"Approximation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Continental, starting from Descartes, and the English, which followed Bacon, had reached the extreme of divergence and opposition, Spinoza was a rationalistic pantheist, Locke, an empirical individualist. With Leibnitz a twofold approximation begins. As a rationalist he sides with Spinoza against Locke, as an individualist with Locke against Spinoza. But he not only separated rationalism from pantheism, but also qualified it by the recognition (which his historical tendencies had of themselves suggested to him) of a relative justification ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... language, in the series of their imitations of natural objects. For there is a certain order or rhythm belonging to each of these classes of mimetic representation, from which the hearer and the spectator receive an intenser and purer pleasure than from any other: the sense of an approximation to this order has been called taste by modern writers. Every man in the infancy of art observes an order which approximates more or less closely to that from which this highest delight results: but the diversity is not sufficiently marked, as that its gradations should ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... before the first month of my banishment expired, had got the length of an invitation to tea, in her own snuggery—an honour never known to be bestowed on any before, with the exception of Father Malachi Brennan, her ghostly adviser; and even he, it is said, never ventured on such an approximation to intimacy, until he was, in Kilrush phrase, "half screwed," thereby meaning more than half tipsy. From time to time thus, I learned from my hostess such particulars of the country and its inhabitants as I was desirous of hearing; and ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... of them zealous on behalf of his plan, fertile in expedients to test its correctness, and untiring in his efforts to make known its success—each of them merciless in his criticism on the rest; there cannot fail, by composition of forces, to be a gradual approximation of all towards the right course. Whatever portion of the normal method any one has discovered, must, by the constant exhibition of its results, force itself into adoption; whatever wrong practices he has joined with it must, by repeated experiment ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... philosophy of the future will be distinguished by their mastery of the realm of mind, and the closer approximation of the human to the Divine, not only in ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... the faithful carrying out of the principles of constitutional government is a departure from the American model, not an approximation to it, and, therefore, a departure from republicanism in its only ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... the great bulk. Marignac assumes, indeed, partial decomposition, but the difficulties which he encountered in making the experiments, on the results of which his opinion rests, were so great that he himself accords to the numbers obtained by him only the value of a rough approximation. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... link at and near the dead-points. The arc of the pitch-curves through which the teeth must extend will vary with their eccentricity; but in many cases it would not be greater than that which in the approximation may be struck about one centre; so that, in fact, it would not be necessary to go through the process of rectifying and subdividing the quarter of the ellipse at all, as in this case it can make no possible difference whether the spacing adopted for the teeth to ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... wings give much of the character, and these organs may be much modified both in form and colour without interfering with their special functions. Again, the number of species of insects is so great, and there is such diversity of form and proportion in every group, that the chances of an accidental approximation in size, form, and colour, of one insect to another of a different group, are very considerable; and it is these chance approximations that furnish the basis of mimicry, to be continually advanced and perfected by the survival of those varieties only which ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... a free translation of the Indian words and an approximation to the tune. The last note in this, as in the lullaby I noted above, is unmusical ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... in amazement. "But," he exclaims, "you must admit that. By what theory of approximation can you show that we do not attain to such perfectibility of number; unless you would say, as I have heard advanced by the Budengen school, that the expression is but a formula adapted to our ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... of an allied group of slightly differing durations. This is one instance of the indeterminateness of sense-awareness. Exactness is an ideal of thought, and is only realised in experience by the selection of a route of approximation. ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... me back from my momentary contemplation of those popular effigies inflated by old newspapers and windy report, the earthly great. He sets me thinking of more personal and intimate applications, of the human beings one knows with a certain approximation to real knowledge, of the actual common substance of life. He turns me to the thought of rivalries and tendernesses, of differences and disappointments. I am suddenly brought painfully against the things that might have been. What if instead of that Utopia ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... notwithstanding suggests something like two months between the first and second acts, for in the first, Hamlet says his father has not been dead two months. 24. We are not bound to take it for more than a rough approximation; Ophelia would make the best of things for the queen, who ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... Berkley, with the same faint, but, to Marston, exquisitely provoking approximation to sarcasm. "There is, as you say, a very charming simplicity. Don't ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Proverbs display a larger compass of thought and experience than seem to belong either to a Jew or a king. * Note: Rosenmuller, arguing from the difference of style from that of the greater part of the book of Proverbs, and from its nearer approximation to the Aramaic dialect than any book of the Old Testament, assigns the Ecclesiastes to some period between Nehemiah and Alexander the Great Schol. in Vet. Test. ix. Proemium ad ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... perception, that sensibility to gradation, which is the essence of tact and taste, and the necessary concomitant of wit. All his subtlety is reserved for the region of metaphysics. For Identitat in the abstract no one can have an acuter vision, but in the concrete he is satisfied with a very loose approximation. He has the finest nose for Empirismus in philosophical doctrine, but the presence of more or less tobacco smoke in the air he breathes is imperceptible to him. To the typical German—Vetter Michel—it is indifferent whether his door-lock will catch, whether his teacup be more or less ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... more pleasing and interesting forms of this moral malady than that which I have been depicting: I have spoken of the effect of intellectual culture on proud natures; but it will show to greater advantage, yet with as little approximation to religious faith, in amiable and unaffected minds. Observe, Gentlemen, the heresy, as it may be called, of which I speak, is the substitution of a moral sense or taste for conscience in the true meaning of the word; now this error may ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... its fortunes, complicated in its history, falling to rise again, receding here to expand there, and harassing and oppressing the world for at least a long 800 years. And lastly comes the Russian Empire, in which the Tartar element is prominent, whether in its pure blood or in the Slavonian approximation, and which comprises a population of many millions, gradually moulded into one in the course of centuries, ever growing, never wavering, looking eagerly to the South and to an unfulfilled destiny, and possessing both the energy of barbarism in its subjects and the subtlety ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... the possible competitors will become real and active ones. These three influences may conceivably act without obstruction or may be hindered and deprived of much of their power. In actual life they are subjected to hindrances, and whether they shall hereafter insure a certain approximation to the general state which a perfectly free competition would insure or whether the economic condition of the world shall be permitted to drift far from that normal state, depends on the success which governments will have in reducing ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... of thinking, but his point of view in general was distinctly Jewish. He gathered together all that was best in the earlier teachings of his race. In many ways he represents an advance beyond all that had gone before and a close approximation to the spirit and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. The God of his faith was omnipotent, majestic, omniscient, just, and merciful. He was the God of all mankind, although it was through Israel that he especially revealed himself. Ben Sira did not, like Ezekiel, think of God as far removed ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... depend upon the efforts of enlightened men in their private capacity. "All culture begins with private men and spreads outward from them. Simply through the efforts of persons of enlarged inclinations, who are capable of grasping the ideal of a future better condition, is the gradual approximation of human nature to its end possible. Rulers are simply interested in such training as will make their subjects better tools for their own intentions." Even the subsidy by rulers of privately conducted schools must be carefully safeguarded. For the rulers' ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... middle of the room. Our presence did not interrupt him, nor even incommode him or modify his fervor. Ten or twelve feet in front of him was the idol, a small figure in a sitting posture. It had the pinkish look of a wax doll, but lacked the doll's roundness of limb and approximation to correctness of form and justness of proportion. Mr. Gandhi explained every thing to us. He was delegate to the Chicago Fair Congress of Religions. It was lucidly done, in masterly English, but in time it faded from me, and now I have nothing left of that episode ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... group themselves better around the calculated results than around those of the first specimen analysed. It must be remembered that substances are rarely found pure either in nature or in the arts; so that in most cases the formula only gives an approximation to the truth. In the case of hydrated salts there is generally a difficulty in getting the salt with exactly the ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... passed the pillar must go on, and the coming man go back. At the Goose Pool and Early Nook, it was common for these coaches to stop; and there, as Jonathan would say, passengers and coachmen 'liquored.' One coach, introduced by an innkeeper, was a compound of two mourning coaches, an approximation to the real railway coach, which still adheres, with multiplying exceptions, to the stage coach type. One Dixon, who drove the 'Experiment' between Darlington and Shildon, is the inventor of carriage lighting on the rail. On a dark winter night, having compassion on his passengers, ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... the ball, a perfect type of wholeness and unity, we are led through diversity, as shown in the three solids of the second gift, toward divisibility in the Building Gifts, and approximation to surface in the sixth gift. The next move in advance is the partial abstraction of surface, shown in the tablets of ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... I adhere strictly to the opinion I then gave; but, since that period, an event has occurred which has shewn, in the clearest manner, that it is entirely out of our power, even in time of peace, to obtain a free trade in corn, or an approximation towards it, whatever may be ...
— The Grounds of an Opinion on the Policy of Restricting the Importation of Foreign Corn: intended as an appendix to "Observations on the corn laws" • Thomas Malthus
... exact physical counterpart of a human being and could live undetected on our worlds for the several years required to prepare for the attack. They were amazingly successful. Each group of cells in the long series which began moving towards an approximation of the human pattern was developed only far enough to initiate the greatest favorable shift possible at that point in its genetic structure. Cell generations may have followed each other within hours in this manner, for over ...
— The Other Likeness • James H. Schmitz
... Syria, I was on terms of close intimacy with him, and the first sign I gave of possessing any brains at all was that I appeared to appreciate a man who was either the absolute sage, or the nearest possible approximation to such a character. For, of all those who nowadays call themselves philosophers, you will hardly find another to match him in the qualities of sincerity and truth. I say nothing of the physical fortitude with which he bears the extremes both of summer and winter, or of the way ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... — N. relation, bearing, reference, connection, concern, cognation; correlation &c 12; analogy; similarity &c 17; affinity, homology, alliance, homogeneity, association; approximation &c (nearness) 197; filiation &c (consanguinity) 11; interest; relevancy &c 23; dependency, relationship, relative position. comparison &c 464; ratio, proportion. link, tie, bond of union. V. be related &c adj.; have a relation &c n.; relate to, refer to; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... accuracy with regard to the number of persons employed on the works at any given time was, for obvious reasons, not to be attained. The figures given above from the official returns are, therefore, only an approximation to the truth, but they may be ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... attempt to adapt the machine to changing conditions. Think what would have happened had we actually remained stolidly faithful to every intention of the Fathers. Think what would happen if every statute were enforced. By the sheer force of circumstances we have twisted constitutions and laws to some approximation of our needs. A changing country has managed to live in spite of a static government machine. Perhaps Bernard Shaw was right when he said that "the famous Constitution survives only because whenever any corner of it gets into the way ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... small creatures might easily be conveyed among the branches or in the crevices of trees uprooted by floods and carried down to the sea, and then floated to a shore many miles distant. That no actual land connection with, or very close approximation to, an Asiatic island has occurred in recent times, is sufficiently proved by the fact that no squirrel, pig, civet, or other widespread mammal of the Eastern hemisphere has been able ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... month ago (September, 1883), I determined to put to the test the statement of some of our theorists, that the surface of a rotating fluid is either a parabola or a hyperbola. I found by experiment that it is neither, but an approximation to the tractrix (a modification of the catenary), if anything definite; as indeed one, on thinking over the matter, might feel certain it would be—the tractrix being the curve ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... only proposed as a rough approximation, let us omit the odd hundreds, and we have two thousand pounds expended in plates only on ONE branch of science, and for one person! Without calling in question the importance of the discoveries contained in those papers, it may be permitted to doubt whether such a large sum might not have ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... the great interests of Political Economy have at all suffered for want of such a measure, which at best would end in answering a few questions of unprofitable curiosity; whilst, on the other hand, without a knowledge of the ground on which value depends, or without some approximation to it, Political Economy could not exist at all, except as ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... least with very few interruptions, from beings of more simple to those of more compound structure; and in proportion as the complexity of their organization increases, the number and dignity of their faculties increase also. Among plants a similar approximation to a graduated scale of being is apparent. Secondly, it appears, from geological observations, that plants and animals of more simple organization existed on the globe before the appearance of those of more compound ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... however, not absolutely correct. It is called the "dead-reckoning," and is only an approximation to the truth, because allowance has to be made for leeway, which can only be guessed at. Allowance has also to be made for variations in the rate of sailing in each hour, for the winds do not always blow with exactly ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... not given to man; but the end here specified—namely, an equality of opportunity which is relative—is the only kind of equality which is even theoretically possible; and it is one, moreover, to which a constant approximation can be made. The absolute equality which is contemplated by socialists, and by others who are more or less vaguely influenced by socialistic sentiment, is, on the contrary, an ideal which either could not be realised at all, or which, in proportion as it was realised, would be ruinous ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... ever made—of the elk in and around the Yellowstone Park, revealed the real number of that largest contingent. By taking those results, and Mr. Seton's figures for elk outside the United States, we obtain the following very close approximation of the wild elk alive in North America ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... joined by addition, or, that there is a self-corroborative chain of evidence. Its type is: Most A are B; most C are B; this is both an A and a C; therefore it is probably a B. On the other hand, when the subsequent approximation or approximations is or are applicable only by virtue of the application of the first, this is joining two (or more) probabilities, by way of Deduction, which produces a self-infirmative chain; and ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... suggesting a rule for husbands. A man should always remember that a woman's regard for him is founded on her impressions when seeing him at his best. Even granting that she has no great illusions about men in general, he at his best is at least an approximation to her ideal—and it is his chief duty never to fall below the standard he set for himself in making his most cogent appeal. Consequently he should continue through the years to be scrupulous about his personal appearance and his ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... Academician, announced as a representation of Moses sustained by Aaron and Hur, during the discomfiture of Amalek. In the entire range of the Pentateuch, there is no other scene (in which the visible agents are mortal only) requiring so much knowledge and thought to reach even a distant approximation to the probabilities of the fact. One saw in a moment that the painter was both powerful and simple, after a sort; that he had really sought for a vital conception, and had originally and earnestly read his text, and formed his conception. And one saw also in a moment that he had chanced upon this ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... the galaxy must—by definition—be the toughest, meanest, nastiest of all. If Pyrrus wasn't it ... it was an awfully good approximation! ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... style, and the air of reality which pervades it, have made it a favorite with every age. In his memorials of Socrates, he records the conversations of a man whom he had admired and listened to, but whom he did not understand. In the language of Xenophon we find the first approximation to the common dialect, which became afterwards the universal language of Greece. He wrote several other works, in which, however, no development of one great and pervading idea can be found; but in all of them there is a singular clearness ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Another approximation to the truth would be to say that an American is really not ashamed of curiosity. It is not so simple as it looks. Men will carry off curiosity with various kinds of laughter and bravado, just as they will carry off drunkenness or bankruptcy. But very few people are really proud of lying ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... approximately. He never fully grasped the idea of the perpendicular as the true index of measurement for the triangle, but based his calculations upon measurements of the actual side of that figure. Nevertheless, he had learned to square the circle with a close approximation to the truth, and, in general, his measurement sufficed for all his practical needs. Just how much of the geometrical knowledge which added to the fame of Thales was borrowed directly from the Egyptians, and how much he actually created we cannot be sure. Nor is the question ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... modern, so far as it has remained true to its own spirit, we observe a keen struggle to unite the two, as being naturally in opposition to each other. The Grecian executed what it proposed in the utmost perfection; but the modern can only do justice to its endeavours after what is infinite by approximation; and, from a certain appearance of imperfection, is in greater danger of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... is difficult," he said, "to calculate exactly; perhaps even impossible, since during these three stormy days I have been unable to keep any account of the rate or direction of the raft; but still we may get an approximation." ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... controlling and ennobling influence, ranks only as an incident. It comes after the main impression of his character has been given. Beyond doubt he represents a real type; no error has been made in this respect; his failure to win higher favour with us arises from his too close approximation to the common clay. There is absent just that small element of the ideal with which even the sternest of the apostles of realism in letters have found it impracticable ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... fact that, when free of all external constraint, growth gains on waste. Indeed, even in the case of old age, the statement remains essentially true, for the phenomena then displayed point to a breakdown of the functioning power of the cell, an approximation to configurations incapable of assimilation. It is not as if life showed in these phenomena that its conditions could obtain in the midst of abundance, and yet its law be suspended; but as if they represented a degradation of the very ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... he could discover that the person with whom Hayraddin was now conversing was one of his own tribe, and at the same time he perceived, to his great disappointment, that no approximation could enable him to comprehend their language, which was totally unknown to him. They laughed much, and as Hayraddin made a sign of skipping about, and ended by rubbing his shoulder with his hand, Durward had no doubt that he was relating the story of the bastinading which he ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... of six miles, live in harmony with each other. The Ahnahaways understand in part the language of the Minnetarees: the dialect of the Mandans differs widely from both; but their long residence together has insensibly blended their manners, and occasioned some approximation in language, particularly as to objects of daily occurrence and ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... solid and very soon cold. In recent years, the theory universally accepted has been that the supply of heat is kept up by the continual contraction of the sun, by mutual gravitation of its parts as it cools off. This theory has the advantage of enabling us to calculate, with some approximation to exactness, at what rate the sun must be contracting in order to keep up the supply of heat which it radiates. On this theory, it must, ten millions of years ago, have had twice its present diameter, while less than twenty millions of years ago it could not have existed except ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... be ripe for taking the whole step, giving up these four points also, and making the reformation complete; and the rather, as in the present series and the one to be proposed, there would be so many points of very near approximation, as, aided in the same manner by tables, would not increase their difficulties, perhaps, indeed, would lessen them by the greater simplicity of the links by which the several members of the system are connected together. Perhaps, however, I was ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... me to be incompatible with the public interests of the country. While it is desirable that Territories, when sufficiently matured, should be organized as States, yet the spirit of the Constitution seems to require that there should be an approximation toward equality among the several States composing the Union. No State can have less or more than two Senators in Congress. The largest State has a population of 4,000,000; several of the States have a population exceeding ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... that of her frail sister. The humiliating truth that many of our female fashions are originated by those whose position we the most regret, and are then carefully copied by all classes of women in our country, does not obtain credence among Japanese women, to whom even the slightest approximation in the style of hair- dressing, ornament, or fashion of ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... at random, are all adapted to the places at which they are found—the narrative leads to them by regular approximation, or they are suggested by the subject and occasion which it draws forth. To introduce a given story into the body of a writing without abruptness, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... Humboldt, "to form an exact enumeration of the cattle in the Pampas, or even to give an approximation to it, so immensely have they augmented during the three centuries which have elapsed since they were first introduced; but some idea of their number may be formed from the following facts in regard to such ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... vindication of polyerotism ever phrased: "Ce n'etait pas que je n'aimasse les autres: mais j'avais encore, outre leur place, celle-ci vide dans mon ame." And the soul of Hylas, like Nature herself, abhorred a vacuum! (This approximation is not intended as "new and original": but it was some time after making it that I recovered, in Notre Dame de Paris, a forgotten anticipation ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... list show that it was rarely attained. The appearance of the works in France seems to have in most cases preceded that in Germany; in the case of the Tarantelle, Op. 43, I found the English edition first advertised (October 28, 1841). Generally there was approximation if not simultaneity. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... gravity to the formative impulse in animated bodies;" but the preoccupation of his vast mind, and the hold of pre-existing ideas, offered difficulties to the solution of the problem. But, note the approximation of his ideas to those herein expressed, he said: "The sun, as the main source of light and heat, must be able to call forth and animate magnetic forces on our planet." Unfortunately, however, he continues thus: "and more especially in the ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... mostly anonymous and not precisely datable, have to do with the exploits of heroes who are the same as those that appear in the Nibelungen Lay or in some way related to them. Some of the poems are written in the Nibelungen meter, or a close approximation to it, others in short rimed couplets, still others in a peculiar stanza of twelve lines. The most of them relate to Dietrich of Bern, the doughtiest and most eminent of all the saga-heroes. Of the selections below No. 3 is given in ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... iron chain which his jailer has forged for his safe keeping. This is not union; and the term "United Kingdom" is in fact a most miserable misnomer. Unity requires something more than a mere material approximation. I believe it to be possible that England and Ireland may become united; and if ever this should be accomplished, let no man forget that the first link in the golden chain issued from the hands of the right ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... opportunity to satisfy the personal spontaneous claims of her own individual nature. Just as the readjustment of Labour is really only an approach to the long recognised ideals of Democracy, so the readjustment of the Home, far from being subversive or revolutionary, is merely an approximation to the ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... Probability, on the supposition that a certain number of Facts from which a Law is derived include substantially all that the whole range of Phenomena belonging to the given sphere would represent. Any possible application of the Inductive Method is, therefore, only a nearer or more remote approximation to an Exactitude and Certainty which the Method ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... distance from the earth must have been increased by some millions of miles. He was rather disposed to suspect that it was not the earth's satellite at all, but some planet with its apparent magnitude greatly enlarged by its approximation to the earth. Taking up the powerful field-glass which he was accustomed to use in his surveying operations, he proceeded to investigate more carefully the luminous orb. But he failed to trace any of the lineaments, supposed ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... the Doctor, doffing his hat, "how would you recofer from a blace when the smallest approximation which I haf yet been able to make puts the depth from the surface to the bed of the gletscher at vrom sixteen hundred to sixteen hundred and sixty metres in distance?" Doctor Zimmermann spoke very good English; and he pushed his ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... philanthropy, and the other to his friendship. But where the term is most applicable, it requires to be used guardedly. Even in painting and sculpture, the artist does not imitate the object in its totality—does not strive to make an approximation to a fac-simile—but he selects certain qualities of the object for his imitation. The painter confines himself to colour and outline; the sculptor abstracts the form, and give it us ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... insight better enabled him to direct those thoughts aright; but what would be said at this period of an in- 94:27 fidel blasphemer who should hint that Jesus used his in- cisive power injuriously? Our Master read mortal mind on a scientific basis, that of the omnipresence of Mind. 94:30 An approximation of this discernment indicates spiritual growth and union with the infinite capacities of the one Mind. Jesus could injure no one by his Mind-reading. 95:1 The effect of his Mind was always to heal and to save, and this is the only genuine Science of reading mortal ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... the security of the government than an approximation to the divine standard of rewards, and if all then recognized and obeyed the law of stewardship nearly all the complaint that would still exist would be silenced by the volunteer service rendered by the fortunate ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... aggravated, if the goods obtained are luxuries and not necessaries (for it is one of the plainest duties of every man, who is removed from absolute want, to live within his means), there is either actual dishonesty or a dangerous approximation to it, and it would be a great advance in every-day morality if society were to recognise this fact distinctly, and apportion its censures accordingly. Where the tradesman knows that he is running a risk, the customer being also aware that he knows it, and adapts his charges to the fact, it is ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... remarkable facts of observation which seemed so complete, it is not surprising that there should have been but little temptation to doubt it. On undertaking a new calculation of the same question, Professor Adams found that Laplace had not pursued this approximation sufficiently far, and that consequently there was a considerable error in the result of his analysis. Adams, it must be observed, did not impugn the value of the lunar acceleration which Halley had deduced from the observations, but what he did show was, that ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... belongs, you know, to the organic system) has a regular mode of action; but I know a great many men whose BRAINS, and all their voluntary existence flowing from their brains, have a systole and diastole as regular as that of the heart itself. Habit is the approximation of the animal system to the organic. It is a confession of failure in the highest function of being, which involves a perpetual self-determination, in full view of all existing circumstances. But habit, you see, is an action in present circumstances ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... shall draw the curtain of death over his sleep—shall prove his apparent sleep to be veritable death. The prolonged interchange in Adonais between the ideas of death and of sleep may remind us that Shelley opened with a similar contrast or approximation his first considerable (though in ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... the fashion of Racine, we grant. Setting aside such faithful transcripts from the antique as the Samson Agonistes, we might consent to view Goethe as that one amongst the moderns who had made the closest approximation to the Greek stage. Proximus, we might say, with Quintilian, but with him we must add," sed lango intervallo; "and if in the second rank, yet nearer to the third than to the first. Two other dramas, the Clavigo and the Egmont, fall below the Iphigenie by the ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... proper additionally to remark, that some apology or propitiation may be necessary toward those who regard every approximation to poverty, not as a misfortune, but a crime. Pecuniary difficulties, especially such as occur in early life, and not ascribable to bad conduct, reflect no discredit on men of genius. Many of them, subsequently, surmounted their first embarrassments by meritorious exertion; and some of our first ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... saw that the she-ape had left her cub alone among the grasses. He moved his tail again, as though this closest approximation of lashing in which he dared indulge might stimulate his momentarily waned courage. The cry of the victorious ape-man still held his nerves beneath its spell. It would be several minutes before he again could ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Another is a keen emulator of Thucydides, and by way of close approximation to his model starts with his own name—most graceful of beginnings, redolent of Attic thyme! Look at it: 'Crepereius Calpurnianus of Pompeiopolis wrote the history of the war between Parthia and Rome, how they ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... it should also be borne in mind that the scale of tests was only a rough approximation to the ideal which the author had set himself to realize. Had his life been spared a few years longer, he would doubtless have carried the ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... and our representations in favour of the Polish Hebrews, a numerous race, but the most suffering and degraded of all the tribes, have not been very agreeable to the Czar. However, circumstances drew to an approximation between the Romanoffs and the Sidonias. I resolved to go myself to St. Petersburg. I had, on my arrival, an interview with the Russian Minister of Finance, Count Cancrin; I beheld the son of a Lithuanian Jew. The loan ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... working upon it, this rude form began to be developed until it became evident to all observers that a female figure was growing into mimic life. At each new visit they beheld a larger pile of wooden chips and a nearer approximation to something beautiful. It seemed as if the hamadryad of the oak had sheltered herself from the unimaginative world within the heart of her native tree, and that it was only necessary to remove the strange shapelessness that had incrusted her, and reveal the grace and loveliness ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... contact," I replied. "If you mean by FEELING," said the King, "approaching so close as to leave no space between two individuals, know, Stranger, that this offence is punishable in my dominions by death. And the reason is obvious. The frail form of a Woman, being liable to be shattered by such an approximation, must be preserved by the State; but since Women cannot be distinguished by the sense of sight from Men, the Law ordains universally that neither Man nor Woman shall be approached so closely as to destroy the interval between the ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... civilization seem only to reach the mixed bloods, and these only in proportion to the white blood in their veins. The Indian is incapable of the white man's civilization, as indeed all other inferior races are. He has fulfilled his destiny, and is passing away. No approximation to the pursuits or the condition of the white man operates otherwise than as a means of his destruction. It seems his contact is death to every inferior race, when not servile and subjected to his care ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... was our earliest friend and ally in the infancy of our political existence the most friendly relations have subsisted through the late revolutions of its Government, and, from the events of the last, promise a permanent duration. It has made an approximation in some of its political institutions to our own, and raised a monarch to the throne who preserves, it is said, a friendly recollection of the period during which he acquired among our citizens the high consideration ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... to use an enema than to go to bed without a bowel movement. If the woman is going around, so that she can give the enema to herself, the most effective way to take it is in the knee-chest position or an approximation to this. Either a fountain or bulb syringe may be used for this purpose; a quart of water at a temperature of 110 F. should be prepared by making it into a suds with castile soap, or one tablespoonful of glycerin ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... allow us to obliterate the injuries worked by time and human enemies. The foot of every wall is heaped about with such formless masses of brick and brick dust, that it is almost impossible to make full explorations or to take exact measurements. One must be content with an approximation to the truth. ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... infinity is not predicable either of 'diminution without limit,' 'augmentation without limit,' or 'endless approximation to a fixed limit,' for these mathematical processes continue only as we continue them, consist of steps successively accomplished, and are limited by the very fact of ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... scarcely inspire his votaries with any feeling of fear. Still, considering the general failure of unassisted reason to mount up to the true notion of a spiritual God, this doctrine of the early Arians is very remarkable; and its approximation to the truth sufficiently explains at once the favorable light in which its professors are viewed by the Jewish prophets, and the favorable opinion which they form of the Jewish system. Evidently, the Jews and Arians, when they became known to one another, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... income of the colonists inhabiting the various settlements in New Holland, cannot be estimated at more than L125,000, and the following sub-divisions of it may be taken as a very close approximation ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... concealed by the cathedral of St. Mark, and the fourth is washed by its canal. The public prison of the city forms the other side of this canal, eloquently proclaiming the nature of the government by the close approximation of the powers of legislation and of punishment. The famous Bridge of Sighs is the material, and we might add the metaphorical, link between the two. The latter edifice stands on the quay, also, and though less lofty and spacious, in point of architectural beauty it is the superior structure, though ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... quarter, it sprang up with new force, and was carried to an extent not favored in Germany. It was in Switzerland that the greatest approximation was made to the forms, if not to the ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... be compared to lines converging at a point, and is more excellent as the lines approach from greater distance; an exemplification may be considered as two parallel lines, which run on together without approximation, never far separated, and never joined. Marlborough is so like the angel in the poem, that the action of both is almost the same, and performed by both in the same manner. Marlborough "teaches the battle to rage;" the angel "directs the storm:" Marlborough is "unmoved ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... and nature go together in this world which was made for man—not for science, but for man? Perhaps I have some glimmerings of where the answer lies. Perhaps "I see a cherub that sees it." And in many of our questions we have to be content with such an approximation to an answer as this. And for my part I am content with this. With less, I ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... to the original, or as to the LXX Greek. And justly so; for the evidence in our hands does not, unfortunately, admit of anything closer than a "period" being safely fixed. The materials we have are not sufficiently precise for closer approximation with any decree of security. Rothstein (Kautzsch, I., p. 178) very wisely says, "Natürlich lasst sich mit irgend welcher Sicherheit über diese Frage nichts ausmachen." With this, until further evidence be forthcoming, it is ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... census, about 18,000 with their friends or boarded out, or 18,900 at the present time, in consequence of the increase of population. We have, however, but scant faith in the correctness of these relative amounts. All we really know is the number receiving definite teaching or training, and an approximation—nothing more—to the gross number of idiots and imbeciles in the land. The next point is to determine the number who belong to the class, already indicated, which we have to legislate and provide for—the poor and the class immediately ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... her bonnet and shawl, rolled them up into as small a package as she could make, and placed them on the nearest approximation to a clean spot that could be found. Then she stooped down, took the baby from the floor and ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... practice should at first be given while circling to the right. As the capabilities of all are not alike, the teacher, who ought also to be the driver, should exercise his judgment in apportioning the work done. As a rough approximation, I should say that an apt pupil who had never been previously on a horse, ought to do in fairly good style, after a dozen lessons, all I have described. These lessons, which had best be given daily, ought not to exceed ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... she stood still near the door. Then she looked at her aunt, and saw that Lady Ball's eyes were keenly fixed upon her. Something like the truth, some approximation to the facts as they were, flashed upon her in a moment, and she knew that she had to bear herself in this difficulty with all her ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... concerted action; and we also find the Pope declaring of one of the brightest saints and luminaries of the Church that we need not follow him when it is plainly impossible for us to do so. Is it so very much to hope that ere many years are over the approximation will become ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... original book, each text page contained several types of secondary material printed in all four margins. The HTML version of this e-text offers a closer approximation of ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... quantity of the corn of Ohio is exported as grain. It is first manufactured into other articles, and then exported in another form. The principal part of these are hogs, cattle, and whiskey. It is difficult to say exactly how much corn is in this way exported, but the following is an approximation— ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... among Sections of the visible church may possibly be effected at the expense of deviations on either hand from the direct line from each to the perfection of the church's character on earth. And though, after confederation is effected, tolerable approximation to it may be made, the sacrifice required may often not be excused. But when each party aims at the truth, the more they advance, the more they will approach each other; and happy will they be and honoured who will arrive there. Deviations from the path ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... many pictures of birds and feathers where the design has become so conventionalized that it is very difficult to recognize the intention of the decorator. Plate CXLVII, f, shows one of these in which the feather motive is prominent and an approximation to a bird form evident. The wings are shown with a symmetric arrangement on the sides of the tail, while the latter member has the three feathers which form so constant a feature in many bird symbols. In b of the same plate there is shown a more elaborated bird figure, also highly ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... enough against the Emperor in the Memoirs to make them comfortable reading for his opponents, though very many of the old calumnies were disposed of in them. They contained indeed the nearest approximation to the truth which had yet appeared. Metternich, who must have been a good judge, as no man was better acquainted with what he himself calls the "age of Napoleon," says of the Memoirs: "If you want something to read, both interesting and amusing, get the Memoires ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the next morning, when he brought in his bill; after satisfying my conscientious landlord, I walked to French Town, which consists of two houses. This town is about 17 miles from the Delaware, and has a communication with the Chesapeak by means of the river Elk. But there is a nearer approximation of the Chesapeak to the Delaware, from a creek running into the latter at Apoquiminick, where the distance is only 7 miles: over this neck of land, all the trade between Philadelphia and Baltimore is conveyed in waggons. How soon would a canal be cut in such ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... statement it will be seen that the problem is an exceedingly complex one, not to be decided off-hand, or by any simple method. It has in fact been usually considered as (strictly speaking) insoluble, and only to be estimated by a more or less rough approximation, or by the method of general analogy from certain known facts. It will be seen, from what has been said in previous chapters, that Mr. Lowell, in his book, has used the latter method, and, by taking the presence of water and water-vapour in Mars as proved by the behaviour of the snow-caps ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace |
