"Abstract" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... me what books I should take if I were contemplating a visit to the Dark Continent, like Lord RANDOLPH CHURCHILL. The question, in the abstract, and without reference to my own personality, is an interesting one, and no doubt human fallibility would, in the case you suppose, induce me to take several volumes of my own Gleanings with me,—not so much for their intrinsic merits, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 2, 1891 • Various
... alone to a drawing-room, and she does go alone. Right here this independent girl makes a mistake. It is granted that the girl with brains and principle to bear herself discreetly during office hours is probably able—in the abstract—to exercise the same ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... the writers who have given such beautiful pictures of our native land and military renown, and to the schoolmasters, who have instilled their words into the souls of the people. Marvellous power of language, which can incite a prosaic peasant lad to sacrifice life joyfully for an abstract ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... descent of the glaciers, and on the zone of perpetual congelation in the antarctic islands, may be passed over by any one not interested in these curious subjects, or the final recapitulation alone may be read. I shall, however, here give only an abstract, and must refer for details to the Thirteenth Chapter and the Appendix of the former ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... character; for, in opposition to the above, it may be said that the claim of the Southern whites that they love the Negro better than the Northern whites do is in a manner true. Northern white people love the Negro in a sort of abstract way, as a race; through a sense of justice, charity, and philanthropy, they will liberally assist in his elevation. A number of them have heroically spent their lives in this effort (and just here I wish to say that when the ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... one of kind but of development and degree. Man has these faculties developed, the animals have them undeveloped. In the "Life and Letters of Charles Darwin," published by his son, is a letter from Mr. Darwin to W. Graham, written in 1881, from which I quote the following: "I have no practice in abstract reasoning, and I may be all astray. Nevertheless, you have expressed my inward conviction, though far more vividly and clearly than I could have done. But then, with me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... against them'—an important increment of his conditions; there is no doubt that 'the King's name is a tower of strength, which they upon the adverse faction want'—and he continued through all his letters arguing the question on its abstract merits, and repeating the topic that had been over and over again urged, but without reference to the actual state of things and the means of resistance. It seems, however, pretty clear that he will oppose this Bill just as he did the last, and he will ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... distinctly. There is not room to give this petition and the answers in full, but as all the subsequent troubles between Charles and the people of England arose out of this difficulty of his young wife's bringing in so strong a Catholic influence with her to the realm, it may be well to give an abstract of some of the principal ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... land, with every comfort about him, paying no taxes but those for the improvement of his property, feeling the government rein only as a salutary check to lawlessness, and looking stedfastly abroad, is not very likely, for abstract notions of right and equality, to sacrifice reality, or to suppose that Mr. Baldwin, amiable as he is, is infallible: whilst Mr. Baldwin himself, the ostensible, but not the real leader of the out-and-out reformers, will pause before he even dreams of alienating the ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... princes are more frequently influenced by views of temporal advantage, than by considerations of abstract and speculative truth. The partial and increasing favor of Constantine may naturally be referred to the esteem which he entertained for the moral character of the Christians; and to a persuasion, that the propagation of the gospel would inculcate the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... vertical bands of red (hoist side), blue, and red; centered on the hoist-side red band in yellow is the national emblem ("soyombo" - a columnar arrangement of abstract and geometric representation for fire, sun, moon, earth, water, ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of Cornelius's death, my father had made a transition to that of Socrates, and was giving my uncle Toby an abstract of his pleading before his judges;—'twas irresistible:—not the oration of Socrates,—but my father's temptation to it.—He had wrote the Life of Socrates (This book my father would never consent to publish; 'tis in manuscript, with some other tracts of his, in the family, all, or most ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... revivalists. Harkey moved the publication of a monthly, The Revivalist, which Synod, however, declared "inexpedient." Through the endeavors of Kurtz a committee was appointed to bring in a report on the "New Measures," which was referred back to the committee. In 1844 Synod resolved to issue an "Abstract of the Doctrines and Practise of the Ev. Luth. Synod of Maryland." Fourteen doctrinal articles were prepared by H. L. Baugher, B. Kurtz, and S. W. Harkey, containing, among other statements, also the following: "We believe that the Scriptures teach that God has given to man, as a natural ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... even than she had imagined it would be—harder because she realized now that they did not speak the same language. She felt that she had struck against something as dry and cold and impersonal as an abstract principle. A ludicrous premonition assailed her that in a little while he would begin to talk about his public duty. This lack of genuine emotion, which had at first appeared to contradict his sentimental point of view, was revealed ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... tell, Councillor Mikulin did not answer that question. He drew Mr. Razumov into familiar conversation. It is the peculiarity of Russian natures that, however strongly engaged in the drama of action, they are still turning their ear to the murmur of abstract ideas. This conversation (and others later on) need not be recorded. Suffice it to say that it brought Mr. Razumov as we know him to the test of another faith. There was nothing official in its expression, and Mr. Razumov was led to defend his attitude ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... of his life, disregarded all semblance of danger. He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes in complete enjoyment of Hussein's cigarettes, which were really excellent, and said, in the even, matter-of-fact tones of one who discusses an abstract problem— ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... antiquity, and a rich literature extending back twenty or thirty centuries; yet no history, no chronology, no annals. They have a philosophy as acute, profound and, spiritual as any in the world, which is yet harmoniously associated with the coarsest superstitions. With a belief so abstract that it almost escapes the grasp of the most speculative intellect, is joined the notion that sin can be atoned for by bathing in the Ganges or repeating a text of the Veda. With an ideal pantheism ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... protoplasm. That individual is a result of the cosmic order, the inevitable product of cause and effect. We know that. We must admit that he is just as much a fact of the universe as a shower of rain or a storm at sea that swallows a ship. We freely grant in the abstract that there must be, at the present stage of evolution, a certain number of persons with unfair minds. We are quite ready to contemplate such an individual with philosophy—until it happens that, in the course of the progress of the solar system, he runs up against ourselves. Then ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... relations in which we are placed at our birth, and the corresponding beliefs or prejudices which we have unconsciously imbibed. Such influences, it may perhaps be said, are of incomparably greater importance than the direct exhortations to which we listen, or than the abstract doctrines which we accept in words, but which receive their whole colouring from the concrete facts to which they conform. Now, I ask how such discipline can be conceived without some kind of competition; or, rather, what would ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... bad;—his father was a villain; his grand-uncle a murderer; his mother a woman of violent temper; and himself, with all this legacy, a man of powerful passions. If evil is in any degree to be palliated because it is hereditary, those who most condemn it in the abstract, may still look with compassionate leniency upon ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... am inclined to think it was good policy. The belief in the descent theory is slowly spreading in England (In October 1867 he wrote to Mr. Wallace:—"Mr. Warrington has lately read an excellent and spirited abstract of the 'Origin' before the Victoria Institute, and as this is a most orthodox body, he has gained the name of the Devil's Advocate. The discussion which followed during three consecutive meetings is very ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... youthful creed. If it only led to the knowledge of good and evil, it were well; if it only taught us to despise the illusions and retire from the pleasures of the world, it would be better. But it destroys our belief—it dims our perception of all abstract truth, virtue, and happiness; it turns life into a jest, and a very dull one too. It makes us indifferent to beauty, and incredulous of goodness; it teaches us to consider self as the centre on which all actions turn, and to which all ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... man of action, who is more real than all the philosophers—Don Quixote. There is undoubtedly a philosophical Quixotism, but there is also a Quixotic philosophy. May it not perhaps be that the philosophy of the Conquistadores, of the Counter-Reformers, of Loyola, and above all, in the order of abstract but deeply felt thought, that of our mystics, was, in its essence, none other than this? What was the mysticism of St. John of the Cross but a knight-errantry of the heart in the ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... Government of India acting fairly in these matters is immense. If anything is done, or attempted to be done, to help the natives, a general howl is raised, which reverberates in England, and finds sympathy and support there. I feel quite bewildered sometimes what to do. Everyone is, in the abstract, for justice, moderation, and suchlike excellent qualities; but when one comes to apply such principles so as to affect anybody's interests, then a change comes ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... better not go into the abstract question, Minnie. I suppose, Mr. Cavendish, you go back to Oxford ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... stationary, or wandering near. Some chosen few were within; two caryatides gentlemen leaned one on each side of the fireplace, and in the centre of the rug stood a remarkably handsome man, of fine figure, perfectly dressed, his whole air exquisitely scornful, excruciatingly miserable, and loftily abstract. 'Twas wonderful, 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange! how one so lost to all sublunary concerns, so far above the follies of inferior mortals, as he looked, came here—so extremely well-dressed too! ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... claim—one of the most stupendous claims that He ever made—that He utterly, absolutely, realizes that ideal. He says, "I do always the things that please him." And then, thirdly, we have the revelation of the secret by which He has been able to realize the ideal, to make the abstract concrete, to bring down the fair vision of divine purpose to the level of actual human life and experience, and the secret is declared in the opening words: "He that sent me is with me; my Father ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... and this likeness the mind takes notice of; it thus analyzes the complex of experience, discerns the common element, and by this means classifies particular facts, thereby condensing them into mental conceptions,— abstract ideas, formulas, laws. The mind arrives at these in the course of its normal operation. As soon as we think at all, we speak of white and black, of bird and beast, of distance and size,—of uniformities ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... so admirably brought out by Browning in his 'Ring and the Book,' so it is also, I think, a truism that every man has (not always consciously) a philosophy. A philosophy is, after all, a point of view; it is not necessarily an abstract academic position; nor is it always a well-defined attempt to discover the ultimate purpose of things. It can be, and very often is, a point of view ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... as the details. There may be, perhaps, some complication of the disease—the bronchial tubes, possibly, may be also inflamed; but I believe that treatment for the intestinal organs is very much more important and necessary, and more urgently required than for the lungs. Persistent study of abstract matters, and certain violent passions, have induced serious disorders in that vital mechanism. However, we are in time to set these conditions right. Nothing is too seriously affected. You will easily get your friend round again," he remarked ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... place Stanley says: "Livingstone followed the dictates of duty. Never was such a willing slave to that abstract virtue. His inclinations impel him home, the fascinations of which it requires the sternest resolution to resist. With every foot of new ground he travelled over he forged a chain of sympathy which should hereafter bind the Christian nations in bonds ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... of Aesthetics has among the Germans, by nature a speculative rather than a practical people, led to this consequence, that works of art, and tragedies more especially, have been executed on abstract theories, more or less misunderstood. It was natural that these tragedies should produce no effect on the theatre; nay, they are, in general, unsuited for representation, and wholly devoid of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... of the phenomena of feeling, an intuitive knowledge of what people like and dislike, a retentive memory, and a happy knack of making all these available at the right moment, than to any profound reasoning on abstract principles. Like some untaught arithmeticians, their calculations came out correct, but they could not have gone through ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... Morton, in this paper, proposals, as to the abstract propriety of which I must now waive delivering any opinion. Some of them appear to me reasonable and just; and, although I have no express instructions from the King upon the subject, yet I assure ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... or family, nationality or worldly interest, the priest is a living machine, to be used in whatever direction his tyrant dictates. Every priest, therefore, be he cardinal or deacon, moves and acts the slave of an abstract idea; an idea incompatible ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... can see you smirking and posturing before the abstract mirror, which is your constant companion. It pleases you, no doubt, to think that anybody should pay you the compliment of making you the object and the subject of a whole letter. Perhaps when you have read it to the end you will alter your mood, since ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... toward realization, projects the remembrance externally in an hallucinatory form. It is this remembrance, and not the words themselves, that the observer has seen. It is thus demonstrated that rapid reading is in great part a work of divination, but not of abstract divination. It is an externalization of memories which take advantage, to a certain extent, of the partial realization that they find here and there in order to ...
— Dreams • Henri Bergson
... so cut, one that her mother and Mr. Fenwick might have shown a more active interest in, instead of saying it was time for all of us to be in bed. She did not, however, ascribe to them any external preoccupation—merely an abstract love of Truth; for was it not nearly one ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... and his lips quivered. 'It's my job,' he said, 'and I'm not going to talk against it. I was arguing about country-work in the abstract over there in England.' Then it was that the boy came in sight with the letters. Reeve looked up and watched him with real pleasure and gratitude. He said something to him in the native language that seemed to amuse the boy very ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... the cause of both Tories and Chouans in the abstract. From the beginning it was clearly a desperate cause, and, admitting that the motive which prompted it was generous, honorable, and praiseworthy, nothing could be expected to ensue from its advocacy but accumulated disaster and greater ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... prosperity.' Napoleon added that he thought the evil might be remedied by divided property and abolishing hurtful privileges, as was done in France. Afterwards Napoleon asked many questions about the Cortes, and when Lord John told him that many of the members made good speeches on abstract questions, but they failed when any practical debate on finance or war took place, Napoleon drily remarked: 'Oui, faute de l'habitude de gouverner.' Presently the talk drifted to Wellington, or rather Napoleon adroitly led it thither. He described ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... which he excelled in early life were in this direction, and at no time in his career did he display any emotional enthusiasm on subjects of general concern. But, on the other hand, he was unflinching in his adherence to abstract principle. Though not carried away by the extravagance of Rousseau, he was thoroughly discontented with the political state of Geneva. He was by early conviction a Democrat in the broadest sense of the term. Indeed, it would be difficult to find a more perfect example of what it was ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... that its effect had been killed. Precisely how Illis had effected this he did not know, nor did he care to inquire. Illis had been forced into an iniquitous bargain; and, since he had taken the first chance to free himself from it, the question of abstract right or wrong was not a subject for ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... association; he had to arrange for the buying and shipping, and the rest was leisure. He could now have gone away somewhere as far as time went. So can a fish live in trees—as far as time goes. And in the daily riding, riding, riding over the range he found the opportunity for abstract thought which the frontier life had ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... notions of an exciting and somewhat disturbing sort into Roschen's little head. If one young girl might get married, so might another, no doubt she thought; and it is conceivable that from this mental statement of a rational abstract possibility her thoughts may have passed on to consideration of the concrete possibilities involved in her own relations with the good-looking Gustav Strauss, son of the rich bird-dealer, or with the good-looking young shoemaker, Ludwig Bauer, who lived ...
— An Idyl Of The East Side - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... was, a resident, who for the more love of the common country, douce, serious, religious man, drove me all about the valley, and took as much interest in me as if I had been his son: more, perhaps; for the son has faults too keenly felt, while the abstract countryman is perfect—like ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... African slave trade. But in the slave holding parts of the United States, the trade is as brisk as ever. They buy and sell you as though you were brute beasts. The North has done much—her opinion of slavery in the abstract is known. But in regard to the South, we adopt the opinion of the New York Evangelist—"We have advanced so far, that the cause apparently waits for a more effectual door to be thrown open than has been yet." We are about to point you to that more effectual door. Look around you, ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... 'You do not talk like a poet, you talk like a man of letters;' and if all the rhymers had not been polite, if most of them had not been to Oxford or Cambridge, they would have said the same thing. I was full of thought, often very abstract thought, longing all the while to be full of images, because I had gone to the art school instead of a university. Yet even if I had gone to a university, and learned all the classical foundations of English literature and English culture, all that great erudition which, ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... the same paper when we first heard our father reading it to our mother. Farther on the old subscriber proceeded to 'maintain', and recalled attention to the fact that it was just exactly as he had said. After which he made a few abstract, incoherent remarks about the 'surrounding district', and concluded by stating that he 'must now conclude', and thanking the editor for trespassing on the ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... 'tis hard to passe between the points of both unwounded. But yet, me thinks, the endeavour to advance the Civill Power, should not be by the Civill Power condemned; nor private men, by reprehending it, declare they think that Power too great. Besides, I speak not of the men, but (in the Abstract) of the Seat of Power, (like to those simple and unpartiall creatures in the Roman Capitol, that with their noyse defended those within it, not because they were they, but there) offending none, I think, but those without, or such within (if there be any such) as favour ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... fond of society, and justified his taste in this respect by the flattering belief that by his presence he was extending the power of the Church; certainly favoring an ambition which could not be described as being moderate. The bishop had no abstract prejudice against gentlemen who wore red hats, and under ordinary circumstances would have welcomed his brother churchman with unaffected cordiality, not to say sympathy; but in the present instance, however gracious his mien and honeyed his expressions, he only looked upon the cardinal as a dangerous ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... to Napoleon upon his graduation read thus:—"This young man is reserved and studious, he prefers study to any amusement, and enjoys reading the best authors, applies himself earnestly to the abstract sciences, cares little for anything else. He is silent, and loves solitude. He is capricious, haughty, and excessively egotisical, talks little, but is quick and energetic in his replies, prompt and severe in his repartees, has great pride and ambition, aspiring ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... hear of his putting it off any longer. Sir Edmund had been harping on this string ever since he came back from Germany, had made it both a general and a particular request, not only urging him to matrimony in the abstract, but pushing him into the arms of every young woman in the country. Ambrose had promised, procrastinated, temporized; but at last he was at the end of his evasions, and his poor father had taken the tone of supplication. "He thinks immensely of the name, of the ...
— The Path Of Duty • Henry James
... introduced this tale into vol. i., p. 223, notes on chapt. iii., apparently not knowing that it was in The Nights. He gives a mere abstract, omitting all the verse, and he borrowed it either from the Halbat al-Kumayt (chapt. xiv.) or from Al-Mas'udi (chapt. cxi.). See the French translation, vol. vi. p. 340. I am at pains to understand why M. C. Barbier de Maynard ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... to me, then, idle to thresh over old straw when the grain is not only winnowed, but gone to the mill. And so I am not here to discuss abstract questions: as, for example, whether in the year 1898 the United States was wise in going to war with Spain, though on that I might not greatly disagree with the malcontents; or as to the wisdom of expansion; or as to the possibility of a republic's maintaining its authority over a people without ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... among the Harleian MSS. contains little remarkable except some letters from Henry VIII's amb'r. in Spain, in 1518, of which, you may see an abstract in ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... that led to its being formed, and that was further cemented by its formation: "Willingly do I recall and linger upon these days and months, extending even to years, in which common studies of this abstract nature bound us together. It was the romance—the poetry—of speculation and friendship. All the vexed questions of the schools were attempted by our united strength, after our higher guide had set the example. The thorny wilds of logic were pleasant as an enchanted ground; its driest ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... invented for the express purpose. To protect the book, we have none but farcical means. Place a few bricks one atop the other; join them with mortar; and the law will defend your wall. Build up in writing an edifice of your thoughts; and it will be open to any one, without serious impediment, to abstract stones from it, even to take the whole, if it suit him. A rabbit-hutch is property; the work of the mind is not. If the animal has eccentric views as regards the possessions of others, ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... and Rolling Stock," read before the Institution of Civil Engineers, in England, with an abstract on the discussion thereon, has been forwarded to us by the publishers, William Clowes and Sons, Stamford street ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... on Idealism must be read by all who believe themselves capable of abstract thought, if they would not fall under the judgment of Turgot, which Emerson quotes: "He that has never doubted the existence of matter may be assured he has no aptitude for metaphysical inquiries." The most ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... from the public. They gave a substantial proof of their gratitude to Park, by permitting him to publish his travels for his own benefit; and a complete narrative of his journey from his own pen was speedily announced to be in preparation. An abstract, drawn up by Mr. Bryan Edwards, from Park's Notes, was printed for private circulation among the members of the Association in the meantime; it was also enriched by a valuable Memoir by Major Rennel, on African Geography. This publication afterwards ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... correct the expression. To one given to day-dreaming, and fond of losing himself in reveries, a sea voyage is full of subjects for meditation: but then they are the wonders of the deep, and of the air, and rather tend to abstract the mind from worldly themes. I delighted to loll over the quarter-railing, or climb to the maintop, of a calm day, and muse for hours together on the tranquil bosom of a summer's sea; to gaze upon the piles of golden clouds just peering above the horizon, fancy them some fairy realms, and people ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... that in this part of his doctrine—and it is an important part—the brilliant French writer, in his endeavours to make philosophizing more concrete and practical, makes it too abstract. Intuition is not a process over against and quite distinct from conceptual thought. Both are moments in the total process of man's attempt to come to terms with the universe, and too great emphasis on either distorts and falsifies the situation ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... liberated him: he had been overreached and trepanned by one set of white men, and he naturally looked on his second captors as more successful rivals in the human, or rather inhuman, Guinea trade; therefore, this event lessened not his hatred for white men in the abstract. ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... whisky. They were still discussing when, an hour later, they, too, disappeared into the darkness that swallowed up the trail to Ashley Ranch. That was the first of many such services. The preaching was always of the simplest kind, abstract questions being avoided and the concrete in those wonderful Bible tales, dressed in modern and in western garb, set forth. Bill and Hi were more than ever his friends and champions, and the latter was heard exultantly to exclaim ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... examine the nature of exceptions. Exceptions are intended for the protection of the defendant, who is often in this position, that though the plaintiff's case is a good one in the abstract, yet as against him, the particular ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... and atoms"—I said—"For by whatever means or substances the Universe is composed, a mighty Intelligence governs it—and I look to the Cause more than the Effect. For even I am a part of the whole,—I belong to the source of the stream as much as to the stream itself. An abstract, lifeless principle without will or intention or intelligence could not have evolved the splendours of Nature or the intellectual capabilities of man—it could not have given rise to what ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... W. Hough, using the eighteen-and-a-half-inch refractor of the observatory. Inasmuch as these observations are not only of high intrinsic interest, but are in conflict, to some extent, with previous records, a somewhat full abstract of them will be useful: The object of general interest was the great red spot. The outline, shape, and size of this remarkable object has remained without material change from the year 1879, when it was first observed ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... that no effort will be made to cram into their poor little minds, theological dogmas which their tender age prevents them from understanding." Huxley defines his idea of a church as a place in which, "week by week, services should be devoted, not to the iteration of abstract propositions in theology, but to the setting before men's minds of an ideal of true, just and pure living; a place in which those who are weary of the burden of daily cares should find a moment's rest in the contemplation of the higher life which is possible for all, though attained ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... hushed before the terrible significance of what they beheld. In the abstract, a life-and-death struggle meant little enough to them. Witnessing it, however, violently stirred their deepest emotions. They hated the camp boss, the libertine, drunkard, bully, Arden Laval, who only ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... prudent not to recognize the near and prospective advantages of such a mediator. Accustomed to her parents' extravagant denunciations, and her uncle's more repressed but practical contempt of them, the unfortunate girl early developed a cynical disbelief in the virtues of kinship in the abstract, and a philosophical resignation to its effects upon her personally. Believing that her father and uncle fairly represented the fraternal principle, she was quite prepared for the early defection and distrust of her vagabond and dissipated brother Stephen, ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... paradise. In this great city, I, Marco, have often been, and have considered it with diligent attention, observing its whole state and circumstances, and setting down the same in my memorials, of which I shall here give a brief abstract. By common report, this city is an hundred miles in circuit[1]. The streets and lanes are very long and wide, and it has many large market places. On one side of the city there is a clear lake of fresh water, and on the other there is a great river, which enters into the city in many places, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... rooms above, came an endless banging, shrieking and caterwauling from embryonic tenori and virtuosi, such as, within a month, would have cured all but the most persistent music-lovers of any further desire for the expression of that abstract art. ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... protect State amendment elections from fraud. Men's right to vote protected by Federal Constitution; state by state enfranchisement would not give this protection to women. Woman Suffrage a national question. Decision on technical and abstract question of Suffrage demands different class of intelligence from election ...
— Woman Suffrage By Federal Constitutional Amendment • Various
... drew the mandatory arrow, and inquired who would go and steal the rice, a rat readily received the order and went off to rob the rice. Drawing another mandatory arrow, he asked who would go and abstract the beans, when once more a rat took over the arrow and started to steal the beans; and one by one subsequently received each an arrow and started on his errand. There only remained the scented taros, so that picking again a mandatory arrow, he ascertained ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... beneficent calling. No money-lender would ever get justice in a British court of law; easier for the camel to thread the needle's eye. That flagrant forgery would be accepted at sight by our vaunted British jury. The only chance was to abstract it ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... may seem somewhat unjustifiable, but if we are to study any building aright, and if we are to interpret in any measure its meaning and symbolism, it cannot wholly be done on any line of abstract aestheticism or archaeological instinct, however intuitive it may be: we must in some measure think of the builders of old times and of the influences which with them produced its inception and have left it to come down the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell
... attained a high degree of success in these arts; few people will deny that Albert Durer and Rubens, for example, are to be called masters in painting, and in the high kind of painting. The Celtic races, on the other hand, have shown a singular inaptitude for the plastic arts; the abstract, severe character of the Druidical religion, its dealing with the eye of the mind rather than the eye of the body, its having no elaborate temples and beautiful idols, all point this way from the first; its sentiment cannot satisfy itself, ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... its classification and its character as a product of our social conditions, as typical of the national character, and so on, and so on. His attitude to the personal aspect of the case, to its tragic significance and the persons involved in it, including the prisoner, was rather indifferent and abstract, as was ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... to the fact that he would starve to death and that everybody who had ever seen him would feel it had been a good thing that he had finally died. But this final plea came from him. He wanted nothing except to talk and hear words in order to relieve the loneliness of his days. He would like abstract discussions that had nothing to do with Winkelberg and the Winkelberg misfortunes. His smile now said: "I am useless, worn out and better off dead. But never mind me. My mind is still alive. It still thinks. I wish it didn't. I wish it crawled around like my body. ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... strife evidently arises out of the conflict between the interests of an oligarchy based upon slavery and a democracy in which slavery, if it exists at all, exists as a mere accident that may be dispensed with without any radical social revolution. Slavery, as opposed to divine law or to abstract justice, never has brought, nor ever will bring, two countries into conflict with each other; but slavery made indispensable as a peculiar institution, as an organized fact, as a fundamental social ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... to have made a bad choice in pitching upon 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 endeavor so to live that Christ would approve our life.... When to this we add that to the conception of the rational critic it remains a possibility that Christ actually was what he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... position so markedly at variance with the idealism of his later years? In all probability it was his rooted suspicion of reasoning as a deliberate and conscious process. Other writers of the century—Addison, for instance—had spoken as if men reasoned from certain abstract ideas (proportion, fitness, and the like) to individual instances of beauty, deciding a thing to have beauty or no, according as it squared or failed to square with the general notion This, as Burke points out, is more than questionable in itself, and it was certain ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... was the patrimony and whole estate of two children. With the rear house taken away, the income from the front would not be enough to cover the interest on the mortgage. It was one of those things that occasionally make standing upon abstract principle so very uncomfortable. I confess I never had the courage to ask what was done in their case. I know that the tenement went, and I hope—well, never mind what I hope. It has nothing to do with the case. The house is down, and the main issue ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... hypothesis of an abstract entity produces psychological phenomena by playing upon the brain as a musician upon his instrument be rejected, and these phenomena be held to be the result of cerebral actions, an objection is made that the latter view is "materialistic" and adverse to the notion of an independent, ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... as a very great physiologist. When a happy illustration, or even a point of pretty broad humour, occurred to his mind, he hesitated not to apply it to the subject in hand; and in this way, he frequently roused and rivetted attention, when more abstract reasoning might have failed of its aim. On one occasion he happened to dine with a large party, composed chiefly of medical men. As the wine cup circulated, the conversation accidentally took a professional turn, and from the excitation ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... the role of landed proprietor in the abstract. He would not have let the Manor and lived elsewhere for the world. He went regularly to church on Sunday morning, though it bored him extremely, because, like Major Pendennis, he thought that "when a gentleman is sur ses ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... things, and Mrs. Viggins, as she called herself,—I cannot imagine a Mr. Viggins for no man in his senses could have married such a creature,—as I was saying, Mrs. Viggins is not at all sacred, and I must endeavor to abstract my mind from her till tomorrow, as far as posserble. My first duty today is to induce Mr. Holcroft to take us to church. It will give the people of Oakville such a pleasing impression to see us driving to church. Of course, I may fail, Mr. Holcroft ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... Angelo, and one of his best imitators; but when his works are compared with those of the great master, or with the masterpieces of the fifteenth century, we see a decline in them. In religious subjects Giovanni was not at home; his most successful works were those which represented sentiment or abstract ideas, because on them he could lavish his skill in execution, and use ornaments that did not suit the simplicity of religious subjects. In the Loggia de' Lanzi, at Florence, there are two groups by him, the Rape of the Sabines ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... the former under the name of "A Day with Beethoven." Beethoven was always trying to translate into music the depths of his heart, the subtleties of his spirit, which are not to be explained clearly by words, but which are as definite as words—in fact, more definite; for a word, being an abstract thing, sums up many experiences and comprehends many different meanings. Music is a hundred times more expressive and exact than speech; and it is not only her right to express particular emotions and subjects, it is her duty. If that duty is not fulfilled, the result is ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... luncheon before Mrs. Macallan arrived at Benjamin's cottage. The ensuing conversation between the old lady and myself (of which I have only presented a brief abstract) lasted until quite late in the afternoon. The sun was setting in heavy clouds when we got into the carriage, and the autumn twilight began to fall around us while we were still on ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... fine word, covered with fine clothes, and goes about in pomp and glitter. It builds in the abstract: telescopes for the blind, lutes for the deaf, flowers for the starved. Bah! charity has had little ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... possible—ay, and happens sometimes—that a woman unselfish, unexacting in all her affections, more prone to give than to receive, thinking perhaps very little of love or marriage, may be unconsciously attracted by some imagined perfection in the other sex, and be thus led on through the worship of abstract goodness until she wakes to find that she has learned to love the man. For what is love in its purest and divinest sense, but that innate yearning after perfection which we vainly hope to find in some other ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... done very easily, if your Majesty would assume the risk of the transportation of the money and the return of the gold. As a result, your royal treasury could in a short time be free from obligations, and could aid in the maintenance of this kingdom. [Marginal note: "Abstract this clause, and send it to the viceroy of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... came the promised vehicle, which was no hackney coach, but a private chariot, having behind it a footman, whose legs, although somewhat large for his body, might, as mere abstract legs, have set themselves up for models at the Royal Academy. It was quite exhilarating to hear the clash and bustle with which he banged the door and jumped up behind after Mrs Nickleby was in; and as that good lady was perfectly unconscious ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... he felt his ears tingling and his face getting red, as they approached the drive. It was crowded. They were kept standing a minute or two at the crossing. He made a desperate effort to abstract himself wholly from the visible world, and retire in a state of serene contemplation. But it would not do; and he was painfully conscious of the stare of lack-lustre eyes of well dressed men leaning over the rails, and the amused look of delicate ladies, lounging in open carriages, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... made an abstract from the 'Demonomagie' of Horst (founded on Hauber's original work), of the 'Hexenhammer,' under its three principal divisions. The third part, which contains the Criminal Code, and consists of thirty-five questions, is the most important section. It is difficult to decide which is the more ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... arroba of straw. Let him explain to the Indians what is necessary for their salvation, and let him not play the discreet among them. Let him use similes and examples in his sermons that they can understand, and not plunge into depths of abstract ideas, for that is a jargon which they do not understand; and they especially detest Latin phrases. The statement that the Indians have no faith is a pretext of the devil, to discourage the gospel ministers. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... savagely. Not that the abstract fact of the bells ringing was of any moment to him, but he was in a mood to be angry with everything. "Here, you!" continued he, seizing hold of a boy who was running by, "what be them bells ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... put upon him in San Domingo, is written in his most crabbed Spanish. He never wrote the Spanish language accurately, and the letter, as printed from his own manuscript, is even curious in its infelicities. It is so striking an illustration of the character of the man that we print here an abstract of it, with some passages translated directly from his ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... being presented with the freedom of the Worshipful Company of Turners, gave an address from which the following is an abstract:— ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... indeed!" cried he; "to abstract myself from all, is all that enables me to get on." And then, with his native candour, he cast aside prejudice, and very liberally praised several points in this ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... to discuss here the abstract question—Is a church an essential want of man, so as to be needed by him forever? It is enough to show that a church is needed now, and will be, for a long time to come. Every religion has had its church. No sooner does a new idea arise, than it is incorporated ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... individual is an object of dread—a creature to be shrunk from and shuddered at. Mrs Brown's horror was frogs. Jacky knew this well. He also knew of Mrs Brown's love for cranberry-jam, and her having put up a special pot. To abstract the pot, replace it by a similar pot with a live frog imprisoned therein, and then retire to chuckle in solitude and devour the jam, was simple and natural. That the imp had done this; that he had watched with delight ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... must be, to emit the wonderful sound, and though it was called the Red One, Bassett could not be sure that red represented the colour of it. Red enough were the deeds and powers of it, from what abstract clues he had gleaned. Not alone, had Ngurn informed him, was the Red One more bestial powerful than the neighbour tribal gods, ever athirst for the red blood of living human sacrifices, but the neighbour gods themselves were sacrificed and tormented before ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... of its members. Around the table, "in a room every evening as full as it could be crammed," says Aubrey, sat Milton (?) and Marvell, Cyriac Skinner, Harrington, Nevill, and their friends, discussing abstract political questions. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... ideas. They make the objections which strike them. What has happened to the hearers when the dialogue is finished? They have found something within them which they did not possess before. They have not merely accepted an abstract truth, but they have gone through a development. Something has come to life in them which was not living in them before. Is not this to be compared with an initiation? And does not this throw light on the reason for Plato's setting forth his philosophy in the form of conversation? These dialogues ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... private offices in Duck Square (where he carried on his practice as a solicitor), when in stepped a tall and pretty young woman, dressed very smartly but soberly in dark green. On the desk in front of Denry were several wide sheets of "abstract" paper, concealed by a copy of that morning's Athletic News. Before Denry could even think of reversing the positions of the abstract paper and the Athletic News the young woman said "Good-morning!" ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... this abstract I do not propose to deal with the disturbances in the system caused by traumatic influences, such as wounds, etc. We are treating only of constitutional diseases which, whether of acute or of chronic character, are all caused by the lack of such chemical elements ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... Anton?" asked Pinac gently. He could see that the old man was much moved and he wanted to bring him out of the world of abstract ideas into the world of ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... changes in fortune, there is not, to my mind, a deeper cause and opportunity for thought. For something in our ordinary actions resembles the little blunted arrows we shoot at targets; little by little we make of our successive deeds an abstract and regular entity that we call our prudence or our will. Then comes a gust of wind, and lo! the smallest of these arrows, the very lightest and most ineffective, is wafted beyond our vision, beyond the very horizon to the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... an object that excels the sense, Dazl'd and spent, sunk down, and sought repair Of sleep, which instantly fell on me, call'd By Nature as in aide, and clos'd mine eyes. Mine eyes he clos'd, but op'n left the Cell 460 Of Fancie my internal sight, by which Abstract as in a transe methought I saw, Though sleeping, where I lay, and saw the shape Still glorious before whom awake I stood; Who stooping op'nd my left side, and took From thence a Rib, with cordial spirits warme, And Life-blood streaming fresh; wide was the wound, But suddenly ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... every Sunday, at the Church of the Assumption, an open discussion on matters of religion takes place, chiefly, however, among the persons who wish to pass for savants. The priests seldom or never attend. It is suspected that these discussions are encouraged by the Government, not from any abstract love it possesses for truth, but for the sake of ascertaining the opinions of those who attend them. If the governing powers suspect, from any of the opinions he utters, that a person is likely to prove dangerous, his movements and words are ever afterwards narrowly watched ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... by the Jews outside Palestine, although it never found a place in the Palestinian canon. Like most wisdom books, it describes at length the beauty and value of wisdom. The figure of Proverbs 8 and 9 is still further developed under the influence of the Greek tendency to personify abstract qualities. In the mind of the author, however, wisdom is simply an attribute of the Deity which he shares in common with men. The book is unique in two respects: (1) it contains the earliest references in Jewish literature to a personal devil and identifies him with the serpent that ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... without duly heeding abstract terms, those who make rain and hail fall on the cleanliness of the window panes, may throw stones at the simplicity of their brothers of the pen. The stones may indeed hit their brothers, who have a body, but will ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... manner at times quite importunate. It was not until after separation on the following morning that the captain and his men ascertained the secret of all this loving-kindness. In the course of their fraternal caresses, the Crows had contrived to empty the pockets of their white brothers; to abstract the very buttons from their coats, and, above all, to make free with ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... force to which the females of her country attain. Her features were beautiful, like those of all her race: never in the upper world have I seen a face so grand and so faultless, but her devotion to the severer studies had given to her countenance an expression of abstract thought which rendered it somewhat stern when in repose; and such a sternness became formidable when observed in connection with her ample shoulders and lofty stature. She was tall even for a Gy, and I saw her lift up a cannon as easily as I could lift ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... ladies at the millinery shop and while selling cigarettes at the Ritzmore, when she had been modeling her manners, and had believed herself just as fine a lady as they. But that had been in the abstract. Now she was face to face with a situation that was painfully concrete—a real test: she had to place herself into close contrast with, and under the close observation of, a real lady, and in that lady's own home. And in all her life she ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... the tone of these extracts and that of our present journalists, when they touch upon the abstract principles of government, may indicate to us the firm hold which the Democratic theory has taken of our people. As that conquering party marched onward, the opposition was forced to follow after, and to encamp upon the ground their powerful enemy left ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... purpose to a life beyond life." And so literature becomes a store of inexhaustible vials, filled with the most generous elixir decanted from the world's master-spirits. Listen again to Vauvenargues: "Good literature is the essence of the best minds, the abstract of their knowledge, the fruit of their long vigils." Or let us drop metaphor, and accept, as entirely satisfying and luminous, the account given by Mr. John Morley, that "literature consists of all books ... where ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... from an abstract, speculative phase of the Monroe Doctrine, took on the concrete and somewhat urgent form of security for our trans-Isthmian routes against foreign interference towards the middle of this century, when the attempt to settle it was made ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... thing to live comfortably with the abstract conception of poverty, another to be brought in contact with its human embodiments. Lily had never conceived of these victims of fate otherwise than in the mass. That the mass was composed of individual lives, innumerable separate centres of sensation, with her own eager reachings for pleasure, ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... how this Ideal may be concentrated in a certain abstract line, not only of sensuous, but of intellectual Beauty,—a line which, while it is as wise and subtle as the serpent, is as harmless and loving as the sacred dove of Venus. I have endeavored to prove how this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... property into working order. On the 6th May the late king's conveyance was read before the Court of Aldermen, and thereupon a committee, of which Sir Martin Bowes was a prominent member, was deputed to make an abstract of the yearly revenues and charges of the house of the Grey Friars and hospital of little Saint Bartholomew, and to report thereon to the court with as much speed as possible.(1260) From a purely monetary point of view the City had ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... those waggish Inscriptions by which Men offer us their Goods, To Day for Money, and to Morrow for Nothing. They often began their Prayers very mystically, and spoke many Things in a spiritual Sense; yet they never were so abstract from the World in them, as to end One without beseeching the Gods to bless and prosper the Brewing Trade in all its Branches, and, for the Good of the Whole, more and more to increase the Consumption of the ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... personal, in which we no longer speak of some one but of some thing? Our neighbours, the English, have well succeeded in making of it a special division of literature under the modest title of "Essays." It is true that in writing of such subjects, always slightly abstract and moral, it is advisable to speak of them in a season of quiet, to make sure of our own attention and of that of others, to seize one of those moments of calm moderation and leisure seldom granted our amiable France; even when she is desirous ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... metaphysician. When she asked her mother who made God, a slap in the face demonstrated to her the limits of human inquiry. The natural instinct of the child over-rode the long travail of the race to conceive an abstract Deity, and Esther pictured God as a mammoth cloud. In early years Esther imagined that the "body" that was buried when a person died was the corpse decapitated and she often puzzled herself to think what was done with the isolated head. When her mother was being tied up ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... impatient of retaining two words which convey the same meaning; and although science had at first to do with the fact of knowing and the conditions of knowledge in the abstract, while literature meant the written record of such knowledge, a far more distinct sphere has been given to each in later times, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... regard versification as a defect. Our studies of history and of the natural sciences were not carried far, but, on the other hand, we went deep into mathematics, to which I applied myself with the utmost zest, these abstract combinations exercising a wonderful fascination over me. Our professor, the good Abbe Duchesne, was particularly attentive in his lessons to me and to my close friend and fellow-student Guyomar, who displayed a great aptitude for this branch of study. We always returned together from the college. ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... mummy—sure to be recognized from its peculiar green color—in order to get the jewels, and thus secure money for his Egyptian expedition. All through, it seems, the Professor was actuated by purely scientific enthusiasm, as in the abstract he cared very little for hard cash. Bolton told Mrs. Jasher that Braddock explained how much he desired to get the mummy, but he did not mention about the jewels. For a long time Sidney was under the ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... a good abstract of the forms of the Italian campanile, by Mr. Papworth, in the Journal of the ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... condicions Whose herte and tunge theyr soules doth defyle By theyr blynde prayers and yll peticions Suche folowe no techynge nor gode monysyons For often many of them with tunge doth pray Theyr mynde, abstract ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... disposition to avoid extremities, if it could be done with propriety. With this view General Hamilton has been ready to enter into a frank and free explanation on any and every object of a specific nature; but not to answer a general and abstract inquiry, embracing a period too long for any accurate recollection, and exposing him to unpleasant criticisms from, or unpleasant discussions with, any and every person who may have understood him in an unfavourable sense. This (admitting ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... blank composure known to suffering males; that colourless unnatural speech which shows a spirit accurately balanced between homicide and hysterics; the tone in which the best of women sometimes utter words worse than death to those most dear to them. If Abstract Bones-and-Sepulchre were to be endowed with the gift of speech, thus, and not otherwise, would it discourse. Leon was a brave man, and I fear he was somewhat sceptically given (he had been educated in a Papistical country), but the ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Boys perform wonderful feats of this kind in England too. However, I once heard a German professor say that the English boy outdid the German in gesunder Menschenverstand (sound common sense), but that the German wins in the race when it comes to the abstract knowledge (Wissen) that he and his countryfolk prize above all the treasures of the earth. No one who knows both countries can doubt for a single moment that the professor was right, and that he stated ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... vivid imagination and an almost unequalled power of illustration. The thought is always concrete, and he is never satisfied with the vague ideas and abstract conceptions which so easily moved his contemporaries. No speeches, either in English or in German, preserve so much of their freshness. He is almost the only Parliamentary orator whose speeches have become to some extent ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... ever degraded humanity, with the spotless purity of the Christian rule of life,—the hesitating, speculative tone of the Master of the Academy with the decision and majesty of Him who 'spake with authority, and not as the Scribes,' whether Greek or Jewish.—the metaphysical and abstract character of Plato's reasonings with the severely practical character of Christ's,—the feebleness of the motives supplied by the abstractions of the one, and the intensity of those supplied by the other,—the adaptation of the one to the intelligent ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... a great influx of members, and three secretaries were appointed. At all meetings at which he was present Sir Charles took the chair, and through this centre exercised much influence, committing the House of Commons to a series of resolutions—abstract indeed, but none ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... questions, whenever the causes are either too inaccessible for their numerical laws to be ascertained, or are too complex for us to compute the effect, or are ever fluctuating. And, in proportion as physical questions cease to be abstract and hypothetical, mathematical solutions of them become imperfect. But the great value of mathematical training is, that we learn to use its method (which is the most perfect type of the Deductive Method), that is, we learn ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... important to private men in various situations in which they may be placed; it is useful to all men who wish either to be acquainted with modern history, or to form a sound judgment on political measures. I shall endeavour to give such an abstract of it as may be sufficient for some, and a convenient guide for others in the farther progress of their studies. The treaties, which I shall more particularly consider, will be those of Westphalia, of Oliva, of ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh
... annually, and the principal within a fixed term, less than nineteen years. And I hope yourself and your committee will render the immortal service of introducing this practice. Not that it is expected that Congress should formally declare such a principle. They wisely enough avoid deciding on abstract questions. But they may be induced to keep themselves within ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... became necessary for the United States either to engage in a war, or to withdraw her commerce from the ocean. The popular voice demanded the former course. Though France was, in the abstract, as unjust as England, her oppressive measures did not affect American commerce, and hence the indignation of the people was directed chiefly against Great Britain; but with the president it was ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... thoroughly given up to cowardice than he had ever been before, was not to be endured! And yet, with what utmost stretch of courage,—even though he were willing to devote himself certainly and instantly to the worst fate that he had pictured to himself,—could he immediately rush away from these abstract speculations, encumbered as they were with personal flattery, into his own most unpleasant, most tragic matter! It was the unfitness that deterred him and not the possible tragedy. Nevertheless, through it all, he was sure,—nearly sure,—that she was playing her game, and playing ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... a good poem, each word and thought enhances the value of those which precede and follow it; and every syllable has a loveliness which depends not so much on its abstract sound as on its position. Look at the same word in a dictionary, and you will ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... profession of letters, but unserviceable to one who would communicate his thoughts and feelings to others. Montaigne was not a professional author; he was a country gentleman with something of his own to say. The literature of the professionals was an ingenious and abstract superstructure built up over an idea or an emotion. Montaigne wished to set down the original thought or feeling as it sprang, hot, from the mind; and, as original thoughts and feelings present themselves always with the force of sensations, he gave them the forms of sensations—that is to ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... were, in spite of the surrounding misery, irresistibly provocative of laughter. Ample justification for this, in truth, is very readily adduceable. Mr. Squeers having, through his one eye, made a mental abstract of Cobbey's letter, for example, Cobbey and the whole school were thus feelingly informed of its contents—"Oh! Cobbey's grandmother is dead, and his uncle John has took to drinking. Which is all the news his sister sends, ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... consider anything clear until we are able to formulate it in words, and analytical language has not been sufficiently shaped to that end.' He goes on to point out that there is an epical value about every great romance, an underlying idea, not presentable always in abstract or critical terms, in the stories of such masters of pure romance as ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... scepticism and had manufactured a creed out of decent compromises which served well enough for ordinary purposes. Even Hume, a sceptic in theory, was a Tory and a Scottish patriot in politics. Scott, who cared nothing for abstract philosophy, did not bother himself to form any definite system of opinions; he shared Hume's political prejudices without inquiring into his philosophy. He thoroughly detested the dogmatism of the John Knox variety, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... the latter city predilections on the black art from a consistent regard to the solemnity of the subject were delivered within the walls of a vast and gloomy cavern. The schoolmen taught that all knowledge might be obtained from the assistance of the fallen angels. They were skilled in the abstract sciences, in the knowledge of precious stones, in alchymy, in the various languages of mankind and of the lower animals; in the Belles-Lettres, Moral Philosophy, Pneumatology, Divinity, Magic, History, and Prophecy. They could controul the winds ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... armour of a man who was a courtier when he chose and the dominating spirit always, he was hot and quick of temper. His light cold eyes glowed with resentment at the dancing lights in hers, as he cynically gave her a bald abstract of the unfortunate mission. He reflected that commonly he would have fitted a different mask to the ugly skull of fact, but this young barbarian, as he chose to regard her, excited the elemental truth in him, defying him to ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... nearly allied to poetry, oratory, and painting. The drama is but the expansion of its touching scenes,—painting, the representation of its fleeting events. Even to the few who are gifted by nature with the power of abstract thought, it is often hazardous to push matters to a conclusion too openly. Lingard evinced the profound knowledge of the human heart by which the Church of Rome has ever been distinguished, when, in his skilful narrative, he concealed the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... wholly consecrated to noble thoughts and work in common. And all went well as long as the light of love was in them: for she thought only of him, and not of what she was doing. The odd thing was that everything she did in that way was well done. Her mind found no difficulty in taking in abstract ideas, which at any other time of her life she would have found it hard to follow: her whole being was, as it were, uplifted from the earth by love; she did not know it; like a sleep-walker moving easily over roofs, gravely and gaily, without seeing anything at all, ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... abstractedly, from her height on the kitchen step. He dropped his eyes and looked at his feet. Then he lifted his eyes again, and looked at her. She looked back at him, as from across a distance. So they watched each other, as strangers across a wide, abstract distance. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... difficulty of finding occupation. Trade Union leaders have boldly avowed that they will thus compel the State to recognize the "right to employment," and to provide that employment by means of national or municipal workshops. With questions of abstract "right" we are not here concerned, but it may be well to indicate certain economic difficulties involved in the establishment of public works as a solution of the "unemployed" problem. Since the "unemployed" will, under the closer restrictions ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... heat is matter. He thus laid the corner-stone of the modern theory that heat light, electricity, magnetism, chemical action, and all other forms of energy are in essence motion, are convertible into one another, and as motion are indestructible. The following abstract of Count Rumford's paper is taken from "Heat as a Mode of Motion," by Professor John Tyndall, published by D. Appleton & Co., New York. This work and "The Correlation and Conservation of Forces," edited by Dr. E. L. Youmans, published by the same house, will serve as a capital ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... distanced. Many fools (speaking of you) say to me: What! would you have him perfect? I answer: Why not? What hurt would it do him or me? O, but that is impossible, say they; I reply, I am not sure of that: perfection in the abstract, I admit to be unattainable, but what is commonly called perfection in a character I maintain to be attainable, and not only that, but in every man's power. He hath, continue they, a good head, a good heart, a good fund of knowledge, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... mathematical science not merely as a vast body of abstract and immutable truths, ... but as possessing a yet deeper interest for the human race, when it is remembered that this science constitutes the language through which alone we can adequately express the great facts of the natural world ... those who thus think on mathematical ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... is not any question of shame or conscience, which are abstract things. It is merely one of fact—that is, whether you did or did not help Miss Catherwood, the spy, to escape. I am convinced that you helped her—not that I condemn you for it or that I am sorry you did so. Perhaps ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... sacrificing ourselves to abstract right for five minutes. Then I leaned back in my chair, and looked at Halicarnassus. He rested his right elbow on the table, and looked ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various |
