Davis translated them into a new, glorified existence for himself ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... varnish which comes of age alone, were imitated with more or less ingenuity. Happily the error is recognised, as far as the best workmanship is concerned, in France. The legitimate imitator's art no longer includes that of depicting wear and brownness, rendering abortive so ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... In Suffolk an abortive calf is buried under the path along which the cows go to the fields, to prevent them being accidentally injured. One description of herb given to a horse prevents the horse-shoer pricking the animal's feet; ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... which surrounded her testifying to the difficulty she was experiencing in the matter. The whole idea of appealing to Brett, of asking any service from him, was intensely repugnant to her and rendered the performance of her task doubly difficult, but at last, after several abortive attempts, it was accomplished. When completed, the letter read as simply and shortly as possible, merely saying that she was anxious to see him about a rather important matter and asking where it would be possible for them to meet. She ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... sensitive observer. A treatment of the subject at once direct and theoretic has been very rare: the problems of nature and morals have attracted the reasoners, and the description and creation of beauty have absorbed the artists; between the two reflection upon aesthetic experience has remained abortive or incoherent. ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... centuries. However that may be, Iyeyasu decided to persecute the Christians vigorously, if possible without losing the foreign trade. His successors were even more anti-Christian and less anxious for trade. After an abortive revolt in 1637, Christianity was stamped out, and foreign trade was prohibited in the most ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... form and obscure as regards its content. Tityrus and Mopsus are alternately lovers, courtiers and spiritual pastors; Pan, when he does not conceal under his shaggy outside the costly robes of a prince, is a strange abortive monster, drawing his attributes in part from pagan superstition, in part from Christian piety; a libel upon both. The seed sown by Petrarch and Boccaccio bore fruit only too freely. The writers of eclogues, either debarred from or incapable of originality, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... the Marriage Bill and the Squatters' Bill, both abortive measures, but, nevertheless, showing clearly the attitude of mind of the white rulers towards the Coloured races. In order to find employment for poor whites, Coloured railway employees who had served the country faithfully and well were dismissed. A white South Africa has been declared ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... name, which every scribe usurps; that now, especially in dramatic, or, as they term it, stage-poetry, nothing but ribaldry, profanation, blasphemy, all license of offence to God and man is practised. I dare not deny a great part of this, and am sorry I dare not, because in some men's abortive features (and would they had never boasted the light) it is over-true; but that all are embarked in this bold adventure for hell, is a most uncharitable thought, and, uttered, a more malicious slander. For my particular, ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... seem never-ending, or the happy hours that go all too quickly. I love clocks so much myself that it always astonishes me to go into a room where there is none, or, if there is, it is one of those abortive, exaggerated, gilded clocks that are falsely labeled "French" and sold at a great price in the shops. Somehow, one never expects a clock of this kind to keep time—it is bought as an ornament and if it runs at all it wheezes, or gasps, or ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... by the water. The width of the stream was too great to admit of the use of the ordinary Indian missiles, but a few useless shots were exchanged from the fusees of the chiefs, more in bravado than with any expectation of doing execution. As some time was suffered to elapse, in demonstrations and abortive efforts, we shall leave them, for that period, to return to such of our characters as remained in the hands ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... it to be a 'clock,' altho no one of us has seen the hidden works that make it one. We let our notion pass for true without attempting to verify. If truths mean verification-process essentially, ought we then to call such unverified truths as this abortive? No, for they form the overwhelmingly large number of the truths we live by. Indirect as well as direct verifications pass muster. Where circumstantial evidence is sufficient, we can go without eye- witnessing. Just as we here assume Japan to exist without ever having ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... a spy in Sir John's camp must prove abortive, as I encountered Captain Walter Butler at the Dead Water, who knows me, and who is aware of my business in New York. Attempting to take him, I made a bad matter of it, he escaping by diving. Some men in green uniforms, whom I suppose were foresters from Sir John's corps, ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... in his lair. I feel certain of it. Of course they have been followed, but only in daylight, and then they are found to be on their ordinary business. But there is one of them who goes abroad at night; and all attempts at following him have proved abortive. He loses himself in the chapparal paths in spite of the spies. That is why I am ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... But since Maedler's time it has been demonstrated that the Pleiades cannot be the center of revolution of the universe, and, as already remarked, all attempts to find or fix such a center have proved abortive. Yet so powerful was the hold that the theory took upon the popular imagination, that even today astronomers are often asked if Alcyone is not the probable site of "Jerusalem ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... Robespierre, Danton, Tinville, Merlin, and the whole of the demmed murderous crowd, will be busy looking after me—a needle in a haystack. They'll put the abortive attempt down to me, and you may—ma foi! I only suggest that you may escape safely out of France—in the Daydream, and with the help ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the insidious offer is then to be noised throughout the country, and a trial to be made to engage the people "to join with those who proffered a sacrifice of enmities to Pitt for the public good." My opinion is, that the trial will be abortive, and the present Administration retire (if so necessitated), merely to return to power on the shoulders of the nation. The Opposition, I understand, foresee their difficulties, and are exceedingly embarrassed, even supposing the Regent, or Regency, to venture on ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... him on terra firma we both shook ourselves, sending an emerald spray flying in all directions; and then abortive attempts were made to dry Tibe with the handkerchiefs of the united party. A few hurried "Thank you's" were all I got from the Chaperon at the time, but on board "Lorelei" she ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... so greatly during the last eighteen months, that in that short time she no longer looked like the same woman. The troubles hanging over both of her children, her abortive hopes for Lucien, the unexpected deterioration in one in whose powers and honesty she had for so long believed,—all these things had told heavily upon her. Mme. Chardon was not only noble by birth, she was noble by nature; ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... proximate object. But the analysis of the perception of matter yields as its result, a remote as well as a proximate object. The proximate object is the perception—the remote object is the reality. And thus the analysis of the given fact necessarily renders abortive every endeavour to construct a doctrine of intuitive perception. The attempt must end in representationism. The only basis for a doctrine of intuitive perception which will never give way, is a resolute forbearance from all analysis ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... eight Spanish and Swedish workmen, being brought hither for the purpose of instructing the natives in the art of smelting iron, soon fell victims to disease and "irregularities". The effort of the marquis to improve the mode of manufacturing iron was thus rendered abortive. Labor and subsistence are, however, so very cheap that almost any amount of work can be executed, at a cost that renders expensive ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... argument or by authority that we are not wrong in believing in our own existence or that of an external world, or did we attempt to establish the trustworthiness of our faculties by resolving it into the veracity of God, our effort must needs be as abortive as it is superfluous, since it involves the necessity not only of proving the fact, but of proving the proof itself, and that, too, by the aid of the very faculties whose trustworthiness is in question! There are certain ultimate facts beyond which it is impossible ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... choice of a musical composer, or when the first tenor at the Argentina theatre has lost his voice on the way, or when the male prima donna[4.1] of the Valle theatre is laid up with a cold,—in brief, when the chief source of recreation which the Romans were hoping to find proves abortive, and then comes Holy Thursday and all at once cuts off all the hopes which might perhaps have been realized It was just after one of these unlucky Carnivals—almost before the strict fast-days were past, when a certain Nicolo Musso opened a theatre ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... a little higher, and he might nourish some expectation of a proselyte more distinguished in the person of the deposed Queen. But the pertinacity with which she and her female attendants refused to see or listen to him, rendered such hope, if he nourished it, altogether abortive. ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... daughter-islands about her; stay us in this felicity, let not the obstinacy of our half-obedience and will-worship bring forth that viper of sedition, that for these fourscore years hath been breeding to eat through the entrails of our peace; but let her cast her abortive spawn without the danger of this travailing and throbbing kingdom: that we may still remember in our solemn thanksgivings, how, for us, the northern ocean, even to the frozen Thule, was scattered with the proud shipwrecks of the Spanish Armada, and ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... come as a deputation to ask counsel of the old sage. He, if any one, would find some means of averting or, at any rate, mitigating the fearful calamity impending over the town and country, and against which prayer, sacrifice, processions, and pilgrimages had proved abortive. They were quite resolved to leave no means untried, not even if heathen magic should ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... could, the fleshiness of Captain Vauvenarde and the rolls of fat at the back of his neck, but I portrayed the villainous physiognomies of his associates very neatly. I concluded by repeating my assertion that our project had proved itself to be abortive. ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... months ago I longed for the monastic life, that is beyond doubt—and now I am wavering. I have abortive gushes of feeling, ineffectual projects, inclinations which fail, wishes which come short—I will and I will not. Still it is needful to understand oneself; but of what use is it for me to try to sound the well of my own soul? If I go down into it, I find everything ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... abortive of wit, where nature had more power than reason in bringing forth the fruit of imperfection. His actions are most in extremes, and the scope of his brain is but ignorance. Only nature hath taught him to feed, and use to labour ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... after witness was brought in, our Lord maintained an unbroken silence. He seemed as though He heard not, but was absorbed in some other scenes from those transpiring around. What need was there for Him to interpose, when all the charges proved abortive? He was, moreover, waiting till the Father gave Him the signal to open ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... the higher powers favoured Dangerfield; and that, beside his absurd sentiment, not to say passion, which could not but be provoking, Puddock's complicity in the abortive hostilities of poor Nutter and the gallant O'Flaherty rankled in Aunt Becky's heart. She was, indeed, usually appeasable and forgiving enough; but in this case her dislike seemed inveterate and vindictive; ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... them after he had left. Had he but known that these men had come red-handed from a treacherous attack upon the tender; that Fatafehi, who so loudly condemned their treachery to Bligh, and assured him that nothing had been seen of the little vessel, had just heard of the abortive attack they had made upon her, he would have taught them a lesson that would have lasted the Tongans many years, and might have saved the lives of the Europeans who perished in the taking of the Port-au-Prince and the ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... on the present occasion was that the Ministers remained in their places and that Mr. Monk's bill, though it had received the substantial honour of a second reading, passed away for the present into the limbo of abortive legislation. ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... outside itself, would not be worth the saving. But this is not the point at issue. Government too good, as well as too bad, may have a baneful influence on men. Its character is a secondary matter. The purpose of self-government is to intensify individual responsibility; to promote abortive attempts at wisdom, through which true wisdom may come at last. Democracy is nature-study on a grand scale. The republic is a huge laboratory of civics, a laboratory in which strange experiments are performed; but by which, as in other laboratories, wisdom may arise from experience, and having ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... sufficient cooking to enable her to get another place. But Mrs. Latch had the power to thwart her in this. Before beginning on her jellies and gravies Mrs. Latch was sure to find some saucepans that had not been sufficiently cleaned with white sand, and, if her search proved abortive, she would send Esther upstairs ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... same peculiarity? When Armado tells the 'country lass' he is wooing, that he will 'tell her wonders,' she exclaims,—'skittish female' that she is,—'What, with that face?' And when Holofernes, nettled with the ridicule showered on his abortive impersonation of Judas Maccabaeus, says, 'I will not be put out of countenance,'—Byron replies, 'Because thou hast no face.' The indignant pedant justifies, and, pointing to his physiognomy, inquires, 'What is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... Austria, which had vacillated and delayed—for she was informed of the schemes of the royalists, and hoped that if Louis XVIII. should ascend the throne, she would be delivered from all the burdensome exactions of the republic—now saw that this abortive attempt had removed the royalists still further from their object and more firmly consolidated the republic; she was therefore inclined to push on negotiations more speedily, and to show greater readiness to bring on ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... deprives the King of every expedient and every hope, on this subject, by its invariable resolution to regard and treat the Americans as its subjects. Such a resolution renders abortive every exertion, that may be made for obtaining peace. It utterly destroys the plan of the two mediating powers, since it decides, in the most peremptory manner, the question which is the subject of dispute, and the direct or indirect decision of which should be the ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... himself expressly connects the origin of the art of miniature-painting with the city of Paris, have often dwelt on this notion of a Renaissance in the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century, a Renaissance within the limits of the middle age itself—a brilliant, but in part abortive effort to do for human life and the human mind what was afterwards done in the fifteenth. The word Renaissance, indeed, is now generally used to denote not merely that revival of classical antiquity which took place ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... the second ballot 71 votes to 4 scattering. This settled the matter unless the few dissenting votes could combine with the solid Democratic vote upon some other candidate. It was soon found that this attempt would be abortive, as several Democrats, and especially those from Richland and Fairfield counties, would vote for me it the choice came between Cox and myself. Every effort was made by General Ashley and the few others who were opposed to ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... the cakes were being made, his sharp eye learning a lesson meantime; and milked the cow while the child was being dressed; and cut slices of pork, superintending its frizzling while the room was being set to rights. Three or four attempts to draw the silent woman into conversation were utterly abortive. ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... he was forced to sign a treaty of alliance with France; while the cost of his abortive expeditions drove him again to face a Parliament. But Cromwell no longer trusted, as in his earlier Parliament, to freedom of election. The sixty members who were returned under the Ordinances of union by Scotland and Ireland were simply nominees of the Government. Its whole influence ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... admit of its publication. The whole bombardment was a grand joke. In the Law Courts, where the Criminal Sessions were being conducted in the ordinary way, the lawyers waxed witty. The witnesses responded. Even the prisoners laughed sorrowfully as each abortive boom rang out. It was a superb joke. The judge let fall some funny things and the jury smiled—without prejudice. His lordship said it was a novel experience for him, as indeed it was for all of us, who were to live and learn ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... constitutional methods were rejected. First came the unauthorized system of "provisional" governors, civilians without any shadow of lawful authority for their appointments, and their abortive attempts at "reconstruction." ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... a fixed principle in the philosophy of English commerce that free-trade between the two countries meant pillaging Englishmen to enrich Scotchmen. A regular postal service was also established. The abortive rising known as Glencairn's Expedition was the only act of open hostility that broke those few years of comparative tranquillity; and the lenient terms granted by Monk to the Highland leader tended more than anything to show how ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... story of success is short and simple: "Other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold." The design of the picture is to reveal the various causes which at different times and places render the husbandman's labour abortive and leave his garner empty. This done, there is no need of more. The seed, when none of these things impeded it, prospered as a matter of course, under the ordinary care of man and ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... whose voices call a young man to Paris, God only knows what may intervene, what contending ideas have striven within the soul, what poems have been set aside, what moans and what despair have been repressed, what abortive masterpieces and vain endeavours."[*] ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... that had actually laid. Therefore our observations were continued with equal assiduity, in hopes that, by some fortunate chance, or in a moment of address, we could secure one of them. More than a month all our endeavours were abortive. ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... they lack similarity. We know something of Indian life; in our youth we saw much of it; and we regard Cooper as its faithfulest delineator in literary art. The time at which this romance opens is in the year 1600, when the wars between France and England led to hostilities in Canada, and when an abortive attack was made upon Quebec by the British and colonial army. The hero and heroine are victims to the disasters of that war, and in describing their adventures, Canada, and the condition of its civilized as well as of its wild inhabitants, are vividly ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... round for some weeks. At the end of that time I found that I had by constant nibbling devoured a large number of the quills, and had spread the ink out to such advantage, what with blots, spills, and abortive commencements, that there appeared to be some everywhere except in the bottle. As to the story itself, however, the facility of my youth had deserted me completely, and my mind remained a complete blank; nor could I, do what I would, excite my sterile ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... were reserved to fates not less abortive and wretched. The first entered the navy as surgeon-mate, but was discharged for drunkenness. He died in penury, an outcast. Harman became a portrait painter in New York, but he lost his strength of body and mind, and finally perished in an almshouse ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... wit; Thou hast, as thou shalt quickly see, Deceived thyself instead of me; For how can heavenly wisdom prove An instrument to earthly love? Know'st thou not yet that men commence Thy votaries, for want of sense? Nor shall Vanessa be the theme To manage thy abortive scheme; She'll prove the greatest of thy foes, And yet I scorn to interpose, But using neither skill nor force, Leave all things to their ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... questions the most important is that which exists with the Government of Great Britain in respect to our northeastern boundary. It is with unfeigned regret that the people of the United States must look back upon the abortive efforts made by the Executive, for a period of more than half a century, to determine what no nation should suffer long to remain in dispute—the true line which divides its possessions from those of other powers. The nature of the settlements on the borders ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... will, you will never make up for the million years that have passed him by, the million years during which the dim sketch which is the basis of all ethics has lain in his brain undeveloped, or developed only into a few fantastic and abortive God shapes ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... as if they were flocks of wool. But it often happens, too, that a man of might strikes a blow which falls without effect upon a stubborn stone; a short, sharp report is heard, and all is over. History is able to record little or nothing of such abortive efforts. Hence the anxiety which every one must feel who, observing the approach of an event, wonders whether those about to witness it will be worthy of it. This reciprocity between an act and its reception is always taken into ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... The effort of the National Government to make the harboring of a fugitive constructive treason, was the farthest thing possible from a peace-offering to the Abolitionists, but the friends of the Compromise measures failed to see that their scheme had proved entirely abortive, and made one further effort to silence the voice of humanity. They entered into a solemn compact in writing to support no man for President or Vice President of the United States, or for senator or representative in Congress, ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... force; but they are indeed only impulses: and 'tis hard to believe, that these so elevated qualities in a man can so thoroughly tinct and imbue the soul that they should become ordinary, and, as it were, natural in him. It accidentally happens even to us, who are but abortive births of men, sometimes to launch our souls, when roused by the discourses or examples of others, much beyond their ordinary stretch; but 'tis a kind of passion which pushes and agitates them, and in some sort ravishes them from themselves: but, this perturbation ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... humble birth. And afterward, when the people were asked by Manilius Mancinus, one of their tribunes, whom they would appoint to carry on the war against Jugurtha, they, in a full assembly, voted it to Marius. The senate had previously decreed it to Metellus; but that decree was thus rendered abortive.[204] ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... the contrivances I hatched, or rather brooded upon, in my thoughts, for the destroying these creatures, or at least frightening them so as to prevent their coming hither any more: but all this was abortive; nothing could be possible to take effect, unless I was to be there to do it myself: and what could one man do among them, when perhaps there might be twenty or thirty of them together with their darts, or their bows and ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... which I discovered as a persistent structure in Ammocoetes.... At a later period the basis cranii of vertebrate animals contains three parts analogous to the bodies of vertebrae, the most anterior of which, in the majority of animals, is generally small, and its development frequently abortive, whilst in man and mammiferous animals the three are very distinct. These parts are developed by the formation of three distinct points of ossification, one behind the other, ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... the enemy, in more or less force, had been viewed practically every day, it had always been impossible to bring him to close quarters, and the policy of wearing out infantrymen's hearts, tempers, constitutions, and boots in abortive pursuits of mounted enemies was, and in the light of all that we now know still is, open to question, for a reference to the Times history of the war shows that all our wanderings and meanderings are summed up in ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... w-will p-pass for w-wit w-with nine-ninet-teen out of t-twenty.' — 'And affected stuttering for humour: replied our landlord, tho', God knows, there is an affinity betwixt them.' It seems, this wag, after having made some abortive attempts in plain speaking, had recourse to this defect, by means of which he frequently extorted the laugh of the company, without the least expence of genius; and that imperfection, which he had at first counterfeited, was now become ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... age; and he now lost all patience with him when he saw him stupidly neglecting the glorious opportunity before him, and throwing away all his advantages, in order to spend his time in ease and indulgence, thus thwarting and threatening to render abortive some of his father's favorite ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... with opening a way to the wound. Out over the flats swung the long skirmish line, picturesque in the variety of its undress, Cutler striding vociferous in its wake, while a bugler ran himself out of breath, far to the eastward front, to puff feeble and abortive breath into unresponsive copper. And still the same flutter of distant, scattering shots came drifting back from the brakes and canons in the rocky wilds beyond the stream. The guard still pursued and the Indians still ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... found this to possess the more subtle qualities of design. And yet, in the cloisters of St. John Lateran at Rome, you have Greek work, if not contemporary with this at Pisa, yet occupying a parallel place in the history of architecture, which is abortive, and monstrous beyond the power of any words to describe. Vasari knew no difference between these two kinds of Greek work. Nor do your modern architects. To discern the difference between the sculpture of the font of Pisa, and the spandrils of the Lateran cloister, requires thorough ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... he commanded the winds, he healed the sick,—all in direct opposition to human philosophy and so-called natural science. He annulled the laws of matter, showing them to be laws of mortal mind, not of God. He showed the need of changing this mind and its abortive laws. He demanded a change of consciousness and evidence, and effected this change through the higher laws of God. The palsied hand moved, despite the boastful sense of physical law and order. Jesus stooped not to human consciousness, nor to the evidence of the senses. He heeded ...
— Unity of Good • Mary Baker Eddy
... times the present population. It was first opened in the year 1831: and the commissioners for improving the town endeavoured to establish a permanent market for cattle, &c., to be held in the large open space in front, but the attempt proved abortive—Newport lying so much more conveniently for the general resort of agriculturists and tradesmen from every quarter of the island.—It is remarkable, however, considering the spirit of the inhabitants for public improvements, that it should have been left to the year 1840, before ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... resided many years in India and had realized a fortune, which he had proposed to return to his native land to enjoy with his wife and only child. But death had stepped in to put an abrupt end to his hopes, and to render abortive all his well-arranged plans, some twelve months previous to the period of which we have spoken. Mrs. Huntington, the widow, had remained in Calcutta to settle up her husband's affairs, and this done, she determined ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... utmost power, the other States from making such an appointment. This measure displeased the other States. In 1665, the office of Commander in Chief becoming vacant, the opposite party endeavoured to procure it for one of the Orange family; this attempt also proved abortive. In 1661 a war broke out between England,—which was then governed by Charles II., and the United States; these displayed in it, chiefly under the command of De Ruyter, prodigies of valour and naval skill; the year 1667 was famous in their annals, by their fleet's sailing ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... more than a majesty for show; the Pope still wore the tiara, still held the pastoral staff and the keys of Gregory VII. and of Innocent III., but, after the death of Boniface VIII., he was nothing more than a majesty of the Church. Both abortive restorations had merely added ruins to ruins, while the phantom of the ancient empire alone remained erect amid so many fragments. Grand in its outlines and decorations, it stood there, august, dazzling, in a halo, the unique masterpiece of art and of reason, as ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... a gesture whisked a couple of attentive waiters to the table, and in the twinkling of an eye—even an American eye—a place was laid for the Prince, with duplicates of all our abortive wine glasses. ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... following the abortive efforts of Cartier and Roberval, the French authorities had made no serious or successful attempt to plant a colony in the New World. That is not surprising, for there were troubles in plenty at home. Huguenots and Catholics were at each other's throats; the wars of the Fronde convulsed the ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... effective machinery of Government, I perceive that it would be quite abortive to attempt to raise a revenue from licences to dig for gold in that region. Indeed, as Her Majesty's Government do not at present look for a revenue from this distant quarter of the British dominions, so neither are they prepared to incur any, expense on account ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... Conferences at Vienna, at Paris, at London, all have been proposed; protocols, joint declarations, sole mediation, joint mediation, identic notes, sole notes, united notes—everything has been tried. Couriers from the Queen have been scouring Europe with the exuberant fertility of abortive projects. After the termination of the most important Conference, held in the capital of the Queen, over which the chief Minister of Her Majesty's foreign relations presided, and which was attended with all the pomp and ceremony requisite for so great an occasion, we find that ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... the wood edge, are three horses and a mule, all four under saddle, with bridles on; these attached to the branches of a tree. There is no providence in this, but rather neglect. Since the purpose for which they were caparisoned has proved abortive, they remain so only from ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... June 6. Latitude 16 degrees 30 minutes, longitude (chron.) 134 degrees. Dry night and wind steady enough to require no change in sail; but this A.M. an attempt to lower it proved abortive. First the third mate tried and got up to the block, and fastened a temporary arrangement to reeve the halyards through, but had to come down, weak and almost fainting, before finishing; then Joe tried, and after twice ascending, fixed it and brought down the block; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... hostilities from England had prevented him from executing his purposed crusade against the infidels, he trusted in the assistance of the Almighty, who would reward his pious intentions, and punish the aggressor, whose ill-grounded claims had rendered them abortive: that Edward proposed a duel on very unequal terms, and offered to hazard only his own person against both the kingdom of France and the person of the king: but that, if he would increase the stake, and put also the kingdom ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... the queen-mother was undecided until she found that her son Charles, who had been bidden to cajole and talk over the Huguenot chiefs, had been attracted by their honesty and uprightness, and was ready to throw himself into their hands, and escape from hers. An abortive attempt on Guise's part to murder the Admiral Coligny led to all the Huguenots going about armed, and making demonstrations which alarmed both the queen and the people of Paris. Guise and the Duke of Anjou were, therefore, allowed to work their will, and to rouse the bloodthirstiness ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "is a vague term, invented in an abortive attempt to define by one word the mass of inextricable disorder arising in our times from the fusion of socialistic ideas with ideas purely republican. If you mean to speak of this kind of thing, you must define precisely ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... great plan of Mr. Macklin proved abortive, when as he said in a former prologue, upon a ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the bridge. The reconnoissance was a success in one way —that is, in finding out that the enemy was at the point supposed by, General Pope; but it also had a tendency to accelerate Beauregard's retreat, for in a day or two his whole line fell back as far south as Guntown, thus rendering abortive the plans for bagging a large ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 2 • P. H. Sheridan
... water enough to keep us alive. The party who had tried to sink a well had invariably been stopped by hard limestone rock in every place they had tried, and all their attempts to penetrate it by means of a cold chisel and pickaxe had proved abortive. The party which had been out with me searching for water had not seen the slightest sign which indicated its presence on the island: we had taken a spade with us, but wherever we dug had come down upon the solid rock. Under these circumstances I reduced the allowance ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... Easterfearn in Beauly Cathedral concluded this abortive attempt to take the Seaforth estates within the scope of a law sanctioned by statesmen, but against which the natural feelings of nearly ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... The abortive attempt of the brigantine to stem the tide at the western end of Blackwell's, will be remembered. It had no other effect than to place her pursuer more in advance, and to convince her own commander that he had now ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... put, so far? To practically none, save the destruction of life. About five years before the war some of us in England tried to initiate an international movement to ban the use of flying for military purposes. The effort was entirely abortive. The fact is, man never goes in front of events, always insists on disastrously buying his experience. And I am inclined to think we shall continue to advance backwards unless we intern our inventors till we have learned to run the inventions ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... should be able to support myself, unless I fed upon snails and other insects, which they offered, by many learned arguments, to evince that I could not possibly do. One of these virtuosi seemed to think that I might be an embryo, or abortive birth. But this opinion was rejected by the other two, who observed my limbs to be perfect and finished; and that I had lived several years, as it was manifest from my beard, the stumps whereof they plainly discovered through a magnifying glass. They would not allow me to be a dwarf, because ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... less easy seemed the justification of her desire for obscurity. From regarding it as a high instinct she passed into a humour that gave that desire the appearance of a whim. But could she really set in train events, which, if not abortive, would take her to the altar with ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... Chinese, and the country would then, with the same quantity of food, support a greater population. But to effect this must always be a most difficult, and, every friend to humanity will hope, an abortive attempt. Nothing is so common as to hear of encouragements that ought to be given to population. If the tendency of mankind to increase be so great as I have represented it to be, it may appear strange that this increase does not come when it is thus repeatedly called for. The true reason is that ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... confusion. Indeed, the probabilities are that in America as in Europe the road to any permanent international settlement will be piled mountain high with dead bodies, and will be traveled, if at all, only after a series of abortive and costly experiments. But remote and precarious as is the establishment of any American international system, it is not for American statesmen necessarily either an impracticable, an irrelevant, or an unworthy object. Fail though we may in the will, ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... consideration the determination with which General Buller had attacked us, and how dearly he had paid for this third abortive attempt, the retreat of his troops remains as much of a mystery to me as that at ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... had brought five years ago were stored in the basement box-room; but under the camp bed was her dressing-bag, the only "lock-up" receptacle she possessed. In it she kept a few letters and an abortive diary which in some moods had given her ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... Federal System; it is supporting it, by making it viable in modern conditions. The assemblage of the States in one Union was never intended to put one State at the mercy of another. If, however, well considered programs of legislation are rendered abortive in a State in consequence of the flow of commerce into it from other States, then it becomes the duty—certainly it is within the discretion of Congress—which alone can govern commerce among the States, to supply the required relief. ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... in the present instance. But to the point. I am willing to do what I can to extricate you from your situation. Your first scheme[114] I was considering; but your own impatience appears to have rendered it abortive, if not irretrievable. I will deposit in Mr. Murray's hands (with his consent) the sum you mentioned, to be advanced for the time at ten pounds ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... attempt of Longstreet to bring the enemy to an engagement outside of Knoxville proving abortive, the commanding General determined to close the campaign for the season, and to put his troops in as comfortable winter quarters as possible. This was found on the right or east bank of the Holston, near Morristown and the little hamlet of Russellville. The brigade crossed the Holston ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... loathsome, that Mr. Lithgow waited with anxious expectation for the day, which, by putting an end to his life, would also end his torments. But his melancholy expectations were, by the interposition of Providence, happily rendered abortive, and his deliverance ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... suckers to spring up since such a condition prevents the bearing of nuts. I followed his advice with my two Jones hybrids and removed all surplus sprouts. This resulted in more abundant flowers and some abortive involucres but still no nuts developed. In the spring of 1940, I systematically fertilized numerous pistillate flowers of these plants with a pollen mixture. On the branches so treated, a fairly good crop of nuts similar to those of the ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... man, for Hopper was hardly competent for the place of a chief clerk. He was unable to write clearly in any language, because incapable of a fully developed thought upon any subject. It may be supposed that nothing but an abortive policy, therefore, would be produced upon the occasion thus suddenly offered. "'Tis a devout man, that poor Master Hopper," said Granvelle, "but rather fitted for platonic researches than for affairs ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and gave no indication that he had that interview in mind. Claverhouse had learned one lesson, however—patience—and he would have many more to learn; he had also been taught not to take hasty views, but to wait for the long result. And his heart lifted when, after the abortive siege of Charleroi, he was summoned for a second time to the Prince's presence. On this occasion the Prince said little, but it was to the point; it was the crisis in ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... probable that the special relation to the animal was established by some such process as we see going on in the preceding case; so that we seem to have in this series one case of incipient totemism and others illustrating various stages of decay of abortive beginnings of totemism. And it is easy to imagine how in the absence of unfavourable conditions such beginnings might grow to a fully developed totem-system. For suppose that in any one community there happened to be at one time two or more prosperous ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... spoiled the scheme. Instead of waiting until the Committee was properly armed and had seized Kruger, he suddenly crossed the border with his forces. The Raid was a fizzle and the commander and all his men were captured by the Boers. This abortive attempt was the real prelude to the Boer War, ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson |
