"Definition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for the student who is old enough to begin to use a book, but they would be but dry husks to a younger child. Many of the careful classifications and analyses of topics in text books had far better be used as summaries than in any other way; and a definition is better when the pupil knows it is true than when he is about to find out whether it ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... Taine's definition would also fit contemporary (1999) drugs and video entertainment which also provide mankind with both hope, pleasure and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... our lives, that runs through every fathom of it, from the time that it is first twisted among the others till the time when that life shall end. And as it is thus impossible for the onlooker to accept from adherents of a creed a definition of what they really believe, so it is impossible for him to acknowledge the forms and ceremonies of which they speak as the real ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... of my own and other than me, and whose existence I simply come upon and find. A power not ourselves, then, which not only makes for righteousness, but means it, and which recognizes us,—such is the definition which I think nobody will be inclined to dispute. Various are the attempts to shadow forth the other lineaments of so supreme a personality to our human imagination; various the ways of conceiving in what mode the recognition, the hearkening to our cry, can come. Some are gross and ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... atmosphere which produced them; and he quotes in illustration a passage from the writings of that Bishop of Spanheim who was the instructor of Paracelsus, and who appears as such in the poem. The passage is a definition of divine magic, which is apparently another term for alchemy; and lays down the great doctrine of all mediaeval occultism, as of all modern theosophy—of a soul-power equally operative in the material and the immaterial, in nature and in the ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... in golden warmth, descending through the leaves, with a whisper, to her embrace. So the personifications of death in literature, thus far, give us no penetrative glance into what it really is, help us to no acute definition of it, but poetically fasten on some feature, or accident, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... objected to be called Vitalists (obviously the right name for them) on two contradictory grounds. First, that vitality is scientifically inadmissible, because it cannot be isolated and experimented with in the laboratory. Second, that force, being by definition anything that can alter the speed or direction of matter in motion (briefly, that can overcome inertia), is essentially a mechanistic conception. Here we had the New Vitalist only half extricated from the Old Mechanist, objecting to be called either, and unable to give a clear lead in the new direction. ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... my dictionary, is "to play for money in games of skill or chance," and it adds the information that the word is derived from the Anglo-Saxon gamen, which means "a game". Now, to me this definition is particularly interesting, because it justifies all that I have been thinking about the gambling spirit in connexion with Premium Bonds. I am against Premium Bonds, but not for the popular reason. I am ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... on the path of definition, of which he was fond, Napoleon suddenly and unexpectedly ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... figure, the "Forgotten Man"—the neglected man, woman, and child of the masses. In an address delivered, in June, 1914, before the Royal Institution of Great Britain, Page gave what he regarded as the definition of the American ideal. "The fundamental article in the creed of the American democracy—you may call it the fundamental dogma if you like—is the unchanging and unchangeable resolve that every human being shall have his opportunity for his utmost ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... St. Patrick, though you don't know why. I will tell you. When St. Patrick first preached the Christian faith in Ireland, before a powerful chief and his people, when he spoke of one God, and of the Trinity, the chief asked how one could be in three. St. Patrick, instead of attempting a theological definition of the faith, thought a simple image would best serve to enlighten a simple people, and stooping to the earth he plucked from the green sod a shamrock, and holding up the trefoil before them he bade them there behold one in three. The chief, struck by ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... patenting of designs. The earliest legislation upon this subject is found in the act of August 29, 1842, section 3; and the only legislation upon the subject is found in this section and in section 11, of the act of March 2, 1861. The definition of the subject matter, or, in other words, of a "design," is the same in both ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... declares, "insinuate themselves into and influence almost every judgment we pass or sentiment we indulge, and are a necessary help (as well as hindrance) to the human understanding; to attempt to refer every question to abstract truth and precise definition, without allowing for the frailty of prejudice, which is the unavoidable consequence of the frailty and imperfection of reason, would be to unravel the whole web and texture of human understanding ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... what is your definition of a hero, I wonder; what are the qualities you think absolutely necessary to ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... who perceived life as he perceived it. There were certain persons who could not leave life alone—they must always be seeing it as a key to something wider, bigger altogether. This was nothing to do with Christianity or any creed whatever, because Creeds implied Certainty and Definition of Knowledge, whereas Peter and the others like him did not know for what they were searching. Again, they were not Mystics because Mysticism needed a definite removal from this world before any other world were possible. No, they were simply ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... and the family occur various subdivisions, known as sub-tribes, hordes, local groups, etc., but without any very clear definition of their nature. It appears, however, that the tribal area is sometimes so parcelled out that property in it is vested, not in the tribe as a whole, but in the local group, which welcomes fellow-tribesmen in times of plenty, but has ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... the latter declares that all he wants is a fair vote for the people, and that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up. I do not understand his declaration, that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up, to be intended by him other than as an apt definition of the policy he would impress upon the public mind—the principle for which he declares he has suffered so much, and is ready to suffer to the end. And well may he cling to that principle! If he has any parental ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... a compressed form that consists of three columns for 'word', 'definition', and 'additional notes'. It is set up with a comma between each item and a hard return at the end of each definition. This means that this section could easily be cut and pasted into its own text file and imported into a database or spreadsheet as a comma ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... of Arcangelo Corelli, who, as mentioned, published his first work (Op. 1, twelve sonatas for two violins and a bass) in 1683, sonatas answered to the definition given by Mattheson in his Das neu eroeffnete Orchester (1713), in which they are said to consist of alternate Adagio and Allegro. J.G. Walther, again, in his dictionary of music,[1] which appeared at Leipzig in 1732, ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... think I ventured on a definition;—only a few loose ideas which had been troubling me ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... remains: he had found a book of a different class from that of the ordinary manuscript—indeed diversis a nostris characteribus. Instead of thinking him arrant knave or fool enough to bring down "antiquity" to the thirteenth century, we might charitably push back his definition of "nostri characteres" to include anything in minuscules; script "not our own" would be the majuscule hands in vogue before the Middle Ages. That is a position palaeographically defensible, seeing that the humanistic ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand
... pretext that they are real nature. Caricatures not to be tolerated in the real world are carefully preserved in the poetic world and reproduced according to nature! The poet can certainly imitate a lower nature; and it enters into the very definition of a satirical poet: but then a beauty by its own nature must sustain and raise the object, and the vulgarity of the subject must not lower the imitator too much. If at the moment he paints he is ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... grapsein, grapsai, gegraphenai, graphesthai, grapsesthai, gegraphthai, grapsasthai, graphthnai, graphthsesthai, as nouns or as verbs. They had established for their own satisfaction the broad distinction between nouns (onomata) and verbs (rhmata); they had assigned to each a definition, but, after having done so, they found that forms like graphein would not fit their definition either of noun or verb.[19] What could they do? Some (the Stoics) represented the forms in ein, etc., as a subdivision of the verb, and introduced for them the name rhma aparemphaton ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... of former ages. Indeed, he held this study to be the duty of the perfect orator; a knowledge of the human mind was one of his essential qualifications. Nor could he conceive of real eloquence without it; for his definition of eloquence is, "wisdom speaking fluently".[1] But such studies were also suited to his own natural tastes. And as years passed on, and he grew weary of civil discords and was harassed by domestic troubles, the great orator ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... neither looked nor acted like a megalomaniac. That wouldn't make much difference to the PD Police; as far as the officials were concerned, the ability to project telepathically and the taint of delusions of grandeur went hand in hand. Controllers were power-mad and criminal by definition. ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... than the ability to give the definition as found in the dictionary. It is possible to recite such definitions glibly without in reality knowing the meaning of the word defined. It is necessary to connect the word definitely and permanently in our mind ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... affairs." Carlyle defines "pragmatic sanction" as "the received title for ordinances of a very irrevocable nature, which a sovereign makes in affairs that belong wholly to himself, or what he reckons his own rights." A dictionary definition calls it "an imperial edict operating as a fundamental law." The term was probably first applied to certain decrees of the Byzantine emperors for regulating their provinces and towns, and later it was given to imperial decrees in the West. In the present ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... may be stated that the term, "quicksand," is so illusive that a true definition of it is badly needed. Many engineers call quicksand any sand which flows under the influence of water in motion. The writer believes the term should be applied only to material so "soupy" that its properties are practically the same ...
— Pressure, Resistance, and Stability of Earth • J. C. Meem
... modesty of nature. Applied to execution it means that dexterous power which hides the means by which it was attained, the difficulties it has conquered." We humbly suggest, that both parts of this definition may be found where there is little grace. It is evident that the lecturer did not subscribe to any theory of lines, as per se beautiful or graceful, and altogether disregarded Hogarth's line of beauty. Had Mr Hay's very admirable short works—his "Theory of Form and Proportion"—appeared in Mr ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... accustomed to say that one could always tell an honorable man by his conduct to his wife, his children, and his servants; and I hope it will appear from these memoirs that the Emperor conducted himself as an honorable man, according to his own definition. He said, moreover, that immorality was the most dangerous vice of a sovereign, because of the evil example it set to his subjects. What he meant by immorality was doubtless a scandalous publicity given to liaisons which might otherwise have remained secret; for, as regards these liaisons ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... answered my father, taking off and rubbing his spectacles,—"which means, Kitty, that when a man's married he has no will of his own. To think," added Mr. Caxton, musingly, "that in this world one cannot be sure of the simplest mathematical definition. You see, Pisistratus, that the angles of a triangle so decidedly scalene as your Uncle Jack's may be equal to the angles of a right-angled triangle after ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... flower of speech: it is an over-ripe fruit rather: heavy-stoned, thin-fleshed—an essentially practical term. It is eminently suited to its purpose, and so widely used that my friend the editor must accept it; not looking askance as he did at my definition of a vampire as a vespertilial anaesthetist, or breaking into open but wholly ineffectual rebellion, at the past tense of the verb to candelabra. ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... first thing is to accept the principle that wealth cannot be accepted except in exchange for full-measure service. You, Mrs. Transley—you teach your little boy that he must not steal. As he grows older simply widen your definition of theft to include receiving value without giving value in exchange. When all the mothers begin teaching that principle the golden age which Mr. Murdoch inquires about ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... love-scene. We add, that it was one of Goethe's favourites, worthy, in his opinion, to be compared with the Canticles.[8] There is a melody in the language of this song, not to be imitated in any translation. We confess that Frederic Schlegel's definition of architecture, "frozen music," occurs to us when we read ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... and strangles, but which never talks, and much less argues—could not endure the particular sort of excitement which surrounded him in France; excitement mainly cerebral, heroism or villainy resulting, but only as the outcome of argument and definition of principle and of that mixture of logic and rhetoric called by the French des mots. Alfieri was not a reasoning mind, he was not an eloquent man; above all, he was not a witty man; his satirical efforts are so many blows upon an opponent's head; they are almost physical brutalities; ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... common boundary between the two countries by following the centre of the river and the great lakes as far as the head of Lake Superior. The issue of negotiations so stupidly conducted by the British commissioner, was a treaty which gave an extremely vague definition of the boundary in the north-east between Maine and Nova Scotia—which until 1784 included New Brunswick—and displayed at the same time a striking example of geographical ignorance as to the north-west. The treaty specified ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... a symbol appointed by God to adumbrate something higher in the future, which is called the antitype. This definition includes three particulars: (1.) The type must be a true adumbration of the thing typified, though, from the very nature of the case, the adumbration must be inadequate—a shadow only of the antitype, and not its substance. Thus the paschal lamb was a type of Christ, though there ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... history of chivalry are unable to refer its origin to any definite time or place; and even specific definition of chivalry is seldom attempted by careful students. They rather give us, as does Gautier in the picturesque account which follows, some recognized starting-point, and for definition content themselves with characterization ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... council can be selected to mark the beginning of a great school. Such a body of doctrine must have existed piecemeal and unauthorized before it was collected and recognized and some tenets are older than others. Enlarging I-Ching's definition we may find in the Mahayana seven lines of thought or practice. All are not found in all sects and some are shared with the Hinayana but probably none are found fully developed outside the Mahayana. Many of them have parallels in ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... Burke's appeal from the new to the old Whigs, which contains astonishing coincidences with the present times. His definition of the people is somewhat tumid and obscure, and involved in a splendid confusion of generalities and abstruse doctrine; but it is a wonderful monument of his genius, and exhibits that extent of knowledge and accuracy of insight ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... Goethe is that he was the first to teach us to define beauty in terms the most concrete possible, to realise it, I mean, always in its special manifestations. So, in the lecture which I have the honour to deliver before you, I will not try to give you any abstract definition of beauty—any such universal formula for it as was sought for by the philosophy of the eighteenth century—still less to communicate to you that which in its essence is incommunicable, the virtue by which a particular picture or poem affects us with a unique and special joy; ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... am not one to take my civic duties lightly," I replied with some hauteur, "but observe that I merely said I had reason to suspect the imminence of the peril. I should like to know the legal definition of infestment, if you please. I cannot definitely say that house-breaking has taken place as yet. I do not know that there has even been petty larceny. There may have been merely loitering ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... speculum of Parsonstown. In the construction of his new instrument, however, he eventually discarded the model there obtained, and worked on a method of his own, assisted by the supreme mechanical skill of James Nasmyth. The result was a Newtonian of exquisite definition, with an aperture of two, and a focal length of twenty feet, provided by a novel artifice with the equatoreal mounting, previously regarded ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... the truth.' Take that with you. A lie must, somewhere, have a truth to prop it. In the heart of every big successful lie you will find some reality. Of course you cannot build a house on nothing. A pyramid cannot be constructed in the air. Now a lie is nothing, the very definition of nothing. It is what is not. So, of course, no pure and simple lie exists. It always builds itself on some truth. It always roots itself into some fact. And there is the secret of its vitality. You batter the lie ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... display your progress before any other pupils again? One private lesson! Did your master advise it? No-no, but he consented to give it, when you had persuaded him that it would be best for you? When you had persuaded him? Behold the American pupil's definition of obedience: to follow commands dictated by herself! However, there is no use in trying to eradicate the ideas bequeathed and fostered by a hundred years of national self-government, so go to the school at the hour when no other ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... as owing to the false notions of the public, not thoroughly acquainted with the true art of painting, he has been often called a caricaturer; when, in reality, caricatura was no part of his profession, he being a true copier of Nature; to set this matter right, and give the world a just definition of the words, character, caricatura, and outre, in which humorous painting principally consists, and to show their difference of meaning, he, in the year 1758, published this print; but, as it did not quite answer his purpose, giving an illustration ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... pass through. At one end of this tube there is a tiny square hole, the opposite end carrying a small convex lens, of such a strength or focus as to show the square hole in true focus, that is, with perfectly sharp definition, even up to the corners of the square. On looking through the tube, the square hole is duplicated, two squares being seen. The colours of a gem are tested by the stone being put in front of this square, when ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... of the awkward age. I am not afraid of any dissent from my definition of the source whence its misery springs. Everybody's consciousness bears witness. Everybody knows, in the bottom of his heart, that, however much may be said about the change of voice, the thinness of cheeks, the sharpness of arms, the sudden length in legs and lack of length in trousers ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the Rainbow mine was opened, and the little town of Pandora sprang into existence. Three hundred workmen, with unlimited thirst and a passion for gaming, suggested multiplication, and Pierre moved from the ranch to the Blue Goose. Had he fixed upon a definition of wealth and adhered to it, a few years at the Blue Goose would have left him satisfied. As it was, his ideas grew faster than his legitimate opportunities. The miners were no more content with their wages than he with his gains, and so it happened that ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... converse of the teaching of those smart gentlemen who waste reams of good paper in establishing, to their own satisfaction, that even the mathematical surface itself has thickness! In the lesson on 'perpendicular and horizontal,' the definition of perpendicular is correct; but all the developing, before and after, unfortunately confounds the perpendicular with the vertical—a bad way toward future accuracy of thought, or toward making scientific ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... first two of these rules are involved in the definition of the syllogism with which we started. We said it might be regarded either as the comparison of two propositions by means of a third or as the comparison of two terms by means of a third. To violate either of these rules therefore would be inconsistent ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... remind me what and who he is whose judgment I for once oppose, and what and who am I that I should oppose it; that he is he, and I am but myself; yet against his classification of Falstaff, against his definition of Shakespeare's unapproached and unapproachable masterpiece in the school of comic art and humouristic nature, I must and do with all my soul and strength protest. The admirable phrase of "swine-centaur" (centaure du porc) ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... these are manmade laws—commands, not descriptions. They don't necessarily have anything to do with facts at all. Take the word 'insanity,' for instance; the word isn't even used by head-shrinkers any more because it's a legal definition that has nothing whatever to do with the ...
— ...Or Your Money Back • Gordon Randall Garrett
... or general nature. In its common, or generally received, acceptation, it implies two things.—First, the nature, habit, disposition, organization or construction of the natural, corporeal, or animal system.—Secondly, a political system, or plan of government. This last definition, I apprehend, explains the Constitution ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... of one's desires and purposes, the realization of one's ideals. But this definition does not necessarily imply a high state of being. As I sit by my window writing, the hoarse cry of a rag-man and the mournful strains of a hand-organ come to my ears. That able-bodied Greek, who is so lavish with ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... alarm. But with characteristic perversity the elements in Christ's vision of the judgment on which men have seized most tenaciously, are precisely those elements which are least intelligible, and least capable of strict definition. It is around the word "eternal" and the nature of the punishment suggested, that the theological battles of centuries have centred. Yet the really central point of both the vision and the teaching, is not here at all; and it is only man's ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... baudekyns, and squenches. It is evident that he keeps a Bestiary, or record of his experiences in bestiology, otherwise called bestial eikonography; and if he be requested to give a more explicit definition of the article, he will perhaps inform you that it is a record of the types of the ecclesiological symbolisation of beasts. If you prevail on him to exhibit to you this solemn record, which he will open with befitting reverence, the faintest suspicion of a smile ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... accomplished, will be denied by no one who is unwilling to betray his ignorance of the subject. Energy in government is essential to that security against external and internal danger, and to that prompt and salutary execution of the laws which enter into the very definition of good government. Stability in government is essential to national character and to the advantages annexed to it, as well as to that repose and confidence in the minds of the people, which are among the chief blessings ...
— The Federalist Papers
... given of characters derived from parts which must be considered of very trifling physiological importance, but which are universally admitted as highly serviceable in the definition of whole groups. For instance, whether or not there is an open passage from the nostrils to the mouth, the only character, according to Owen, which absolutely distinguishes fishes and reptiles—the inflection of ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... had often precipitated a deplorable shrug, in which Victor Radnor now perceived the skirts of his idea, even to a fancy that something of the idea must have struck Inchling when he shrugged: the idea being . . . he had lost it again. Definition seemed to be an extirpation enemy of this idea, or she was by nature shy. She was very feminine; coming when she willed and flying when wanted. Not until nigh upon the close of his history did she return, full-statured and embraceable, to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... zealous to retain his monopoly of African and eastern exploration, and the pious sovereigns of Spain, desirous to build their colonial empire on solid and unquestioned foundations, alike appealed to the Pope for a definition of their rights and a confirmation of their claims. The world seemed big enough and with a spacious liberality Pope Alexander VI granted Ferdinand and Isabella the right to explore and to take possession of all the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... like Dandin, in Racine's comedy of Les Plaideurs, was disposed to pass over the deluge, and to plunge instantly into the core of his subject. He commenced with a review of the royal prerogatives, and with a definition of the words "to reign." Referring to the dictionary of the academy, he showed triumphantly, that to reign, was no other than to "govern as a sovereign"; while to govern, in the familiar signification, was no more than ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... to good breeding at home to come and seik it of the French) who are drawen wt the sweitness of the country, and the common civility of the inhabitants. Let this we have sayd of the French pass for a definition of him till we be able to ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... republican, neither a democrat nor an aristocrat, but a disaffected subject under a King, a dangerous citizen of a Commonwealth, ridiculing both the friend of equality and the defender of prerogatives; no exact definition can be given, from his past conduct and avowed professions, of his real moral and political character. One thing only is certain;—he was an ungrateful traitor to Louis XVI., and is a submissive ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... is a word of four letters and a definition which you have extracted from the dictionary. But love, real love, dewy and palpitant and tender, you do not know. If God made you and me, and men and women, believe me He made love, too. But to come back. It's about ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... what a land! On the swelling mounds of snow above them there was not one break, not a feature to give definition to the hazy outline. No scene could have been more perfectly devised to produce optical illusions. And then, while there was so much to observe, a thick fog descended, and blotted out all hope of seeing what lay beyond the ice-foot. During the afternoon of January ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... contributions that modified the culture pattern of its predecessors and its contemporaries. At the same time all of the civilizations have had certain common features that are the characteristic aspects which justify the general definition of civilization presented in the Introduction ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... of their fellows, by translating some of the ever-vital aspects of religion into the vocabulary of the hour. The language of religious discourse is liable to a subtle kind of pedantry, requiring a vigorous intellect adequately to dissolve. New illustrations, novel forms of definition, are often helpful in expelling the dreariness of outworn and meaningless phrases. Ruskin's task is facilitated by the nice balance of his intellectual and imaginative endowments, by the fact that his words ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... life, therefore, although one of those expressions that baffle definition, points to something of vast importance to the happiness of men and the progress of the race. It is no idle dream, no mere amusement of the fancy. Whenever we feel a generous thrill on hearing of a great action—that is poetry. Whenever we are conscious of a larger and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... much to you as to me, who have seen more of the lives, of which they are the sign. Margaret, beautifully dressed, (don't despise that, for it made a fine picture,) presided with more dignity and grace than I had thought possible. The subject was Beauty. Each had written her definition, and Margaret began with reading her own. This called forth questions, comments, and illustrations, on all sides. The style and manner, of course, in this age, are different, but the question, the high point from which it was considered, and the earnestness and simplicity of the ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... capital thus moves to a new place in the group system, it becomes an active competitor of the labor or capital that was already there. We need a definition of the competing process. In the case of producing agents it consists in a rivalry in selling. The laborer who moves from A' of the table that, in the preceding chapter, has been used to represent organized industry to B', offers for sale, as some would say, ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... been born in any family except her own, she would probably have described her as "dangerous," but it was impossible to brand her daughter with so opprobrious an epithet. The word, owing to the metaphorical yet specific definition of it which she had derived from the rector's sermons in her childhood, invariably suggested fire ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... earlier times the value of education was assumed, or vaguely taken on faith. Education was supposed to consist of so much "learning," or a given amount of "discipline," or a certain quantity of "culture." Under the newer definition, education may include all these things, but it must do more; it must relate itself immediately and concretely to the business of living. We no longer inquire of one how much he knows, or the degree to which his powers have been "cultivated"; but rather to ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... statements necessarily contradicting the other, they might both be easily true. The fact is, however, that she speaks English like a foreigner. Mud itself—or a Sun editorial—could not be plainer than this definition of her exact ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... the appearance of two or more subjects. Under the cover of rhetoric higher themes are introduced; the argument expands into a general view of the good and evil of man. After making an ineffectual attempt to obtain a sound definition of his art from Gorgias, Socrates assumes the existence of a universal art of flattery or simulation having several branches:—this is the genus of which rhetoric is only one, and not the highest species. To flattery is opposed the true and noble art of ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... kerchief was wound round her supple neck. Puce-coloured boots clasped her slim little ankle so charmingly, that even those uninitiated into the mysteries of beauty would infallibly have sighed, if only from wonder. There was something maidenly in her easy, but aristocratic gait, something eluding definition yet intelligible to the glance. As she walked past us an indefinable perfume, like that which sometimes breathes from the note of a charming woman, was wafted ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... are ab initio, identical and coinherent; that intelligence and being are reciprocally each other's substrate. I presumed that this was a possible conception, (i.e. that it involved no logical inconsonance,) from the length of time during which the scholastic definition of the Supreme Being, as actus purissimus sine ulla potentialitate, was received in the schools of Theology, both by the Pontifician and the Reformed divines. The early study of Plato and Plotinus, with the commentaries and the THEOLOGIA PLATONICA ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... slightly different things to some persons, "line" meaning the out-of-doors portion of the line and "line circuit" meaning the indoor portion, composed of apparatus and associated wiring. Such shades of meaning are inevitable and serve useful purposes. The opening definition hereof is accurate. ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... desire, in relation to blushing in relation to hysteria in relation to menstruation in relation to modesty in relation to season in women Sexual periodicity in men what we owe to irradiations of Sexual organs viewed differently by savage and civilized peoples Shame, definition and nature of Short sight and modesty Shyness Slang, private Sleep in relation to sexual activity Snake and women in folk-lore Somnambulism of bladder Speech, modesty in Spring, as season of sexual excitement ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... most of these versions are some form of ABCDEF; and these, I think, we must consider as integral parts of the story. It will be seen that one of our versions (c) properly does not belong to this cycle at all, except under a very broad definition of the group. In all these tales the turtle is the injured creature: he is represented as patient and quiet, but clever. The monkey is depicted as selfish, mischievous, insolent, but stupid. In general, ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... may arise in some minds, What is the use of it all? The answer is, that if man's intellectual nature thirsts for knowledge, then knowledge is useful because it satisfies this thirst. If you demand practical ends, you must, I think, expand your definition of the term practical, and make it include all that elevates and enlightens the intellect, as well as all that ministers to the bodily health and comfort of men. Still, if needed, an answer of another kind might be given ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... when the whole course of the news seems planned for the benefit of the chaffish and irreverent commentator. When Governor Hobby of Texas issues a call for the state cavalry. When one of your clients drops in, in the goodness of his heart, to give you his own definition of a pessimist—a pessimist, he says, is a man who wears both belt and suspenders. When a big jewellery firm in the city puts ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... nude girl in plein air, flecked with splotches of sunlight filtered through a sieve of leafage, with her realistic taurine companion, and their environment of veridically rendered out-of-doors, may stand for an illustrative definition of modernity; but what you feel most of all is Roll. It is ten chances to one that he has never even been to Venice or thought of Veronese. He has not always been so successful; as when in his "Work" he earned Degas's ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... in it rather a huge joke on the "miserable Indians," and give the friars great credit for "patriotism," a term which in this connection they dragged from depth to depth until it quite aptly fitted Dr. Johnson's famous definition, "the ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... and not merely what the other is not. The situation is paradoxical enough: Each aspect—the negative or the positive—of anything appears to exclude the other, while each requires its own other for its very definition and expression. It needs the other, and yet is independent of it. How Hegel proves this of all concepts, cannot here be shown. The result is that no concept can be taken by itself as a "that-and-no-other." It ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... considered, the best definition of true courage I have ever read is that given by Gen. Sherman in his Memoirs, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... Totemism. For a newly sprung up modern totem our author alludes to a boat, among the Mandans, 'their totem, or tutelary object of worship.' An object of worship, of course, is not necessarily a totem! Nor is a totem by the definition (as a rule one of a class of objects) anything but a natural object. Mr. Max Muller wishes that 'those who write about totems and totemism would tell us exactly what they mean by these words.' I have told him, and indicated better sources. ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... submission; and will, at any rate, view with suspicion those weakly amiable theories of the divine government, which would have us believe pain to be an oversight and a mistake, to be corrected by and by." ("Collected Essays" 3 page 62.) This essay contains the definition of science as "trained and organised common sense," and the reference to a new "Peter Bell" which suggested Miss May ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... another definition. Here is the last word on the subject, the authoritative word, from our Lord Jesus Himself. It tells what faith is in its outward working, the part the crowd sees. The faith that accepts Jesus as Saviour accepts Him also ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... of interest in these Celtic folk-tales is the light they throw upon the relation of hero-tales and folk-tales (classes 2 and 3 above). Tales told of Finn of Cuchulain, and therefore coming under the definition of hero-tales, are found elsewhere told of anonymous or unknown heroes. The question is, were the folk-tales the earliest, and were they localised and applied to the heroes, or were the heroic sagas generalised and applied to an unknown [Greek: tis]? All the evidence, in my opinion, inclines ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... and freed her mind she usually got the best of it, for she seldom failed to have common sense on her side, while Jo carried her love of liberty and hate of conventionalities to such an unlimited extent that she naturally found herself worsted in an argument. Amy's definition of Jo's idea of independence was such a good hit that both burst out laughing, and the discussion took a more amiable turn. Much against her will, Jo at length consented to sacrifice a day to Mrs. Grundy, and help her sister through what she ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... names of Sera and Serice, the former for the chief city, the latter for the country of the Seres, and as usual defines their position with a precision far beyond what his knowledge justified—the necessary result of his system. Yet even his definition of Serice is most consistent with the view that this name indicated the Chinese empire in its northern aspect, for he carries it eastward to the 180th degree of longitude, which is also, according to his calculation, in a lower latitude the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... my repeating the same description in the sequel of that correspondence, admitted it to be a question at once and equally toute francaise, et toute europeenne: an explanation the exact meaning of which I acknowledge I do not precisely understand; but which, if it does not distinctly admit the definition of a, question francaise, seems at least to negative M. de Montmorency's definition of a question ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... immediately carried away into the infinities. The result is that the solution of the problem of the origin of life by spontaneous generation, as a property of "certain elements of matter, united in a special form, under special conditions," is buried forever out of sight. This same definition of life is found on page 69 of a work entitled, "The System of Nature," published by D. Holbach, a French Atheist, in 1774, in these words: "Experience proves to us that the matter which we regard as inert and dead assumes action, ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... willing to write it down for me?" asked Bok, fearful that he should not remember Doctor Briggs's definition ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... As this definition by no means met the feelings that were uppermost in the mind of the young hunter, he made no immediate answer, but stood gazing at the dark hills and the glassy water in ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... collective term designating all organized effort, both in and out of schools, toward instructing and influencing young people with regard to the problems of sex. Here we have returned to the central thought of the definition with which this lecture opened, and which I emphasize because it is the foundation of all future lectures: The larger sex-education includes all scientific, ethical, social, and religious instruction and influence which in any way may ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... come within the limits of "technical education." The necessity for such control, somewhere, is obvious. No legislature, certainly not ours, is likely to grant the power of self-taxation without setting limits to that power in some way; and it would neither have been practicable to devise a legal definition of technical education, nor commendable to leave the question to the Auditor-General, to be fought out in the law-courts. The only alternative was to leave the decision to an appropriate State authority. If it is [233] asked what is the need ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... of slavery, if there be such a form, looking at the chattel principle as the definition of slavery, is comparatively the worst form. For it not only keeps the slave in the most unpleasant apprehension, like a prisoner in chains awaiting his trial; but it actually, in a great majority of cases, where kind masters do exist, trains him under the most favourable ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... inclined to believe that in this passage the learned author has erred, not in the definition of the symbol, but in his deduction of its origin. Light became the object of religious veneration, not because of the brilliancy and clearness of a particular sky, nor the warmth and genial influence of a particular climate,—for the worship was universal, in Scandinavia as in ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... creamy brick building of the Children's Hospital, snuggled like a gentle sister by the side of the impressive marble walls of its big brother, the Harvard Medical School, and, as the light grew and gave definition to its outlines, she felt as though it were actually drawing nearer to her. In imagination she went to meet it; she entered its doors and took her place among those who toiled there with loving hearts and skillful hands; and thus Miss Merriman ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... of "extracts" which were forwarded under the same cover have been preserved. Ten days later (February 25) he reverts to these "extracts," and on February 28 he despatches a fair copy of the first act. On March 9 he remits the third and final act of his "dramatic poem" (a definition adopted as a second title), but under reserve as to publication, and with a strict injunction to Murray "to submit it to Mr. G[ifford] and to whomsoever you please besides." It is certain that this third act was written at Venice ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... holding out the olive branch to "the wayward wanderers" who had treated him so despitefully at Surat; and last year at Lahore, when Pandit Mohan Malavya was expounding from the chair the latest formula adopted by Congress as a definition of its aims, his chief anxiety seemed to be to prove that it offered no obstacle to the return of the Surat insurgents to the fold. This formula, it may be mentioned, lays down that "the objects of the Indian National Congress ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... assailed Bute again and again with an unflagging zeal, it was no less ready to challenge to an issue the greatest man who over accepted a service from Bute, and to remind Dr. Johnson, who had received a pension from the King's favorite, of his own definition of a pension and ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... boy, Strappan, who is even more noted than my Rose, and who has given some remarkable answers to questions which Mr. Thorpe puts to him, and which he takes down verbatim. The only one I know is his definition of Love. "Arter you lub, you lub, you know, boss. You can't broke lub. Man can't broke lub. Lub stan', he ain't goin' broke. Man hab to be berry smart for broke lub. Lub is a ting stan' jus' like tar; arter he stick, he stick. He ain't goin' ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... all others—is it valid, in a word, is it genuine, is it sincere, the result of some direct impression or perception of life?—I had found small edification, mostly, in a critical pretension that had neglected from the first all delimitation of ground and all definition of terms. The air of my earlier time shows, to memory, as darkened, all round, with that vanity—unless the difference to-day be just in one's own final impatience, the lapse of one's attention. There is, I think, no more nutritive or suggestive truth in this ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... spoke English perfectly, though with a slightly foreign accent, "never interrupt a philosopher. Allow Jeff to proceed with his definition." ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... new man. As this is the first occasion on which the succession to the Byzantine throne comes into our review, it may be well to consider what sort of thing it was. I suppose the Caesarean succession even from the first is a hard thing to bring under any definition. Since Claudius was discovered quaking for fear behind a curtain, and dragged out to sit upon the throne which his nephew Caius had hastily vacated, after having been welcomed to it four years before with universal acclamation, it would be difficult ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... has long enjoyed the advantages of a definite scale and notation. Should not the art of coloring gain by similar definition? The musical scale is not left to personal whim, nor does it change from day to day; and something as clear and stable would be an advantage ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... necessarily leads us to this final fact, and then we accept this fact as the basis of our synthesis. The Science of Spirit is thus not one whit less scientific than the Science of Matter; and, moreover, it starts from the same initial fact, the fact of a living energy which defies definition or explanation, wherever we find it; but it differs from the science of matter in that it contemplates this energy under an aspect of responsive intelligence which does not fall within the scope of physical ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... as you do not begin with a definition you may begin anyhow. An abrupt beginning is much admired, after the fashion of the clown's entry through the chemist's window. Then whack at your reader at once, hit him over the head with the ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... In terms of the definition of religion given in the last chapter, we may describe the Bible as the record of the progressive religious experience of Israel culminating in Jesus Christ, a record selected by the experience of the Jewish and ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... her "Study of Marie Bashkirtseff," says: "Marie loved to recall Balzac's questionable definition that the genius of observation is almost the whole of human genius. It was natural it should please her, since it was the most conspicuous of her many gifts. As we might expect, therefore, she was especially successful as a portrait painter, for she had a knack of catching her sitter's likeness ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... established. An important step toward the unity of this language was taken in 1881 by the congress of Paris, which rendered the use of the C.G.S. system definitive and universal. This labor was completed in 1884 by the meeting of a new congress at Paris, at which a definition of the C.G.S. and practical units was distinctly decided upon. That the unit of light defined by the congress has not rapidly come into favor is due to the fact that its practical realization is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... respecting the ships of the Phoenicians, is, that they had two kinds; one for the purposes of commerce, and the other for naval expeditions; and in this respect they were imitated by all the other nations of antiquity. Their merchant-ships were called Gauloi. According to Festus's definition of this term, the gauloi were nearly round; but it is evident that this term must be taken with considerable restriction; a vessel round, or nearly so, could not possibly be navigated. It is most probable that this description refers entirely ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... charity, envy, and justice. The formula is, "What is pity? What do we mean by pity?" and so on with the other words. If the meaning of the response is not clear, ask the subject to explain what he means. If the definition is in terms of the word itself, as "Pity means to pity someone," "Revenge is to take revenge," etc., it is then necessary to say: "Yes, but what does it mean to pity some one?" or, "What does it mean to take revenge?" etc. Only supplementary ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... at a proper definition of Rationalism we should consult those authors who have given no little attention to this department of theological inquiry. Nor would we be impartial if we adduced the language of one class to the exclusion of the other. We shall hear alike from the friends and ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... liked him well enough to encourage his attentions, which is a fairly good definition of a harmless flirtation," she said, quite seriously, "and later discovers that she loves him and that he loves her, why should ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... of definition already indicated, a few instances of the horrible presented on the stage in our time may be given usefully; it must be added that most appear to lie on the ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... something in Caesar's definition, nevertheless. It was found that among the saints there were certain weaker brethren who did not want a hymn to their ale. One of these was Johnny Niplightly, the rural constable, who was the complement of Katherine in the choir, being leader of the singing among the men. He was a tall man with ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... is the general definition of a chop. The slice and chop are so closely related that, except in stroke analysis, they may ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... robbed the church of St. Michael's, carrying off the great chest of communion plate, offertories, and rents, he had piously left behind in Mattingley's house the vestry-books and parish-register; a nice definition in rogues' ethics. Awaiting his end now, it smote Mattingley's soul that these stolen records had not been returned to St. Michael's. Next morning he must send word to Carterette to restore the books. Then his conscience would be clear once more. With this resolve quieting his mind, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... famous "Polemical Essay on the Twin Doctrines of Christian Imperfection and a Death Purgatory"; than which few clearer, more convincing, or more able vindications of Scriptural holiness have ever been written. Can aught be plainer than the definition of Christian perfection ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... and all objects seemed to stand out in sharp definition, a condition seldom seen by dwellers on our Earth except in extremely dry ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... of reason, when almost all mankind acts without reason, so that it may pass for a thing that has no manner of existence but in the imagination. We shall prove this from M. Bayle. "[1]We are defined," says he, "a reasonable animal. A very fine definition indeed, when none of us do any thing but without reason. I assure you, sir, that one may say of reason, what Euripides said in the beginning of one of his tragedies, and which afterwards was corrected, on account of the murmurings of the ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... to be found in the headnotes relative to the various kinds of figures. Nor is it as thorough in handling the figures as its predecessors. It utilizes, however, the customary Greek and Latin terms and supplies a definition, but here the similarity with contemporaries and ancients ends. It is weak in amplification of examples during an age when amplification was practiced. Sherry economizes by selecting usually one example in support of a figure while contemporary cataloguers, ...
— A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes • Richard Sherry
... went down, the outlines of the rejoicing city took on the faint mist-blue of a dream city. It softened the outlines of the Eiffel tower to strange and fairy-like beauty and gave to the trees in the Tuileries gardens the lack of definition of an old engraving. And as if to remind the rejoicing of the price of their happiness, there came limping through the crowd a procession of the mutilees. They stumped along on wooden legs or on crutches; they rode in wheeled chairs; they were led, ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... order is plain, if for no other reason than that he never produced a work in any of the greatest forms of poetry. The drama, the epic, the lyric, were all outside his range. On the other hand, unless a definition of poetry be framed—and Dr. Johnson has well remarked that "to circumscribe poetry by a definition will only show the narrowness of the definer"—which shall exclude all gnomic and satiric verse, and so ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... definition, and admits of none. It probably never exists uncaused; though it survives all real or imagined ground for it, and in some cases seems rendered only the more intense by the admitted unworthiness of its object. When it is not the reason for marriage, it can hardly ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... was signed in May, 1805. The definition of the exact boundaries of the ceded territory was purposely left very loose by Napoleon. On the east, the Spanish Government of the Floridas still kept possession of what are now several parishes in the State of Louisiana. In the far west the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... were using the Republican party as the instrument of wholesale schemes of jobbery and pelf? To charge the Liberal Republicans with apostasy because they had the moral courage to disown and denounce these men was to invent a definition of the term which would have made all the great apostates of history ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... heaven on the earth with the power of observing every fact about all human beings at once, he might ask, as the newspaper editors are asking as I write, what that Socialism is which influences so many lives? He might answer himself with a definition which could be clumsily translated as 'a movement towards greater social equality, depending for its force upon three main factors, the growing political power of the working classes, the growing social sympathy of many members ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... law; shortness of his study; different opinions respecting his law learning; his definition of law; his manner of preparing causes and of conducting suits; his maxim for sluggards; tendency to mystery in his practice; fondness for surprising an opponent; an illustration of this remark; his treatment of associate counsel; nice discrimination in the selection ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... motto for a man—"I live for God!" It is religion's truest definition. It is the essence of angelic bliss—the motive-principle of angelic action; "Ye ministers of His, that do His pleasure." The Lord of angels knew no higher, no other motive. It was, during His incarnation, the regulator and directory of His daily ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... or the chissel, because the interstices are deep, and the lines strongly defined: but those tender gradations of muscular action, which constitute the graceful attitudes of the body, are difficult to conceive or to execute, except by a master of nice discernment and cultivated taste. B. By what definition would you distinguish the ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... refraction of the rays in the atmosphere may be due to what he calls its 'lenticular outline,' he defines refraction to be 'the bending of a ray passing obliquely from a rarer into a denser medium,'—a good enough popular definition, but for its sad defectiveness. Is he not aware that the light is also bent in penetrating obliquely from a denser into a rarer medium, as in passing from the surface of a low plain to the eye of a spectator on a neighboring mountain, and that the bending is just as great in this direction ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... in which we would take an interest artistic or scientific, literary or social, the best way to begin herewith is to carefully read the simplest and easiest account of it which we can obtain, in order that we may know just exactly what it is, or its definition. And this done, let the student at once, while the memory is fresh in mind, follow it up by other research or reading, observations or inquiries, on the same subject, for three books read together on anything will profit more than a hundred at long intervals. In fact, a great ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... code of social ethics. The conception of life which they hold has not yet expressed itself in social changes or legal enactment, but rather in a mental attitude of maladjustment, and in a sense of divergence between their consciences and their conduct. They desire both a clearer definition of the code of morality adapted to present day demands and a part in its fulfilment, both a creed and a practice of social morality. In the perplexity of this intricate situation at least one thing is becoming clear: if the latter day moral ideal is in reality that of a ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... the long run." I have been accustomed to put it to myself, perhaps more clearly, that the price we have to pay for money is paid in liberty. Between these two ways of it, at least, the reader will probably not fail to find a third definition of his own; and it follows, on one or other, that a man may pay too dearly for his livelihood, by giving, in Thoreau's terms, his whole life for it, or, in mine, bartering for it the whole of his available liberty, and becoming a slave till death. ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and lessen the dissatisfied feeling? It passed hovering in and about his thoughts, though uncaught by actual words; and as his mind played with it, he felt more hopeful. He searched in vain for a definition, but, though fruitless, the search brought comfort somehow. Something had been accomplished and it was due to himself, because without his presence it would never have been done. This hint slipped into desire, ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... all the way from Millbrook to Spotswood, corresponds to the mathematical definition of a straight line. It forms the third concession of the township, and there is not a curve in it anywhere. The concessions number from west to east, and the sidelines, running at right angles to them are exactly two miles apart. At the northwestern angle ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... thing up to the time of cognition which is the cause of its becoming an object of cognition. To be an object of cognition means nothing more than to be the cause of the origination of cognition. Nor does this definition imply that the sense- organs also are the objects of cognition. For a cause of cognition is held to be an object of cognition only in so far as it imparts to the cognition its own form (and this the sense-organs ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... DEFINITION OF HISTORY.—The subject of history is man. History has for its object to record his doings and experiences. It may then be concisely defined as a narrative of past events in which men have been concerned. To describe the earth, the abode of man, to delineate ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... courage, moral strength, moral force; we all recognise that great virtue of mind and heart that keeps a man unconquerable above every power of brute strength. I call it moral force, which is a good name, and I make the definition: a man of moral force is he who, seeing a thing to be right and essential and claiming his allegiance, stands for it as for the truth, unheeding any consequence. It is not that he is a wild person, utterly reckless of all mad possibilities, filled with ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... meaning in the phrase, 'Done to a turn' as applied to omelettes? You know there is; and so also you must believe in Categories, and you must admit differences of kind as well as of degree, and you must accept exact definition and believe in all that your fathers did, that were wiser men than you, as is easily proved if you will but imagine yourself for but one moment introduced into the presence of your ancestors, and ask yourself which ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... Method in each of the three departments of education, the Intellectual, the Moral, and the Religious. Things before words, or always along with words, to explain them; the concrete and sensible to prepare for the abstract; example and illustration rather than verbal definition, or to accompany verbal definition: such is his main maxim in the first department. Object-lessons, wherever possible: i.e. if boys are taught about the stars, let it be with the stars over their heads to look at; if about the structure of the human body, let it be with a skeleton before them; ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... marching dithyrambs. Any formula defining it as "the art of lying back and getting elaborately tickled," should surely at this hour be too primitive—too Opic—to bring anything but a smile to the lips of grown white-skinned men; and the very fact that such a definition can still find undoubting acceptance in all quarters may be an indication that the true [Greek: idea] which this condition of being must finally assume is far indeed—far, perhaps, by ages and aeons—from becoming part of the general conception. ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... which this devotion has run. But he accepts and defends, on the most precarious grounds, the whole system of thought out of which they have sprung by no very violent process of growth. He cannot, of course, stop short of accepting the definition of the Immaculate Conception as an article of faith, and, though he emphatically condemns, with a warmth and energy of which no one can doubt the sincerity, a number of revolting consequences drawn from the theology of which that dogma is the expression, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... in most of the Southern States, into two classes, designated by law as Negroes and mulattoes respectively. The term Negro was used in its ethnological sense, and needed no definition; but the term "mulatto" was held by legislative enactment to embrace all persons of color not Negroes. The words "quadroon" and "mestizo" are employed in some of the law books, tho not defined; but the term "octoroon," as indicating ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... vocabulary to which thought freely commits itself, trained, stimulated, raised, thereby, towards a high level of abstract conception, surely to the increase of our general intellectual powers. That, of course, is largely due to Plato's successor, to Aristotle's life-long labour of analysis and definition, and to his successors the Schoolmen, with their systematic culture of a precise instrument for the registration, by the analytic intellect, of its own subtlest movements. But then, Aristotle, himself the first of the Schoolmen, had succeeded Plato, and did but formulate, ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... himself encircled by the group discussing its loss, and more or less carried away on the current of their excitement. But an undercurrent of query continued to run in his mind, as to what had really happened to the boy, and what was the boy's exact definition ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton |
