"Absolute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... got to move som' nodder place!" And in all truth, the Indian's fears were well justified. For of all the animals of the North, the carcajo is the most hated by the trappers. And he has fairly earned every bit of hatred he gets because for absolute malicious fiendishness this thick-bodied brute of many names has no equal. Scientists, who have no personal quarrel with him, have given him the dignified Latin name of gulo luscus—the last syllable of the last word being particularly apt. In the dictionaries and encyclopaedias ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... trio remained kneeling and staring up at the King in absolute wonderment; for in a few brief words he had swept away, as by the touch of a magician's wand, the gathering feeling of jealous annoyance which was forming in each breast. Leoni was the first to find the use of his tongue; but ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... unfitness of the first lieutenant arises from absolute incompetence or negligence of his duties, it will soon appear in some palpable instance, for which he must be accountable before a court-martial, unless his captain permit him to quit the ship to avoid that alternative. On the other hand, it will sometimes happen, that an officer who is both competent ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... conditions remain approximately similar to what they are at present, there is no more reason why it should cease to exist in the next, than in the past, hundred million years or so. The true ground for doubting the possibility of the establishment of absolute monarchy in Britain is, that opinion seems to have passed through, and left far behind, the stage at which such a change would be possible; and the true reason for doubting the permanency of a republic, if ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... infinite which I believe is God. My soul finds it in you.... The first effects of the war upon you have been trouble, sacrifice, pain, and horror. You have come out of it impaired physically and with mind still clouded. These will pass, and therefore I beg of you don't grow fixed in absolute acceptance of the facts of evolution and materialism. They cannot be denied, I grant. I see that they are realities. But also I see beyond them. There is some great purpose running through the ages. In our day the Germans have risen, ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... thirty-five female prisoners. In this celebrated prison, hard labor is combined with solitary confinement, an arrangement which is technically known as the "separate system." Silence and seclusion are so strictly enforced as to be almost absolute and uninterrupted; even the minister who addresses the prisoners on the Sabbath is known to them only by his voice. A marked feature of this institution is security without the aid of any deadly weapon, ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... dreadful alternative, yet was obliged to confess that in my present circumstances existence was not to be borne. It was in vain that I reasoned on the sinfulness of the deed, and on its damning nature; he made me condemn myself out of my own mouth, by allowing the absolute nature of justifying grace and the impossibility of the elect ever falling from the faith, or the glorious end to which they were called; and then he said, this granted, self-destruction was the act of a hero, and none but a coward would shrink from it, to suffer ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... Thomas was again interfering a little with her inclination, by advising her to go immediately to bed. "Advise" was his word, but it was the advice of absolute power, and she had only to rise, and, with Mr. Crawford's very cordial adieus, pass quietly away; stopping at the entrance-door, like the Lady of Branxholm Hall, "one moment and no more," to view the happy scene, and take a last look at ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... which confuse the observer, is that it is in accord with Chinese temperament, tradition and circumstance. Feudalism is past and gone two thousand years ago, and at no period since has China possessed a working centralized government. The absolute empires which have come and gone in the last two millenniums existed by virtue of non-interference and a religious aura. The latter can never be restored; and every episode of the republic demonstrates that China with its vast and diversified territories, its population of between three hundred ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... others came to them by gift. Next, to the gallery of the S. of A.—annual exhibition—just opened. Fine. Think of a town like this having two such collections as this, and a Society of Artists. It is so all over Australasia. If it were a monarchy one might understand it. I mean an absolute monarchy, where it isn't necessary to vote money, but take it. Then art flourishes. But these colonies are republics—republics with a wide suffrage; voters of both sexes, this one of New Zealand. In republics, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... affair; in the war of righteousness every man fights for his own hand; all the six hundred precepts of the Mishna cannot shake my private judgment; my magistracy of myself is an indefeasible charge, and my decisions absolute for the time and case. The moralist is not a judge of appeal, but an advocate who pleads at my tribunal. He has to show not the law, but that the law applies. Can he convince me? then he gains the cause. And ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... do the same for me, Mr. Ferguson?" he asked, with the sudden reflection that, young as he was, there was no absolute certainty of ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger
... followed the close of the War of 1812 was, perhaps, the longest which any nation has ever enjoyed. For the navy of the United States, it was a time of absolute peace, inactivity, even stagnation. The young nation was living literally up to Washington's rule of avoiding entanglements abroad, and its people looked with suspicion on the naval branch of the service which had rendered such a good account of itself in ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... quantity. More trips were made, but there is and can be little place for a civilian on a "front," any spot in which, over a strip several miles wide, from the heavy artillery positions of one side to the heavy artillery of the other, may be in absolute quiet one minute and the next the centre of fire. There is no time to bother with civilians during an offensive, and, if a retreat is likely, no commander wishes to have country described which may presently ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... whether officer or master, he had never met such a crew, and never should expect to; and that the two officers of the Alert, long ago shipmasters, agreed with him that, for intelligence, knowledge of duty and willingness to perform it, pride in the ship, her appearance and sailing, and in absolute reliableness, they never had seen their equal. Especially he spoke of his favorite seaman, French John. John, after a few more years at sea, became a boatman, and kept his neat boat at the end of Granite Wharf, and was ready to take all, but delighted to ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... these. The link between government and governed in Italy had snapped. The social bond was broken, and the constituents that form a nation were pursuing divers aims. On the one hand stood Popes and princes, founding their claims to absolute authority upon titles that had slight rational or national validity. These potentates were ill-combined among themselves, and mutually jealous. On the other side were ranged disruptive forces of the most heterogeneous kinds—remnants from antique party-warfare, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... end!" he said, as he grasped the meaning of this fresh disturbance of its course; and he peered forward again for the path, it being absolute madness to think of seeing anything in the watery chaos below. Then, looking back, it was as if some icy hand had clutched his heart, for ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... of expatriating their hopes and fears, now, disciplined by the succeeding storms and sobered by increase of years, had been taught to prize and honour the spirit of nationality as the best safeguard of national independence, and this again as the absolute pre-requisite and necessary basis of ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... at this new difficulty, Cecilia begged to speak with her alone, and then represented in the most earnest manner, the absolute necessity there was for her being in London that night: "Every thing," said she, "depends upon it, and the whole purpose of my journey will otherwise be lost, for Mr Delvile will else think himself extremely ill used, and to make him reparation, I may be compelled to submit to almost ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... With him the Mexican Republic began, and with him it has been terminated. In 1822 he was first to proclaim a Republic in the Plaza of Vera Cruz; and when I stood in the Plaza of the city of Mexico, in the winter of 1854, I heard him proclaimed absolute ruler of a state which had already ceased to be a Republic. This was not the first time that he had been raised to absolute authority in Mexico, but the third time that this had occurred in his checkered career—a career that resembles more the vicissitudes in the life of a ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... is only in a very imperfect state of the world's arrangements that any one can best serve the happiness of others by the absolute sacrifice of his own, yet so long as the world is in that imperfect state, I fully acknowledge that the readiness to make such a sacrifice is the highest virtue which can be found in man. I will add, that in this condition of the world, paradoxical as the assertion may be, the conscious ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... proved more than enough. Everybody was beginning to give Elmendorf the cold shoulder there, and by this time, reasoned Cranston, he must have had sense enough to discontinue his visits. Here, however, he underrated Elmendorf's devotion to his principles, for such was the tutor's conviction of their absolute wisdom and such his sense of duty to humanity that he was ready to encounter any snub rather than be balked in his determination to right the existing wrongs. Cranston did not want to go to the Allisons' and ask for Elmendorf. He had that to say which could not ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... have given sign of life, and the insult found the way to your heart. I would be charmed to restore you to your senses. I await your commands. The day, the place, and the weapons, I leave to your choice. And, stay! You can count on my absolute discretion. No one, I give you my word, shall learn from me that your fainting-fit had ears, and resented insults. Here is ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... the same time have included a much smaller number of men. The Equites and First Class alone amounted to 100 Centuries, or more than half of the total number; so that, if they agreed to vote the same way, they possessed at once an absolute majority. An advantage was also given to age; for the Seniores, though possessing an equal number of votes, must of course have been very inferior in ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... sufficient strength of mind to adopt a new pattern. He was in short an amiable mathematician, and a feeble classic; and I think that is all that could be said of him with any certainty. There seemed to be an absence of character which might be called characteristic, and a feebleness of will so absolute as ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... shopkeeper made his humble appeal when fate seemed determined to crush him, and the substantial loan that Meng made to him without hesitation kept him from closing his shutters and once more set him on his feet to commence the struggle again. The widow who had been left in absolute poverty had but to state her case, when with a countenance beaming with compassion and with eyes moist at her piteous story, Meng would make such arrangements for her and her children that the terror of starvation was lifted from her ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... encouragement. It was a magnificent scheme. The canal was not to cost Egypt one cent, but was to pay fifteen per cent. of its receipts to the Egyptian government, and at the expiration of ninety-nine years was to become the absolute property of Egypt. On such terms the concession was given to ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... cold as outer space, nearly at the absolute zero," Charlie explained. "And it was heated only superficially during its quick passage through the air. But how it comes to be ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... rose and violet in each glassy twig and leaf. At these times, too, there woke and stirred a faint, faint wind, almost a warm wind, and then, here and there, a little cushion or mat or flag of snow would fall, or an icy stem break off. The silence was absolute, animal life appeared suspended, the squirrels no longer ran chattering in quest of food, as on mild days they will near habitations, no bird was seen or heard. This state of coma or trance held all created things, and as with most Canadian scenery, small chance was there for sentiment; the ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... continued, without regarding her rejoinder, "in any remarkable degree. I could have borne its absence with common patience, but absolute disfigurement, deformity, such as you assure me those burns have left behind them, is too dreadful! Had not Dr. Pemberton bared her arm in bleeding, as he did, I should never have known of it at all probably until too late. That ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... or more per pound, and there it is calculated that at the next levy the defalcations will be at least forty per cent, according to the calculation of the poor-law commissioner himself. To talk, then, of raising rates in such districts as these would be absolute insanity; and even in districts less heavily rated, any sudden attempt considerably to increase the rate would have the effect of pauperising those who are now solvent, and to augment rather than diminish the ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... vis inertia of the spars, and, exerting all my force, when it was once in motion, I succeeded in giving the raft an impetus that carried it completely past the ship. I confess I felt no personal apprehension from the suction, supposing the ship to sink while the raft was in absolute contact with it, but the agitation of the water might weaken its parts, or it might wash most of my stores away. This last consideration induced me, now, to go to work with the oars, and try to do all I could, by that mode of propelling my dull craft. I worked hard just ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... of his nephew, the present Emperor Charles, with great affection. The relations between the two were, however, always marked by the absolute subordination of the nephew to the uncle. In all political discussions, too, the Archduke Charles was always the listener, absorbing the precepts expounded ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... taken in too absolute a sense. There are medicines, and good ones, in the hands of writers and of critics, to abate, if not to heal, this plague of sentimentalism. I have stated ultimate causes only. They are enough to keep the mass of Americans reading sentimentalized fiction until some fundamental ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... however he was sufficiently recovered to want more jam. Casey filled his pockets with small cans and doled them out one by one and gossipped artfully while he watched Injun Jim eat pickles, India relish and jelly with absolute, inscrutable impartiality. Casey felt sympathetic qualms in his own stomach just from watching the performance, but he was talking for a gold mine and ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... question indicated that Lincoln contemplated a possibility of being compelled to recede from the policy expressed in his inaugural. Yet it was not his temperament to abandon a purpose deliberately matured and definitely announced, except under absolute necessity. To determine now this question of necessity he sent an emissary to Sumter and another to Charleston, and meantime stayed offensive action on the part of the Confederates by authorizing Seward to give assurance ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... us only over beast, fish, fowl, Dominion absolute; that right we hold By his donation. But man over man He made not lord; such title to himself Reserving, human left ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... anxious to promote the settlement of the country, by organising parties of emigration, were busy in making known through the settlements the absolute security of the fort at Boonesborough, and the wonderful attractions of the region, in soil, climate, and abounding game. Henderson himself soon started with a large party, forty of whom were well armed. A number ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... winter. The coasts of Great Britain seem to have been nothing but stumbling-blocks in the way of every ship. . . . I have seen, in an American paper, a passage in which the writer undertakes to defend my husband from some dirty aspersions. It seems that some one had told the absolute falsehood that he had shirked all responsibility about the shipwrecked soldiers, and his defender stated the case just as it was, and that Mr. Buchanan declined having anything to do with the matter. The government will make the chartering of the steamer ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... little hurried, after all, in classing myself as an absolute pauper," I explained as she read. "You see, I must go out there and look ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... sacrifice which it represents could be useful only in so far as it was complete and irretrievable. Let us remember that the communal system of government, on whose development the Renaissance mainly depended, inevitably perished in proportion as it developed; that the absolute subjugation of Italy by Barbarous nations was requisite to the dissemination of the civilization thus obtained; that the Italians were politically annihilated before they had time to recover a normal condition, and were ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... it, at least," was the answer. "He had not been here a week before he tried to put his arms around me. I had to let him hold my hand to avoid an absolute quarrel. He is not an ordinary man, Daisy, and does not act like others, but we understand each other. He is waiting for something better in his business prospects, and as I am so busy on my new book I am glad to be left to myself for ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... was no fool—he constructed a kaleidoscope that showed an absolute, geometrical symmetry, where in fact there was only confusion. He showed how, by the use of mirrors, things could be made big, small, tall, short, wide, crooked or distorted. He told of how magicians, by the use of Galileo's Tube, could show seven stars where there was only one; ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... saw; and, to arrest the hemorrhage, the king bolt taken from one of the wagons was heated and applied to serve as an actual cautery. The operation, rudely performed, with rude instruments, by unpractised hands, excited to action only by the spur of absolute necessity, proved, nevertheless, entirely successful. Before the caravan arrived at Santa Fe the patient had so far recovered that he was able to take care ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... explanation of the origin of souls is that which says they come from a previous existence. This is the theory of imagination, framed in the free and seductive realm of poetic thought. It is evident that this idea does not propose any solution of the absolute origination of the soul, but only offers to account for its appearance on earth. The pre existence of souls has been most widely affirmed. Nearly the whole world of Oriental thinkers have always taught it. Many of the Greek philosophers held it. No small proportion of the early Church Fathers believed ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... time he did a great work for singers and band, and reduced the ballet to its proper rank. In 1846 he left his position and went to the new Italian opera at Covent Garden, where he remained for a quarter of a century, absolute in his musical supremacy and free to deal with all works as he pleased, among them those of Meyerbeer, at that time the most prominent composer in the operatic world; for Wagner as yet was scarcely known. It is to Costa that Meyerbeer owes his English ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... Avenue, and walking lightly and quickly came at last to the old church, where all her life she had worshiped. At this hour there was no service, and she knelt for a moment, then sat back in her pew, glad of the sense of absolute immunity from interruption. ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... omnibus he discerned on the opposite bank, packed with stout people. This was the third week of his vacation, one enforced by a nerve specialist in the Austrian capital, and for the first time Davos felt almost cheerful. Perhaps the absolute hush of the country and the purity of the atmosphere, with its suggestion of recent rain,—the skies weep at least once a day in the Salzkammergut region,—proved a welcome foil to fashionable Ischl, with its crowds, its stiffness, its court ceremonial—for ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... succeed in anything she undertook. It seemed to her one of the most natural and most reasonable things in the world that Andrew should marry her when his parents strongly desired it. In her estimation it was an absolute sin for him to go against the opinion of the brethren and become a soldier. Yet she was willing to forgive it all and help lead him ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... ideal; that is, the comedy of Aristophanes rose to as great a distance above the ludicrous of real life, as the tragedy of Sophocles above its tragic events and passions,—and it is in this one point, of absolute ideality, that the comedy of Shakespeare and the old comedy of Athens coincide. In this also alone did the Greek tragedy and comedy unite; in every thing else they were exactly opposed to each other. ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... become the mistress, when your husband is to you what your father was to me, that danger is no longer to be feared. Though this wise policy will cost your young and tender heart a pang, your happiness demands that you become the absolute sovereign of your home." ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... thermometer to a well, in which the water rises to different heights, according as it is more or less supplied by the spring which feeds it: if the depth of the well is unfathomable, it must be impossible to know the absolute quantity of water it contains; yet we can with the greatest accuracy measure the number of feet the water has risen or fallen in the well at any time, and consequently know the precise quantity of its increase or diminution, ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... day, while playing in a park, threw mud on a swan, imagining that he had besmirched the bird forever until it dived under the water and reappeared again as white as before. Why, even if I at this moment did not possess the absolute proof of her innocence, nobody could ever persuade me to believe that story. You don't know the Indian as I do, Miss Van Ashton. The high-caste Indian women are quite as incapable of such things as you are. It was a devilishly ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... with me what thou wilt! Such is my joy, so full and absolute, I can not know vexation. From this hour To you, my father, I resign myself, Content to be more frugal than ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... and that he was very brutal in his language and demeanor when he was in a passion. The bishop expressed himself quite strongly on this point, saying that he could not but adore the depth of the providence of God that had raised such a furious man to so absolute an authority over so great a part ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... with no eloquence, no brilliant talents, no profound information, with nothing in short but plain good sense and an excellent heart, possessed so much influence both in and out of Parliament. His temper is an absolute miracle. He has been worse used than any Minister ever was in debate; and he has never said one thing inconsistent, I do not say with gentlemanlike courtesy, but with real benevolence. Lord North, perhaps, was his equal in suavity ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... loophole through the cracks of the twelve-inch logs. Harris transferred his attention to the long line of log buildings a hundred yards to the east. The row afforded perfect cover for any who chose that route of approach. They could walk up to them in absolute safety, screened both from himself and those in ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... to continue a system of absolute denial in face of proofs like these. The marquise persisted, all the same, that she was in no way guilty; and Maitre Nivelle, one of the best lawyers of the period, consented to defend ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... resistance; while the Duke seemed to regard the ruin he had caused with a malignant spirit scarcely human. In truth, the aspect of Brussels at this time was that of a city stricken by a plague. Articles of absolute necessity could not be obtained. It was impossible even to buy bread, meat, ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... duumviri, to so high a degree, that each crossing whatsoever the other promotes, the most of others of quality take sides, and such as appear neuters with the monarchy a monopoly in either of their hands; weeping over the graves of the Conde, Duque, and Don Luis de Haro, because they were absolute and sole favourites in their generations; attributing to this very cause the seeming disproportion, if not contradiction, between my reception in, and conduction from, Cadiz, hitherto, and now my long demurrage so near the Court, for want of a house in it, and prophesying ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... convert to the doctrine of evolution, in as absolute a form as it is held even by the materialists, though differently, I am persuaded that if Agassiz had lived long enough to see the latest development of it he would have accepted it, as did Professor Owen, who was, like Agassiz, and possibly even more literally, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... by the Lady Hyacinths is still remembered by those who saw it as the most bewildering entertainment of their theatrical experience. The play had been cut down to its absolute essentials and the players, though drilled and coached in their lines and business, had been left quite free in the matters of interpretation and accent. The result was so unique that the daily press fell upon it with whoops of joy and published portraits ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... gross, corporeal, absolute are ye, Ye help not to define That subtle fragrance, delicate and free, Which like a vesture clothes this ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... Design," he informed me, "and thoughts are all duller Than Beauty, and Beauty is Art; but no critic can grouse At the notion of Absolute Pure Indivisible Colour As calm as Eternity, smooth as omnipotent nous— I am painting ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... sublimest, of the soul of Christianity. It expresses, as in huge worldwide architectural emblems, how the Christian Dante felt Good and Evil to be the two polar elements of this Creation, on which it all turns; that these two differ not by preferability of one to the other, but by incompatibility absolute and infinite; that the one is excellent and high as light and Heaven, the other hideous, black as Gehenna and the Pit of Hell! Everlasting Justice, yet with Penitence, with everlasting Pity,—all Christianism, as Dante and the Middle Ages had it, is emblemed here. Emblemed: and yet, as I urged ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... manner which shows the inevitable disaster heaping up ... The good Cardinal Bonpre is a beautiful figure, fit to stand beside the good Bishop in "Les Miserables." It is a book with a serious purpose expressed with absolute unconventionality and passion ... And this is to say it is ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... on, succeeded by exhaustion and the death-rattle. Derues fell on his knees, and the priest administered extreme unction. There was then a moment of absolute silence, more impressive than cries and sobs. The priest collected himself for a moment, crossed himself, and began to pray. Derues also crossed himself, and repeated in a low voice, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... man, trained in the strictest sect of the Pharisees, is awakened one morning, and told that he has come into the absolute possession of a very great fortune in lands and wealth. The time may come when he may know himself and his powers more thoroughly, but never again, as on that morn, will he feel such an exultant sense of mastery over the world and his fortunes. That image[1] seems to me to ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... "meat," however, that Ossaroo stripped the tiger of his skin, but rather for the skin itself; and not so much for the absolute value of the skin, for in India that is not great. Had it been a panther or leopard skin, or even the less handsome hide of the cheetah, its absolute value would have been greater. But there was an artificial value attached to the skin of a tiger, and that well knew the shikarree. He knew ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... organization of conquered Asia Minor; the march of the right wing and centre of the army along the Syrian Mediterranean coast; the engineering difficulties overcome at the siege of Tyre; the storming of Gaza; the isolation of Persia from Greece; the absolute exclusion of her navy from the Mediterranean; the check on all her attempts at intriguing with or bribing Athenians or Spartans, heretofore so often resorted to with success; the submission of Egypt; another ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... their subsequent conflict with Great Britain, he might have had a better chance; but none realized more entirely than he did himself the utter hopelessness of the undertaking which was before him. At the same time he was determined to carry it through, seeing, as few others could, the absolute necessity for the sacrifice, if he were to effect the escape of his fleet. Calling the men aft, he spoke briefly to them, pointing out the necessity for the conflict, and the nobility of this sacrifice. He entreated them, in a few brave, manly, thrilling words, ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... to be startling enough, we may believe; in the conservative atmosphere of the Atlantic rooms. And Howells—gentle, genial, sincere—filled with the early happiness of his calling, won the heart of Mark Twain and never lost it, and, what is still more notable, won his absolute and unvarying confidence in all literary affairs. It was always Mark Twain's habit to rely on somebody, and in matters pertaining to literature and to literary people in general he laid his burden ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... but not many. Now and then a swift and sweet run home, to live for a moment in the midst of all this preparing to live; to rest among the home hearts; to breathe a few breaths in absolute freedom; to exchange Mr. De Wort's dusty office for the bright little keeping-room of the farmhouse, and forget the business of the hard brick and stone city under the shadow or the sunshine that rested on Wut-a- qut-o. Then Winthrop threw ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... pigeons and jackdaws. I spoke to her. All Arras, she said, was ruined. The great cathedral was ruined, her own family were ruined utterly, and she pointed to where the sad houses gazed from forlorn dead windows. Absolute ruin, she said; but there must be no armistice. No armistice. No. It was necessary that there should be no armistice at ...
— Unhappy Far-Off Things • Lord Dunsany
... Chinese immigrants; and in 1662 the colony was once more menaced with a new and great danger, by the Chinese pirate Kog-seng, who had under his command between eighty and one hundred thousand men, and who already had dispossessed the Dutch of the Island of Formosa. He demanded the absolute submission of the Philippines; his sudden death, however, saved the colony, and occasioned a fresh outbreak of fury against the Chinese settlers in Manila, a great number of whom were butchered in their own "quarter" (ghetto). [250] Some dispersed and hid themselves; a few in their ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... in sharp command. "Now, attention! We are on a somewhat delicate business. A mistake might bring disaster. I am in command of this party and I must have absolute and prompt obedience. Mr. Cadwaller, it will be at your peril that you make any such move again. Let no man draw a gun until ordered by me! Now, then, cut out those horses and bunch ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... so opposed to everything here "that, he says, nothing but long time in the country can make an Englishman intelligible on religious subjects." To confirm this theory that a perfect knowledge of the language of the people to be taught is an absolute essential in a missionary—it is known, for an absolute fact, that missionaries have been eight years in India preaching until even they became convinced that sometimes they gave a totally wrong impression of what they were ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... meal every day for a space of six years, a person may be cleansed of that sin.[115] By observing a harder vow with regard to food one may be cleansed in three years.[116] By living upon one meal a month, one may be cleansed in course of only a year. By observing, again, an absolute fast, one may be cleansed within a very short time. There is no doubt again that one is cleansed by a Horse-sacrifice. Men that have been guilty of having slain a Brahmana and that have succeeded in taking the final bath at the completion of the Horse-sacrifice, become cleansed of all their ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... cell, or a meadow-lark hopping to and fro in a seven-inch cage. The plan and aspect of the buildings are monotonous, and so is the way of life of those who inhabit them. Fortunately, the sun does rise and set in Southern California: otherwise life there would be at an absolute stand-still, with no past and no future. But, as it is, one can look forward to ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... "It must be the individual caterer of whose wealth we have heard so much. His attentions to my friends during the interregnum deserve recognition. Several of them have been saved from absolute want ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... the following work accordingly is, the examination of this neglected branch in the analysis of unbelief. While admitting most fully and unhesitatingly the operation of emotional causes, and the absolute necessity, scientific as well as practical, of allowing for their operation, it is proposed to analyse the forms of doubt or unbelief in reference mainly to the intellectual element which has entered into them, and the discovery of the intellectual ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... some goddess or other; and, as in every other warfare in this world, my fortune was various; sometimes I was received with favour, and sometimes I was mortified with a repulse. At the plough, scythe, or reap-hook I feared no competitor, and thus I set absolute want at defiance; and as I never cared further for my labours than while I was in actual exercise, I spent the evenings in the way after ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... fully determined to do so; he had made up his mind that it was his duty to oppose measures which he thought destructive to the happiness of his countrymen, and to make an effort to re-establish the throne; but he did not bring to the work the sanguine hope of success, the absolute pleasure in the task which animated Larochejaquelin; nor yet the sacred enthusiastic chivalry of Cathelineau, who was firmly convinced of the truth of his cause, and believed that the justice of God would not allow the murderers of a King, and the ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... followed by an interval of blankness. He might, perhaps, have obtained grammars from Alfredston, but to do that required money, and a knowledge of what books to order; and though physically comfortable, he was in such absolute dependence as to be without a farthing ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... while he could not go to sleep again. Fear had taken absolute and complete possession of him—the fear of the eternal damnation that the missionary had so vividly pictured. It was a picture that had been received at the time without being seen and through all these years had remained in his brain, covered and hidden. This day's ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... rail, one hind leg slightly bent and propped by the tip of a cracked and drying hoof. Most of us have seen such a horse, seemingly on the gradual slip into oblivion, whose very tail-switching was so rhythmic and regular as to fit in, in absolute harmony, with the swelling waves of sleep and measured breathing and all that sort of thing. And that very horse might well be on the brink of a day's exhausting labour. And furthermore he might well know it. Certainly his experience might tell him—easily enough. ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... with men in general and on the average; they have no message for you and me individually. And it seems not unlikely that birds may be equally illogical; always expecting to live, and not die, and often giving themselves up to impulses of gladness without stopping to inquire whether, on grounds of absolute reason, these impulses are to be justified. Let us hope so, at all events, till somebody ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... of 1804, Napoleon regarded himself the absolute master of fortune. His twofold title of Emperor of the French and King of Italy no longer sufficed him; he yearned for that of Emperor of the West. He created kings, grand dukes, sovereign princes. He made his brother Joseph King of the Two Sicilies; his brother-in-law ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... the Infinite atomic ethers through the law of Divine attraction, and when we have built and rebuilt our cells into an intelligent relationship with absolute wholeness, we become a magnet, so highly sensitized and so magnetic and carefully polarized, that we are an attracting center for everything in our atmospheric environment, and our physical body and our environment become the expression of our ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... great length and showed by apparently unimpeachable mathematics that Carpenter was entirely wrong and that his statements showed an absolute lack of knowledge of the most elementary and fundamental laws of light transmission. Carpenter replied briefly that he could prove by mathematics that two was equal to one and he challenged Despetier ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... political business, and fourteen-year-old Theo was in charge in the great house on the Hill a mile and a half from New York. Imagine any modern father leaving his little girl behind in a more or less remote country place with a small army of servants under her and full and absolute authority over them and herself! But I take it that there are not many modern little girls like Theodosia Burr. Certainly there are very few who could translate the American Constitution into French, and Theo did that while she was still a slip of a girl, merely ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... rider, subdued herself to the masterful art of the man, until the two were as parts of a sentient machine that operated without jar or friction. After several minutes, finding their perfect mutual step and pace, and Graham feeling the absolute giving of Paula to the dance, they essayed rhythmical pauses and dips, their feet never leaving the floor, yet affecting the onlookers in the way Dick voiced it when he cried out: "They float! They float!" The music was the "Waltz ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... experience all possible aspects of a Volga excursion, that day, short of absolute shipwreck. As we floated down the mighty stream, a violent thunderstorm broke over our heads with the suddenness characteristic of the country. We were wet to the skin before we could get at the rain-cloaks on which we were sitting, but our boatmen remained as dry as ever, to ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... cruelty on the part of the riders have been reported—of whippings, spurrings, and even absolute torture, to urge ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... universe—"which is, properly speaking, only a decent way of getting rid of Him." [2] A totality of being is not the same as a personal God, but the very contrary. Nor is it any consolation to be told that this totality, though not personal, is "super-personal." Such a super-personal Absolute or Whole, to quote Dr. Ballard's penetrating criticism, "is devoid of just those elements which for human experience constitute personality. To our power of vision it matters nothing whether we say ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... there was no reason, with his pagan and quite genuine convictions, why he should. Fidelity in so far as it meant keeping to one person was to him foolishness. In so far as it meant loyalty of affection and absolute honesty ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... but one step with Mrs. Sheldon from peevish incredulity to frantic alarm; and Diana found it as difficult to tranquillise her newly-awakened fears as it had been to rouse her from absolute apathy. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... every part to the minutest detail, to have each part machined to its exact size, and to have every screw, bolt, and bar precisely interchangeable. About the year 1907 the Ford factory was systematized on this basis. In that twelvemonth it produced 10,000 machines, each one the absolute counterpart of the other 9999. American manufacturers until then had been content with a few hundred a year! From that date the Ford production has rapidly increased; until, in 1916, there were nearly 4,000,000 automobiles in the United States—more ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... his companion grew louder and more frequent. But opposite to him, the child's face was unchanged. Her glass was full of wine, but she seemed never to touch it. Her long white fingers played with her bread, but she seemed to eat little or nothing. Her face was pallid and drawn; there was terror—absolute, undiluted terror—in her unnaturally large eyes. Often when the man spoke to her she shivered. Her eyes seemed constantly trying to escape his gaze, wandering round the room, the terror of a hunted animal ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... such a trip, it shall not be in the approved line of Cook's Tours. I want to adventure in absolute freedom, with no tagging tourists or other obstacles to a perfect adventure. I would carefully select a party of fifteen or twenty harmonious souls and charter or buy a private yacht. Then start and stop as we pleased. No hurry, no lagging, unless we chose. It seems to me that such a wonderful outing ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... no room for doubt. Beyond two or three tiny flecks of gold the three adventurers found nothing of value in the deeper sand and gravel of the stream. That night absolute dejection settled on the camp. Both Rod and Wabigoon made vain efforts to liven up their drooping spirits. Only Mukoki, to whom gold carried but a fleeting and elusive value, was himself, and even his hopefulness was dampened by the gloom of his ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... had the smallest regard for truth, or for the fame of the person whose speeches he had undertaken to publish, would have had recourse to the various sources of information which were readily accessible, and, by collating them, would have produced a book which would at least have contained no absolute nonsense. But I have unfortunately had an editor whose only object was to make a few pounds, and who was willing to sacrifice to that object my reputation and his own. He took the very worst report extant, compared it with ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... finally disappears. The comet itself dwindles to a hairy star once more and goes—whither? Into space so remote that we cannot even dream of it—far away into cold more appalling than anything we could measure, the cold of absolute space. More and more slowly it travels, always away and away, until the sun, a short time back a huge furnace covering all the sky, is now but a faint star. Thus on its lonely journey unseen ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... football shoulders and leaned forward earnestly. "No, Doctor, that's exactly the way to put it." He said to Crowley, very seriously, "We've done this most efficiently. We've gone through absolute piles of statistics. We've...." ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... printers because the samurai were an educated class, and the only people fitted to deal with the very complicated Japanese alphabet; and many became policemen because it was a post for which their fighting instinct and their habit of authority well fitted them. Their authority over the people is absolute and unquestioning; and, again, there are ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore
... fury of the tempest had spent itself, or perhaps we did not feel it so much as we scudded before it, but at all events the seas, which at first had been kept down by the wind and lay flat and frothing, now got up into absolute mountains. A singular change, too, had come over the heavens. Around in every direction it was still as black as pitch, but nearly overhead there burst out, all at once, a circular rift of clear sky—as clear as I ever saw, and of a deep bright ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... must touch, and she had to abstain especially from meat of any kind, as well as fresh fish. Nor was this all she had to endure; even her contact, however remote, with these two articles of diet was so dreaded that she could not cross the public paths or trails, or the tracks of animals. Whenever absolute necessity constrained her to go beyond such spots, she had to be packed or carried over them lest she should contaminate the game or meat which had passed that way, or had been brought over these paths; and also for the sake of self-preservation against tabooed, and consequently ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... can exact the least complacence from him; and he would let her lovely limbs ach rather than offer her his chair: while the gentle Lyperus tumbles over benches and overthrows tea-tables to take up a fan or a glove; he forces you, as a good parent doth his child, for your own good; he is absolute master of a lady's will, nor will allow her the election of standing or sitting in his company. In short, the impertinent civility of Lyperus is as troublesome, though perhaps not so offensive, as the brutish ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... the doctor's housekeeper, thought a golden shower had fallen over the house. Where there had been absolute poverty there was now abundance. There were no more shabby curtains and threadbare carpets—everything was new and comfortable. The doctor seemed to have grown younger—relieved as he was from a killing weight of ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... talk. But, in these early days at least, he was determined to shine by any means. He made himself feared in the village for his tongue. He would crush weaker men to their faces, or even perhaps - for the statement of Sillar is not absolute - say cutting things of his acquaintances behind their back. At the church door, between sermons, he would parade his religious views amid hisses. These details stamp the man. He had no genteel timidities in the conduct ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dilated for an instant. Then she laughed with all the joyous abandon of youth and absolute health. "You get worse and worse," she said, teasingly. "Do go and have another talk with Fernando, John. Then come and tell ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... with more absolute power cf. His. 3, 7: adductius, quam civili bello, imperitabat. The adv. is used only in the comp.; and the part. adductus is post-Augustan. Jam and nondum both have reference to the writer's progress in going over the tribes of Germany, those tribes growing less and less free as ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... identified with the whites; they are more respectable and respected by far, in this relation, than they can be, in the circumstances of the case, if they are detached from the whites. There is no expression which conveys a more absolute error than this, and we often meet with it: "He ceased to be a slave, and became a man." I read lately the report of a lecture at the North, by an eminent gentleman, of great moral worth, and highly respected. He said, ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... direction of such officers as might be depended upon, and who were well acquainted with the natives. In Captain Cook's former visits to this country, he had never made use of such precautions; nor was he now convinced of their absolute necessity. But, after the tragical fate of the crew of the Adventure's boat in this sound, and of Captain Marion du Fresne, and some of his people, in the Bay of Islands (in 1772), it was impossible to free our navigators from all apprehensions ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... the national guard, with a grenadier cap on his head. Madame saw my embarrassment: laughed: and in two minutes her husband knew the purport of my visit. He began by expressing his dislike of the military garb: but admitted the absolute necessity of adopting such a measure as that of embodying a national guard. "Soyez le bien venu; Ma foi, je ne suis que trop sensible, Monsieur, de l'honneur que vous me faites—vu que vous etes antiquaire typographique, et que vous avez publie des ouvrages relatifs a notre art. Mais ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... handkerchiefs, clasp-knives, fruits, or a handful of nuts, and forced him to put on a regulation coat. Rene would then stuff his fill with the other servants. This duty, which du Bousquier had turned into a reward, won him the most absolute ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... however, that in the minds of most of them, the value of united action, the value to each of the example of the others, and the security against absolute poverty and helplessness in the first years of hard struggle, as well as the comfort of social ties, has ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... ever been so powerful and rich. The Greeks called the Persian king The Great King. Like all the monarchs of the East, the king had absolute sway over all his subjects, over the Persians as well as over tributary peoples. From Herodotus one can see how Cambyses treated the great lords at his court. "What do the Persians think of me?" said he one day to Prexaspes, whose son was his cupbearer. "Master, they load you ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... deceased, whose short life had been so pure and holy, and then he eulogized the sister who had devoted herself so unselfishly to the helpless brother, and who, he said, could have nothing to regret, nothing to wish undone, so absolute and entire had been her sacrifice. Hitherto Lucy had sat as rigid as a stone, but as she listened to her own praises she moved uneasily in her seat, and once put up her hand deprecatingly as if imploring ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... a bitter extreme, in getting the church and state separated from each other so far that the latter scarcely ever gets a glimpse of the former, and we stand by priding ourselves in the absolute divorce. Then we have also succeeded in getting the different creeds separated by chasms so wide that it is impossible to make a combined attack against a common foe. However, these separations between sects are gradually disappearing, and over the lessening ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... be seen. He went into a windmill on a height nearby, and watched the fight through one of the narrow windows in its upper story. He would not even put on his helmet. That was the way the father stood by his son—by showing absolute confidence in him, and denying himself all the glory that might come from a great and important battle. And the young fellow was a thousandfold nerved and strengthened by knowing that his ...
— The Junior Classics • Various |
