"Absolute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is, I cease to have mundane existence through beholding the soul in Brahman; the result of this would be the abolition of sorrow, etc., but in no way absolute Oneness. ...
— The Tattva-Muktavali • Purnananda Chakravartin
... than any savages possess, but their art was truly savage. To discover how Greek art climbed in a couple of centuries from this coarse and childish work to the grace of the AEgina marbles, and thence to the absolute freedom and perfect unapproachable beauty of the work of Phidias, is one of the most singular problems in the history of art. Greece learned something, no doubt, from her early knowledge of the arts the priests of Assyria and Egypt had elaborated in the valleys of the Euphrates and the Nile. That ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... functions of the different parts of the brain. An experiment is mentioned with a newly killed animal, whose brain was taken out and its place filled with substances producing electric action, when the process of digestion, that had been interrupted, was instantly resumed, thus "showing the absolute identity of the brain with a galvanic battery." The experiment of inducing muscular action in a corpse, by applying galvanism, is sufficiently well known. To borrow an illustration from Sidney Smith, it would seem, that, if we only knew to what organs of the brain to direct an electric ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... nudo, 'with one foot bare,' the ablative absolute. This construction consists of two parts, a noun, or pronoun corresponding to the subject of a clause, and a participle corresponding to the verb of a clause. A predicate noun or adjective may take ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.
... does not correspond to the logic of facts. Words are for the most part simple, downright, and absolute. The facts of history are very rarely so. Their importance is very often relative, and is conditioned by changing circumstances. It was so with the events that led up to the second Afghan War. They were very complex, and could not be summed up, or disposed of, by reference to ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... Orange, men not likely to go to extremes. And it was an axiom that the masses are always led by few, and cannot act of themselves. But in the Netherlands more than elsewhere the forms, if not the reality, of freedom were preserved, and the sovereign was not absolute. Moreover, he governed from a distance, and, in addition to his constitutional caution and procrastination, correspondence ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... news that Mr. Thurston thought him a remarkable mathematician and perhaps the leading student in his class. Cyril himself, too pale for a country boy of fourteen, narrow-shouldered, silent, and timid, took this unexpected fame with absolute terror, but Olive's pride delighted in it and she positively bloomed, in the knowledge that her brother was appreciated. She herself secretly thought books were rather a mistake when paints and brushes were at hand, and it was no wonder ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... jeeringly and the others saw there was no use arguing with the stubborn Bear King, who seemed to have absolute faith in his Pink Bear. The Wizard, who knew that magical things can usually be depended upon, and that the little Pink Bear was able to answer questions by some remarkable power of magic, thought it wise to apologize to the Lavender Bear for the unbelief ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... it was likewise an official and not a nobiliary title. Later, with the growth of the feudal system, the counts became not merely royal officers, but hereditary rulers, with coronets and arms and an assumption of absolute authority in their counties. In some of these counties the title developed later ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... to the great deserts of the world, these authorities say:—"Perhaps the most absolute desert tract on the face of the globe is that which occupies the interior of the great island, or as it may not improperly be styled, ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... my lieutenant, their confessor, and the doctor, who lives eighteen miles away, and only sees them when I am present.' Years went by; on January 1687 one of the two captives died; we really do not know which with absolute certainty. However, the intensified secrecy with which the survivor was now guarded seems more appropriate to Dauger; and M. Funck-Brentano and M. Lair have no doubt that it was La Riviere who expired. He was dropsical, that appears in the official correspondence, and the ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... practical experience as an essential complement to sea power, whatever future the airship and aeroplane may have for independent action. A captain who is going to fight his ship successfully must have practised in time of peace with all the weapons he will employ in action, and he must have absolute control over all the elements constituting the fighting power of his ship. In a larger sense, the same may be said of an admiral in command of a fleet; divided control may mean disaster. The advent of aircraft has introduced new and, at present, only partially ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... or has been lost or broken, and cannot be replaced. Some comfort or luxury to which she has been used from childhood is lacking, and cannot be furnished. The multifarious materials upon which household art can employ itself are reduced to the few absolute essentials. These difficulties are felt more by the woman than the man. To quote the words of a writer who was herself a pioneer ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... and animation that carried all his hearers irresistibly away. His logic, wit, and sarcasm, his clear voice, flashing eyes, and vigorous power of declamation, used only when the occasion was important, gave him in time almost absolute control in Athens, and had he sought to make himself a despot he might have done so with a word; but happily he was honest and patriotic enough to content himself with being the First ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... of the rabbits, his experiments, however certain of success he deemed them, were always made on or with regard to his own belongings. The little plot of garden-ground which he held in absolute possession was continually being dug up and refashioned, in his eager efforts to convert it successively into a vineyard, a Portuguese quinta, (to effect which he diligently planted orange-pips and manured the earth with the peel,) or, favorite scheme of all, a wheat-field,—dimensions, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... said in her excitement, which had risen to an absolute scream, I cannot tell; but some prudent friend pulled her down off the stone, to be succeeded by a speaker more painful, if possible; an aged blind man, the worn-out melancholy of whose slow, feeble voice made my heart sink, and hushed the murmuring ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... this envelope contains while waiting for central to answer your call" he said gently. "I snipped the wires while you were hiding your face in your hands, wondering what you were going to do. These papers are merely a few affidavits, proving an absolute alibi in the matter of that Garlock robbery. I was eating frijoles and flapjacks with three prospectors about fifteen miles south of Olancho at the time this stage was held up, and I was in Keeler the following morning. This document contains a statement of the most amazing case of ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... The care of which (as has been said) should begin with the first Years of Childrens Lives, in curbing at the earliest appearance thereof, every their least evil inclination; and accustoming them to an absolute, constant, and universal Submission and Obedience to the Will of those who have the disposal of them: Since they will hardly ever after (especially in a great Fortune) be govern'd by their own Reason, who are not made supple to that ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... in Liverpool; my father, A prosperous merchant, gave to business His time and active thoughts, and let his wife Rule all beside with rigor absolute. My maiden name was Mary Merivale. There were eight daughters of us, and of these I was the fourth. We lived in liberal style, And did not lack the best society The city could afford. My heedful mother, With eight undowered girls to be disposed of, Fearfully healthy all, ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... close with a quotation from the Autobiography, which in its sincerity and absolute freedom from literary cant will be cherished by all whose desire is to behold "the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies." "I have drawn a high prize in the lottery of life," wrote ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... of invention. On this he waits with [114] a perfect patience; other moments are but a preparation, or after-taste of it. Few men distinguish between them as jealously as he. Hence so many flaws even in the choicest work. But for Leonardo the distinction is absolute, and, in the moment of bien-etre, the alchemy complete: the idea is stricken into colour and imagery: a cloudy mysticism is refined to a subdued and graceful mystery, and painting pleases the eye while it ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... moment after I had finished there was absolute silence in the audience. We did not know what would happen. Then, suddenly, as the truth of the statement struck them, the men began to applaud—and the danger of that ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... impossible we can have the idea or representation of anything whatever, unless there be somewhere, either in us or out of us, an original which comprises, in reality, all the perfections that are thus represented to us; but, as we do not in any way find in ourselves those absolute perfections of which we have the idea, we must conclude that they exist in some nature different from ours, that is, in God, or at least that they were once in him; and it most manifestly follows [from their infinity] that they ...
— The Principles of Philosophy • Rene Descartes
... was the more remarkable, the more sure to attract attention, inasmuch as the 'Evening Pulpit' had never supported the Liberal interest. As was said in the first chapter of this work, the motto of that newspaper implied that it was to be conducted on principles of absolute independence. Had the 'Evening Pulpit,' like some of its contemporaries, lived by declaring from day to day that all Liberal elements were godlike, and all their opposites satanic, as a matter of course the ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... stewardship; and let him seriously consider, whether, at such a time, he thinks he shall be able to satisfy himself, that any act of buying and selling, or the fate of war, or the birth of children in his house, plantation, or territories, or any other circumstance whatever, can give him such an absolute property in the persons of men, as will justify his retaining them as slaves, and treating them as beasts? Let him diligently consider whether there will not always remain to the slave a superior ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... Shakspere has elsewhere embodied superstitions, he has treated them as direct and unalterable facts of human nature; and this he has done because he was too profound a philosopher to be capable of regarding genuine superstition as the product of random spectra of the fancy, having absolute darkness for the prime condition of their being, instead of eeing in it rather the zodiacal light of truth, the concomitant of the uprising, and of the setting of the truth, and a partaker in its essence. Again, Shakspere ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... I here intend to personate the bashful Author, and out of a point of Honour undervalue my Comedy. I should very unseasonably disoblige all the People of Paris, should I accuse them of having applauded a foolish Thing: as the Public is absolute Judge of such sort of Works, it would be Impertinence in me to contradict it; and even if I should have had the worst Opinion in the World of my Pretentious Young Ladies before they appeared upon the Stage, I must now believe them of some Value, since so many People ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... induces but compels a feeling of absolute detachment from the world. To both Stanley and Mildred their affairs—the difficulties in which they were involved on terra firma—ceased for the time to have any reality. The universe was nothing but a vast stretch of water under ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... analogous to that which we acquire of a country by the map,—minute, perhaps, and accurate, and available for all necessary purposes, but cold and naked, and wholly destitute of the mimic charm produced by landscape-painting. These defects are partly remediable, and even without an absolute violation of literal truth, although by methods rightfully interdicted to professors of biographical exactness. A license must be assumed in brightening the materials which time has rusted, and in tracing out half-obliterated inscriptions ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Gospels. Therefore, to ascertain. Scripture, you must have one article more; and you must define what that Scripture is which, you mean to teach. There are, I believe, very few who, when Scripture is so ascertained, do not see the absolute necessity of knowing what general doctrine a man draws from it, before he is sent down authorized by the state to teach, it as pure doctrine, and receive a tenth of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Sam's fight was won. Pouncing upon the man representing the stock of the south-side investor, he and Webster did not go out of the room until they had secured absolute control of the Rainey Company and the man who had refused to vote had put twenty-five thousand dollars into his pocket. The two employee directors Sam marked for slaughter. Then after spending the afternoon and early evening with the representatives of the eastern companies and ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... Dr. Stone's work has been the training of her nurses. This has been an absolute necessity, for, as Dr. Stone said: "When I found I had to run a hospital with accommodations for 100 beds, and an out-patient department with sometimes 120 patients a day, I at once found I had to multiply myself by training workers. These workers I selected from various Christian ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... unresilient mass of personal presence I mean; so that I fairly think of him as a form of bland porpoise, violently blowing in an age not his own, as by having had to exchange deep water for thin air. Thus he impressed me as with an absolute ancientry of type, of tone, of responsible taste, above all; this last I mean in literature, since it was literature we sociably explored, to my at once charmed and shamed apprehension of the several firm traditions, the pure proprieties, the discussabilities, in the oddest ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... calm frightened me more than a storm would have done. To win Dionysia's love was too great happiness. I expected a catastrophe, something terrible. I expected it with such absolute certainty, that I had actually made up my mind to confess every thing to M. de Chandore. You know him, Magloire. The old gentleman is the purest and brightest type of honor itself. I could intrust my secrets to him with as perfect safety as I formerly intrusted Genevieve's name ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... she could not support herself in the position most calculated to give her ease and pleasure? "Always this tying up and restraint!" pursued the Wind, with an angry puff. "Perhaps I am prejudiced; but as to be deprived of freedom would be to me absolute death, so my soul revolts from every shape and ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... not in the boat in which Will had a place, as he rowed stroke of the first gig and Will was in the launch. Tom was also in another boat, but was in the same division. No lights were to be seen, and absolute silence reigned. Noiselessly the men landed and formed up on the beach. To reach the batteries they had to climb the cliff by a zigzag pathway, up which they were obliged to go in single file. They arrived at the summit without apparently creating a suspicion of their presence, and then advanced ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... time he was the power that moved that community even in its most insignificant machinery. With marvellous skill he constructed out of that simple republic of protestants an absolute despotism. And ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... had risen to the exalted rank of grand vizier, and had married the sister of Solyman the Magnificent. The sultan daily became more attached to him; and he, on his part, acquired influence over his imperial master. Vested with a power so nearly absolute that Solyman signed without ever perusing the hatti-sheriffs, or decrees, drawn up by Ibrahim,—and enjoying the confidence of the divan, all the members of which were devoted to his interests,—the renegade administered according to his own discretion, the affairs of that mighty empire. Avaricious, ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... the universe. It is very much our way of thinking of her, and of course both our own concept and the later Roman concept go back to Greece. But Greece had not always had this idea of the goddess of luck. The older purer age of Greek thought was permeated with the idea of the absolute immutable character of the divine will, a belief which precluded the possibility of chance or caprice. The earliest Greek Tyche (Fortuna) was the daughter of Zeus who fulfilled his will; and that his will through her was often a beneficent will is shown in the tendency ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... conceive it as far as possible as present or actually existing. But the endeavour of the mind, or the mind's power of thought, is equal to, and simultaneous with, the endeavour of the body, or the body's power of action. (This is clear from II. vii. Coroll. and II. xi. Coroll.). Therefore we make an absolute endeavour for its existence, in other words (which by III. ix. note, come to the same thing) we desire and strive for it; this was our first point. Again, if we conceive that something, which we believed to be the cause of pain, that is (III. xiii. note), which we hate, ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... to arrive at the tenuous statement, 'I think, therefore I am,' is nicely thrown out by tagging it with another metaphysical intangible called illusion—as if the mind can separate illusion from reality by some absolute standard." ...
— The Unthinking Destroyer • Roger Phillips
... even putting 'Wandering Willie's Tale' aside, and taking for granted the merits of that incomparable piece (of which, it may yet be gently hinted, it was not so very long ago still a singularity and mark of daring to perceive the absolute supremacy), the good things in this fascinating book defy exaggeration. The unique autobiographic interest—so fresh and keen and personal, and yet so free from the odious intrusion of actual personality—of the earlier epistolary presentment ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... should be altered, but, in the words of a despatch addressed by the Government of India to the Secretary of State on September 9, 1882, the local reports showed "an overwhelming consensus of opinion that the time had come for modifying the existing law and removing the present absolute bar upon the investment of native magistrates in the interior with powers over European British subjects." Not one single official gave anything approaching an indication of the storm of opposition that ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... before come in contact with a man like Cahoon, and I was very much interested in him. His contempt, not only for our fellow-countrymen in Leinster, Munster and Connacht, but for all the other inhabitants of the British Isles was absolute. He had a way of pronouncing final judgment on all the problems ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... dropped now, and it was noted as strange that no rush of air came after each explosion. There was the heavy concussion and then a terrible stillness, the air being perfectly motionless, and this appearing the more strange after the frightful tornado through which they had passed. Silence absolute, and a darkness as thick as that of the great plague of Egypt—a darkness that could be felt. And now, making no headway whatever, the vessel rolled heavily in the tossing waves, which boiled round ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... when they returned, Mac in absolute peace of mind, but Charley still unsettled. His headquarters were a hundred miles away, and their sport of a host spent the following day running them down in his car, so that Charley might have final satisfaction, and that night, ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... the vexed question of the vigor and vitality of the mulatto, upon which the more extended observations of the last three years have as yet shed little light. It is the same with the whole obscure problem of amalgamation; indeed, he slips into an absolute contradiction, in pronouncing judgment rather too hastily here. "I believe," he says, "that the effect of general emancipation will be to discourage amalgamation. It is rare in Canada." (p. 219.) But, however it may be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... this forth in song the singer achieved the aim of Art. This joy would become part of the life of those who heard her, because it can never be too clearly understood that we are built of our memories, and though we seem to forget, yet these memories are absolute. So the joy that the singer gave out went to gladden the world, and that which she gave, paradoxically enough, remained with her. That which we express, by the record of that expression we ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... not with egos, but with life. Mr. Burroughs goes on the basis that a definition is something hard and fast, absolute and eternal. He forgets that all the universe is in flux; that definitions are arbitrary and ephemeral; that they fix, for a fleeting instant of time, things that in the past were not, that in the future will be not, that out of the past become, and ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... the track of the compasses is identical with that of the insect. The most pronounced deviations do not exceed the small variations which we must reasonably expect in a problem of a physical nature, a problem incompatible with the absolute ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... four eyes. Who can measure the fascination under which the young enthusiast fell at first sight? In any case nothing apparently occurred to disturb the amiability of either monarch. It was doubtless agreed that they should form a dual alliance, absolute and exclusive.[9] "I have often slept two in a bed," the suave but inelegant Napoleon was heard to say at a subsequent meeting, "but never three." Savary declared that the smiling and complacent young Czar thought ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... adjective 'good' is dangerous, and before the time for the bill was half expired, Bozzy has closured it and the amendment. The state of his affairs, the loss of his wife bore heavily on him, together with 'the disadvantage to my children in having so wretched a father—nay, the want of absolute certainty of being happy after death, the sure prospect of which is frightful.' Then a fitful gleam of the old Adam breaks out. He has heard of a Miss Bagnal, 'about seven and twenty, lively and gay, a Ranelagh girl, but of excellent principles insomuch that she reads prayers ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... not a word, To the patriarch there by the ford; No answer has come through the ages To the poets, the seers, and the sages Who have sought in the secrets of science The name and the nature of God, Whether cursing in desperate defiance Or kissing His absolute rod; But the answer which was and shall be, "My name! Nay, what is it to thee?" The search and the question are vain. By use of the strength that is in you, By wrestling of soul and of sinew The blessing ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... as concerned the Christian world. And secondly, that from then and until well into the sixteenth century, the whole attention of artists was engrossed in changing the powers of indication into powers of absolute representation, developing completely the drawing, anatomy, perspective, colour, light and shade, and handling, which Giotto and his contemporaries had possessed only in a most rudimentary condition, and which had sufficed for the creation of just such pictorial themes as ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... came, amid absolute silence. He was at the wall of the fort when suddenly Donald rose to his full height, flung up both arms, and yelled at the top of his voice—the familiar manner of stopping a pursuing wild animal. The Indian, instinctively taken aback, halted, and ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... unreasonable. But he soon gets to see, as he reads and as he notes the rapid and profound transformation of all civilization which was taking place in that generation, that St. Thomas was standing out for a principle, ill clothed in his particular plea, but absolute in its general appreciation: the freedom of the Church. He stood out in particular for what had been the concrete symbols of the Church's liberty in the past. The direction of his actions was everything, ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... Mrs. Graham gravely, "be silent!" There was a moment of absolute stillness, broken only by the ticking of the little crystal clock on the mantelpiece, and then Mrs. Graham continued: "I must ask you not to speak again, my daughter, until I have finished what I have to say; and even ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... that these Belgians have no means of securing the information they need, as the Germans have almost absolute possession of their country and are, as might be expected, not furnishing any information as to the amount of destruction, or the quantity of materials which can be used again, or in any other way. It is stated that the Germans have practically looted the whole country, carting off the machinery ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... move. I hardly dare breathe, and I dreaded lest the violent pulsation of my heart should attract the attention of the Unknown Presence and precipitate its coming out. Yet despite the perturbation of my mind, I caught myself analysing my feelings. It was not danger I abhorred so much, as its absolute effect—fright. I shuddered at the bare thought of what result the most trivial incident—the creaking of a board, ticking of a beetle, or hooting of an owl—might have on the intolerable agitation ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... universal force—or, at all events, that the organization of the material universe may not be such as to place that portion of space occupied by it in such relations to the forces exerted in it, as may invalidate the absolute similarity of circumstances assumed? Or we may argue, what have we to do with the notion of angular movement in the lever at all? The case is one of rest, and of quiescent destruction of force by force. Now how is this destruction effected? Assuredly by the ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... parliament is absolute and arbitrary is a contradiction. The Parliament cannot make two and two five. Omnipotency cannot do it.... Parliaments are in all cases to declare what is for the good of the whole; but it is not the declaration of parliament that makes it so: there ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... urb. cond. 567. brought first out of Asia to Rome singing wenches, players, jesters, and all kinds of music to their feasts. Your princes, emperors, and persons of any quality, maintain it in their courts; no mirth without music. Sir Thomas More, in his absolute Utopian commonwealth, allows music as an appendix to every meal, and that throughout, to all sorts. Epictetus calls mensam mutam praesepe, a table without music a manger: for "the concert of musicians ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... the dreadful abyss that separates this life from the life unknown. We were even almost persuaded that war would one day cease for lack of soldiers, that is to say, of men foolish enough or unhappy enough to risk the only absolute realities—health, physical comfort, an unimpaired body and, above all, life, the greatest of earthly possessions—for the sake of an ideal which, like all ideals, ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Because what he asked was not done, although I desired to please him, he was displeased. The accountant, Marten Ruiz de Salazar, has for a long time been offended, because he was not allowed to take fees from the clerks of the accountancy, and to exercise absolute authority over accepting and dismissing them, as in the present case. Hence my proposition was disliked by them both. Thus may your Majesty see carried out in this case the same motive that I stated for all the others—namely, that they do not vote without self-interest or passion. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... had up before the General Court and questioned, among other points, as to his own report of the manner of his conversion. "He had lain under a spirit of bondage and a legal way for years, and could get no assurance, till, at length, as he was taking a pipe of tobacco, the Spirit set home an absolute promise of free grace with such assurance and joy as he never since doubted of his good estate, neither should he, though he should fall into sin. . . . The Lord's day following he made a speech in the assembly, showing that as the Lord was pleased to convert Paul as he was in ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... himself obliged to take an expensive journey to London, in the fruitless attempt to come to some terms with his father's lawyer, Mr. Whitton. Mr. Timothy Shelley was anxious to bind his erratic son down to a settlement of the estates, which, on his own death, would pass into the poet's absolute control. He suggested numerous arrangements; and not long after the date of Shelley's residence in York, he proposed to make him an immediate allowance of 2000 pounds, if Shelley would but consent to entail the ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... all nations, he shall deem to be reciprocally unjust and unreasonable, he shall have the power, and it shall be his duty, to suspend, by proclamation to that effect, for such time and to such extent (including absolute prohibition) as he shall deem just, the right of free passage through the St. Marys Falls Canal so far as it relates to vessels owned by the subjects of the government so discriminating against the citizens, ports, or vessels of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... to balance this dangerous authority, thought too much weight could not be thrown into the scale of the procurator: secondly, as the government was now entirely despotical, a connection between the inferior officers of the empire and the senate[22] was found to shock the reason of that absolute mode of government, which extends the sovereign power in all its fulness to every officer in his own district, and renders him accountable to his master alone for the abuse ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the Kingdoms, There is no such qualification, nor subordination observed in the present Engagement, but on the contrary, it is so carried on, as to make duties to God and Religion conditionall, qualified, limited; and duties to the King absolute ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... Although I was far from being even commonly virtuous, which is about tantamount to absolute wickedness, I was no longer the thoughtless mortal I had ever been since I left school. The society of Emily, and her image graven on my heart; the close confinement to the brig, and the narrow escape from death in the second attempt to save the poor sailor's life, had ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... respect, was reported faithfully and accurately to his superior. The person of John Anderson, his suspicions concerning him, the strangely formed friendship of the spy with the Military Governor, were indicated with only that amount of reserve necessary to distinguish a moral from an absolute certitude. Events had moved with great rapidity, yet he felt assured that the real crisis was only now impending, for which reason he desired to return to the city so as to be ready for any service which ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... established that assumed an equal and mechanical progress on the part of every child every year. Yet, in spite of grave defects, the Act of 1872 brought inestimable blessings with it. For one thing, the health conditions of education were vastly improved. Many of the old schools were absolute hovels. After 1872, large, airy, and spacious buildings, were erected in every district of the land. It was no longer a case of one old dominie facing singly a whole regiment of unruly youngsters: every school was organised and disciplined into regular and seemly order. We had ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... contrast between labor and recreation increases without doubt the appeal of the city to many. The factory system not only satisfies the gregarious instinct, it also gives an absolute break between the working time and the period of freedom. In so far as labor represents monotony, it emphasizes the value of the hours free from toil. This contrast is often in the city the difference between very great monotony ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... Belle of New York." In his letters home he describes in detail many of the festivities and the wildness with which he has flung himself into them, dilating on his splendid renewal of health, his absolute immunity from fatigue. He attributes this to his indifference to diet and regularities of meals and sleep; but we may guess that it was due to a reaction from having shifted his burden to stronger financial shoulders. Henry Rogers had ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... declaring, "give you absolute control, Miss Brent. With them you can force Mr. Balcom completely out of ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... and multiplied fronts of this irregular building were, as Dr. Rochecliffe was wont to say, an absolute banquet to the architectural antiquary, as they certainly contained specimens of every style which existed, from the pure Norman of Henry of Anjou, down to the composite, half Gothic half classical architecture of Elizabeth ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... tumult of the times. Such a commander they found in Napoleon. They were more than willing to confer upon him all the power he could desire. "You know what is best for us;"" said the people of Napoleon. "Direct us what to do, and we will do it." It was thus that absolute power came voluntarily into his hands. Under the circumstances it was so natural that it can excite no suspicion. He was called First Consul. But he already swayed a scepter more mighty than that ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... did not admit of any irregularity of this kind. It called, instead, sternly and insistently for absolute denial. It told her now, without the smallest shadow of doubt, that from to-night she must never see Sir Edwin again. She must take whatever interest he had brought out of her life, and go back to the old, ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... accident. If desired two or three guns may be arranged like the spokes of a wheel, all aiming near the bait. Even with one gun the victim stands but little chance, but where two or three pour their contents into his body, his death is an absolute certainty. ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... over these beautiful pictures which are painted by the delicate and scientifically accurate fingers of Light itself. These reproductions are true. There is no imagination in them nor conventionalism. In the presence of their absolute truth any written description or work of human hands shrinks into insignificance. The scientific value of these photographs can not ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [May, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... religion, poetry, philosophy, science, are 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 ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... man's work," said Mrs. Van Vechten, pouring herself a second cup of tea. "He chooses it; then he is allowed to go at it with absolute freedom. He isn't hampered by the dull, petty details of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... I quote from Mr. Hornaday's recent lecture at Rochester. He says, "Owing to the peculiar and almost impassable nature of the country, Borneo has never been crossed by the white man. Travelling over some of the mountains seems to be an absolute impossibility. Many of them consist almost wholly of huge blocks of basalt, soft, moist, and too slippery to walk upon. I would rather attempt to cross the continent of Africa than the island of Borneo. The explorer must carry with him provisions enough to ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... snatch me from my heaven, the lovely victim lay ready for the sacrifice, all prepared to offer; my hands, my eyes, my lips were tired with pleasure, but yet they were not satisfied; oh there was joy beyond those ravishments, of which one kind minute more had made me absolute lord:' 'Yes, and the next,' said she, 'had sent this to your heart'——snatching a penknife that lay on her toilet, where she had been writing, which she offered so near to his bosom, that he believed himself already ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... come upon one doctrinal platform when they enter eternity. They all have one creed there. There is not a skeptic even in hell. The devils believe and tremble. The demonstration that God is holy is so irrefragable, so complete and absolute, that doubt or denial is impossible in any spirit that has passed the line between time ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... surprise, flowed, though with an almost imperceptible current, in the direction they were taking, or exactly opposite to that of the river they had ascended from the salt-marshes of the east. As Has-se had requested him to keep absolute silence, and on no account to speak, he restrained his curiosity for the present, but determined to seek an explanation of this phenomenon when ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... was sure that he had the cryptic device that was responsible for the failure of a cold-war raid. He wouldn't have dared drive away from Dillon leaving these devices behind. If they were what he thought, they'd be absolute proof of the truth of his story, and they should furnish clues to the sort of science the Invaders possessed. Show the world that Invaders were upon it, and all the world would combine to defend Earth. The cold war ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... upon public liberty, and the sad misery they underwent, while they were tyrannized over by such emperors as Caius. See Josephus's own short but pithy reflection at the end of the chapter: "So difficult," says he, "it is for those to obtain the virtue that is necessary to a wise man, who have the absolute power to do what ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... found that the natives of that town had received the news of the victory of El-Teb with absolute incredulity, but the arrival of the Tokar fugitives convinced them that the Arabs had really been defeated. One of the prisoners taken at Sinkat came in a day or two later, having made his escape from Osman Digma's camp. He reported that the news of the battle of El-Teb had arrived ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... a change of residence or a vacation trip are always interested in the climate of the locality attracting their attention, for they know that absolute contentment in any clime, even for a brief period, is impossible without a friendly attitude on the part of the elements. So many regions seem to have been permanently blighted by conditions opposed to human happiness, or at least to have been forgotten in certain ...
— The Beauties of the State of Washington - A Book for Tourists • Harry F. Giles
... and other facts show the great variety of touch impressions that may be distinguished. The sense of temperature has a comparatively high development, and more so in women than in men. At the lips and with the tips of the fingers, differences of two-tenths of a degree are perceived. But where an absolute valuation and not a difference is to be perceived, the mean variation, generally, is not much less than 4 degrees. E. g., a temperature of 19 degrees R. will be estimated at from 17 to 21 degrees. I believe, however, that the ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... feeling as they once had been. No unkind words had passed on either side, at least none which could really be regarded as such, for the trifles which had gradually produced this feeling of separation were almost too insignificant to call forth absolute unkindness; yet still they did their ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... given to him to see what the Italian naturalist Malpighi showed only seven years later, in 1664, when he demonstrated, in a living frog, the actual passage of the blood from the ultimate ramifications of the arteries into the veins. But that absolute ocular demonstration of the truth of the views he had maintained throughout his life it was not granted to Harvey to see. What he did experience was this: that on the publication of his doctrines, they were met with the ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... sarcastic bass, enough to wither the marrow of a weak man. But the school-master was no weak man. His foot was entirely on his native heath, I assure you. He knew every inch of the ground, from the domination of the absolute faith in the ages of Fetichism, to its pseudo-presentment in the tenth century, and its actual subversion in the nineteenth. Every step. Our politicians might have picked up an idea or two there, I should think! Then he was so cool about it, so skilful! He fairly rubbed his hands with ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... to the fact that the author was a prominent actor in nearly all the legislation of this long period, and that he consequently possesses that personal and absolute knowledge which comes from actual participation. The following extract which is taken at random from page 117 of the volume discloses something of the author's happy faculty of seeing and describing things as they occurred to him. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... no time so trying, so full of agony to the soul, as is that hour when it first begins to doubt the absolute, unquestionable truth of the creeds it has hitherto blindly accepted, and in which it has fully believed. Creeds are the swaddling clothes of the soul, and must inevitably be outgrown and laid aside as the ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... more. The titles of his book are ingenious, and would ensure their sale at any time. As for their contents, odious as was the language he used, Prynne always hit the nail he intended, and was very good at a blow. In Rome's Masterpiece, he declared that the archbishop was a "middle-man, between an absolute Papist and a real Protestant, who will far sooner hug a Popish priest in his bosom than take a Puritan by the ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... high mass, and each of them offer one penny to the child-bishop. When Dean Colet was asked why he had left his foundation in trust to laymen (the Mercers' Company), as tenants of his father, rather than to an ecclesiastical foundation, he answered, "that there was no absolute certainty in human affairs, but, for his part, he found less corruption in such a body of citizens than in any other order or ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... wish. Two can work at once, one on each line. Choose the two sharpest edged of the daggers, and be sure to cut clean, and not to make a scraping noise or to try to break out pieces of wood. The work must be done in absolute quiet. Indeed, however careful you are, it is possible that some slight sound may be heard above, but, if noticed, it will probably be taken for ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... small jealousy shot through Lena's heart. It was always and everywhere Miss Elton. "I sent her another, but of slightly different shape. I am, as you know, a worshiper of beauty, but all these creations of man's hands are but parodies, are they not, Mrs. Percival, on absolute beauty? They are like ourselves, the creatures of a day. Nature herself, in sea and air and woodland, produces exquisite loveliness, and yet even her achievements are dwarfed when one stands face to face with one of ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... out her hands and Shann saw now, lying on a slowly closing palm, a disk such as the one Thorvald had shown him. The Terran had only one moment of fear and then came blackness, more absolute than the dark of any ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... wit &c 498; ability &c (skill) 698; wisdom &c 498; Vernunft [G.], Verstand [G.]. soul, spirit, ghost, inner man, heart, breast, bosom, penetralia mentis [Lat.], divina particula aurae [Lat.], heart's core; the Absolute, psyche, subliminal consciousness, supreme principle. brain, organ of thought, seat of thought; sensorium^, sensory; head, headpiece; pate, noddle^, noggin, skull, scull, pericranium [Med.], cerebrum, cranium, brainpan^, sconce, upper story. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... hath Christ committed this power of the keys to his church guides, that thereby they become the most proper receptacle thereof? Ans. Thus briefly. All absolute lordly power is in God originally: all lordly magisterial mediatory power is in Christ dispensatorily: all official, stewardly power is by delegation from Christ only in the church guides[93] ministerially, as the only proper subject thereof that may exercise the same lawfully ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... off the mantel-piece, and he started out of his chair and picked it up, and fitted it to the same exact spot. As if it were an absolute point of good breeding that it ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... the great deity of the other class. Renan boldly says: "For myself, I believe there is not in the universe an intelligence superior to that of man; the absolute of justice and reason manifests itself only in humanity; regarded apart from humanity that absolute exists only as an abstraction. The infinite exists only when it clothes itself in form."[23] And as the soul of man is, rather inconsistently for ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... with the thought, but follows it accidentally; it is a fact which only proves that a sensitive nature can succeed a rational nature, and vice versa; not that they co-exist, that they exercise a reciprocal action one over the other, and lastly that they ought to be united in an absolute and necessary manner. From this exclusion of feeling as long as there is thought, and of thought so long as there is feeling, we should on the contrary conclude that the two natures are incompatible, so ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... defrauding two women whose interests had been confided to him. Yet the story seemed probable. Moreover, even had matters been as Mr. Ferguson represented, his want of feeling seemed almost as bad as absolute dishonesty. He asked Ruth several questions in order that he might become fully ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... voice was a mezzo-soprano of great volume and purity, and had been brought to absolute perfection by the severe training of her father. Her private character was irreproachable. Few women have been more beloved for their amiability, generosity, and professional enthusiasm. Her intellect was of a high order, and the charms of her conversation fascinated all who ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... and love hath done it. Now, then, how monstrous and ugly a thing must pride be after this! That the dust should raise itself, and a worm swell, that wretched, miserable man should be proud, when it please the glorious God to be humble, that absolute necessity shall not constrain to this, that simple love persuaded him to! How doth this heighten and elevate humility, that such an one gives out himself, not only as the teacher, but as the pattern of it. ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... certitude of it in the believer. So, too, the words "death" and "life," in Paul's writings, are generally charged, by a constructio proegnans, with a double sense, one spiritual, individual, contingent, the other mechanical, common, absolute. Death, in its full Pauline force, includes inward guilt, condemnation, and misery, and outward descent into the under world. Life, in its full Pauline force, includes inward rectitude, peace, and joy, and outward ascent into the upper world. Holiness is necessary, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... carrying on as if—as if you were really scared! We've got these people: We'll have them out of Deepwater in six months. It's absolute ruination to their beastly old house; we'll put the chimneys on the very edge, not three hundred yards off, and our smoke'll be drifting over them half the time. You won't have this confounded stuck-up ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... been said that there is an absolute opposition between these two classes of sayings; that either Jesus contradicted Himself, or the evangelist drew from one source which was of a Judaizing character, and from another source which taught St. Paul's principle of justification ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... Kildun married, first, Mary Skene, daughter of Skene of Skene, in 1661. This is proved by a charter to her of her jointure lands of Kincardine, etc. (see Particular Register of Sasines Invss., vol. ix. fol. 9). He married, secondly, Margaret, daughter of Urquhart of Craighouse. The absolute impossibility is at once obvious of George of Kildun - who only married his first wife in 1661 - having had a son, John Mackenzie of Gruinard, in a position to have obtained a charter in his favour of the lands of Little Gruinard, etc., in 1669 ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... for me to say I have any affection for an absolute stranger just because she happens to be the child of a brother who never was any comfort to me in this world. With you it may be different," continued Miss Lacey, with what she intended to be adroitness. "Laura ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... receive the same favorable welcome and treatment at the hands of civilized nations as is accorded to all foreign visitors. Their exodus will have no resemblance to a flight, for it will be a well-regulated movement under control of public opinion. The movement will not only be inaugurated with absolute conformity to law, but it cannot even be carried out without the friendly cooperation of interested Governments, who would ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... penetration they must have been, discovered, Count Altenberg had taken the hint without being offended: indeed, she had felt it a point of conscience to let the truth be seen time enough, to prevent his coming to a downright proposal, and having the mortification of an absolute refusal. Other mothers, she knew, might feel differently about giving a daughter to a foreigner, and other young ladies might feel differently from her Georgiana. Where there was so great an establishment in prospect, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... savages, like famished wolves, with the most dismal yells and howlings, came rushing upon them. The peril was so terrible that there seemed to be no hope of escape. But there are no energies like the energies of despair. Every man resolved, in the calmness of the absolute certainty of death, to sell his life as dearly as possible. Captain Holyoke was a man equal to the emergency, and every member of his heroic little band had perfect confidence in his courage and his skill. Silently, sternly, sublimely, ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... fanciful case can be shown by noticing how often we speak of "transparent" honesty, or of "absolute" honesty: this is notably one of the words for which we have a sliding scale of values, which vary considerably with the age and the community. "Political honesty" has a very different meaning in the England of to-day from that which it had in the eighteenth century. To get at the ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... outgrown the accommodation of the common rooms, a daring scheme had been conceived between mother and son,—no less than that he should have a small room set apart for himself as a study. When first broached to the father, this scheme had met with an absolute denial that seemed to promise no hope of further consideration; but the mother, accepting defeat at the time, had tried again and again, with patient dexterity at favourable moments, till at last one proud day the little ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... theology ought never to be looked at except with the Eye of Faith. Now the philosophers are borrowing an eye of Faith from the theologians, and adding it on to their own microscope like another lens, and they have detected a kind of Absolute, a sort of a Something, the Higher Pantheism. I could never tell you all about it, and I don't even know whether they have really put theology under the microscope, or ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... much. She was not imaginative. She had plenty of feeling, but no sentiment, for sentiment is feeling that has been thought over; and her life was too entirely objective to allow her to think of her own feelings. Her highest qualities, as Albert inventoried them, were good sense, good taste, and absolute truthfulness and simplicity of character. These were the qualities that he saw in her after a brief acquaintance. They were not striking, and yet they were qualities that commanded respect. But he looked in vain for those high ideals of a vocation and a goal that so filled his own soul. ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... under this two-fold consideration. First, as they are in themselves, each made up of such a collection of simple ideas. Thus drunkenness, or lying, signify such or such a collection of simple ideas, which I call mixed modes: and in this sense they are as much POSITIVE ABSOLUTE ideas, as the drinking of a horse, or speaking of a parrot. Secondly, our actions are considered as good, bad, or indifferent; and in this respect they are RELATIVE, it being their conformity to, or disagreement with some rule that makes ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... Prince expresses the pure and still popular Moslem feeling; and yet the learned and experienced Mr Redhouse would confuse this absolute Predestination with Providence. A friend tells me that the idea of absolute Fate in The Nights makes her feel as if the world were a jail. [FN244] In the Book of Sindibad this is the Story of the Sandal-wood Merchant and the Advice of the Blind Old Man. Mr. Clouston (p. 163) ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... her sister's fate hung in the balance. What she uttered was verbally true. Before rising, Thyrza had said: 'I will marry him.' In the possible breaking of this bond Lydia saw such a terrible danger that her instincts of absolute sincerity for once were overridden. If she spoke falsely, it was to save her sister. Thyrza once married, the face of life would be altered for her; this sudden passionate love would fall like a brief ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... other window, looked across disparagingly, hard at work on his beard. He said nothing, but after a time abruptly thrust his hands in his pockets, and his feet out in front of him in a manner which expressed absolute dissent. When momma said she thought she would try to get a little sleep he looked round observantly, and as soon as her slumber was sound and comfortable ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... moments that I felt a loathing for myself, and such strong self-disgust must surely have prevailed in the end to make me false to duty if, as I have said, I had not an absolute faith that his Excellency required no man to tarnish his honor for the ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... can't but take notice of. First, 'tis said, That he has not kept to the Unity of Time in his Heautontimoreumenos, or Self-Tormenter; which contains the space of two days. Then, between the second and third Acts, there's an absolute failure of the Continuance of the Action. These are generally believ'd by several Men, and such as are famous too; and some to vindicate Terence the better have added another Mistake, That the Play was always acted two several times, the two first Acts one, and the three last ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... of opinion that to persevere in our enterprise at the Shepherdstown ferry or anywhere in the immediate neighborhood, would be not only the height of rashness, but absolute waste of time. He advised our striking northward at once, by the Cumberland route, which then appeared to be the only one offering possible chances of success. Even on the Lower Potomac, the cordon of pickets and guard-boats had been ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... possibly an intellectual and moral asset of no mean importance. This, and more, a sovereign Ireland means to Europe. Above all it means security of transit, equalizing of opportunity, freedom of the seas—an assurance that the great waterways of the ocean should no longer be at the absolute mercy of one member of the European family, and that one the least interested in general ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... During seventy days, from the thirteenth of Nisan, the date of Haman's edict ordering the extermination of the Jews, until the twenty-third of Siwan, when Mordecai recalled it, they were permitted to enjoy absolute ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... have not unfrequently been the holders of temporary and precarious power, there are not many instances where they have held secure and absolute dominion," says Dr. William W. Ireland in his ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... professor announced at breakfast, 'that we shall be the matter of two or three months at Last Ridge. What comforts we have there will be the results of our own efforts. Now, though we have brought with us certain of the absolute necessities, there is much in the way of provision and sundries that we should have. Mr. Howard has been so very considerate as to offer us a wagon and horses and even a driver. I think, my dear, that we would do well to drive into Big Run, which I understand is a progressive ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... were joking with the Indians, who appeared stolidly apathetic or resigned; the Mexicans stood apart in sullen gloom, as if secretly mourning their lost estate; but Sing Lee looked about him with a cheerful calmness which seemed indicative of absolute contentment and his face wore, continually, a complacent smile. What strange varieties of human destiny these men present, I thought as I surveyed them: the Indian and the Mexican stand for the hopeless ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... Thus, no absolute rights can be laid down even for men who share the same ideas in their private and social intercourse. The conception of the constitutional State in the strictest sense is an impossibility, and would lead to an intolerable state of things. The ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... tone changed ever so slightly. "If this ever occurs again you may be sure that disciplinary action will be taken.... Attention there!" At the other end of the barracks a man had moved. Again, amid absolute silence, could be heard the clanking of the officers' heels as ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... Napoleon in rebellion, in atrocities, in massacres, in outrages, in treason. If he should attempt roguery it would miscarry. Not a regiment would stir. Besides, why should he make such an attempt? Doubtless he has his suspicious side, but why suppose him an absolute villain? Such extreme outrages are beyond him; he is incapable of them physically, why judge him capable of them morally? Has he not pledged honor? Has he not said, "No one in Europe doubts my word?" Let us fear nothing. To this could be answered, Crimes are committed ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... by creeping along very slowly, in absolute indifference to the galling fire from the shore guns. He knew that there must be a channel, for he and the Spaniard ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... were interrupted by the absolute necessity of Charles's following the others to admire mirrors and china; but Anne had heard enough to understand the present state of Uppercross, and rejoice in its happiness; and though she sighed as she rejoiced, her sigh had none of ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... desired, she revealed to his astonished eyes a backbone that was evidently made of iron. She was immovable, he admitted, and because she was immovable he was conscious of a sharp unreasonable impulse to reduce her to the pliant curves of her girlhood. After eight years of an absolute supremacy, which had been far from good for him, his will had been tripped up at last by so small a thing as a ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... power which they possess of moving all together and the necessity they frequently feel of exerting this power in search of fresh pasture for their herds. A tribe that was rich in cattle had an immediate plenty of food. Even the parent stock might be devoured in a case of absolute necessity. The women lived in greater ease than among nations of hunters. The men bold in their united strength and confiding in their power of procuring pasture for their cattle by change of place, felt, probably, but few fears about providing for a family. These combined causes soon ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... been ruined at some period by a jest much less severe: for it was delivered in the presence of witnesses, who were only desirous of having an opportunity of representing it in its utmost malignancy, to make a merit of their vigilance with a powerful and absolute minister. Of this the Chevalier de Grammont was thoroughly convinced; yet whatever detriment he foresaw might arise from it, he could not help being much pleased with what he ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... Second, and Third parts of Henry VI., in which, "out of 6043 lines, 1771 were written by some author preceding Shakspeare; 2373 by him, on the foundation laid by his predecessors; and 1899 were entirely his own." And the proceeding investigation hardly leaves a single drama of his absolute invention. Malone's sentence is an important piece of external history. In Henry VIII, I think I see plainly the cropping out of the original rock on which his own finer stratum was laid. The first play was ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... one short beach-line north of Glen Roy, and he has indicated, on the authority of Sir David Brewster, others in the valley of the Spey. If these could be accurately connected, by careful measurements of their absolute heights or by levelling, with those of Glen Roy, it would make a most valuable addition to our knowledge on this subject. Although the observations here specified would probably be laborious, yet, considering how rarely such evidence is afforded in any ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... not the light woman, to whom love has come suddenly, as a new sentiment coming suddenly into her life, but the simple, instinctively loving woman, in whom we see nothing of the demi-monde, only the natural woman in love. Throughout the play she has moments, whole scenes, of absolute greatness, as fine as anything she has ever done: but there are other moments when she seems to carry repression too far. Her pathos, as in the final scene, and at the end of the scene of the reception, where she repeats the ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons |
