"Abstract" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... angry at God and at Abel. The Holy Spirit speaks of faith in different ways in the Sacred Scriptures. Sometimes He speaks of faith independently of other matters. When the Scriptures speak of faith in the absolute or abstract, faith refers to justification directly. But when the Scripture speaks of rewards and works it speaks of compound or relative faith. We will furnish some examples. Galatians 5:6, "Faith which worketh by love." Leviticus 18:5, "Which if a man do, he shall live in them." ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... assiduities and some manifestation, even stronger than gallantry, and treated it merely as a matter of course. Really, without an hyperbole, she was a woman to whom an appearance of devotion might be excusable, and looked upon more as a tribute to the abstract spirit of beauty and its divine Creator, than as a sensual ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... proposition that the room in which Oleron sat was characterised by a certain sparsity and lack of vigour; so much the worse for Miss Bengough; she certainly erred on the side of redundancy and general muchness. And if one must contrast abstract qualities, Oleron inclined to ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... she's not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she's weak, she has a rage for domination, and nothing less will satisfy her. She has a small mind, and she resents the abstract which she is unable to grasp. She is occupied with material things, and she is jealous of the ideal. The soul of man wanders through the uttermost regions of the universe, and she seeks to imprison it ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... gave Hamilton an advantage. Jefferson never argued, and, if he had attempted it, he would have been no match for his adversary. He contented himself with a plain statement of his views and the reasons which influenced him, made in the abstract manner which was habitual with him. Hamilton, on the other hand, was an adroit lawyer, and a painstaking dialectician, who carefully fortified every position. He made long speeches to the Cabinet, with as much earnestness as one would use in court. Though ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... literary journals of the same period were Archibald Bower's Historia Literaria (1730-34); the Bee; or, Universal Weekly Pamphlet (1733-35), edited by Addison's cousin, Eustace Budgell; the British Librarian, exhibiting a Compendious Review or Abstract of our most Scarce, Useful and Valuable Books, etc., published anonymously by the antiquarian William Oldys, from January to June, 1737, and much esteemed by modern bibliophiles as a pioneer and a curiosity of its kind; a Literary Journal (1744-49) ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... the ablest of the Whig orators had been engaged against the accused. It is easy for historians, writing long after the passions, the temptations, the necessities of the moment have ceased to press, to criticize the acts of the past by the "dry light" of pure reason and abstract morality. But the claims of necessity should not be ignored in delivering what is intended to form a sort of ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... unlike all His predecessors than all His followers.... Religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in selecting this Man as the ideal Representative and Guide of humanity; nor even now would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete than to endeavour so to live that Christ would ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... MacFlecnoe, while the two were yoked for castigation in Part II. of Absalom and Achitophel, which appeared in 1682. Dryden possessed preminently the faculty for satire. He did not devote himself exclusively to an abstract treatment, nor, like Pope, to bitter personalities; he blends and combines the two methods most effectively. Every one of his brisk, nervous couplets carries a sting; every distich is a sound ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... in that receptacle, hanging the key on a little hook in the hall. Morning after morning it was she who received the postbag, unlocked it, and brought the contents to Mrs. Clavering, who always distributed the letters herself. Thus it was easy for Bertha to abstract the letters which contained the Dawlish postmark. She did this for a reason. It would never do for Florence to find out that her mother had not received the ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... most hateful character possible, are said to be, these men, in very truth, are. I do not mean that all of them are hateful personally, any more than all the Inquisitors, or all the buccaneers. But the position which they occupy, and the abstract excellence of which they are in arms to vindicate, is that which the united voice of mankind habitually selects as the type of all hateful qualities. I will not bandy chicanery about the more or less of stripes or other torments which are daily requisite ...
— The Contest in America • John Stuart Mill
... abstract of the principles and plans contained in the work that is now prosecuted, and for the suppression of which the proclamation appears to be intended; but as it is impossible that I can, in the compass of a letter, bring into view all the matters ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... quietness with which the women pursued their employment, in the lower and lower whispers in which the men continued their conversation. There was something pervading the air of the whole apartment that conveyed a sense of the solemn, unworldly stillness which we attach to the abstract idea ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... and abstract ladies and gentlemen have as bodily feelings, and employ as gross language, as if they had been every-day characters. A specimen of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... French kingship formed a better estimate than was formed at Rome of the effect which would be produced by such doctrine on France, in the existing condition of the French mind; they entered upon no theological and abstract polemics; they confined themselves entirely to setting in a vivid light the pope's pretensions and their consequences, feeling sure that, by confining themselves to this question, they would enlist in their opposition not only all laymen, nobles, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Hennah, who has had much practical experience, recommends the collodion to be made sensitive merely by the iodide of potassium; and he said, "if it did not work quite clearly and well, a little tincture of iodine brought it right." Here, then, is added the very thing which MR. CROOKES proposes to abstract. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... when he unconsciously brings every subject back to the original motif—"but that young man of Twickenham—he is a most pitiful fellow—" you feel Dr. Wolff was never more simply sincere and self-deluded, than Von Rosen's belief that it is an abstract criticism. Also you know how tedious broken English in a novel is, as a rule. But Black has very artistically managed his hero's idioms so as to give great effect. And as we have a brain wave on about Womanhood you may like, as much as I have, V. Rosen's ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... demanded, uncertain whether he were apostrophizing Diable's squaw, or abstract glory. "Speak out!" I shouted, ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... poetry. But I do wish he had given more time and trouble to his own art, that we might have had clearer and lovelier poetry. Perhaps, if he had developed himself with more care as an artist in his own art, he would not have troubled himself or his art by so much devotion to abstract thinking and intellectual analysis. A strange preference also for naked facts sometimes beset him, as if men wanted these from a poet. It was as if some scientific demon entered into him for a time and turned poetry out, till Browning got weary of his guest and threw him out of the window. These ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... discussions held by men qualified by intellect and study to deal with them are the obvious resort. There is room among the two hundred judges for some such men, but the juries are little more numerous than is required for the examination of and report on objects. For more abstract inquiries they will need recruits. These should be supplied by the leading philosophical associations of this country and Europe. The governments have all an interest in enlisting their aid, and the Centennial Commission has done what in it lay to promote their action. Ethnic ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... his bones. He knew how far worse it had been than Garth had told. He knew of the cruel, humiliating question: "How old are you?" Jane had confessed to it. He knew how the outward glow of adoring love had faded as the mind was suddenly turned inward to self-contemplation. He had known it all as abstract fact. Now he saw it actually before him. He saw Jane's stricken lover, bowed beside him in his blindness, living again through those sights and sounds which no merciful curtain of oblivion could ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... might ask questions which no philosopher would be able to answer. For I believe that she is tormented by the pain of existence. Of course I do not mean that the riddle presents itself to her as it does to us,— nor that she can have reached any abstract conclusions by any mental processes like our own. The external world to her is "a continuum of smells." She thinks, compares, remembers, reasons by smells. By smell she makes her estimates of character: ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... opinion; between the testimony of God and the reasonings of men; the words of the Spirit and human inferences. Faith in the testimony of God, and obedience to the commandments of Jesus, are their bond of union, and not an agreement in any abstract views or opinions upon what is written or spoken by divine authority. Hence all the speculations, questions, debates of words, and abstract reasonings, found in human creeds, have no place in their religious ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... Hamilton sent to Congress his Report on Manufactures, and how anybody survived the fray which ensued can only be explained by the cast-iron muscles forged in the ancestral arena. Hamilton had no abstract or personal theories regarding tariff, and would have been the first to denounce the criminal selfishness which distinguishes Protection to-day. The situation was peculiar, and required the application of strictly business methods to a threatening and immediate emergency. Great Britain was oppressing ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... she rose, a trifle excited in the glow of abstract happiness, and walked erratically about, smiling to herself, touching and rearranging objects that caught her attention. Then an innocent instinct led her to the mirror, where she stood a moment looking back into the lovely reflected face ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... Emerson (1803-1882), who lighted up its doctrines with the rays of ethical and poetical imagination. Without the formality of dogma, he was a teacher of vigorous morality in line with the ruling tendencies of the age, and bringing all the aid of abstract teaching towards the solution of the moral problems ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... "remember, that the punishment will rest on ourselves. We may, with as much philosophic justice as possible, throw the blame of our faults on our parents and preceptors, and on the early mismanagement of our minds; yet, after we have made out our case in the abstract, to the perfect satisfaction of a jury of metaphysicians, when we come to overt actions, all our judges, learned and unlearned, are so awed, by the ancient precedents and practice of society, and by the obsolete law of common sense, that they finish by pronouncing against us the barbarous ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... [Footnote 1: Abstract of paper by HENRY FOWLER, chief mechanical engineer of the Midland Ry., England, before the Institution of ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... a straight line. If we were to observe the flying raven from the moving railway carriage. we should find that the motion of the raven would be one of different velocity and direction, but that it would still be uniform and in a straight line. Expressed in an abstract manner we may say : If a mass m is moving uniformly in a straight line with respect to a co-ordinate system K, then it will also be moving uniformly and in a straight line relative to a second co-ordinate system K1 provided ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... have a horrible suspicion that however much I may try to persuade myself I'm concentrating upon some abstract theme, I've really all the ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... impatient, I know," said Miss Evans, as the subject warmed and brightened under the glow of words, "to see the day when my long cherished ideas will be wrought into actual life. Will it not be grand when religion shall no longer be an abstract, soulless science, a musty theology, but a living, vital truth, lived and acted, not merely professed and preached; when the human family shall be united in one bond, and man love to do his brother good; when he who is strong, shall care for him who is weak; ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... be brought and so many wild revolutionists in whom must be instilled a respect for law and order, is it strange that we should ourselves sometimes lump the word of God and the principles of law and order together under the head of "sentimentality" and shrug our shoulders? Justice in the abstract is our aim—any American will tell you that—so why haggle over details and insist ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... like this to Philip, as she sometimes did, she seemed quite unconscious that he was a listener, it was rather as if he were part of her and thinking the same thoughts. To Philip she seemed wonderful. He had never bothered his head in that way about abstract things when he was her age, and he could not understand it in her. What was more, he could not have thought as she did if he had tried. She had that sort of mind which accepts no stereotyped reflection ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... style of political thunder. "It matters not," he said, "what way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract question whether slavery may or may not go into a territory under the Constitution; the people have the lawful means to introduce it or exclude it as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere unless it is supported by local police ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... turned to an examination of her desertion of Arnaud, but she could find no trace of conventional regret; of what, she felt, her sensation ought to be. The instinctive revolt from oblivion was an infinitely stronger reality than any allegiance to abstract duty. She was consumed by the passionate need to preserve the integrity of being herself. The word selfish occurred to her but to be met unabashed by the query, why not? Selfishness was a reproach applied by those who failed to get what they ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... and abettors of the fearful conspiracy in which they are alleged to be engaged. In fact, I cannot blame them. It is hard to expect that mere compassion for a persecuted sect—or, what is yet more rare, an abstract love of justice—should be powerful enough to engage men to expose themselves to the awakened fury of a whole people; for, in the present state of general agitation, whoever disbelieves the least tittle of the enormous improbabilities which have been accumulated ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... achieve reputation as an essayist. His critical faculty was pronounced, and he had carefully developed it; and it was possible that when the world had completely palled upon him, he would shut himself up at Crumford Hall and give the public the benefit of his accumulated opinions, abstract and biographical. But he was not ready for that yet; he needed several years more of experience, observation, and assiduous cultivation of the habit of analysis; and in the meantime he was in a condition ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... died in peace. From the preceding abstract it will appear, that from the year 1570 to 1600, Queen Elizabeth and the Protestant religion were constantly exposed to the machinations of the active partisans of the Roman see, who were encouraged by the pope himself. Every pontiff pursued the same course. There was ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY, (published in Boston by Gould and Lincoln), is an excellent abstract of all the chief movements and discoveries in the scientific world for the year 1850. We advise all our readers interested in any of the sciences to procure it, and its companion volume for the previous year. The work will be continued, and it will be invaluable as a library ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the theologians who attended the Elector to Augsburg, in his narrative of what occurred during the diet, giving a brief abstract of the contents of the Augsburg Confession, epitomises the, Xth Article thus: Of the Holy Sacrament of the true body and blood of Christ in the Sacrament of the altar; and the XXIV Article, "of the Mass, how it ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... been, was creeping into his heart. It felt like the liquid music of a low, serious voice, or it may have been a passion, such as he had seen in the depths of two large, sad, gray eyes, or it might have been the soft soothing influence of a sweet, dreamy smile. It was just as abstract as any of these, and yet just as fascinating and just as exquisite. This was Love for him, a beautiful but a dreadful thing! feeding his hungry soul and quenching his heart's awful thirst, yet swaying him with a merciless tyranny, for love caresses ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... here again, with him—up to a point. She thought (and thoughts are apt to put themselves with a bluntness which would be inexcusable in speech) that it was high time that Eleanor Scaife was married, and, from an abstract point of view, this could hardly be denied. Lady Eynesford took the next step. Eleanor and Coxon would suit one another to perfection. Hence the invitations to tea, and Lady Eynesford's considerate withdrawals into the house, or out of sight ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... ex-city treasurer? Have you any idea? I can tell. I had the matter looked up almost a month ago on my accession to office. Just a little over two hundred thousand dollars, gentlemen—just a little over two hundred thousand dollars. Here is an abstract from the files of Dun & Company for that year. Now you can see how rapidly our Caesar has grown in wealth since then. You can see how profitable these few short years have been to him. Was George W. Stener worth any such sum up ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... came into Archie's mind that young John Graham was "just trying him," as boys say; and, in perfect simplicity and good faith, he gave an abstract of the chapter, with comments of his aunt's, and some of his own upon it. It was not very clear or very complete, it is true; but it was enough to change considerably the expression of John's ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... lines; being the complement of the law of continuity, contrast of light and shade not being enough. Interchange: as in heraldic quartering. Consistency: or breadth overriding petty contrast and giving the effect of aggregate color or form. Harmony: art is an abstract and must be harmoniously abstracted, keeping the relations ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... attribute to the Blackfoot of to-day any such abstract conception of the name of the Creator as that expressed in the foregoing quotation. The statement that Old Man was merely light personified would be beyond his comprehension, and if he did understand what was meant, he would laugh at it, and aver that Na'pi was a real man, a flesh and ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... adoration?... All she had said seemed to me eternal; all she had looked on appeared to me sacred. I envied the earth on which she had trodden; the sunshine which had enveloped her during our walks appeared to me happy to have touched her. I would have wished to abstract and separate forever from the liquid plains of air, the air that she had sanctified in breathing it; I would have enclosed the empty place that she had just ceased to fill in space, so that no inferior creature should occupy it, ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... right of revolution is a natural right possessed by every people. They may revolutionize their governments when they become oppressive. The Constitution was adopted as the logical consequence of this idea. There is no use now in discussing the abstract question of secession. We must treat the present condition of the Gulf States as a revolution in fact accomplished. We must meet them fairly. I vote against this amendment, and wish to stand right upon the record. ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... more thousands, perhaps, that, whatsoever they may think of it in its origin, and as a matter depending upon natural right, yet take things as they are, and, finding slavery to be an established relation of the society in which they live, can see no way in which, let their opinions on the abstract question be what they may, it is in the power of the present generation to relieve themselves from this relation. And candor obliges me to say, that I believe they are just as conscientious, many of them, and the ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... use of Mother Earth, to the use of the nation's natural home, workhouse and storehouse, whence, by labour, everything necessary to life and comfort can alone be derived. Winstanley realised, as they to-day realise, that to admit in the abstract the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man, to admit the equal claim of all to life, and yet to deny the equal claim of all to the use of God's Earth, to share in those blessings which the great Father of all men has lavished upon His children, and which form the ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... and the directness of it, which compels him always to take the short cut and keeps it clear of crankery of every kind. The "isms" have no place in a newspaper office, certainly not in Mulberry Street. I confess I was rather glad of it. I had no stomach for abstract discussions of social wrongs; I wanted to right those of them that I could reach. I wanted to tear down the Mulberry Bend and let in the light so that we might the more readily make them out; the others could do the rest then. I used to say that to a very destructive crank who ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... development it is to be feared there were whole tracts of mind and brain left vacant—for Toni belonged, by adoption at least, to a class who read only for amusement and occupation, and are not in the least anxious to try their mental teeth on any abstract theories or philosophies of life. She was at present all for the concrete. Things seen and known were of importance, things unseen were alike uninteresting and incredible. The abstract virtues were all very well, but life was much too vivid and important to ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... "I don't. Babe hasn't the make-up for a professional woman in any line. She is too self-centred, too impetuous. She needs something to humanize her womanhood, not make an abstract thing of her. I'd rather see Babe a gentle, loving woman than the greatest light of ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... no comment. She knew that her father's resentment was based on no abstract love of law and order. It had back of it no feeling that crime had been committed or justice outraged. The frontier was in its roistering youth, full of such effervescing spirits that life was the cheapest thing it knew. Every few days some ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... to think abstractly and to form words with an abstract significance that human language owes much of its high development. But this ability is largely confined to civilized mankind, savages being greatly or wholly lacking in it. This deficiency is indicated in their modes ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... the communities of insects, the results are the same as though the individual animal fully recognized the value of concerted endeavor. So among primitive savages of to-day there is only a vague conception of abstract duty as such, or it may be practically lacking, as in the case of the Fuegians. So also a growing child is substantially egoistic, and it must be taught by precept and example that the rights of others can be safeguarded only by the altruistic correction of ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... of Herat would scarcely seem worth all the noise that has been made about it. There has been a great amount of sentiment wasted in eulogizing its alleged beauty. Of its wealth and commercial importance in the abstract, I should say much exaggeration has been indulged in. Still, there is no gainsaying that it is a most valuable strategical position, which, if held by either England or Russia, would exercise great influence ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... Oersted, of Ampere, of Davy, and of Faraday, but, in other respects, their work is too often lost sight of in the splendid modern developments of their discoveries. Again, there is another group of discoverer-inventors who occupy an intermediate position between the abstract discoverers above named and the inventors and adapters of still more recent times. To this group belong the names of Pixii and Saxton, Holmes and Nollet, Wilde, Varley, Siemens, Wheatstone, and Pacinotti, who was the first ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... unique and have but little variation, the probabilities of inadvertence are diminished, and the mere attention being left comparatively unemployed, what advantages are obtained by either party are obtained by superior acumen. To be less abstract—Let us suppose a game of draughts where the pieces are reduced to four kings, and where, of course, no oversight is to be expected. It is obvious that here the victory can be decided (the players being at all equal) only by some recherch movement, the result of some strong exertion of the intellect. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... strongly show their brotherhood with the other Spanish peoples. In this connection the spirit of their renowned kinsman, Don Quixote de la Mancha, is often in evidence. When one of them mounts his Rocinante in defense of some particularly attractive abstract proposition, nothing less than a blow from a windmill will bring him back to reality. And so when any person or group of persons become enamored of an idea they are unwilling to brook contradiction or compromise. The inclination of the majority ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... adjectives are made abstract substantives, by adding the termination ness; and a few in hood or head, noting character or qualities: as white, whiteness; hard, hardness; great, greatness; skilful, skilfulness, unskilfulness; godhead, manhood, maidenhead, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... to be one of the later writings of Plato, in which the style has begun to alter, and the dramatic and poetical element has become subordinate to the speculative and philosophical. In the development of abstract thought great advances have been made on the Protagoras or the Phaedrus, and even on the Republic. But there is a corresponding diminution of artistic skill, a want of character in the persons, a laboured march in the ...
— Philebus • Plato
... cold, stern, ignorant men, who had an intense hatred for the mere accomplishments of life. Each had two daughters, who, with the natural tastes of the sex, were not averse to the graces of education, in the abstract, but could not bear to see them displayed by their "stuck-up, pauper cousin," as they often termed that hapless young lady in private conversation. A kind offer, which she was imprudent enough, to make, to ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... them, too, inculcating this doctrine not as a cold and abstract principle, but as an imperative act of daily piety, and embodying it in ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... handle. Our natures are so sentient that objects of sense please us best. It is from this that object lessons attract the young. They can best apprehend what their senses can grasp. It is very difficult for the mind to grasp abstract truth. But right here lies the basis of all true education. The power to comprehend truth in the abstract, to take hold of its ramifications as subjects of thought, and reduce them to order in the mind, so as ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... curious to find this current as a folk-tale at Palena, in the Abruzzi, without any material variation except in the conclusion. My friend, Mr. E. Sidney Hartland, has favoured me with the following abstract of the Italian version, as given in vol. iii. of the "Archivio per lo studio delle Tradizioni Popolari" ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Avarice unmistakable gleamed from their little, glittering, ratlike eyes, but he was sure that they would sell out for no small sum, and in so far as he could remember there had been in his pockets, when he came here, not more than five or six louis. Doubtless the old Michel had managed to abstract those in his daily offices about the room, for Ste. Marie knew that the clothes hung in a closet across from his bed. He had seen them there once when the ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... a vivid sense of the pain and terror of life. He had been clamoring to have those Reds punished; but somehow or other he had thought of this punishment in an abstract way, a thing you could attend to by a wave of the hand. He hadn't quite realized the physical side of it, what a messy and bloody job it would prove. Two hours and more he had listened to the thud of a whip on human flesh, and each separate ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... Highness has always approv'd your self a true Friend to our Country; I though it my Duty to inscribe, or, as it were, to consecrate this Abstract of our History to your Patronage. That being guarded by so powerful a Protection, it might with greater Authority and Safety come abroad in the World. Farewel, most illustrious Prince; May the great God Almighty for ever bless and ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... free banking accused a restrictionist of defrauding the poor or defacing tombstones. Politics, too, home and foreign, is a fertile source of difference of opinion; and yet gross abuse, on paper, of each other, by political disputants, discussing abstract questions having no present relation to power or pay, are very ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... among whom he moves, it is almost certain that he will make many mistakes, if not insure failure. Now few results are apt to be more delusive than a mere collection of words, or even of short sentences. The instances of "a dead policeman" as a Non-aryan equivalent for the abstract term "death" which the inquirer wanted; of the rejoinder of "what do you want?" for the repeated outstretching of the "middle finger," a special term for which was sought, and numerous other mistakes, are often perfectly avoidable, ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... nature and her works, and specially of the Celestiall courses, by reason of the continuall motion of the heauens, searching after the first mouer, and from thence by degrees comming to know and consider of the substances separate & abstract, which we call the diuine intelligences or good Angels (Demones) they were the first that instituted sacrifices of placation, with inuocations and worship to them, as to Gods; and inuented and stablished all the rest of the obseruances and ceremonies ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... interesting caller. It was his ambition to be first with every piece of intelligence, and he enjoyed telling news, even of a harassing description. Mr. Lawrence believed that Miss Abingdon's niece was already engaged to Peter Ogilvie, and he began by a series of deft questions to try to abstract the definite information that he ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... reviewers, have been further allowed for, Jeffrey is a most admirable essayist and critic. As an essayist, a writer of causeries, I do not think he has been surpassed among Englishmen in the art of interweaving quotation, abstract, and comment. The best proof of his felicity in this respect is that in almost all the books which he has reviewed, (and he has reviewed many of the most interesting books in literature) the passages and traits, the anecdotes and phrases, which have made most mark in the general ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... delight in the abstract and in the concrete of strolling and lounging about the June meadows; of lying in pickle for half a day or more in this pastoral sea, laved by the great tide, shone upon by the virile sun, drenched to the very marrow of your being with the warm and wooing influences ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... mortal sense Christian Science seems abstract, but the process is simple and the results are sure if the Science is understood. The tree must be good, which 459:27 produces good fruit. Guided by divine Truth and not guesswork, the theologus (that is, the student - the Christian and scientific expounder - of the ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... to mention my everlasting Abstract (340/5. The "Origin of Species" was abbreviated from the MS. of an unpublished book.) to you again, for I am sure I have bothered you far more than enough about it; but as you allude to its previous publication I may say ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... for that same purpose—to have a good time; it was such a jolly wild place to let the Old Nick loose in; and now it seems that's to be taken for a man's natural level, and the best that he's capable of! Then I met you. You would voluntarily give up ease and luxury, for a time, for the sake of an abstract idea—whether misguided or not, I will not say, the fact remains the same—and I swear it was a new revelation to me. It was strange and perverse, and it was deuced taking! Then I tried to get you to include me among the objects of your ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... argument were wanting to prove the originality of the magnetic needle as used in China, the circumstance of their having ingrafted upon it their most ancient and favourite mythology, their cycles, constellations, elements, and, in short, an abstract of all their astronomical or astrological science, is quite sufficient to settle that point. Those who are acquainted with the Chinese character will not readily admit that their long established superstitions should be found incorporated on an ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... heard nor saw anything to justify the belief of any mental change in the opinions of Mr. Paine previous to his death; but that being very ill and in pain, chiefly arising from the skin being removed in some parts by long lying, he was generally too uneasy to enjoy conversation on abstract subjects. This, then, is the best evidence that can be procured on this subject, and we publish it while the contravening parties are yet alive, and with the authority ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... that accounts for the love of truth in mathematics and algebra may be extended to morals, politics, natural philosophy, and other studies, where we consider not the other abstract relations of ideas, but their real connexions and existence. But beside the love of knowledge, which displays itself in the sciences, there is a certain curiosity implanted in human nature, which is a passion derived from a ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... that countryman, then? I deem I have half a guess of you; your name is Old Honesty, is it not? So the old gentleman blushed, and said, Not Honesty, in the abstract,[207] but Honest is my name; and I wish that my nature shall agree to what I ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... call Cavour one of the greatest of statesmen. Those grounds are not what he hoped to do, but what he did. He was not a Prometheus chained to a rock, who hopes till hope creates the thing it contemplates. Constitutionally he was easily discouraged. In the abstract he rather exaggerated difficulties than minimised them; but in the face of any present obstacle an invincible confidence came over him in his power to surmount it. As he once wrote of himself—moderate in opinion, ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... has been sharpened by seeing it exemplified, not in the form of expressed opinions only, but in the form of private actions, for Mr. Mill was not one of those, who, to sympathy with their fellow men in the abstract, join indifference to them in the concrete. There came from him generous acts that corresponded with his generous sentiments. I say this, not from second-hand knowledge, but having in mind a remarkable example known only to myself and a few friends. I have hesitated whether to give this example, ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... less abstract topic of the bloomers, I often tease Luccia and Irene about them, seeking for further information as to why they ever came to retrograde from a position so heroically taken, one of such serious import to human progress, and to condescend once more ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... in those trifling logical schools that are among us. They are so far from minding chimeras and fantastical images made in the mind that none of them could comprehend what we meant when we talked to them of a man in the abstract as common to all men in particular (so that though we spoke of him as a thing that we could point at with our fingers, yet none of them could perceive him) and yet distinct from every one, as if he were some monstrous Colossus or giant; yet, for all this ignorance ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... man would scarcely suffice to obtain these things if men did not mutually assist one another. As money has presented us with an abstract of everything, it has come to pass that its image above every other usually occupies the mind of the multitude, because they can imagine hardly any kind of joy without the accompanying idea of ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... 116. Having perceived, by abstract meditation, that the Spirit or Self is distinct from its three bodies (viz. the gross, subtle and causal bodies), and that it is a portion of the one Spirit of the Universe (Brahma), every man ought to worship K.rish.na by means of that ...
— The Siksha-Patri of the Swami-Narayana Sect • Professor Monier Williams (Trans.)
... poor. If any one strongly impressed with the power of the human mind to triumph over circumstances will contend that the parishioners of Basset might nevertheless have been a very superior class of people, I have nothing to urge against that abstract proposition; I only know that, in point of fact, the Basset mind was in strict keeping with its circumstances. The muddy lanes, green or clayey, that seemed to the unaccustomed eye to lead nowhere but into each other, did really lead, with patience, to a distant high-road; but there ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... roundabout fashion, to the matrimonial relation. His treatment, far from suggesting an academic aloofness, was as concrete as characterization and conversation could make it; no one would have supposed, at first glance, that what chiefly moved him was a chaste abstract Platonic regard for the whole gentler sex. In short, people—such seemed to be his thesis—might very advantageously separate, and most informally too, as soon as they discovered they ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... attainment of womanhood's maturity is the beautiful, the divine freshness of girlhood. For man, the cost of the attainment of manhood's full strength and power is equally great, and equally sad,—his divine faith in human nature, his divine belief that abstract justice and right and truth rule ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... them together, nothing under heaven but the love and confidence they had in one name. Their love of right and independence wouldn't have been strong enough, and besides a good many of them got disheartened. A hungry stomach is a pretty stout arguer against abstract questions. I have seen my father crying like a child for the wants and sufferings he was obliged to see, ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... this subject, I shall not regard it in the first instance in reference to the present position of the slaveholding States, or the difficulties which lie in the way of their emancipating their slaves, but as a naked, abstract question—whether it is better that the institution of praedial and domestic slavery should, or should not, exist in civilized society. And though some of my remarks may seem to have such a tendency, let me not be understood as taking upon myself to determine that it is better ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... of that malignant philosophy, which, disregarding the actual state of the world, and estimating at nothing the miseries of a vast portion of the human race, can coolly and deliberately pursue, through oceans of blood, abstract systems for the attainment of some fancied untried good, were gathered in the French West Indies. Instead of proceeding in the correction of any abuses which might exist, by those slow and cautious steps which gradually introduce reform without ruin, which ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... have already been able to accomplish ought to give weight to our words. We speak not from abstract conviction, but from experience; not as mere enthusiasts, but as men of practical common sense, holding in our hands the means of escape from the present condition of society, and from that still more frightful state ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... much interest in abstract statements. 'You remember,' she said, turning to Baruch, 'that man Chorley as has the big farm on the left-hand side just afore you come to the common? He wasn't a Surrey man: he came out ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... hesitated to speak, my good Galeotti? and didst thou think thy speaking it would offend me?" said the King. "Alack, I know that thou art well sensible that the path of royal policy cannot be always squared (as that of private life ought invariably to be) by the abstract maxims of religion and of morality. Wherefore do we, the Princes of the earth, found churches and monasteries, make pilgrimages, undergo penances, and perform devotions with which others may dispense, unless ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... were the greatest instruments of thought which were possessed by the Greek philosopher; having the same power over the mind which was exerted by abstract ideas, they were also capable of practical application. Many curious and, to the early thinker, mysterious properties of them came to light when they were compared with one another. They admitted of infinite multiplication and construction; in Pythagorean triangles ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... The abstract theorizing of one philosopher can never satisfy the individual in regard to the varied manifestations of friendship, and it is therefore interesting and profitable to note what various writers have said about this world-wide force under the varying conditions of the past and the ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... and then had himself suffocated in a warm bath, merely because he was attacked with a perfectly curable illness. The philosophy which alone professed itself able to heal men's sorrows applauded the supposed courage of a voluntary death, and it was of too abstract, too fantastic, and too purely theoretical a character to furnish them with any real or lasting consolations. No sentiment caused more surprise to the Roman world than the famous one preserved in ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... is no mere abstract dogma of theology, but it touches our daily life at all points, and is essential to the fullness of our satisfaction and our ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... Dean Milman in his History of Christianity. He says: "This Being [the Word or the Wisdom] was more or less distinctly impersonated, according to the more popular or more philosophic, the more material or the more abstract, notions of the age or people. This was the doctrine from the Ganges, or even the shores of the Yellow Sea, to the Ilissus; it was the fundamental principle of the Indian religion and the Indian ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... superior being, in the other would form only an attribute—swell the power and amplify the character of a Jupiter, a Mars, a Venus, or a Pan. It is in the nature of man, that personal divinities once created and adored, should present more vivid and forcible images to his fancy than abstract personifications of physical objects and moral impressions. Thus, deities of this class would gradually rise into pre-eminence and popularity above those more vague and incorporeal—and (though I guard myself from absolutely solving in this manner the enigma of ancient theogonies) ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Bayle on this matter that I could find in his works. But remembering Laurentius Valla's Dialogue on Free Will, in opposition to Boethius, which I have already mentioned, I thought it would be opportune to quote it in abstract, retaining the dialogue form, and then to continue from where it ends, keeping up the fiction it initiated; and that less with the purpose of enlivening the subject, than in order to explain myself towards the end of my dissertation as clearly ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... Bruno had suggested a new course of action so much as that he had supplied a new motive power. To do good, to give alms, to be kind to poor and sick people, Doucebelle had been taught already: but the reason for it was either the abstract notion that it was the right thing to do, or that it would help to increase her little ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... to this sacrifice. I did not entirely abjure the creed which had, with great copiousness and eloquence, been defended in these letters. Besides, mixed up with abstract reasonings were numberless passages which elucidated the character and history of my friend. These were too precious to be consigned to oblivion; and to take them out of their present connection and arrangement would be to ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... Imagine, then, how much more so in the case of a woman like Alice Oke; and if the pencil and brush, imitating each line and tint, can't succeed, how is it possible to give even the vaguest notion with mere wretched words—words possessing only a wretched abstract meaning, an impotent conventional association? To make a long story short, Mrs. Oke of Okehurst was, in my opinion, to the highest degree exquisite and strange,—an exotic creature, whose charm you can no more describe than ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... lingering remembrances they may be led to read his straightforward account, he trusts to be able to show them that he has had no choice but to adopt the intellectual conclusions which offend them;—that the difference between them and him turns on questions of Learning, History, Criticism and Abstract Thought;—and that to make their results (if indeed they have ever deeply and honestly investigated the matter) the tests of his spiritual state, is to employ unjust weights and a false balance, which ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... not the question of actuality in Italy that it is in England," his Eminence replied; "but in the abstract, and other things equal, my attitude would of course ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... to his chamber, seated himself by a table upon which were books and papers, and soon became lost in sad memories of the past that strongly linked themselves, why he could not tell, for they had no visible connection, with the present. For a long time he sat in this abstract mood, his hand shading his face from the light. At last he arose slowly and went to a drawer, from which he took a small morocco case, and, returning with it to the table, seated himself again near the lamp. He opened the case, and let the light fall strongly upon the miniature of a most ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... therefore at once abandoned. But knowing that the jurisprudence of Masonry is founded, like all legal science, on abstract principles, which govern and control its entire system, I deemed it to be a better course to present these principles to my readers in an elementary and methodical treatise, and to develop from them those necessary deductions which reason ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... Our imperfect abstract gives but a meagre notion of the fulness and completeness of this admirable work. It will accomplish its object, if it send the reader to the book itself. The appearance of the volume is timely. Events and circumstances have prepared the minds of our countrymen to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... desert would rally to his armies and fight for a short time; but at the first disaster, or whenever they became tired of the discipline and regularity of the army, they would mount their camels and return to the desert, generally managing on the way to abstract from the farms of those on their route either a horse, cattle, or some other objects which would pay them for the labors they ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... and contrast with the horizontal lines of the flat roofs and square walls. We think it right, therefore, to give the cottage the relief and contrast which, in reality, it possessed, even though we are at present speaking of it in the abstract. ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... head the creaking wings of birds come to establish desolation under the shattered roof. Why was he so sad because some people who were members of the parasite class and were probably devoid of all political idealism had had to stop having a good time? It was, she supposed, that ethereal abstract sorrow, undimmed by personal misery and unconfined by the syllogisms of moral judgment, that poets feel: that Milton had felt when he wrote "Comus" about somebody for whom he probably wouldn't have mixed a toddy, that she ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... declared, "ah! in the abstract they are wonderful, but in the concrete they do not interest me. Maxendorf has come here, doubtless, with great schemes in ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... burned when they talked of the Cove, and he longed to jump up and plead its defence; but he knew that it would be worse than useless and he held himself in—but they didn't know, they didn't know. It enraged him most when they spoke of it as some lifeless, abstract thing, some old rubbish-heap that offended their sight, and then he thought of its beauties, of the golden sand and the huddling red and grey cottages clustering over the sea as though for protection. You might fancy that the waves slapped them on the back for good-fellowship when they dashed ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... project or overhang in some ancient city's walls. There are many such imperfect syncretisms or eclecticisms in the history of philosophy. A modern philosopher, though emancipated from scholastic notions of essence or substance, might still be seriously affected by the abstract idea of necessity; or though accustomed, like Bacon, to criticize abstract notions, might not extend his criticism ...
— Sophist • Plato
... voyage of Nearchus. Of this voyage we are now to speak; and as it is curious and important, not merely on account of the geographical knowledge it conveys, but also from the insight it gives us into the commercial transactions of the countries which he visited, we shall give rather a full abstract of it, availing ourselves of the light which has been thrown upon it by the learned and judicious ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... young and very brilliant journalist who had once given me lessons in philosophy, and with whom I maintained a friendship in spite of his ultra-radical politics. He reminded me now and then of Geoffrey Owen, but his enthusiasm was of a dryer sort; not humanity, but the abstract idea of progress inspired him; not the abolition of individual suffering, but the perfecting of his logical conceptions in the sphere of politics was his stimulating hope. And there was in him a strong alloy of personal ambition and a stronger of personal passion. Rather to my surprise ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... helps him to keep the constant stock of goods that at any time is a potential million of dollars. A permanent body of any kind, if it is made up of shifting tissues, is commonly described by the use of an abstract term. A waterfall, made as it is of rapidly changing drops of water, is spoken of as a "water power," since the power is the abiding thing. An endless series of living human beings is described as "humanity," since that remains through all personal changes. ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... since the days of Aristophanes. "Every Man in His Humour," like the two plays that follow it, contains two kinds of attack, the critical or generally satiric, levelled at abuses and corruptions in the abstract; and the personal, in which specific application is made of all this in the lampooning of poets and others, Jonson's contemporaries. The method of personal attack by actual caricature of a person on the stage is almost as old as the drama. Aristophanes so lampooned Euripides in ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... that he loves France bounded by the Rhine, and the Pyrenees, and its principal city Paris, and its history and so on. But the man who loves humanity—what does he love? There is such a thing as a state, as a nation; there is the abstract conception of man; but humanity as a concrete idea does ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... state, thou perfect model Of heaven itself, and abstract of the angels, Forgive the late disturbance of my soul! I'm clear by nature, as a rockless stream; But they dig through the gravel of my heart, And raise the mud of passions up to cloud me; Therefore let me conjure you, do not go; 'Tis said, the Guise ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... some pieces on human life and manners, such as (to use my Lord Bacon's expression) come home to men's business and bosoms, I thought it more satisfactory to begin with considering man in the abstract, his nature and his state; since, to prove any moral duty, to enforce any moral precept, or to examine the perfection or imperfection of any creature whatsoever, it is necessary first to know what condition and ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... Miss Spragg's wardrobe her dinner-dresses were not many. She had ordered a number the year before but, vexed at her lack of use for them, had tossed them over impatiently to the maid. Since then, indeed, she and Mrs. Spragg had succumbed to the abstract pleasure of buying two or three more, simply because they were too exquisite and Undine looked too lovely in them; but she had grown tired of these also—tired of seeing them hang unworn in her wardrobe, like ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... with something of suspicion. Now Jacko had been introduced to Gangoil under German auspices, and had soon come to a decision that it would be a good thing and a just to lock up all the Brownbies in the great jail of the colony at Brisbane. He probably knew nothing of law or justice in the abstract, but he greatly valued law when exercised against those he hated. The western fence of which mention has been made ran down to the Mary River, hitting it about four miles west of Medlicot's Mill; so that there was ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... Plays—those founded on Bible history—and Miracle Plays—those founded on the lives of the saints. These plays were performed both in the churches and in the open air. They were written usually by the clergy. Gradually there grew up a play in which the places of religious characters were taken by abstract virtues and vices personified, and plays called Moralities were produced. They were played chiefly by tradesmen's guilds. Alongside the sacred drama are to be found occasional secular dramatic attempts, farces, carnival ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock |
