"Generalize" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Evaporated Thinking. If I were to generalize in what I have to say about men who are fooled by themselves instead of rounding my idea out with some particular man everybody knows, like Mr. Burleson for instance, it ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... bird is intelligent and by no means a slave to habit; because he has behaved in a certain way once, there is no law, avian or divine, that compels him to repeat that conduct on the next occasion. Nor is it safe to generalize about him, or any other bird for that matter. One cannot say, "The magpie does thus and so," because each individual magpie has his own way of doing, and circumstances alter cases, with birds as well as ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... struggling to define the infinite; they are the expressions of that "yearning after the gods" which the earliest of poets discerned in the hearts of all men. Studied in this sense they are rich in teachings. Would we estimate the intellectual and aesthetic culture of a people, would we generalize the laws of progress, would we appreciate the sublimity of Christianity, and read the seals of its authenticity: the natural conceptions of divinity reveal them. No mythologies are so crude, therefore, none so barbarous, but deserve the attention ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... reflect, analyze, and generalize, has an advantage over uncultured minds even of double experience. Poor as your cook is, she now knows more of her business than you do. After a very brief period of attention and experiment, you will not only know more than she does, but you will ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Students of rural life apparently give this element less attention than it deserves. As Professor Ross has pointed out in "South of Panama," for example, the precocious development of sex tends to enfeeble the intellect and to prevent the largest kind of mental capacity. It is unsafe at present to generalize regarding the differences between country and city life in matters of sex, but it is certainly true, when rural life is empty of commanding interests and when it is coarsened by low traditions and the presence ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... told Mrs. Montresor what I thought. It is all very well to generalize and to be glad that certain institutions produce certain effects; but of course you are superior to the institutions, or you wouldn't be generalizing so, and all the more, of course, superior to the effects, and so I don't see how it signifies to ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... but one of the atoms in a grand organism where we could see only by monads at a time,—if he and the sun and the sea were but cells or organs of some one small being in the fenceless vivarium of the Universe? Let not the ephemeron that lights on a baby's hand generalize too rashly upon the non-growing of organisms! As we thought on these things, we bared our heads to the barer forehead ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... microscope could only give back the proper response, we should see them, if not be filled with wonder at the marvellous perfection of their structure. But into whatever divisions or classifications we may distinguish or generalize the properties of matter, we can never predicate vitality of it, any more than we can predicate intellectuality. Indeed, "intellectual matter" presents no greater incongruity or invalidity of conception than "vital matter." These qualifying terms are applied to the known laws ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... one should not generalize regarding nations, except in vague or very guarded terms; but possibly it would not be unjust to say that the Italians, apart from those of northern provinces and of Sardinia, have too much imagination to make first-class soldiers. And they are too sensitive, as you could see in an Italian military ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... ideas, if it were not for the mobility of attention which the ceaseless variation of the surrounding world produces in them. Thus all the facts grouped nowadays under the name of auto-suggestion may, in my opinion, be explained. Here we shall generalize the law in this form: every idea conceived by the mind is an auto-suggestion, the selective effect of which is only counterbalanced by other ideas producing a different auto-suggestion. This is especially noticeable in the young, who so rapidly carry into action what ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... "You generalize, Don Benito; and mournfully enough. But the past is passed; why moralize upon it? Forget it. See, yon bright sun has forgotten it all, and the blue sea, and the blue sky; these have turned ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... rigidity of demonstration desirable is in the present state of erotics beyond our power. Until our family trees give us something more than mere skeletons of dead branches, we must perforce continue ignorant of the science of grafts. For the nonce we must be content to generalize from our own premises, only rising above them sufficiently to get a bird's-eye view of our neighbor's estates. Such a survey has at least one advantage: the whole field ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... harims. I often spent an evening in them, and I found them very pleasant; only at first the women used to ask me such a lot of inconvenient questions that I became quite confused. They were always puzzled because I had no children. One cannot generalize on the subject of harims; they differ in degree just as much as families in London. A first-class harim at Constantinople is one thing, at Damascus one of the same rank is another, while those of the middle and lower classes are different ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... individuals is the objective truth. As the number of units taken diminishes, the amount of variety and inexactness of generalization increases, because individuality tells for more and more. Could you take men by the thousand billion, you could generalize about them as you do about atoms; could you take atoms singly, it may be that you would find them as individual as your aunts and cousins. That concisely is the ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... aim to generalize the most important facts, leaving the reader to examine at his leisure recondite authorities, in which, too often, the argument is obscured by minute details, and ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... special tutors rose rapidly in our esteem. They seemed of rather finer quality than the guards, though all were on terms of easy friendliness. Mine was named Somel, Jeff's Zava, and Terry's Moadine. We tried to generalize from the names, those of the guards, and of our three girls, ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... the foundation of the method of Descartes; add to it his advice on the art of reasoning, which even in his time was not at all novel, but which with him is very precise; not to generalize too hastily, not to be put off with words, but to have a clear definition of every word, etc., and thus a sufficient idea of it ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... implied right of the sovereignty of the king, just as we idly substituted the words "God save the people" at the end of a proclamation, for "God save the king." It was a form. But, if it is desirable to affix to them any more precise signification, it will not do to generalize according to the argument of one party; but we are to take the words, in their limited and appropriate meaning and with their accompanying facts. They can only allude to the constituencies, and these constituencies ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of the process of falling prices may also be considered as direct and indirect. The direct results are somewhat of the opposite character to those just related for a period of rising prices. It is difficult to generalize about them. If the period of falling prices follows closely upon a period of sharply rising prices, during which latter period wage increases lagged greatly behind price increases, the tendency for wages to rise may continue to manifest itself for some time after prices have ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... be possible. Ignorance is the best of law reformers. People are glad to discuss a question on general principles, when they have forgotten the special knowledge necessary for technical reasoning. But the present willingness to generalize is founded on more than merely negative grounds. The philosophical habit of the day, the frequency of legislation, and the ease with which the law may be changed to meet the opinions and wishes of the public, all make it natural and unavoidable ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... form one class. Thirdly, all who are guilty of the same sins, whether the world knows them or not; whether they languish in prison, looking forward to the gallows, or walk honored among men, they also form a class. Then proceed to generalize and classify the whole world together, as none can claim utter exemption from either sorrow, sin, or disease; and if they could, yet Death, like a great parent, comes and sweeps them all through one ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... upon two feet or four, or wings or fins, lack reason just in proportion to their idiocy. Lor'! why I have seen human creatures at the Idiot Asylum with less intellect than cats. And I have seen some horses with more intelligence than some legislators. You can't generalize on these subjects, grandpa," said Miss Electra, ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... problems and to decide which process of arithmetic should be used in dealing with them. Once these decisions are made the succeeding arithmetical calculations are simple and easy. In technical terms the ability that is needed is the ability to generalize one's experiences. In every-day terms it is the ability to use ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... these were excrescences or city fashions; that one must not generalize. These are empty phrases. To understand the spirit of a society it is not hermits that one must study. And, moreover, let any one ask himself whether this society was really based on the idea of solidarity and human friendliness or upon unscrupulous personal interests ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... "You generalize, and since you are laying down a rule, you are right," said Raymond. "But this is a particular case and an exception. We owe some duties to the feminine gender as well as to patriotism. The greater shouldn't always be swallowed up in ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... that mentioned above. Among close acquaintances there is little difficulty in establishing which of their characteristics belong to that quality, and when series of such observations are brought together it is not difficult to generalize and to abstract from them specific rules. Then, in case of need, when the work is important, one makes use of the appropriate rule with pleasure, and I might say, with thanks for one's ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... public sentiment in this country for any period knows how easy it is to generalize from a few facts, and yet, if the subject be more thoroughly investigated, it becomes apparent how unsatisfactory such generalizations are apt to be; not that they are essentially untrue, but rather because they express only a part of the ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... back to the lawn. A good extent of open lawn space is always beautiful. It is restful. It adds a feeling of space to even small grounds. So we might generalize and say that it is well to keep open lawn spaces. If one covers his lawn space with many trees, with little flower beds here and there, the general effect is choppy and fussy. It is a bit like an over-dressed person. One's grounds lose all individuality thus treated. ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... hard as they possibly could. The women were doing menial work, such as scrubbing, which the men refused to do. The men were properly fed at noon; the women satisfied themselves with cake and pickles. Why was this? It is of course impossible to generalize on a single factory. I can only relate the conclusions I drew from what I saw myself. The wages paid by employers, economists tell us, are fixed at the level of bare subsistence. This level and its accompanying conditions are determined by competition, by the nature and number of labourers ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... ultimate end to be contemplated, I do not admit that it should be the proximate end. The Expediency-Philosophy having concluded that happiness is a thing to be achieved, assumes that Morality has no other business than empirically to generalize the results of conduct, and to supply for the guidance of conduct nothing more than its ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... evenings, by describing the persons and manners of the unfortunate beings, whose figures or voices awoke sympathetic sorrow in Maria's bosom; and the stories she told were the more interesting, for perpetually leaving room to conjecture something extraordinary. Still Maria, accustomed to generalize her observations, was led to conclude from all she heard, that it was a vulgar error to suppose that people of abilities were the most apt to lose the command of reason. On the contrary, from most of the instances ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... and further back through the stream of time, the task became easier in a way; but we have had to generalize more, and often, for want of time and space, to use types in lieu of individuals. For with every successive generation the number of our progenitors increased in geometrical progression (as in the problem of the nails in the horseshoe) until a ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... authority: but such phrases are nets which, while they do indeed capture the main tendency of ideas, allow to escape the subtle reservations and qualifications wherein the life of ideas truly resides. On such a point we can at best generalize: and this generalization will most easily be made ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... down to Bevisham to witness the ceremony of the nomination in the town-hall sobered Mr. Tuckham's disposition to generalize. Beauchamp had the show of hands, and to say with Captain Baskelett, that they were a dirty majority, was beneath Mr. Tuckham's verbal antagonism. He fell into a studious reserve, noting everything, listening to everybody, greatly to Colonel Halkett's admiration ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... land. Recent investigations appear to show that Forbes was right enough in his classification of the facts of distribution in depth as they are to be observed in the Aegean; and though, at the time he wrote, one or two observations were extant which might have warned him not to generalize too extensively from his Aegean experience, his own dredging work was so much more extensive and systematic than that of any other naturalist, that it is not wonderful he should have felt justified in building upon it. Nevertheless, so far as the limit of the range of life in depth goes, Forbes' ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... to humanity or the race in general. Of these, the most prominent are—the proneness to suppose in nature greater order and regularity than there actually is; the tendency to support a preconceived opinion by affirmative instances, neglecting all negative or opposed cases; and the tendency to generalize from few observations, or to give reality to mere abstractions, figments of the mind. Manifold errors also result from the weakness of the senses, which affords scope for mere conjecture; from the influence exercised over the understanding ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... well-endowed professorship. It were as well to be educated in the shadow of a mountain as in more classical shades. Some will remember, no doubt, not only that they went to the college, but that they went to the mountain. Every visit to its summit would, as it were, generalize the particular information gained below, and subject it to more ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... landscape, corroborated. And yet the contrast of the clear atmosphere and the sharp air equally insisted on the mountains. It was a strange and delicious double effect, a contradiction of natural impressions, a negation of our right to generalize from ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... mesmerism as a series of facts apparently inconsistent with experience, it is most hasty and unphilosophical to attempt to generalize it by crude hypotheses. To rest its probable truth upon these hypotheses, is to take a totally different ground, and one much lower and more assailable. We have no desire to be hypercritical—to expose minor scientific inaccuracies in the work before us; but we do not hesitate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... purely physical sciences. He does not even know the name of history, or the meaning of metaphysics and ethics. He knows the essential relations between men and things, but nothing of the moral relations between man and man. He does not readily generalize or conceive of abstractions. He observes the qualities common to certain bodies without reasoning about the qualities themselves. With the aid of geometric figures and algebraic signs, he knows something of extension and quantity. Upon these figures and signs his senses rest their knowledge ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... becoming vengeance. We are in possession of but few of the numerous enterprises in which he was engaged; imperfect memories of the aged give us glimpses of deeds for the particulars of which we turn in vain to the dusty pages of the chronicler. But we need not generalize farther upon the traits of his military character. We have endeavored to make these speak for themselves, page by page, in the narration of the events, so far as we know them, by which his reputation was acquired. It is enough that his fame has entered largely into that of his country, ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... concrete examples and specific instances are popular for expository articles. Sometimes several instances are related in the introduction before the writer proceeds to generalize from them. The advantage of this inductive method of explanation grows out of the fact that, after a general idea has been illustrated by an example or two, most persons can grasp it with much less effort and with much ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... Holbein, only what he sees. And, as I have told you often before, the really scientific artist is he who not only asserts bravely what he does see, but confesses honestly what he does not. You must not draw all the hairs in an eyelash; not because it is sublime to generalize them, but because it is impossible to see them. How many hairs there are, a sign painter or anatomist may count; but how few of them you can see, it is only the utmost masters, Carpaccio, Tintoret, Reynolds, and Velasquez, who ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... cit.) remarks that the authorities who have committed themselves to declarations in favor of the unconditional advantages of sexual abstinence tend to fall into three errors: (1) they generalize unduly, instead of considering each case individually, on its own merits; (2) they fail to realize that human nature is influenced by highly mixed and complex motives and cannot be assumed to be amenable only to motives of abstract morality; ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... dualistic doctrine of the Parsees. But among the Egyptians, Greeks and Aztecs, as well as in the words of Zarathustra and in the theology of Christianity, we frequently meet with the distinct recognition of the fundamental unity of all power. At core, all religions have seeds of monotheism. When we generalize the current concepts of motion or force beyond individual displays and relative measures of quantity, we recognize their qualitative identity, and appreciate the logical unity under which we must give them abstract expression. This is the process, often unconscious, ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... pursuits are contracted, whether they be merely professional, merely scientific, or of whatever other peculiar complexion. Men, whose life lies in the cultivation of one science, or the exercise of one method of thought, have no more right, though they have often more ambition, to generalize upon the basis of their own pursuit but beyond its range, than the schoolboy or the ploughman to judge of a Prime Minister. But they must have something to say on every subject; habit, fashion, the public require it of them: and, if so, they can only give sentence according to their knowledge. ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... those conventional heroines of second-rate novels, who love tremendously once, and then, when things go wrong, promptly turn into marble statues, and go through life with hearts of stone? Well, my dear, I am just like that. I know it's despicable. I have straggled against it. It is idiotic to generalize from one personal experience. I keep before my mind that other men are not like him. I know they aren't, but yet—somehow I think they ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... correspondent—I cannot formulate any theory of friendship which will cover all the conditions. I know a few things that friendship is not, and a few things that it is, but when I come to generalize upon the abstract quality I am quite at a ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... Romanesque, and Western Gothic, the roof-mask is the gable: in the Eastern Romanesque, and Eastern Gothic, it is the dome: but I have not studied the roofing of either of these last two groups, and shall not venture to generalize them in a diagram. But the three groups, in the hands of the Western builders, may be thus simply represented: a, Fig. XII., Greek;[71] b, Western Romanesque; c, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... homesickness that would be engendered on the way. In fact, one doubts whether the sufferer would even need to be of English strain to attach the vision of home to the essentially lovable places that Mr. Parsons depicts. They seem to generalize and typify the idea, so that every one may feel, in every case, that he has a sentimental property in the scene. The very sweetness of its reality only helps to give it that story-book quality which persuades us we have known it ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... Lord John, thinking it well to generalize and spare Mrs. Freddy further rending, 'we've been talking about this public demonstration of the unfitness of women for ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... photograph Yussuf for you. The feelings and prejudices and ideas of a cultivated Arab, as I get at them little by little, are curious beyond compare. It won't do to generalize from one man, of course, but even one gives some very new ideas. The most striking thing is the sweetness and delicacy of feeling—the horror of hurting anyone (this must be individual, of course: it is too ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... it hot-shot, but I'll have to generalize the story for you. The most decisive of all the tests have been made during the last eighteen months, and the final and most convincing of all within the year, under the direction of Lombroso, Morselli, and Bottazzi. It is safe ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... was especially illuminating because he had spent nineteen years in south China and had never before visited the north. He began to realize what every one soon learns who wanders much about the Middle Kingdom—that it is never safe to generalize in this strange land. Conditions true of one region may be absolutely unknown a few hundred miles away. He was continually irritated to find that his perfect knowledge of the dialect of Fukien Province was utterly useless. He was well-nigh as helpless as though he had never been ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... and clear to the distant view which below on the plain a thousand things would come between to intercept. But there was some morbidness about it too. Disappointment in two or three instances where he had given his full confidence and been obliged to take it back had quickened him to generalize unfavourably upon human character, both in the mass and in individuals. And a restless dissatisfaction with himself and the world did not tend to a healthy view of things. Yet truth was at the bottom; truth rarely arrived at without the help of revelation. He discerned a want he did not know ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... disliked him immensely, and I ought to do him justice, now he's gone. He deserved all your pity. He's a doomed man; his vice is irreparable; he can't resist it." Lydia did not say anything: women do not generalize in these matters; perhaps they cannot pity the faults of those they do not love. Staniford only forgave Hicks the more. "I can't say that up to the last moment I thought him anything but a poor, common little creature; ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... devotion which, if they ever possessed, had long ago died out. She saw that England was ripe for heresy, and the result confirmed her worldly sagacity. How came it, then, that the change which was absolutely impossible in Ireland, was so easily effected in the other country? Or, to generalize the question: How is it that, to speak generally, the nations of Northern Europe embraced Protestantism so readily, while those of Southern Europe refused to receive it, or were only slightly affected by it? Ranke has remarked that, when, after the first ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... had found no bath, and asking for one at Chester, the chambermaid said, with earnest good-will, that "they had none, but she thought she could get me a note from her master to the Infirmary (!!) if I would go there." Luckily I did not generalize quite as rapidly as travellers in America usually do, and put in the note-book,—"Mem.: None but the sick ever bathe in England"; for in the next establishment we tried, I found the plentiful provision for a clean and healthy day, which I had read ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... of her right to engage in a punitive expedition against Servia, guaranteed that she would do nothing to generalize the conflict by her assurances to Russia and to the world that there would be no annexation of Servian territory or annihilation of the Servian Kingdom. Whether these assurances were genuine or not is impossible of determination. We have ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... I do generalize on the attitudes of both black and white servicemen and the black and white communities at large as well. But I have permitted myself to do so only when these attitudes were clearly pertinent to changes in the services' racial policies and only when the written record supported, ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... the Celebrity had been content with women in general, all would have been well; but he was unable to generalize, in one sense, and to particularize, in another. And it was plain that he wished to monopolize Miss Trevor, while still retaining a hold upon the others. For my sake, had he been content with women alone, I should have had no cause to complain. But it seemed that I had an attraction ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... delight at once calm and profound, of which so few know the power, and the direct influence of human relation, Gibbie's emotional joy was more stirred by storm than by anything else; and with all forms of it he was so familiar that, young as he was, he had unconsciously begun to generalize on its phases. ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... prominently forward one culminating point, which serves to determine their true character. Such is the wise economy of all revealed laws, that generally avoiding abstractions, they select as a standard one special case of the most interesting, and leave it to thy care of the human understanding to generalize, and deduce from it universal theories.[2] Consequently, on analysing the ten emanations of the Divine Will, we must transfer mentally each of them to the class of duties to which it belongs, and consider it as intended to represent all ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... she said. "I can't guess what. Yes, he is that sort of good fellow, I suppose; but don't you think you generalize too much, when you class them all together? And don't you judge harshly? Cannot a man have—to use the cant phrase—have sown his wild oats, and have done with them? Mind, I know nothing definite about those wild oats, but before now it has been a matter ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... more grand and a darker complexion. The spirit of indignant hatred and contempt with which he regarded the mass of humanity; his quiet and powerful perception of their failings, errors, and crimes; his zeal for liberty and freedom of thought, tended at once to generalize, while it embittered, his satire, and to change traits of personal severity for that deep shade of censure which Gulliver's Travels throw upon mankind universally." Most of the sentiments which impressed Swift, seem also to have been felt by the unknown author ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... does not demand an explanation. When we are thwarted we begin to ask why. It was the evil in the world that set Leibniz the task of justifying the ways of God to man. Nor is it an accident that in daily life misfortune turns men to philosophy. One might generalize and say that as soon as we begin to explain, it is because we have ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... person's business or book of accounts is such deprivation of his property without due process of law, at least when applied to a natural person. I find no legislation limiting these important principles, but on the contrary the tendency in modern statutes and modern State constitutions is to extend and generalize them. Of such is the famous clause of the recent constitutions of Kentucky and Wyoming that "absolute arbitrary power over the lives, liberty, and property of freemen exists nowhere in a republic, not even in the largest majority." In ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... from life, sometimes generalizing broadly and sometimes keeping close to the single individual, but always free to modify the mere fact as he may have observed it to conform with the larger truth of the fable he shall devise. Most story-tellers tend to generalize, and their fictions lack the sharpness of outline we find in nature. Daudet prefers to retain as much of the actual individual as he dares without endangering the web of his composition; and often the transformation is very slight,—Mora, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... to generalize—the very thing I was resolute to avoid. How silly to generalize about a country which embraces such extremes of climate as the sharp winters of Boston and New York, and the warm winds of Florida which blow through palms and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... in St. Matt. xiii. 36 and xv. 15, we cannot generalize about the Peshitto rendering of this verb. Conversely, [Syriac letters] is used as the rendering of other Greek words besides ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... me as a defect in our anatomical teachers, that in describing that prominent feature of the human face, the organ of scent, they generalize too much, and have but one term for the symmetrical arch, arising majestically, or the tiny atom, scarcely equal to the weight of a barnacle—a very dot of flesh! Nor is the dissimilarity between the invisible functions ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... knowledge should have withheld Max Muller from finding the grand distinctive mark of humanity in the power of speech. The merest theorist needs some range of reality for the framework of his theories, and the man of broad principles must have facts to generalize. Indeed, a good memory is the indispensable servant of large thought, and however deficient in certain directions, the great thinkers have had large stores. 'The best heads that have ever existed,' says an idealist,—'Pericles, Plato, Julius Caesar, Shakespeare, Goethe, Milton,—were ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... same into life, has the historic mission of also carrying the revolution to perfection, and to promote on all fields the budding of the germs for radical transformations, which a social order, built on new foundations, would only have to generalize on a large scale, ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... been "self-made" men, so-called, whose best powers were evoked by rare opportunities. Oftener, they have been men of thoroughly disciplined minds, of sharpened perceptive faculties, trained to analyze and to generalize; men of well-balanced judgments and power of ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 6, June 1896 • Various
... Anglo-Saxon growth. Their difference is from a difference of environment; and the Christmas story when naturalized among us becomes almost identical in motive, incident, and treatment with the Thanksgiving story. If I were to generalize a distinction between them, I should say that the one dealt more with marvels and the other more with morals; and yet the critic should beware of speaking too confidently on this point. It is certain, however, that the Christmas season is meteorologically more favorable ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... unsuccessful participants. The results show that, even in some of the most successful districts, there is not a large "social surplus,"—that is, a surplus of receipts over total expenditures. It is difficult to generalize from such studies with any degree of accuracy; but it seems likely that if we could measure the vast amount of fruitless effort which has been expended in non-productive territories, the result would tend to bear out the general conclusion that the social surplus for the mineral ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... economy of human time is the next advantage of machinery in manufactures. So extensive and important is this effect, that we might, if we were inclined to generalize, embrace almost all the advantages under this single head: but the elucidation of principles of less extent will contribute more readily to a knowledge of the subject; and, as numerous examples will be presented to the reader ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... continuing to rise in the estimation of his party, and commanding a certain respect from the neutral public, by acknowledged and eminent talents in the details of business; for his quickness of penetration, and a logical habit of mind, enabled him to grapple with and generalize the minutiae of official labour or of legislative enactments with a masterly success. But as the road became clearer to his steps, his ambition became more evident and daring. Naturally dictatorial and presumptuous, his early suppleness to superiors was now exchanged for a self-willed ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of her actions all through this crisis. Pity, if one may generalize, is at the bottom of woman. When men like us, it is for our better qualities, and however tender their liking, we dare not be unworthy of it, or they will quietly let us go. But unworthiness stimulates woman. It brings out her deeper nature, ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... here to-night to the particular line of truth and motive the Lord had in mind when he said, "I am the way." By thus pointing out the way, and showing that eternal life and happiness are the blessed reward of walking in it, I hope to induce some here to-night to enter it. I might here generalize somewhat by calling your attention to the fact that it is natural for us all, when going anywhere, to feel best satisfied when we know the way we are on is the right way to where we want to go. It is true, however, one may tramp along through life over ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... great expediencies and elaborations, permeated with the musty odour of old family medicines and old-wife wisdom; all of them grotesque and absurd in their form—because they address themselves to "all," because they generalize where generalization is not authorized; all of them speaking unconditionally, and taking themselves unconditionally; all of them flavoured not merely with one grain of salt, but rather endurable only, and sometimes even seductive, when they are over-spiced and begin to ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... and all with a woman when she begins to read stuff like that is her inability to generalize. You women take everything home to yourselves. You try to deduct conclusions from your own lives which men like Schopenhauer have scanned the centuries for. The natural course of your life could hardly have provided you with the pessimism with ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... You generalize this by saying that any opinion, however satisfactory, can count positively and absolutely as true only so far as it agrees with a standard beyond itself; and if you then forget that this standard perpetually grows up endogenously ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... that neither are all men Shakespeares and St. Augustines. The credit is so much the greater to those of the species which have overcome the disadvantages of a low and repulsive origin. None the less, however, will a strict veracity of mind and speech be careful not to generalize too sweepingly from a few particulars, and also not to make too indiscriminate and imperious a demand upon other people's enthusiasm. Especially will it be unwise for the friends of the dog to persist in their attempt to exalt him by depreciating man, inasmuch as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... always the case, so far as we know, where the Corinthian capital was used. In Corinthian buildings the anta, where met with, has a capital like that of the column. But there is very little material to generalize from until we descend ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... parties. Those who know me know I have suffered. I tried to come to an understanding with the authorities on different points. I believe I have done my duty. It was said that I was egotistical. A man cannot generalize himself unless he is imputed with the taint. After the Canadian Government, through the honourable under-secretary of state, replied to my letter regarding the half-breeds, then, and not till then, ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... her thought dwelt insistently upon the significance of his stepping aside, in the middle of a violent proposal, in order to make irrelevant remarks. What struck her was the man's certitude. So little did he doubt that he would have her, that he could afford to pause and generalize upon love ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... religion—the vain, who are mortified at the national degradation—and authors, who sigh for the freedom of the press.—When you consider this multiplicity of symptomatic indications, you will not be surprized that such numbers are pronounced in a state of disease; but our republican physicians will soon generalize these various species of aristocracy under the single description of all who have any thing to lose, and every one will be deemed plethoric who is not in a consumption. The people themselves who observe, though they do not reason, begin to ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... in until Mrs. Willoughby was entertaining three or four in the front parlor. Miss Ainsley remained chatting with Ella, who felt that the Northern girl's remarks were largely tentative, evincing a wish to draw her out. Shrewd Ella soon began to generalize to such a degree that Miss Ainsley thought, "You are no fool," and had a growing respect for the "little baker," as she ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... have been of various kinds. First and foremost, it has been difficult to choose a point of view. On what basis shall we classify? A language shows us so many facets that we may well be puzzled. And is one point of view sufficient? Secondly, it is dangerous to generalize from a small number of selected languages. To take, as the sum total of our material, Latin, Arabic, Turkish, Chinese, and perhaps Eskimo or Sioux as an afterthought, is to court disaster. We have no right to assume that a sprinkling of exotic types will do to supplement the few languages nearer ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... I might say that this would be attributable to the peculiarity of his temperament, and that he had no call to generalize and go beyond that. But I will lend a hand to the public prosecutor in this perplexity. I will bring the charge against myself in a more telling form than he has been able to do. I will formulate it as the facts of the case require that it must be formulated if it is to be ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... What, then, is this thing we call conscience? Is it made of India-rubber? I once knew a clever Southern woman, who said that New England women seemed to her all conscience—Southern women all soul and impulse. If it were possible to generalize in this way, we might say that Carmen had neither conscience nor soul, simply very clever reason. Uncle Jerry had no more conscience than Carmen, but he had a great deal of natural affection. Henderson, with ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... explain how the study of social insects has set moralists of recent years thinking in a new direction, it will be necessary to generalize a great deal in the course of so short a lecture. It is especially the social conditions of the ants which has inspired these new ideas; but you must not think that any one species of ants furnishes us with all the facts. The facts have been arrived at only through ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... hereafter? And what ground is left for the reckless prediction that Theology is doomed, and must fall before the onward march of Positive Science? If man was able from the beginning to observe, to compare, to abstract, and to generalize, and if the fundamental laws of human thought have been ever the same, it follows that there must have been a tendency, coeval with the origin of the race, towards Theological, Metaphysical, and Inductive Speculation, and that the same tendency must continue as long as his powers remain ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... the sole end and the highest ambition of science to discover as many as possible of the relationships which bind facts together, and thus to carry the generalization to the farthest point. Its office is not to discover causes, but to generalize effects. The investigation of real causes is quite given ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... to generalize the law that is at the basis of the theory of value. In reality, it is all-comprehensive. The first generalization to be made consists in applying the law, not to single articles, but to consumers' wealth in all its forms. The richer man becomes, the less can his wealth ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... they could not readily describe what they mean by that expression. Profoundly engaged in the study of particular classes of natural phenomena, they are usually too much engrossed in the immense and ever accumulating details of their special sciences to generalize upon the methods of reasoning which they unconsciously employ. Yet few will deny that these methods of reasoning ought to be studied, especially by those who endeavor to introduce scientific order into less successful and ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... economists nor legists have ever risen. If our legislators had introduced into their codes the principle of distributive justice which governs printing-offices; if they had observed the popular instincts,—not for the sake of servile imitation, but in order to reform and generalize them,—long ere this liberty and equality would have been established on an immovable basis, and we should not now be disputing about the right of property and ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... learned more about men, as such, from him than ever she had learned, consciously at least, from Rodney. She'd never been able to regard her husband as a specimen. He was Rodney, sui generis, and it had never occurred to her either to generalize from him to other men, or to explain any of the facts she had noted about him, on the mere ground of his masculinity. She began doing that now a little, and ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... generalize in that mode, Miles, my dear boy, I must allow that we are. We can go up channel, and ten chances to one but we fall in with some Yankee, who will lend ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... "Oh, but generalize! From what you know of women as Woman, what should you expect? Shouldn't you expect her to make you pay somehow for your privity to her disgrace, to revenge her misery upon you? Isn't there a theory that women forgive injuries, ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... it? Does it give any signs of qualities, physical or mental, tending to distinguish it from Britons, Australians, or North Americans? The answer is not easy. Nothing is more tempting, and at the same time more risky, than to thus generalize and speculate too soon. As was said at the outset, New Zealand has taken an almost perverse delight in upsetting expectations. Nevertheless, certain points are worth noting which may, at any rate, help readers to ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... practical book "from the ground up." It gives complete directions for growing all vegetables cultivatable in the climate of the northern United States. It represents a departure in vegetable-garden literature. It does not generalize. The illustrations, numbering about 150, are ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... question came, was Charlotte like Sylvia? Was Charlotte even now sitting watching for him with that awful eagerness which comes from a hunger of the heart? He had seen one woman's wounded heart, and, like most men, was disposed to generalize, and think he had seen the wounded hearts of ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... then if 70 Xs be Ys, and 40 Zs be Ys, it follows that 10 Xs (at least) are Zs. Hamilton, whose mind could not generalize on symbols, saw that the word most would come under this system, and admitted, as valid, such a syllogism as "most Ys are Xs; most Ys are Zs; therefore, some Xs ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... more contemptible, they feel, for the public to wrap itself in the cloak of hypocrisy before casting stones. The modern poet's weakness for autobiographical revelation leaves no secret corners in his nature in which surreptitious vices may lurk. One might generalize what Keats says of Burns, "We can see horribly clear in the work of such a man his whole life, as if we were God's spies." [Footnote: Sidney Colvin, John Keats, p. 285.] The Rousseau-like nudity of the poet's soul is sometimes put forward ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... man, and his only business, have been periods of spiritual abasement and poverty." Certainly no one will be inclined to claim for the eighteenth century the spiritual idealism of the seventeenth, though Law and Bishop Wilson and the Wesleyan revival will make us generalize with caution. But the truth was that theological ethics had become empty and inadequate, and the problem was therefore urgent. That is why Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume and Adam Smith—to take only men of the first ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... and yet generalize at the same time, we will say here that the Tea plant or tree is greatly modified in hardiness, in height, in size of leaf, and in the quality of the leaf for a beverage, by soil, by moisture, tillage, and climate. Some soils ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... second edition of the Lyrical Ballads. Much of the matter of these essays, received at the time with contemptuous aversion, is now accepted as truth; and few compositions of equal length contain so much of vigorous criticism and sound reflection. It is only when they generalize too confidently that they are in danger of misleading us; for all expositions of the art and practice of poetry must necessarily be incomplete. Poetry, like all the arts, is essentially a "mystery." Its charm ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... axiom requires large qualifications. There are no absolute rules, in fact, except such as are dictated by the plainest common sense. Aristotle himself did not so much dogmatize as analyse, classify, and generalize from, the practices of the Attic dramatists. He said, "you had better" rather than "you must." It was Horace, in an age of deep dramatic decadence, who re-stated the pseudo-Aristotelian formulas of the Alexandrians ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... persons, still imbued with political (Jacobin) artificiality, think that in order to solve the social question it will be necessary to generalize the system of metayage. They imagine, then—though they do not say so—a royal or presidential decree: "Art. 1. Let ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... of personal pronouns are not used indiscriminately, but the examples of their use which I collected are too few to generalize upon. However, ngatu and the three next under it, appear to be used only with a certain class of verbs of which an example is afforded by the sentence ngatu nudu matumina I struck him; and the use of the second set of these ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... a rogue is smart and slippery." This was an airy generalization drawn from the particular case of Captain MacWhirr's honesty, which, in itself, had the heavy obviousness of a lump of clay. On the other hand, Mr. Jukes, unable to generalize, unmarried, and unengaged, was in the habit of opening his heart after another fashion to an old chum and former shipmate, actually serving as second officer ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... to present in this lecture, requires historical background, detailed criticism, and a study of development. I have time for reference to none of these, and can only summarize the end of the process. If, therefore, I seem to generalize unduly, I hope that my deficiencies may be charged against the exigencies of the occasion. But I generalize the more boldly because I am speaking, after all, of an English literature; not in a Roman-Greek relationship of unnaturalized borrowings (for we Americans imitate ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... quite confident; even at that age, as I have observed, she knew very well what she liked. For my part I remembered so vividly my own early dreams and later awakenings that I would not cut short her guileless visions; moreover, to generalize from one's self is the most fatal foolishness, even while it is ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... with more of imagination than good sense, teach distinctions which do not exist, generalizations which do not generalize, and do incalculable mischief by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... easy to ask questions and to generalize," returned Mr. Birtwell, not hiding the annoyance ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... subject is made to arise in the succession of exercises. It is wise at times to set a trap for students so that they may learn through the consequences of error. For this reason students may be permitted to leap to a conclusion, to generalize from insufficient data, to neglect controls, to overlook disturbing factors, etc. An improperly planned and poorly graded laboratory course repeats exercises that involve the same problems and omits situations that give training in attacking and ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... objected to as being frivolously Oriental-looking and brilliant, whereas the critic likes only the sober and the dull. Few are sufficiently educated to appreciate style: and we cannot rule our own by anybody's opinion; but we can generalize and find something that shall be agreeable to all—something approaching to a golden mean. The artist for decoration should be sensitively alive to any suggestion from the style of that which he is to adorn, remembering the antecedent motives ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... be very good for you. A journal of your life, and analyses of your thoughts, would teach you how to generalize, and give firmness to your conclusions. Do not write down merely that things are beautiful, or the reverse; but what they are, and why they are beautiful or otherwise; and show these papers, at least at present, to nobody. Be your own judge ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... intellects, three story intellects with skylights. All fact—collectors, who have no aim beyond their facts, are one-story men. Two-story men compare, reason, generalize, using the labors of the fact-collectors as well as their own. Three-story men idealize, imagine, predict; their best illumination comes from above, through the skylight. There are minds with large ground floors, that can store an infinite amount ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... began the marvellous development from which our liberty has gained so much. At the beginning it was a process belonging to the sovereign and used solely for his business, or employed for the business of others only by his permission in the special case. What Henry seems to have done was to generalize this use, to establish certain classes of cases in which it might always be employed by his subjects, but in his courts only. In essence it was a process for getting local knowledge to bear on a doubtful question of fact of interest to the ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... the return to the nest, including my earlier attempts, was verified in the case of four species: the Chalicodoma of the Sheds, the Chalicodoma of the Walls, the Three-horned Osmia and the Great or Warted Cerceris (Cerceris tuberculata). ("Insect Life": chapter 19.—Translator's Note.) Shall I generalize without reserve and allow all the Hymenoptera (The Hymenoptera are an order of insects having four membranous wings and include the Bees, Wasps, Ants, Saw-flies and Ichneumon-flies.—Translator's Note.) this faculty of finding their way in unknown ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... if they could add anything more without spoiling the design. "I'd say: a level of mentation qualitatively different from nonsapience in that it includes ability to symbolize ideas and store and transmit them, ability to generalize and ability to form abstract ideas. There; I didn't say a ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... to study the forms and relations, mainly by the broad touch, with a characteristic direction and movement. No amount of explanation will tell you anything. You must sit and look, think, analyze, and suggest, then generalize ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... to note that the Catholic immigrant, finding in his Church the one homelike thing, is often a better Catholic in America than he was at home. A Protestant writer without accurate information would not dare to generalize on the religious dislocation of the second Catholic generation. But there must be a very great loss. The large non-churched elements in our population must be in part due to Catholic disintegration as they are certainly ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... Generalize as to the similarity of the places in which the pupils have seen the sparrow singing, and as to the times of day in which the ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... he continued, stealthily. "A man just can't generalize the creatures. Apparently they are craving nothing so much as emotional excitement and when you offer it to them they want to go to housekeeping with it. Love is a business with them and not ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... created by every interest in warfare. It would be easy to create pregnant courses on how soldiers down the course of history have lived, thought, felt, fought, and died, how great battles were won and what causes triumphed in them, and to generalize many of the best things taught in detail in the best schools of war in different grades ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... any hotter cheeks than young Ried's just at that moment. This was the most extraordinary person with whom he had ever talked. It was impossible to generalize with her. Not that he wanted to generalize; on the contrary, he at once saw the possibilities growing out of individual effort, and caught at the idea of undertaking something. But the question was, Why had he not thought of it before? One person to reach ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... We may now generalize and clearly state: That is masculine which belongs to the male—to any or all males, irrespective of species. That is feminine which belongs to the female, to any or all females, irrespective of species. That is ovine, bovine, feline, ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... outraged feelings, Freddie Drummond, in the role of his other self, came to experience genuine outrage, and it was only when he returned to the classic atmosphere of the university that he was able, sanely and conservatively, to generalize upon his underworld experiences and put them down on paper as a trained sociologist should. That Bill Totts lacked the perspective to raise him above class-consciousness Freddie Drummond clearly saw. But Bill Totts could not see it. ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... peoples, where family life was an uncertain quantity, the relations of parents, or of one of the parents, to the children afforded the opportunity most frequently used for their instruction in tribal religious ideals and customs. We cannot generalize as to the practices of savage man in regard to family life, for those practices range from common promiscuous relationships, without apparent care for offspring, to a family unity and purity approaching the best we know; but this much is certain, ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... my father a synthetic mind, because I always try to generalize matters, and for that reason science attracts me more than philosophy. In my father's time philosophy embraced no more nor less than the whole universe and all being; consequently it had a ready answer for all questions. In our times it has become rational in so ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... where it has contributed so powerfully to change the face of society. It is not because the French have changed their former opinions, and altered their former manners, that they have convulsed the world; but because they were the first to generalize and bring to light a philosophical method, by the assistance of which it became easy to attack all that was old, and to open a path to ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... lion, elephant, and buffalo, as much more dangerous than the grizzly. As it happened, however, the only narrow escape I personally ever had was from a grizzly, and in Africa the animal killed closest to me as it was charging was a rhinoceros—all of which goes to show that a man must not generalize too broadly from his own personal experiences. On the whole, I think the lion the most dangerous of all these five animals; that is, I think that, if fairly hunted, there is a larger percentage of hunters killed or mauled for a given number of lions killed than for a given ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... principles from a sum of given facts and phenomena. It would seem that positive science began with Aristotle, since he maintained that experience furnishes the principles of every science; but while his conception was just, there was not at that time a sufficient amount of experience from which to generalize with effect. It is only a most extensive and exhaustive examination of the accuracy of a proposition which will warrant secure reasoning upon it. Aristotle reasoned without sufficient certainty of the major ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... Peter. "And yet none the less a ghost in my opinion. Now let us generalize. It needn't be a sound maxim to seek the person who benefits by a crime—not always—for often enough the actual legatee of a murdered man may have had nothing whatever to do with his death. Albert, for example, will inherit Mr. Bendigo Redmayne's estate when leave to assume his ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... of country, with its poor communications, we can only know in part. When one sets out to generalize he does so at his own peril. The only consolation is that it is almost impossible to disprove any statement; for, however fantastical, it is probably in accord with the facts in ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... We may generalize this instance so as to cover the causes of many memories. Some present feature of the environment is associated, through past experiences, with something now absent; this absent something comes before us as an image, and is contrasted ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... however, something more in the claim to universality in aesthetic judgments than the desire to generalize our own opinions. There is the expression of a curious but well-known psychological phenomenon, viz., the transformation of an element of sensation into the quality of a thing. If we say that other men should see the beauties we see, it ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... in every relationship when one must generalize if one is to go further. A certain practice in this kind of talk with ladies blunted the finer sensibilities of Mr. Brumley. At any rate he was able to produce this sentence without a qualm. "Life," he said, "is sometimes a ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... are considering is a long one which owes its unity to the sole fact that the capitol was at Kyoto. It is, therefore, unsafe to generalize on its manners and customs. But we may say with a degree of accuracy that the epoch was marked by an increasing luxury and artificiality, due largely to the adoption of Chinese customs. The capital city was built on a Chinese pattern and the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... all walk? It seems to me that life's the tight boot, and marriage the crutch that may help one to hobble along!" She drew Bessy's hand into hers with a caressing pressure. "When you philosophize I always know you're tired. No one who feels well stops to generalize about symptoms. If you won't let your doctor prescribe for you, your nurse is going to carry out his orders. What you want is quiet. Be reasonable and send away everybody ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... opinion will count for very little against the weight of evidence," replied Colwyn. "It is impossible to generalize in a crime like murder. My experience is that the most unlikely people commit violent crimes under sudden stress. Unless you have something more to go upon than that, your protestations will count for very little ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... in nature:—and to those philosophers who pursue the inquiry zealously yet cautiously, combining experiment with analogy, suspicious of their preconceived notions, paying more respect to a fact than a theory, not too hasty to generalize, and above all things, willing at every step to cross-examine their own opinions, both by reasoning and experiment, no branch of knowledge can afford so fine and ready a field for discovery as this. Such is most abundantly shown to be the case by the progress which electricity has made in the last ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... the Alps, it is not easy to comprehend, as it were, in one view, the various corresponding effects of the same cause, through a space of country so extensive, and where so many different and confounding observations must be made. In this case, we must generalize the particular observations, with regard to the inclinations of strata and their direction, in order to find a similar effect prevailing among bodies thus changed according to a certain rule; this rule then directs our understanding of the ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... another kind of story which I believe children of this transition period and a little older seek and for the most part seek in vain. These children are beginning to generalize, to marshal their facts and experiences along lines which in their later developments we call "laws." They like these wide-spreading conceptions which order the world for them. But they cannot always take them as bald scientific statements. ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell |
