"Acquire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... board before the cutter finished her trip at Whitby. Both boys had done their best to acquire knowledge, and had learnt the names of the ropes and their uses by the time they got ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... movements. To learn how, requires, of course, the action of the brain, but with frequent repetition the muscles become so accustomed to certain successive movements, that they are continued by the cord without the control of the brain. Thus we may acquire a sort of artificial reflex action, which in time becomes in a way a part of our organization, and is carried on without will power ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... toes; listening, tasting, feeling; in a word, by all his Five Senses, still more by his Sixth Sense of Hunger, and a whole infinitude of inward, spiritual, half-awakened Senses, endeavouring daily to acquire for himself some knowledge of this strange Universe where he had arrived, be his task therein what it might. Infinite was his progress; thus in some fifteen months, he could perform the miracle of—Speech! To breed a fresh Soul, is it not like brooding a fresh (celestial) Egg; wherein ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... This is the natural memory which is allied to sense, such as children appear to have and barbarians and animals. It is necessarily limited in range, and its limitation is its strength. In later life, when the mind has become crowded with names, acts, feelings, images innumerable, we acquire by education another memory of system and arrangement which is both stronger and weaker than the first—weaker in the recollection of sensible impressions as they are represented to us by eye or ear—stronger by the natural connexion of ideas with objects ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... to understand instinctively everything one might say to him, even in its subtler aesthetic values, although he had consciously learned little. He was of the endowed natures to whom much is given, rather than of those who are set to acquire. He had many lines in his face-even his simple life had gone hard with him, its sorrows un assuaged by its simplicity. His hair was grizzled, and hung long and straight on his collar. He wore a grizzled beard cut broad ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... had the good fortune to obtain the services of a person of Mr. Burckhardt's education and talents, resolved to spare neither time nor expense in enabling him to acquire the language and manners of an Arabian Musulman in such a degree of perfection, as should render the detection of his real character in the interior of Africa ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... as I says, no sooner does them Injuns get near us, than them three blessed foreigners is over after 'em; ropin' at em' with questions an' invadin' of 'em, an' examinin' of 'em like the whole tribe's for sale an' they aims to acquire 'em if ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... humorist, it is on his occasionally triumphant success as a serious or tragic poet, that the fame of Marston rests assuredly established. His intermittent power to rid himself for a while of his besetting faults, and to acquire or assume for a moment the very excellences most incompatible with these, is as extraordinary for the completeness as for the transience of its successful effects. The brief fourth act of "Antonio and Mellida" ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... him as priestess of the idea which God has now called to life within man's bosom, and of the struggle towards the realisation of that idea—education by development—the destined means of raising the whole human race.... No man can acquire fresh knowledge, even at a school, beyond the measure which his own stage of development fits him to receive.... Infant Schools are nothing but a contradiction of child-nature. Little children especially those ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... idleness consigned, He felt the laudable desire From mere vacuity of mind The wit of others to acquire. A case of books he doth obtain— He reads at random, reads in vain. This nonsense, that dishonest seems, This wicked, that absurd he deems, All are constrained and fetters bear, Antiquity no pleasure gave, The moderns of the ancients rave— Books he abandoned like the fair, His book-shelf ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... spirit, manhood's fire, Firm hand and eagle eye, Must he acquire who would aspire To ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... speak of those who calumniate art because they have never been favored by it. These persons only appreciate a possession by the trouble it takes to acquire it, and by the profit it brings: and how could they properly appreciate the silent labor of taste in the exterior and interior man? How evident it is that the accidental disadvantages attending liberal culture would make them lose sight of its essential ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... long been known," says Prof. Way, "that soils acquire fertility by exposure to the influence of the atmosphere—hence one of the uses of fallows. * * I find that clay is so greedy of ammonia, that if air, charged with carbonate of ammonia, so as to be highly pungent, is passed through a tube filled with small fragments of dry clay, ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... magic in this, that the receipt consisted in being more cunning than the rest of the world, and that this cunning was not without its serious consequences to its possessor; nay, it seemed to him as though to acquire it were to make a compact with Satan himself. His hand trembled, his pale face glowed, but his desire for more certain knowledge on the subject prevailed; and he told the stranger that, having heard that there was an ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... virtue of feudal relations, not by virtue of the spiritual authority of the Holy See or the vicarship of the Holy Father. The right to govern under feudalism was simply an estate, or property; and as the church could acquire and hold property, nothing prevented her holding fiefs, or her chief from being suzerain. The expressions in the papal briefs and bulls, taken in connection with the special relations existing between the Pope and emperor in the Middle Ages, and his relations with other states as their feudal sovereign, ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... attained with the greatest difficulty; we have it not by intuition, but acquire it by many unsuccessful trials and long experience. One gives a hint, and the other improves it; but prejudice and ignorance too often stand in the way: "That cannot be," or "I cannot believe that," has crushed many ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... from the eastward, we anchored above the Narrows. I was soon convinced that Captain Thompson was no driver. Although originally a Massachusetts man, he had lived long enough in southern climates to acquire indolent habits. When the wind was ahead, if on anchorage ground, he would let go an anchor, rather than take the trouble of beating to windward for what he considered the trifling object of saving a day or two in the passage! "Have patience and the wind will change," was his motto. He ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... shook his head. He was studying law. He needed money to complete his course. He needed many things he could acquire from James Minturn. ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... all!" stammered Manilov. "Only—pardon me—I do not quite comprehend you. You see, never has it fallen to my lot to acquire the brilliant polish which is, so to speak, manifest in your every movement. Nor have I ever been able to attain the art of expressing myself well. Consequently, although there is a possibility that in the—er—utterances ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... the Vaal River drifts, the condition of the Dutch subjects of Cape Colony and of the Orange Free State in the Transvaal, the Netherlands Railway tariffs as they operate against Cape Colony and the Free State, the Railway Agreement with Natal, the disputes with Portugal, the attempts to acquire native territory on the East Coast, the terms of the Netherlands Railway Concession, Selati Railway Concession, Dynamite Concession—in fact, all other concessions, monopolies, contracts, privileges, appointments, and rights, ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... prosperity. By means of the magnetic telegraph communication between the seaboard of the Atlantic and the lakes is more easy than between New York and Brooklyn, and with the whole west Cincinnati has acquired new importance. It can not but continue to advance and acquire yet more ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... objects of household use or ornament, which he had seen all his life without specially noticing them, seemed under the stress of his present mood to acquire a sudden importance and fix themselves indelibly in his memory. There, on a nail driven long before he was born, hung the little round lid- holder he had pieced together in his earliest years and presented to his mother in a gush of pride greater than any he had since experienced. ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... experiments, it seems probable, that the increase of weight which some metals acquire, by being first dissolved in acids, and then separated from them again by alkalis, proceeds from air furnished by the alkalis. And that in the aurum fulminans, which is prepared by the same means, this air adheres to the gold ...
— Experiments upon magnesia alba, Quicklime, and some other Alcaline Substances • Joseph Black
... for it is during these years that they are establishing themselves in the commercial world. As a general thing, but it is wise to remember that there is no rule to which there are not exceptions, by the time a man is twenty-seven his habits are formed and it is too late to acquire new ones. ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... obliged to sell it. The cultivation of estates by means of these people is, in the eyes of the Roman princes, an attack upon the rights of property. Their passion for incessant work is a disturbance of the delightful Roman tranquillity. The fortunes they acquire by personal exertion, energy, and activity, are a reproach by inference to that stagnant wealth which is the foundation of the State, and the ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... base of the series, and an articulate series with an articulate lying at its base. So there must be A SPECIAL CREATION AT LAST. Hear him: "There appears, indeed, to be a limit given to the adaptability of every organism by the type of its tribe or phylum. Thus, for example, no vertebrate animal can acquire the ventral nerve chord of articulate animals instead of the characteristic spinal marrow of the vertebrate animals."—History of Creation, vol. 1, p. 250. So the vertebrate must forever remain a vertebrate, and the articulate forever an articulate. Were they both evolved ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various
... after that about this valuable find. He had tried to sell it at first to the National Gallery; but though the Directors admired the work immensely, and admitted its genuineness, they regretted that the funds at their disposal this year did not permit them to acquire so important a canvas at a proper figure. South Kensington again was too poor; but the Doctor was in treaty at present with the Louvre and with Berlin. Still, it was a pity a fine work of art like that, once brought into the country, should be allowed to go out of ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all gently: for in the very 5 torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, 10 who, for ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... was chiefly the manner of his consideration—his future was the future of a great many young men who begin life under reasonably auspicious circumstances. That is to say, he would be a success financially and socially to as great an extent as he cared to aspire. He would acquire wealth and an expanding influence in his community. He would lead a tolerably pleasant domestic existence. He would be proud of his wife's beauty, her charm; he would derive a soothing contentment from her affection. He would take pleasure in friendships. In the end, of course, at some far-off, ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... present, and in many instances most absurdly, called. Morton could, however, lay a just claim to be called liberally educated. He went to college without contemplating to pursue either of the three learned professions, but merely to acquire a more intimate acquaintance with the classics, history, belles lettres, and mathematics, than it was then supposed he could obtain elsewhere. People begin to think differently at the present period, and have a faint sort of notion that a boy can become qualified for the every ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... us of primary fundamentals. 'Such, as without the knowledge and belief of which it is impossible to acquire that inward righteousness and true holiness which the christian religion aimeth at;—but the particulars of these, say you, I shall not enumerate, because [as will appear from what will be said anon] it is not needful to have a just table of them' ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of this war, we have been made to realize that even the private individual can not afford to live wrapped up in his own life and not take his part in public affairs. He must acquire the habit of taking his share of public responsibility. This signifies that a very great deal of very simple work, all pointing in the direction of a greater work, must be done in the way of educating, not engineers and scientific men only, but the general ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... ice" had increased to the thickness of an inch and a half on the morning of the 23d, and some snow which had fallen in the night served to cement the whole more firmly together. On a breeze springing up from the westward, however, it soon began to acquire a motion to leeward, and at half an hour before noon had slackened about the ships sufficiently to allow us to warp them out, which was accordingly done, and all sail made upon them. The wind having freshened up from the W.N.W., the ships' heads were got the right way, and, ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... matters, it was universally agreed, that we should have a part of the venison for supper, and the girls undertook the task with alacrity. 'I am sorry,' cried I, 'that we have no neighbour or stranger to take a part in this good cheer: feasts of this kind acquire a double relish from hospitality.'—'Bless me,' cried my wife, 'here comes our good friend Mr Burchell, that saved our Sophia, and that run you down fairly in the argument'—'Confute me in argument, child!' cried I. 'You mistake there, my dear. I believe there ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... body in Italy (or France) as if it were the Russian Church; it has no part or lot in the well-being of the Italian people, and, so far as the central power of it is concerned, the Vatican and its councils, its only purpose is to acquire political influence for its own political aggrandizement, to the exclusion from its field of operations of all other creeds. For the attainment of this end it works with the single-eyedness which Christ ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... two men—lithe, tall, and strong—are seen standing on the green height, their long hair confined by a wreath of leaves and flowers, while a similar wreath is twisted round the waist. With a keen, quick glance they measure the distance, and fall back some yards, in order to run and acquire the needful impetus. Suddenly one of them reappears, takes a flying leap from the rock, executes a somersault in mid-air, and feet foremost plunges into the pool beneath, to rise again almost immediately, and climb the steep river-bank with an air of serene indifference. His companion ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... stories of this unfortunate woman, as if she had been privy to the murder of one Mr. Hanson, who was killed in the Farthing-Pie House fields[3]; and attended this with so many odd circumstances and particulars, which tales of this kind acquire by often being repeated, that the then Ordinary of Newgate thought it became him to mention it to the prisoner. Mrs. Griffin appeared to be much affected at her character being thus stained by the fictions of idle suspicions ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... it please you, you are free, partly, because you are young. Your nation is like a fine, florid youth, full of fiery impulses, and hard to restrain; his strong hand nobly championing his heart. On all sides, freely he gives, and still seeks to acquire. The breath of his nostrils is like smoke in spring air; every tendon is electric with generous resolves. The oppressor he defies to his beard; the high walls of old opinions he scales with a bound. In the future he sees all the domes of ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... to clean the baker's windows for fifty cents a week, to deliver a newspaper over a regular route, to sell ice water on the Coney Island horse-cars—in short, to do any honorable work to overcome the burden of poverty. Meanwhile he strove to acquire what little education he could, but he probably learned more from his association with the prominent persons whom he met as a result of his early passion for autograph collecting. Such a boyhood brings home the important ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... a female ghost in long, clinging robes floating calmly through the sky, indicates that you will make progression in scientific studies and acquire wealth almost miraculously, but there will be an under note of ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... you are securing the full benefit of a vitality-stimulating process that ordinarily can be obtained only by going through a prolonged course of wrestling. There is no necessity for you to develop a "bull neck," but you should make the most strenuous efforts to acquire a sufficient development of the back of the neck to give it an arched appearance. The more nearly you can approximate a development of this character, the more vital will you become. And along with this superior power will come a similar improvement in ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... game has been taken up with considerable enthusiasm at many centres, and it is estimated that there are now at least forty thousand American golfers. There is, perhaps, no game that requires more patience to acquire satisfactorily than golf, and the preliminary steps cannot be gobbled. It is therefore doubtful whether the game will ever become extensively popular in a country with so much nervous electricity in the air. I heartily wish that this half-prophecy may prove utterly mistaken, for no better ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... He gained fair honors during his residence there, but, like Johnson, Swift, Goldsmith, and other eminent men, he did not distinguish himself so as to lead to any speculation as to his after greatness, although his elders said he was more anxious to acquire knowledge than to display it;—a valuable testimony. His domestic life was so pure, his friendships were so firm, his habits so completely those of a well-bred, well-born IRISH GENTLEMAN—mingling, as only Irish gentlemen can do, the suavity of the French with ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... at the front. But the threat which the Brigadier held over me, that if I went into the trenches or anywhere out of his immediate ken I should be sent back to No. 2 General Hospital, was something which weighed upon my spirits very heavily at times, and caused me to acquire great adroitness in the art of dodging. In fact, I made up my mind that three things had to be avoided if I wished to live through the campaign—sentries, cesspools, and generals. They were all sources of special danger, as everyone who has been at the front can testify. Over and over ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... their ancestors: he discoursed as pertinently on several of our neighbouring families as I could do, upon which I told him I was surprised at his so perfect knowledge of our families in England; his answer was, that from his infancy he had made it his business to acquire the knowledge of the laws, customs, and families of his country, so that he might not be reported a stranger when the Almighty pleased to call him thither. These and the like discourses held until word was brought that dinner was served; we ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... learning, and had made his chief aim in life to acquire wisdom. He knew that if his people were to become really great they must labor in the arts and letters and acquire knowledge from books. Practically all the books of that time were written in Latin which few could ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... prayer. The true prayer is a conversation, or intercourse, of man with God. The combination of meditating with vocal prayer is an excellent means of participating in Divine grace. Meditation makes us realize our needs, the faults which we should lay aside, and the virtues which we must acquire. Sin makes man blind, meditation opens his eyes. Vocal prayer alone is not of itself a protection from sin, daily experience teaches this. There are many who say vocal prayers and yet fall into grievous sin and remain in that state. The reason is because they ...
— The Excellence of the Rosary - Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin • M. J. Frings
... a good thing that you read. Acquire the habit of doing so. In time you will come to value that habit. Madame Beecher-Stowe has wrung tears from your eyes? I read her once, and six months ago read her again with the object of studying her—and ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... This difficulty was not to be overcome, and the monks set their ingenuity to work to discover another plan. The palace of Vauvert had never laboured under any imputation upon its character until they became its neighbours; but, somehow or other, it almost immediately afterwards began to acquire a bad name. Frightful shrieks were heard to proceed from it at night; blue, red, and green lights were suddenly seen to glimmer from the windows, and as suddenly to disappear; the clanking of chains was heard, and the howling as of persons in great pain. These disturbances continued ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... in a somewhat idealistic sense, is it with what we may term vital energy. Cells, organisms, even whole races, are subject to degeneration and decay. They cannot acquire higher powers, though they may gradually lose what they already have; as Bateson has recently told us that whatever evolution there is must be by loss and not by gain. Water very easily runs down hill; but cannot go up hill in and of itself. Just so with the types of organic life. It was not ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... They were pelted with stones by the natives. Sir John Davis denounced this incident as international outrage, and, in disregard of the accepted treaty provisions, proclaimed "that he would exact and acquire from the Chinese Government that British subjects should be as free from molestation and insult in China as they would be in England." On April 1, all the available forces at Hong Kong were summoned to Canton. Three steamships, bearing two regiments of soldiers, ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... the fruits of their exertion their liberty, and the rights of citizens. Let us at least be employed by you as slaves purchased for the service of this war, let us be allowed to combat with the enemy and acquire our freedom by fighting. Do you wish to make trial of our valour by sea, by land, in a pitched battle, or in the assault of towns? We ask as our portion all those enterprises which present the greatest difficulty and danger, that what ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... subjects. I am not afraid of ladies, young or old—far from it; but, I think, that in compliance with the custom of the present day, they allow too much freedom of speech and manner to marriageable men. Now, the fact is, that anything like this easy freedom I never could acquire; and as I am always afraid of going too far, I am generally, I dare say, considered ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... on chattering, and every now and then some familiar intonation, some expression of her mother's, a certain style of speaking and thinking, that resemblance of mind and manner which people acquire by living together, shook Lormerin from head to foot. All these things penetrated him, making the reopened wound of ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... walls. The brown cheeks and the rustic dress of some would inform him that they had but recently left the plough to labor in a not less toilsome field; the grave look, and the intermingling of garments of a more classic cut, would distinguish those who had begun to acquire the polish of their new residence; and the air of superiority, the paler cheek, the less robust form, the spectacles of green, and the dress, in general of threadbare black, would designate the highest class, who were understood to have acquired nearly all the science their Alma Mater could ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... well-dressed man and a dressy one," said Elaine, judicially; "and you may have noticed how seldom a dressy woman really knows how to dress. As an old lady of my acquaintance observed the other day, some people are born with a sense of how to clothe themselves, others acquire it, others look as if their clothes ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... name, standing and rank of the man, together with all the rights of a divorced woman. The illegitimate child has, in such cases, all the rights of children born in wedlock. We may await with curiosity to see whether the provisions of this bill, so hostile to woman, will acquire the force of a civil code of law in Germany. But retrogression is ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... was the help for this? You may say that she should have remained indoors, and not have subjected herself to his companionship. But the remaining indoors would not have brought her health, and it was health that she was staying in Boulogne to acquire, and the sooner it came the better pleased she would be, for she wanted to be at home with ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... every writer to acquire command of language, in order that he may be able to write with ease and readiness, and, upon any occasion, to form extempore discourses. Unless he can do this, he will never shine as a speaker, nor will he ever ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... law, the cakravartin and other uses of the wheel in Indian symbolism, are irrelevant, for the object to be explained is not really a wheel but a barrel, large or small, containing written prayers, or even a whole library. Those who turn the barrel acquire all the merit arising from repeating the prayers or reading the books. In Tibet this form of devotion is a national mania. People carry small prayer wheels in their hands as they walk and place large ones in rivers to be turned by the current. In China, ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... liaison of Madame Steno and her husband, she no more hesitated to open the latter's secretary than she later hesitated to open the desk of her brother. The correspondence which she read in that way was of a nature which exasperated her desire for vengeance almost to frenzy. For not only did she acquire the evidence of a happiness shared by them which humiliated in her the woman barren in all senses of the word, a stranger to voluptuousness as well as to maternity, but she gathered from it numerous proofs that the Countess cherished, with regard to ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... of this step were twofold: to open up new fields for the rapidly expanding German trade, and to divert German emigration in such a way that its steady stream would not drain the Fatherland of too large a proportion of its surplus population. From 1884 on Germany used every opportune moment to acquire colonial possessions. Though for many years none of the other powers seriously objected, it was quite natural that sooner or later Germany would find itself in conflict with the other colonizing powers, especially ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... kept under the domination or nominal authority of Turkey. Austria feared Russia's influence with the new countries of Servia, Roumania, Bulgaria and Montenegro, and therefore she desired to have this territory remain Turkish by influence, to the end that she might some day acquire part or all of it ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... it. Like as the heart in the midst of the body is principal and chief thing, and serveth to covet and desire that thing that is most necessary to every of thy members; so, my son, thou shalt be amongst thy people as chief and principal of them, to minister, imagine, and acquire those things that may be most beneficial unto them. And then thy people shall be obedient unto thee, to aid and succour thee, and in all things to accomplish thy commandments, like as thy ministers labour every one in his office to acquire and get that thing that thy heart ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... who advance, not they. You will soon acquire a practical knowledge of the laws of optics, and learn to calculate distances and sizes as well as the rest ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... improper. To find a girl like Marcella, who did not put him either in a fever or a panic of sexuality was supremely reassuring: she seemed to him like a nice man friend might be—though he never had been able to acquire a man friend. He was intensely grateful to her for marrying him: he was not her lover; he was her dependent: he was treating her as he might have treated the old Dean at the hospital, or as her father had treated God. But—his conventional sense told him to kiss ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... in the course of such a life as was At once adventurous and contemplative, Men who partake all passions as they pass, Acquire the deep and bitter power to give[en] Their images again as in a glass, And in such colours that they seem to live; You may do right forbidding them to show 'em, But spoil (I think) a ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... true in a just and philosophical way of thinking, it is certain it is not the philosophy of our passions; but that many things operate upon them by means of the idea and supposition of power, independent of its actual exercise. We are pleased when we acquire an ability of procuring pleasure, and are displeased when another acquires a power of giving pain. This is evident from experience; but in order to give a just explication of the matter, and account for this satisfaction and uneasiness, we must ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... other early Latin writers, whose unpruned vigour was distasteful to one who had already begun to appreciate the purer and not less vigorous style of Homer and other Greek authors. Horace's father took care that he should acquire all the accomplishments of a Roman gentleman, in which music and rhetoric were, as a matter of course, included. But, what was of still more importance during this critical period of the future poet's first introduction to the seductions of the capital, he enjoyed the advantages ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... that is onerous and exacting. We know that the duties of wife and mother require an intelligence which is rendered efficient only by maturity and experience. We know that many, if not most, young wives acquire habits which undermine their health and their morals unwittingly, and we also know that the product of this inefficiency results in the decadence and the [3] degeneration ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... most remarkable. The silver trout is less heavily built, the head is smaller and sharper, the scales are smaller in size, and the stripe on the side is violet instead of pink. There is only one alternative opinion, namely, that for an unknown reason some rainbows acquire this peculiar silvery appearance. Whatever may be the final decision, the fact still remains that a fish of a different type from the ordinary rainbow is common in these waters, and is well deserving of a description. The back is green, with the usual black spots, the sides and belly ...
— Fishing in British Columbia - With a Chapter on Tuna Fishing at Santa Catalina • Thomas Wilson Lambert
... go as soon as peace would allow him. Meanwhile he wished to join his elder brother, who had removed to London, and was now engaged with his uncle in the manufacture of musical instruments. In London he thought he could acquire a knowledge of English, and save from his wages the amount necessary to pay his passage from England to America. He could reach some of the seaports of the Continent by walking. But he needed money to pay his passage from there to Great Britain. His determination thus formed, he made no secret ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... that point of view I was bound to concur. I did not like to suggest to her that before entering upon a difficult task it would be better for young men to ACQUIRE knowledge and experience: that is so unpopular ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... power of criticism, but what I lack most is what Henry possesses above all men: equanimity, moderation, self-control and the authority that comes from a perfect sense of proportion. I can only pray that I am not too old or too stationary to acquire these. ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... after a series of the most strange tergiversations. Spain, reduced to feebleness, and menaced with invasion by France, showed no alacrity to meet Charles's overtures for an offensive treaty. Van Galen, bishop of Munster, a restless prelate, was the only ally he could acquire. This bishop, at the head of a tumultuous force of twenty thousand men, penetrated into Friesland; but six thousand French were despatched by Louis to the assistance of the republic, and this ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... the bold explorers made their way as far north as the forks of the Saskatchewan; and by 1743 the distant peaks of the Rocky Mountains had rewarded the vision of a younger La Verendrye. To no avail: for this wide dominion was destined to pass to hands firmer to hold, if slower to acquire. ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... learn duly to appreciate our friends. I weighed the defects of mine against its good qualities, and rejoiced that the latter had greatly the preponderance. She was a friend on whom I might rely in case of need. Such a conviction is necessary to the captain: through it alone can his actions acquire the decision and certainty so indispensable in time of danger, and so essential to success. In the course of four-and-twenty hours the storm abated; a favourable wind again swelled our sails, and we enjoyed it doubly after the little troubles we had undergone. At daybreak on the 8th of ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... nearer. Calder was the one man in Wadi Halfa who could claim something like intimacy with Durrance. Despite their difference in rank there was no great disparity in age between the two men, and from the first when Calder had come inexperienced and fresh from England, but with a great ardour to acquire a comprehensive experience, Durrance in his reticent way had been at pains to show the newcomer considerable friendship. Calder, therefore, ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... into fragments; and nowhere outside of South Carolina did it acquire sufficient unanimity and power to impart any great momentum to the revolutionary design. Besides, in the absence of clear and deep convictions, the question itself was of such a nature, that strong passions could not easily spring from it. The interests involved were not necessarily in conflict; ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... mature; what temptations his power and bloody instincts may present to him; what evil resorts he may be driven to, in an ungrateful world, when he has become case-hardened and impenetrable to outward impressions; or, in short, what contempt he may acquire for the fiddlers and cabbage-leaves of his early days. And what he may do in those vast lagoons where he is undoubtedly master, or in the black depths of the St. Johns, where the water hides the blood he may shed, and the long moss screens him from the tiger; what orgies he may celebrate, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... number of canoes, and inhabitants, which it might contain: sixty-seven canoes, and 147 people were counted. No estimate, however, of even tolerable accuracy, can be drawn from so imperfect a datum; though it was perhaps the best in our power to acquire. ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... our feelings,' added Sir Jasper, 'but it is our duty to bring up our own child in her natural station; and though we know she would learn nothing but good in your family, I cannot think it well that a girl should acquire habits, and be used to society ways and of life beyond those which she ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her study patiently, and, failing to acquire the secret of the nameless grace she sought, among the youthful company who were assembled in the house, often walked out alone, in the early morning, among the children of the poor. But still she ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... name is Mukkun, which means butter, and of this commodity I believe he absorbs as much as he can honestly or dishonestly come by. How else does the surface of him acquire that glossy, oleaginous appearance, as if he would take fire easily and burn well? I wish we could do without him! The centre of his influence, a small room in the suburbs of the dining-room, which he calls the dispence, or dispence-khana, is a place ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... find the money necessary to build the nineteen hundred miles remaining of the main line, to build or acquire necessary branches and ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... Jones, this medal, as well in consideration of the distinguished marks of approbation which His Majesty has pleased to confer upon that officer, as from a sense of his merit: And, that as it is his earnest desire to acquire greater knowledge in his profession, it would be acceptable to Congress, that His Majesty would be pleased to permit him to embark with his fleets of evolution, convinced that he can no where else so well acquire that knowledge ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... that the reasoning of that great chieftain took this shape: "A Commonwealth must have laws. The Goths, accustomed for generations to their tameless freedom, have not acquired the habit of obedience to the laws. Till they acquire that habit, the administration of the State must be left in Roman hands, and all the authority of the King must be used in defence ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... assisted my friends and have shown substantial gratitude to many of my instructors, on more than one occasion going so far as to provide dowries for their daughters. Nay, I should not have hesitated to expend every farthing of my patrimony, if so I might acquire, what is far better, a contempt for it. But as for you, Aemilianus, and ignorant boors of your kidney, in your case the fortune makes the man. You are like barren and blasted trees that produce no fruit, but are valued only for the timber that ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... myself in such simple ways as were in vogue among the collegians. But coming as I did, alone, from a small boarding-school, proved to be a great disadvantage, for I had all my friends to make after my arrival and I had neither the means nor the address to acquire ready-made social distinction. Thus it happened that I was very lonely during my first years in Cambridge; missed the genial companionship of my old friends, the Quirks, and seized every opportunity that offered for going ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... "Don't acquire the habit of hiding your sins from people," replied Sasha, with a smile. "Have you perhaps ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... first visited Argentina it was little more than an unknown land, whose inhabitants had no ambition, and no desire to acquire wealth—except at the expense of broken heads. There was a standard of wealth, but it lay in the number of cattle owned; land was of little value, save for feeding cattle, and therefore counted for naught, but cattle could be boiled down for tallow; bones and hides were also marketable ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... leaving home, and clung with a distressing tenacity to her round of daily studies, shortening her brief time of exercise, and seeming anxious to goad herself into the attainment of the utmost amount of knowledge which it was possible for her to acquire, grudging every minute as lost and wasted time that was not given to study. To shine had become with her the one absorbing object; to shine, not, alas! for Christ, but for self, for the world, that she might gain ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... couldn't have out of my sight. It was just that. I never was so proud of anything I learned at college as I was when the gruff man who had my special training in charge told me I would make a stenographer. Not all of them did, he said. Some never could get hold of it, or acquire any speed or accuracy. Just give me a year, and I'll put down your thoughts before ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... hundred-weight each, in which state it leaves the mine. The casks are conveyed down the side of the mountain in a curious manner. Each cask is fixed upon a light sledge with two wheels, and a man, who is well used to the precipitous path, walks down in front of the sledge, taking care that it does not acquire momentum enough to overpower him. When the cask has been thus guided safely to the bottom, the man carries the sledge up hill upon his shoulders, and prepares ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... His deportment was serious, and his own attendance at preaching and prayer-meetings was regular. His little boy, about seven years old, had already learnt to read, and he now became the instructor of his parents, who were both so eager to acquire knowledge, that their young teacher would often fall asleep in the midst of ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... sir; very much more, and I have taken steps to acquire it. For nearly two years I have regularly attended the sessions of the courts, both in St. Mary's county and here in the city, and in that time have learned something of the practice of ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... owes its commencement to the repeated solicitations of several Ladies and Gentlemen, Subscribers to the Author's BOTANIC GARDEN, who were frequently lamenting the want of a work, which might enable them, not only to acquire a systematic knowledge of the Foreign Plants growing in their gardens, but which might at the same time afford them the best information respecting their culture—in fact, a work, in which Botany and Gardening (so far as relates to the culture of ornamental ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. I - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... his fever for gain. He had but one child. The second Reuben built upon the foundations this afforded him, a fortune as much larger than the first as the rapid growth and increasing capabilities of the country gave him enlarging opportunities to acquire. It was no longer necessary to deal with savages: his powers were called upon to cope with those of white men who came to a new country to struggle for livelihood and fortune. Some were shrewd, some were desperate, some were dishonest. But shrewdness never outwitted, ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the Burmese is to acquire merit for their next incarnation by good works done in this life. The bestowal of alms, offerings of rice to priests, the founding of a monastery, erection of pagodas, with which the country is crowded, the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... this, rather derisive on the part of all but the Major; but when Chas, glancing up from his paper, remarked crisply: "Aw, Miss Mamie! Like to speak to you a minute, please!"—the merriment seemed mysteriously to acquire a more genuine ring. Carlisle politely inquired who Miss ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... very beginning of our life, yet it can nevertheless become through habituation associated with other thoughts; this he endeavours to prove in the Passions de l'ame, I. 50. He thence concludes, that there is no soul so weak, that it cannot, under proper direction, acquire absolute power over its passions. For passions as defined by him are "perceptions, or feelings, or disturbances of the soul, which are referred to the soul as species, and which (mark the expression) are produced, preserved, ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... say. Persons who live in countries where there are many colored persons acquire an instinctive means of judging that cannot be ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... transmitted by sense-channels over the nerves of sense, and received by a conscious brain. A baby born without sight, hearing, taste, smell, or touch would remain a mere bit of clay. He could have no awareness. But so long as any one sense channel remains open the mind may acquire some knowledge. ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... realization comes like a lightning flash the moment the attention is directed toward it, while in other cases the Candidates find it necessary to follow a rigorous course of training before they acquire the realization in consciousness. ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... tramped about the fields, talking artificial manure and subsoil drainage with the men. Yet neither she nor her husband was to blame. The young Italian had but followed the teachings of his family, which decreed that the only honorable way for an aristocrat to acquire wealth was to marry it. The American wife honestly tried to do her duty in this new position, naively thinking she could engraft transatlantic "go" upon the indolent Italian character. Her work was in vain; she made herself ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... would sound like affectation to others, but will not to you. It would be affected, even to you, to say I am indifferent to fame. I certainly am not, but I am indifferent to almost anything I have done to acquire it. The greater part are mere compilations; and no wonder they are, as you say, incorrect, when they are commonly written with people in the room, as "Richard"[1] and the "Noble Authors" were. But I doubt there is a more intrinsic fault in ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... acquire courage, however, as they noted the small number of the intruders, and the fact that the latter took no notice of them, and presently, when the mob which had followed the English from the wharf swung into the street and began to explain in response ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... own. Her entire isolation, from her foundation, gave her an independent government and customs peculiar to herself, but at the same time her people, even in their earliest and most precarious struggles, were no barbarians who had slowly to acquire the arts of civilised life. Among the refugees were persons of high birth and great traditions, and they brought with them to the first crazy settlement on the lagoons some political training and some idea of how to reconstruct their shattered social fabric. ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... citizens. While rendering the peasant capable of possessing, the new regime imposed upon him the obligations of defending his actual or potential possessions. Recourse to arms is a necessity alike for whomsoever acquires or wishes to acquire territory. Hardly had the Frenchman come to enjoy the rights of a man and of a citizen, hardly had he entered into possession or thought he might enter into possession of a home and lands of his own, when the armies of the Coalition arrived "to drive him back to ancient slavery." Then ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... Durand, "was very anxious to acquire great power over Marie Louise, and she might have been successful had she taken, more precautions. Talleyrand said of her that she had the head of a Cromwell on the body of a pretty woman. Endowed by nature with a marked character, ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... task. So far as disposition was concerned the pupil was not disappointing. Endymion was of an affectionate disposition and inclined to treat his father with deference. He was gentle and docile; but he did not acquire knowledge with facility, and was remarkably deficient in that previous information on which his father counted. The other pupil was of a different temperament. She learned with a glance, and remembered with extraordinary tenacity everything she had acquired. But she was neither ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... and virtue—that, in fine, the happiness of the people of these States, under the auspices of liberty, may be made complete, by so careful a preservation and so prudent a use of this blessing, as will acquire to them the glory of recommending it to the applause, the affection, and the adoption of every nation which is yet ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... acquired by such precocious employment of young women, are not less destructive of their ultimate utility and respectability in life. Habituated from their earliest years to one undeviating mechanical employment, they acquire great skill in it, but grow up utterly ignorant of any thing else. We speak not of ignorance of reading or writing, but of ignorance in still more momentous particulars, with reference to their usefulness in life as wives and mothers. They can neither ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... stammer was an inherited one, both the father and grandfather having been inveterate stammerers. Be that as it may, their defective enunciation, practiced in the presence of the boy whose case I am describing, caused the boy himself to acquire a habit of imperfect enunciation which took the form of simple stuttering and which all the home efforts of his mother and father had failed to eradicate. At the time he was brought to me, I gave him the usual ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue |
