"Mathematics" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... activities of young men to impart an education of wonderful effectiveness. [22] The subjects we have valued so highly for training were to them unknown. They taught no arithmetic or grammar, no science, no drawing, no higher mathematics, and no foreign tongue. Music, the literature and religion of their own people, careful physical training, and instruction in the duties and practices of ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... second Phillis Wheatley of Boston. Banneker in 1770 constructed the first clock striking the hours that was made in America, and from 1792 to 1806 published an almanac adapted to Maryland and the neighboring states. He was thoroughly scholarly in mathematics and astronomy, and by his achievements won a reputation for himself in Europe as well as in America. Phillis Wheatley, after a romantic girlhood of transition from Africa to a favorable environment in Boston, in 1773 published ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... strictly orthodox teacher of the Law. In their wake come troops of physicians, theologians, lexicographers, Talmudists, and grammarians. Great is the circle of our national literature: it embraces theology, philosophy, exegesis, grammar, poetry, and jurisprudence, yea, even astronomy and chronology, mathematics and medicine. But these widely varying subjects constitute only one class, inasmuch as they all are infused with the spirit of Judaism, and subordinate themselves to its demands. A mention of the prominent actors would turn this whole essay into a dry list of names. Therefore it is better for ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... first examination for admission to the Indian Civil Service, and given proof that they have received the benefits of a liberal education, and acquired that general information in classics, history, and mathematics, which is provided at our public schools, and forms no doubt the best and surest foundation for all more special and professional studies in later life, they suddenly find themselves torn away from their old studies ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... get all that rot? Yarns aren't done by mathematics. You can't do it by rule any more than you can dance by rule. You have to have the itch of the thing in your fingers, and if you haven't,—well, you're damned lucky, and you'll live long and prosper, that's all."—And with that he yawned and went ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... begun???" Perhaps she really did not know what I meant, but several of the girls who knew about it too laughed, and I was in a terrible fright. But Hella was simply splendid. "Excuse me, Frau Doktor, Rita asked whether the frost had begun yet." "And that's the way you spend your time in the mathematics lesson?" But thank goodness that made things all right. Only in the interval Hella said that really I am inconceivably stupid sometimes. What on earth did I want to write a thing like that for? When it begins, of course she will let me know ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... in solemnity of use in Italy at this time; including, of course, whatever was known of the higher abstract mathematics and mysteries of numbers, but reverenced especially in its vital necessity to the prosperity of families and kingdoms, and first fully so understood ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... to expect it to cover every department of the higher education, but there is a happy mean discoverable between the two. A compromise can be established by which, while a preference is given to such studies as science and mathematics, which may be held to represent the inductive and deductive training, boys may yet carry away from school a reasonable amount of practical knowledge, which, if they do not allow it to get altogether rusty, can be of use to them in its direct ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... for the ruin of the empire, the rude valor of the Barbarian mercenaries. The military art has been changed by the invention of gunpowder; which enables man to command the two most powerful agents of nature, air and fire. Mathematics, chemistry, mechanics, architecture, have been applied to the service of war; and the adverse parties oppose to each other the most elaborate modes of attack and of defence. Historians may indignantly observe, that the preparations of a siege would found and maintain a flourishing colony; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... and all but hated the church; while, I fear, I quite despised dissenters. I had often dined with him, and he had found out that I had a great turn for figures, as he called it. Having always been fond of mathematics, I had been able to assist him in arriving at a true conclusion on what had been to him a knotty point connected with life-insurance; and consequently he had a high opinion of my ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... admonition, and perhaps it may declare a dividend years hence. Last week I found your algebra on the rug before the library grate, and noticed several sums worked out in pencil on the margin. Are you fond of mathematics?" ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... a very wise man, had explained to Sammy that there was scarcely any use in his thinking of being a pirate if he could not navigate a ship. And navigation, he further explained, was a form of mathematics that could only be studied after one had graduated from high school and ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtle; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend. Abeunt studia in mores. Nay, there is no stond or impediment in the wit, but may be wrought out by fit studies: like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises. Bowling ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... fellow, well bred, no cringing courtier, accomplished, good at classics, fairish at mathematics, a scholar in French, German, Italian, with a shrewd knowledge of the different races, and with sound English sentiment too, and the capacity for writing good English, although in those views of his the ideas are unusual, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of physical and ethical science, no less than of mathematics and the common round of learning, as well as concerning arts, he possessed full knowledge ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... devoted themselves ardently to study, and gave up almost the whole of their time to it; they enabled themselves to write French correctly, and acquired a good knowledge of history. Italian, English, the higher branches of mathematics, turning and dialing, filled up in succession their leisure moments. Madame Adelaide, in particular, had a most insatiable desire to learn; she was taught to play upon all instruments, from the horn (will it be believed!) ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... walls of this school a large number of boys had a little world all to themselves; they had their societies and their games and their tricks, along with hard work in Latin and French and mathematics; and though such work may seem monotonous and dreary, they managed to enjoy it. Poe has described his life here very carefully in his famous story of "William Wilson." "Oh, a fine time were those years ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... we might say, a biological poetry; and the greater the intellectuality and poetic abstraction the greater the possible range. Yet we must not expect this scope of speculation in us to go with adequacy or exhaustiveness: on the contrary, mathematics and religion, each in its way so sure, leave most of the ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... declaiming, owing, it is said, to his having been laughed at on his first attempt as a school-boy at Salem; but he either delivered or read a Latin theme at a Junior exhibition. He also paid scant attention to mathematics and metaphysics, and had no pride as to failing in recitation in those branches; but he distinguished himself as a Latin scholar and in English. His most fruitful hours, as so often happens, were those spent in the little library ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... not fit for much, I am certainly fit for something. I have only a smattering of Latin and Greek, it is true, and a very slight knowledge of French, but, if I am to believe my teacher's reports, I am not a bad arithmetician, and I know a good deal of mathematics, besides being a ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne
... of society. But Michelin was right, and the old Seigneur, Sir Henri Robitaille, who was a judge of men, knew he was right, as did also Hennepin the schoolmaster, whose despair Jacques had been, for he never worked at his lessons as a boy, and yet he absorbed Latin and mathematics by some sure but unexplainable process. "Ah! if you would but work, Jacques, you vaurien, I would make a great man of you," Hennepin had said to him more than once; but this had made no impression on Jacques. It was more to the point that the ground-hogs and black squirrels and pigeons ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... long been regarded as an inevitable conclusion from the Periodic Law of Mendeleef. This law says that the physical as well as the chemical properties of the various elements depend upon their atomic weights, or as it is stated in the language of mathematics, the properties of an element are functions of its atomic weight. This fact of the variation in the properties of elements in accord with their atomic weights has been even more strikingly illustrated by the behavior of discharges of electricity through rarified ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... past nine the two forces were seven miles apart and the battle was on. It is necessary here to give certain facts about gunnery on a large modern battleship. Firing at a range of seven miles means a test of mathematics rather than of the mere matter of pointing guns. At that distance the target—the ship to be hit—is barely visible on the sky line on the clearest and calmest sea. If a hole the size of the head of a pin be made in a piece of cardboard and the latter he held about a foot ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... view of the system of the fatalists, and a confutation of their opinions; with an illustration of the doctrine of free will; and an enquiry, what view Mr. Pope might have in touching upon the Leibnitzian philosophy, and fatalism: by Mr. Crousaz, professor of philosophy and mathematics at Lausanne. This translation has been generally thought a production of Johnson's pen; but it is now known, that Mrs. Elizabeth Carter has acknowledged it to be one of her early performances. It is certain, however, that Johnson was eager to promote the publication. ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... of civilization involve specialization in the apprehension of series as such. Under these conditions the number technique becomes elaborate and requires time and instruction for its mastery. The advance which mathematics has made within a brief historical time is strikingly illustrated by the words with which the celebrated mathematician, Sir Henry Savile, who died in 1662, closed his career ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... represents the shortest distance between two points A and B. In a manner similar to this Euclid built his whole mathematical system upon the basis of definitions and postulates, a system the complexity and thoroughness of which has caused all students of mathematics at one time or another to marvel and admire. But, of course, a definition is little more than assigning a definite term to a definite thing. It is when we begin to consider the premises that are necessary for arriving at the profound truths of the universe that we find the weakness of rationalism. ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... prison." But there were those names of the missing, and there was our ill-disguised mirth. Smith resorted to heroic measures. He came in with two or three of his staff and a man who was said to be a professor of mathematics. This was on the 8th of November, 1864. He made all officers of the lower room move for a half-hour into the upper room, and there fall in line with the rest. His adjutant called the roll in reality. Each as his name was read aloud ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... foreign to that genus indeed, but to which the notion of that genus is applicable: thus a live coal or a flame is said to be a species of fire, because in each of them the nature of fire is applied to a foreign matter. In like manner we speak of astronomy and perspective as being species of mathematics, inasmuch as the principles of mathematics are applied to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... in England, was admired by Dahlia and Zephine. She had had an establishment of her own very early in life. Her father was an old unmarried professor of mathematics, a brutal man and a braggart, who went out to give lessons in spite of his age. This professor, when he was a young man, had one day seen a chambermaid's gown catch on a fender; he had fallen in love in consequence ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... whole thing has been very scientifically calculated, of course; but the slightest flaw in the mathematics could cause a miss. Yes, the projectile may never reach its mark; it's something ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... William I, laid down strict rules for his son's training, for he longed to be followed by a lad of military tastes. He was to learn no Latin but to study Arithmetic, Mathematics and Artillery and to be thoroughly instructed in Economy. The fear of God was to be impressed on the pupil, and prayers and Church services played an important part in the prince's day, of which every hour had its allotted task. Haste and cleanliness were inculcated in the ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... much is said, and what that genius and those extraordinary mental powers required in a General have really to do. All appears so simple, all the requisite branches of knowledge appear so plain, all the combinations so unimportant, that in comparison with them the easiest problem in higher mathematics impresses us with a certain scientific dignity. But if we have seen War, all becomes intelligible; and still, after all, it is extremely difficult to describe what it is which brings about this change, to specify this ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... decisions came always without warning. In the fall of 1769 I was just gone back to the academy, and put to work at mathematics and some Greek under James Wilson, at that period one of the tutors, and some time later an associate judge of the Supreme Court. This great statesman and lawyer of after-days was a most delightful teacher. He took a fancy to my Jack, and, as we were inseparable, ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... he, "that I had that idea to throw myself out into the lake! Mr. Kennedy would soon have jumped at it, and he would not have hesitated to do as I did, for nothing's more natural than for one man to give himself up to save two others. That's mathematics!" ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... Casanova told his neighbor that he had been informed of her intellectual attainments, and asked what was her chosen subject of study. Her chief interest, she rejoined, was in the higher mathematics, to which she had been introduced by Professor Morgagni, the renowned teacher at the university of Bologna. Casanova expressed his surprise that so charming a young lady should have an interest, certainly exceptional, in a dry and difficult subject. Marcolina ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... the financial status of the others. It was found on careful compilation that, by close and respectful attention to Professors Beekstein and Gumbo, twenty minutes would suffice for the rendering of the Greek and Latin test; while only ten minutes extra were needed to follow the requirements of mathematics. ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... interesting to our travelers. But Kitty was too young to feel more than a dim surprise at the objects around her. She knew nothing, of course, of the history of Alexandria, once the first city in the world, where Euclid presided over the school in mathematics, and Aristotle studied and gave instruction. Here stood those vast libraries founded by Ptolemy Soter, which were subsequently destroyed, and here St. Mark presided over the church of Africa. Yet all this was unknown to Kitty, who was much more interested in the good dinner set before her at ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... never been published. [Footnote: To this circumstance we must attribute its being so little known amongst the philosophers and mathematicians of foreign countries, and also the fact that D'Alembert, whose philosophy was miserably below his mathematics, many years afterwards still continued to represent the dispute as a verbal one.] From this time until 1770, he supported himself as a private tutor in different families, or by giving private lectures in Koenigsberg, especially to military men on the art of fortification. In 1770, he was ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... and conservation of energy; the mechanical theory of the universe; the kinetic theory of gases, and Darwin's Law of Natural Selection, were examples of what a young man had to take on trust. Neither he nor any one else knew enough to verify them; in his ignorance of mathematics, he was particularly helpless; but this never stood in his way. The ideas were new and seemed to lead somewhere — to some great generalization which would finish one's clamor to be educated. That a beginner should understand them all, or believe ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... lately turned over the catalogues of all the principal divinity schools in the country, to see if any chairs of natural science had been established, or if candidates for the ministry had to undergo any compulsory instruction in geology or physics, or the higher mathematics, or biology, or palaeontology, or astronomy, or had to become versed in the methods of scientific investigation in the laboratory or in the dissecting-room, or were subjected to any unusually severe discipline ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... uneventful, quiet life of a studious Camford undergraduate. Happy it was beyond any other time, except perhaps a few vernal days of boyhood, but it was unmarked by any incidents. He read, and rowed, and went to lectures, and worked at classics, mathematics, and philosophy, and dropped in sometimes to a debate or a private-business squabble at the Union, and played racquets, fives, and football, and talked eagerly in hall and men's rooms over the exciting topics ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... library or the scientific instruments of well-equipped laboratories, but in the men who are the incarnation of all these, that your college lives. It is not enough that there be knowledge, history and poetry, eloquence and art, science and mathematics, philosophy and ethics, ideas and ideals. They must be vitalized. They must be fashioned into life. To send forth men who live all these is to be a college. This temple of learning must be translated ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... hero, negro, majority, Mary, vortex, memento, joy, lily, knight-templar, knight-errant, why, 4, x, son-in-law, Miss Smith, Mr. Anderson, country-man, hanger-on, major-general, oxen, geese, man-servant, brethren, strata, sheep, mathematics, pride, money, pea, head, piano, veto, knives, ratios, alumni, feet, wolves, president, sailor-boy, spoonful, ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... Pleasant Institute he roomed with his teacher in mathematics, a young man named Fitzgerald, and a warm friendship sprung up between them. Fitzgerald saw that his pupil had no natural talent or taste for mathematics; but instead of despairing in consequence of this discovery, he redoubled his efforts. Appealing to his ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... story; and how, before he fell in love with her, he didn't believe in fairies, or Firedrakes, or caps of darkness, or anything nice and impossible, but only in horrid useless facts, and chemistry, and geology, and arithmetic, and mathematics, and even political economy. And the Firedrake would have made ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... form them out of the pieces given him. In some cases much time and thinking are required to form the figure. The ring-puzzle is made of rings of bamboo or iron, on a bar. Boys having a talent for mathematics, or those who have a natural capacity to distinguish size and form, succeed very well at these games ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... to their own fingers no less than does what the politicians handle now. Dividing whatever might reach the people, without reference to those who produced it, could yield the average man no more than he gets now. That's very simple mathematics. One of the saddest sights of the day is the number of good people to whom these ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... reported of a professor of mathematics of thirty-five years of age and temperate, who, feeling a pain in his left leg, discovered a pale flame about the size of a ten-cent piece issuing therefrom. As recent as March, 1850, in a Court of Assizes in Darmstadt during the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Oxford; and painters and admirers of old masters being people without sense, at least in comparison with the graduate, he thus disposes of his learned difficulty:—"This is a point, however, on which it is impossible to argue without going into high mathematics, and even then the nature of particular curves, as given by the brush, would be scarcely demonstrable; and I am the less disposed to take much trouble about it, because I think that the persons who are really fond of these works ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... adopted, and, in course of time, even the language also. The court was filled with native officials, the cities and temples were restored, and Egyptian learning was patronised. One of the few Egyptian treatises on mathematics that have come down to us is dedicated to a Hyksos sovereign. It was only in religion that the new rulers of Egypt ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... on the Welsh coast, only increased this liking, and till he went to Cambridge in 1798 his education had not been calculated to prepare him for a clerical life. He never received any instruction in classics; of Greek and Latin and mathematics he knew nothing, and owing to his schools and tutors being constantly changed, his general knowledge ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... I had the rare good fortune to meet my old friend Doctor Congar, with whom I had studied chemistry and mathematics fifteen years ago. He exalted San Gabriel above all other inhabitable valleys, old and new, on the face of the globe. "I have rambled," said he, "ever since we left college, tasting innumerable climates, and trying the advantages offered by nearly every new State and Territory. ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... on the student once matriculated, though every encouragement be given and every facility afforded to those whose genius leans in that direction. The College should make ample provision for the study of ancient languages, and also for the study of the mathematics, but should not enforce those studies on minds that have no vocation for such pursuits. There is now and then a born philologer, one who studies language for its own sake,—studies it perhaps in the spirit of "the scholar who regretted that he had not concentrated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... and mathematics, agriculture and chromatics, Music, painting, sculpture—she knew all the tricks of speech; Bas-relief and chiaroscuro, and at last the Indian Bureau— She discussed it quite serenely, as she ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... is always searching for learning and riches, and everlastingly crushing underfoot all new riches and learning. It tried to make Fabre, a born lover of nature, desert her; it forced him to teach mathematics for decades instead. The first thing the world does to a genius is to make him lose ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... For example, I am lecturing on Mathematics. I have more pupils than I can deal with. They are as greedy for knowledge as sponges for water, and I cannot get even the simplest text-books for them. I cannot even find in the second-hand book stores an old Course of Mathematics from ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... prevent us from determining in advance an act which springs from our free activity. For the future of the material universe, although contemporaneous with the future of a conscious being, has no analogy to it. The astronomer regards time from the point of view of mathematics. He is concerned with points placed in a homogeneous time, points which mark the beginning or end of certain intervals. He does not concern himself with the interval in its actual duration. This is proved by the fact that, could all velocities ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... little thinking that one day I should have the audacity to set myself up as a legislator on marriage, I was going to take lunch at the house of a college friend, who was perhaps too early in life afflicted with a wife and two children. My former professor of mathematics lived at a short distance from the house of my college friend, and I promised myself the pleasure of a visit to this worthy mathematician before indulging my appetite for the dainties of friendship. I accordingly made my way to the heart of a study, where ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... articles described the highly interesting series of experimental researches of Dr. C. A. Bjerknes, Professor of Mathematics in the University of Christiania, which formed so attractive a feature in the Electrical Exhibition of Paris in 1881, and which constituted the practical development of a theoretical research which had extended over a previous period of more than twenty years. The experiments ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... agreeable divinities who presided over the more becoming and nobler activities of the Greek mind. By music the Greeks meant much more than merely the tonal art itself. Under this term they included pretty much all that they had of a liberal education; grammar, history, rhetoric, mathematics, poetry and song—all were included in this one elastic and comprehensive term. Music itself, the art of ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... as is humanly possible of that insensate pile of written work that the Girls' Public School movement has inflicted upon school-girls. She really learnt French and German admirably and thoroughly, she got as far in mathematics as an unflinching industry can carry any one with no great natural aptitude, and she went up to Bennett Hall, Newnham, after the usual conflict with her family, to work ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... perhaps fraternal rapture? Had I a sister? Could I doubt it at that ecstatic moment? How I would love her! The fatted calf was not only killed, but cooked, to welcome the long lost. Nor Latin, nor French, nor Greek, nor Mathematics, should embitter the passing moments. This young summer, that breathed such aromatic joy around me, had put on its best smile to welcome me to my paternal abode. "No doubt," said I to myself—"no doubt, but that some one of the strange stories that I told of myself at Root's, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... her hand, M. de Nueil and Mme. de Beauseant were still in a position quite as natural and quite as false as at the beginning of their adventure. And yet they had reached a fatal crisis, which may be stated as clearly as any problem in mathematics. ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... important. By this I mean, a general knowledge of the mathematics, of mechanics, optics, hydrostatics, astronomy, chemistry, botany, and the like. The teaching of these should be accompanied by experiments. Experimental philosophy, as I observed before, is peculiarly interesting to youth. Such knowledge teaches us the ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... history with the haunting sense that next moment he might come upon the trace of certain of his own ancestors of whom he specially desired to enlarge his knowledge. Whether he started any new thing in mathematics I cannot tell, but he would sit absorbed, every day and all day long, for weeks, over his slate, suddenly throw it down, walk out for the rest of the day, and leave his calculus, or whatever it was, for months. He read Shakespeare as with a microscope, propounding and answering the ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... education accounts for many of his opinions on the general subject. Thus, he believed, contrary to the judgment of his time, that Latin and Greek were not essential subjects in a liberal education, and that mathematics, in which he never excelled, did not deserve the place it held. He believed that any one who had acquired a command of good English could learn any other modern language that he really needed when he needed it; and this faith he illustrated in his own person, for he learned ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... but not in mathematics. Listen to me. Let's accept that the pressure of one atmosphere is represented by the pressure of a column of water thirty-two feet high. In reality, such a column of water wouldn't be quite so high because here we're dealing with salt water, which ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... thought the arrangement would suit you. She is a perfectly competent teacher of French, Italian, the English branches, music, drawing, the dead languages, and higher mathematics—quite a prodigy, I assure you, for a lady not yet twenty-two years old." (Marcus was addressing the father.) "I have been particular in my inquiries, and all who know her speak in the highest terms of her remarkable attainments, her ability to teach others, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... away, there was a crevice unseen before, and wide enough to admit a hand. The reader must remember there were masons in the old time who amused themselves applying their mathematics to such puzzles. Here obviously the intention had been to screen an entrance to an adjoining chamber, and the key to the design had been the sliver ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... one of our school-fellows, William Irvin, was appointed a cadet to West Point, and, as it required sixteen years of age for admission, I had to wait another year. During the autumn of 1835 and spring of 1836 I devoted myself chiefly to mathematics and French, which were known to be the chief requisites ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... expounded by the professor of mathematics. Of this exposition, it is safe to say, Cynthia comprehended not a word for the following simple reason. Early that morning Joyce had returned from the visit to her great-aunt Lucia and had entered ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... Pisistratus might have called his 'The Serious Novel,' or 'The Tragic Novel.' But, Squills, that title would not have been inviting nor appropriate, and would have been exposed to comparison with Scarron, who being dead is inimitable. Wherefore—to put the question on the irrefragable basis of mathematics—wherefore as A B 'My Novel' is not equal to B C 'The Golden Novel,' nor to D E 'The Serious or Tragic Novel,' it follows that A B 'My Novel' is equal to P C 'Pisistratus Caxton,' and P C 'Pisistratus Caxton' must therefore be just equal, neither more nor less, to A B 'My Novel,'—which ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... It was made up of short essays, about twenty altogether, bound in dark-green cloth, lettered at the side, and published in 1841. They were upon the oddest subjects: such as, Ought Children to learn Rules before Reasons? The Higher Mathematics and Materialism. Ought We to tell Those Whom We love what We think about Them? Deductive Reasoning in Politics. What Troubles ought We to Make Known and What ought We to Keep Secret: Courage as a ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... its golden scheme, The use of all such discords; and, at last, Their exquisite solution. Then darkness breaks Into diviner light, love's agony climbs Through death to life, and evil builds up heaven. Have you not heard, in some great symphony, Those golden mathematics making clear The victory of the soul? Have you not heard The very heavens opening? Do those fools Who thought me an infidel then, still smile at me For trying to read the stars in terms of song, Discern their orbits, measure their distances, ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... Anne, "but she has finished her mathematics' group, and her studies this year are things she doesn't care for, and consequently left them until the last. We wouldn't want a Phi Sigma ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... But in Geoffry Hamlyn these qualities are perhaps more noticeable (at all events to a colonial reader) than in the later novels, because of the contrast they furnish to the essentially competitive life of modern Australia. Brentwood is 'excessively attached to mathematics, and has leisure to gratify his hobby'; Harding, 'an Oxford man,' is 'an inveterate writer of songs,' a pastime which only the annual business of shearing is permitted to interrupt; Buckley is intent on the education of his son, ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... is better than his mathematics," said Cathro, and he fell into lamentation. "I have had no luck lately," he sighed. "The laddies I have to prepare for college are second-raters, and the vexing thing is, that when a real scholar is reared in Thrums, instead of his being handed over ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... of ancient history which remain to us form a great presumption in their favour, since the first Greek philosophers went to them to learn mathematics, and since the most ancient curiosities collected by the emperors ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... Monsieur, is the evil of the times. I tell you what, if I had a son, I would hesitate a long while before giving him a literary education. I would have him learn chemistry, mathematics, fencing, cosmography, swimming, drawing, but not composition—no, not composition. Then, at least, he would be prevented from becoming a journalist. It is so easy, so tempting. They take pen and paper and write, it doesn't matter what, apropos to it doesn't ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... true, it must not be forgotten that he had not the school-training of an engineer. Nothing is more untrue than the statement that he was, like de Lesseps, only a contractor. He was a very unusually brilliant engineer, and his ignorance of the higher mathematics served to show his brilliancy the more clearly. Some persons have said that his chief talent was in explaining abstruse reasonings simply; but an engineer has told me that he thought Eads's chief ...
— James B. Eads • Louis How
... enterprise and of knowledge, and knew how to confine such inquiries within the bounds, and entwine them with the interests, of absolute monarchy, was productive of direct advantage to the state, whose ship-building and machine-making showed traces of the beneficial influence of Alexandrian mathematics; and not only so, but also rendered this new intellectual power—the most important and the greatest, which the Hellenic nation after its political dismemberment put forth—subservient, so far as ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... As mathematics are—or is: thanks, old subscriber!—the only just rule by which questions of life can be measured, let us, by all means, adjust our theme to the straight edge and the balanced column of the great goddess ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... and humanity in all their matters of business that came before him. There was a general passion for reasoning: and philosophy, insomuch that the very palace, it is reported, was filled with dust by the concourse of the students in mathematics who were working their problems there. Some few days after, it was the time of one of the Syracusan sacrifices, and when the priest, as he was wont, prayed for the long and safe continuance of the tyranny, Dionysius, it is said, as he stood by, cried out, "Leave off praying ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the experience of which I am about to write, I was professor of astronomy and higher mathematics at Abercrombie College. Most astronomers have a specialty, and mine was the study of the planet Mars, our nearest neighbor but one in the Sun's little family. When no important celestial phenomena ...
— The Blindman's World - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... fail to use the left for his master's honour and service." Bruno and Notger of Liege (974-1005) undertook to reform their clergy and to encourage intellectual culture. Under their guidance, Liege became once more a great centre of learning. Besides theology, grammar, rhetoric and poetry, music and mathematics were taught in the city, which could boast of being a "Northern Athens." The movement reached Cambrai and Utrecht, and one of the most important chronicles of the time, Sigebert's De Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis—a first attempt towards a universal history of Europe—was ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... we never learnt anything in the navy when I was a youngster, except a little rule-of-thumb mathematics. One picked up a sort of smattering of a language or two knocking about the world, but no grammatical knowledge, nothing scientific. If a boy doesn't get a method, he is beating to windward in a crank craft all his life. He hasn't got any regular ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... seminaries will not ascend the pinnacles of fame nor direct the affairs of nations: such affairs will be left for those who have learned, with their arithmetic, the self-denial, reverence and obedience, which are the conditions of the application of addition and division in the high mathematics. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... Milbanke was neither ignorant nor silly, she was called a learned lady by Lord Byron's associates. He bore testimony, in due time, to her agreeable qualities as a companion,—her brightness, her genial nature, her quiet good sense; and we heard no more of her "learning" and "mathematics," till it suited her enemies to get up a theory of incompatibility of temper between her and her husband. The fact was, she was well-educated, as education was then, and had the acquirements which are common in every house among the educated ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... both came, Mrs. March with her usual question, "Any letter from Father, girls?" and Laurie to say in his persuasive way, "Won't some of you come for a drive? I've been working away at mathematics till my head is in a muddle, and I'm going to freshen my wits by a brisk turn. It's a dull day, but the air isn't bad, and I'm going to take Brooke home, so it will be gay inside, if it isn't out. Come, Jo, you and Beth ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... not answer this at all satisfactorily to his own mind, and he was considerably annoyed with himself to be forced to admit the existence of certain portions of his mental composition which were apparently not to be probed by logic, or measured by mathematics. ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... noticing what I had never before noticed, the wisps of hair which floated a little untidily about her ears. And I did what I had never done before—I compared her with another woman, with Miss Tucker, whose piano had so often disturbed my evening labors. Miss Tucker taught mathematics in an uptown girls' school. She was not as pretty as Gladys Todd, but I remembered how wonderfully neat she was, with never a hair blowing loose, and I remembered too that, though she had disturbed me with her ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... history of philosophy, or of philological and historical criticism, which is essential to any one who desires to obtain a right understanding of agnosticism. Incompetence in philosophy, and in all branches of science except mathematics, is the well-known mental characteristic of the founder of positivism. Faithfulness in disciples is an admirable quality in itself; the pity is that it not unfrequently leads to the imitation of the weaknesses as well ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... height to height, becoming successively professor of mathematics in the University of Tennessee, lawyer, member of Congress, attorney-general of Tennessee, United States minister to Constantinople, ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... possible military duty. The officers should be given the chance to perfect themselves by study in the higher branches of this art. At West Point the education should be of the kind most apt to turn out men who are good in actual field service; too much stress should not be laid on mathematics, nor should proficiency therein be held to establish the right of entry to a corps d'elite. The typical American officer of the best kind need not be a good mathematician; but he must be able to master himself, to control others, and to show boldness and fertility ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... college, and taking advantage of the opportunities I possessed of rising in the world, I spent all my means, and then, to the grief of an excellent father, shipped on board a merchantman as a sailor before the mast. My knowledge of mathematics soon enabled me to become a better navigator than the captain himself, while I rapidly acquired a knowledge of seamanship, as from having been accustomed all my life to boating and yachting, I was at once perfectly at home. I soon became a mate, but I spent ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... his fourteenth year, Grotius published a translation of a work, published by Simon Steven in 1586, upon Navigation, and shewed by it a profound knowledge of mathematics:[010] he dedicated it to ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... morning, Willie," she said. "I thought your father mentioned at breakfast that he expected you to put in at least four hours a day on your mathematics and—" ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... country, and that they are wonderfully perfect for a first essay, yet every human essay must have defects. It will remain, therefore, to those now coming on the stage of public affairs, to perfect what has been so well begun by those, going off it. Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Natural History, Anatomy, Chemistry, Botany, will become amusements for your hours of relaxation, and auxiliaries to your principal studies. Precious and delightful ones they will be. As soon as such a foundation is laid in them, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... than a painter, and as a draughtsman rather than a colourist. There is hardly a branch of human learning to which he did not at one time or another give his eager attention, and he was engrossed in turn by the study of architecture—the foundation-stone of all true art—sculpture, mathematics, engineering and music. His versatility was unbounded, and we are apt to regret that this many-sided genius did not realise that it is by developing his power within certain limits that the great ...
— Leonardo da Vinci • Maurice W. Brockwell
... The purest case in which, an expressive value could arise might seem to be that in which both terms were indifferent in themselves, and what pleased was the activity of relating them. We have such a phenomenon in mathematics, and in any riddle, puzzle, or play with symbols. But such pleasures fall without the aesthetic field in the absence of any objectification; they are pleasures of exercise, and the objects involved ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... Street," may be less provincial than she sounds. Her question puts up a real problem. When only one girl in one hundred has a chance at the Three R's, is it right to "waste money" on giving certain others the chance to delve into psychology and higher mathematics? When there is not bread enough to go around, why should some of the family have cake ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... our country. This is especially true of the Peoria speech and the Cooper Institute speech. Lincoln was powerful in argument, always seizing the strong points, and demonstrating his propositions with a clearness and logic approaching the certainty of mathematics. He had, in wit and humor, a great advantage over Douglas. Then he had the better temper; he was always good humored, while Douglas, when hard pressed, was sometimes irritable. Douglas perhaps carried away the more popular applause; ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... Rudyerd is a remarkable sort of man. He came of poor an' dishonest parents, from whom he runned away in his young days, an' got employed by a Plymouth gentleman, who became a true father to him, and got him a good edication in readin', writin', an' mathematics. Ah, Tommy, my son, many a time have I had cause for to regret that nobody ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... established by your statistics you must ascertain the correlations. When I turn over the pages of Biometrika, a quarterly journal in which is recorded the work done in the field of biological statistics by Professor Karl Pearson and his colleagues, I am out of my depth at the first line, because mathematics are to me only a concept: I never used a logarithm in my life, and could not undertake to extract the square root of four without misgiving. I am therefore unable to deny that the statistical ascertainment ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... presume to question anything, that on such ripe consideration, Lord Kelvin has to say upon the physical problems involved. But I may remark that no one can have asserted more strongly than I have done, the necessity of looking to physics and mathematics, for help in regard to the earliest history of the globe. (See pp. 108 and 109 of ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... scholar, and a ripe and good one. Self-made and self-taught, he began the serious struggle of life when he was merely a boy himself; and reading, and writing, and spelling, and languages, and mathematics came to him by nature. He acquired by slow degrees a fine library, and out of it a vast amount of information. He never bought a book that he did not read, and he never read a book unless he considered it worth buying and worth keeping. Languages and mathematics were his particular ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... wish you to believe, nor to think that I myself believe, that all women make heroes of their husbands. Women are logical in nothing. They naturally hate mathematics. So, they would have their husbands be heroes only to the rest of the world. There is a charming picture by John Leech, the English satirist, which depicts Jones, who never looked askance at a woman in his life, sitting demurely at table, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... things,' said he, jocosely. 'Only first-class certificates in gunnery, seamanship, and mathematics; then, to finish up with, the unhappy youth has to look forward to an interview or two with the hydrographer, who isn't at all a gentleman to be ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... "god of the potter"; Kuski-banda, "god of goldsmiths", &c.—the divine patron of the arts and crafts. "Ea knoweth everything", chanted the hymn maker. He taught the people how to form and use alphabetic signs and instructed them in mathematics: he gave them their code of laws. Like the Egyptian artisan god Ptah, and the linking deity Khnumu, Ea was the "potter or moulder of gods and man". Ptah moulded the first man on his potter's wheel: he also moulded the sun and moon; ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... stepped out at a brisk walking pace; for he had by this time reflected that it was not possible to run all the way to the Spanish main. There was, however, another person stirring in the village besides Cashel. This was Mr. Wilson, Dr. Moncrief's professor of mathematics, who was returning from a visit to the theatre. Mr. Wilson had an impression that theatres were wicked places, to be visited by respectable men only on rare occasions and by stealth. The only plays he went openly to witness were those of Shakespeare; and his favorite was "As ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... a dreadful old tyrant for keeping you slaving away at your classics and mathematics, because you recollect the work that you are often so unwilling to do, while the hours I give you for play quite slip your minds. Now, this is my invariable rule, that you shall do everything well: work hard when it's work, and ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... tongue, he gave up all idea of becoming a clergyman. Filled with his secret purpose, he retired to Horton, in Buckinghamshire, where his father had bought a small country seat. Between the years 1632 and 1638 he studied all the best Greek and Latin authors, mathematics, and science; and he also wrote L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, Comus, Lycidas, and some shorter poems. These were preludes, or exercises, towards the great poetical work which it was the mission of ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... had been quite neglected; but being of a strong mind, sound judgment, and eager after information, he read much and improved himself, insomuch that he was chosen, with Joshua Fry, professor of Mathematics in William and Mary college, to continue the boundary line between Virginia and North Carolina, which had been begun by Colonel Byrd; and was afterwards employed with the same Mr. Fry, to make the first map of Virginia which had ever been made, that of Captain ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... mankind from the control of the animal instincts, and in the purely physical and mathematical sciences it does. In mathematics, dynamics, optics, acoustics, astronomy, electricity, engineering, and mechanics, the dictates of pure intellect are seldom interfered with by any blind impulse, attraction, or prejudice. But it is very different in the realm of opinion—in ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... Historical Society had begun to exercise an increasing influence on the younger generation. Harvard College, like all colleges of the day, was hardly more than a species of higher academy whither boys went at a tender age to continue their study of the classics and mathematics, and incidentally ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... Easter now. I have so wanted to tell you how glad I was to hear about your honours at Cambridge. I once thought of sending you a message through your brother, but then I thought it might be making too much fuss, because I know nothing of mathematics, or of the value of a senior-wranglership; and you were sure to have so many congratulations ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... is on my desk. I keep him near me. The lawyer who outgrows that book—well, I may be an old fogy on the subject, so I'll say nothing more except to commend the treatise to a lawyer as I would the multiplication table to a student of mathematics. And now let me say that when you have been with me one year we will begin to talk about other matters, the question of money, for instance. Don't be extravagant—don't give money because you don't know what else to do with it—and I will see that you shall not want for anything. ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... infantry of the line, for example, whose fantasy is tamed by much walking exercise, and whose valour necessarily must be of a more plodding kind. As to gunners or engineers, whose heads are kept cool on a diet of mathematics, it is ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... who in that manner celebrated his 80th birthday; and it was opened October 1, 1880. The College, which is estimated to have cost L100,000, was built entirely by the founder who also endowed it with an income of about L3,700 per annum, with the intention of providing instruction in mathematics, abstract and applied; physics, mathematical and experimental; chemistry, theoretical, practical, and applied; the natural sciences, geology, metallurgy and mineralogy; botany, zoology and physiology; English, French and German, to which have since been added Greek, Latin, English literature, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... Pierre proposed to himself the tormenting enigma, harder, he thought, to solve than any problem of mathematics,—for it was the riddle of his life: "What thoughts are truly in the heart of Amelie de Repentigny respecting me? Does she recollect me only as her brother's companion, who may possibly have some claim upon her friendship, but none ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Academy, Dotheboys Hall, at the delightful village of Dotheboys, near Greta Bridge in Yorkshire, Youth are boarded, clothed, booked, furnished with pocket-money, provided with all necessaries, instructed in all languages living and dead, mathematics, orthography, geometry, astronomy, trigonometry, the use of the globes, algebra, single stick (if required), writing, arithmetic, fortification, and every other branch of classical literature. Terms, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... mistress—I, Although my opinion may require apology, Deem this a commentator's phantasy, Unless indeed it was from his own knowledge he Decided thus, and showed good reason why; I think that Dante's more abstruse ecstatics Meant to personify the Mathematics.[175] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... with wise creatures who could demonstrate the usefulness of all they did, and the economy of the processes by which they did it. As there is no place in such a world for women as we know them, you wish to create Eve over again, or rather to call forth a female Adam. I object. Man cannot live by pure mathematics alone. Imagination is a faculty of the mind, as much as reason. Now, women are the imaginative side of the human race; not only imaginative themselves, but the cause of imagination in others. I like mountains and clouds, trees, birds, and flowers,—the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... Latin verses; "coached" him in play-hours: carried him triumphantly out of the little-boy class into the middle-sized form; and even there got a fair place for him. It was discovered, that although dull at classical learning, at mathematics he was uncommonly quick. To the contentment of all he passed third in algebra, and got a French prize-book at the public Midsummer examination. You should have seen his mother's face when Telemaque (that delicious romance) was presented to him by the Doctor in the face of the whole school and ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... instance be demanded, and the first question will be, by what right is it demanded? On this account I think it expedient to make some preliminary remarks on the introduction of Postulates in philosophy. The word postulate is borrowed from the science of mathematics [50]. In geometry the primary construction is not demonstrated, but postulated. This first and most simple construction in space is the point in motion, or the line. Whether the point is moved in one and the same direction, or whether ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... impartially. It is not my fault that it is a physical impossibility for me to get up early in the morning, and therefore that I never have stayed in any office more than two or three weeks at the longest. It is constitutional. I can't write a good hand, or keep books correctly, for the same reason. Mathematics were left out of my composition. I must smoke, and it is impossible for me to smoke a poor cigar. If I am in debt for cigars, as well as other necessities, how can I help it? I would willingly work if I could only find the kind of work that would suit me. I am not a fool. There ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... ineffectual instruments in comparison with the apparatus of modern mathematical method. And while the mathematical subjects of the quadrivium were taught as science and for their own sakes, the new mathematics is a sort of supplement to language, affording a means of thought about form and quantity and a means of expression, more exact, compact, and ready than ordinary language. The great body of physical ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... round on its axis, will have carried the observatory about 8000 miles away from A, and placed it at, say, B. If the moon's direction be again noted, it is very easy to calculate her distance by a branch of mathematics called trigonometry, which Jack, I have no ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... notes a tendency in much purely idealistic and philosophical love poetry to present us with a mere skeleton of abstraction. Part of this effect may be the reader's fault, of course. Plato assures us that the harmonies of mathematics are more ravishing than the harmonies of music to the pure spirit, but many of us must take his word for it; in the same way it may be that when we fail to appreciate certain celebrations of ideal love it is because of our "muddy vesture of decay" which hinders ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... Saturn's ring consists in reality of many concentric rings, each turning, with its own proper rotation rate, around the central planet. It is singular that Herschel, who, though not versed in the methods of the higher mathematics, had considerable native power as a mathematician, was unable to perceive the force of Laplace's reasoning. Indeed, this is one of those cases where clearness of perception rather than profundity of mathematical ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... 'habit' mind. When a certain thought-groove has been formed in your mind, energy flows into it involuntarily, i.e., by itself and without any conscious effort on your part. This is passive mentation. It is automatic mental activity. Take an example. Some school-boys find Mathematics, Science and Geography easy to master from the very start. They feel quite in sympathy with the teacher of Mathematics. But History and Language are their abomination. There are others who simply cannot 'take an ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... of education," returned the Insect; "it's merely a question of mathematics. I've seen the professor work lots of sums on the blackboard, and he claimed anything could be done with x's and y's and a's, and such things, by mixing them up with plenty of plusses and minuses and equals, and ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... an unwise educator who, after training the pupil's mind up through geometry, would then put him back to studying the simple branches of mathematics, instead of taking him on into higher mathematics. Likewise the Heavenly Father does not, after partly developing the redeemed, His children, by hard trials, return them to lives of easy trials, but He leads them into yet harder trials. Take Elijah ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... the Lhari met up with men, they used a system of mathematics as clumsy as the old Roman numerals. You have to admire them, when you realize that they learned stellar navigation with their old system, though most ships use human math now. And of course, you know their eyes aren't like ours. Among other things, they're ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... part of the book, and we shall be surprised if some hard-headed divine, who fears that this doctrine of Intuition will pester his Church, does not find out the flaws in the argument. It will be urged, for instance, that, in confessing that the Science of Morals can never be as exact as that of Mathematics, because we have no terminology for Ethics so exact as for Geometry, she, in effect, yields the whole question, and leaves us in the old slough of doubt where Pyrrho and Pascal delighted to thrust us, and where the Church threatens to keep us, unless we will pay her tolls ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... imperturbable Clodd. "A girl of eighteen wants to know something else besides mathematics and the classics. You don't ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... it was not until his sixteenth year that it was decided to give him a good education. He was then sent to Niffing's High School, at Vienna, N. Y., where he attained considerable proficiency in his studies, including Latin and Mathematics. Having developed a taste for medical studies he was admitted as a private pupil of Professer Woodward, of the Vermont College of Medicine, and graduated in November, 1831. Immediately on the completion of his studies he moved into Ohio and commenced practice in Bedford, ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... Hanover, November, 1738. My father, who was a musician, destined me to the same profession, hence I was instructed betimes in his art. That I might acquire a perfect knowledge of the theory as well as of the practice of music, I was set at an early age to study mathematics in all its branches—algebra, conic sections, infinitesimal analysis, ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... Professor, he can go on showing you and the rest of mankind just why the shortest distance between two points is in a straight line. I'll take your collective and separate words for anything on the subject of surgery or mathematics, but when it comes to my work I wouldn't bank on your theories if they were endorsed by ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... strong natural bent toward mathematics. The story is that his father, in order to turn his son's whole force on the study of languages, put out of the lad's reach all books treating his favorite subject. Thus shut up to his own resources, the masterful little fellow, about his eighth year, ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... patient industry, and in 1765 was appointed organist at Halifax. He was now in receipt of an income which secured him due domestic comforts, and enabled him to remedy the defects of his early education. With the help of a grammar and a dictionary he mastered Italian. He also studied mathematics and the scientific theory of music, losing no opportunity of adding to his ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... 18 (Lon. ed., 1894).] Professor Huxley does not name Paine, evidently because he knows nothing about him. Yet Paine represents the turning-point of the historical freethinking movement; he renounced the 'a priori' method, refused to pronounce anything impossible outside pure mathematics, rested everything on evidence, and really founded the Huxleyan school. He plagiarized by anticipation many things from the rationalistic leaders of our time, from Strauss and Baur (being the first to expatiate on "Christian Mythology"), from ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... early showed a deep interest in mathematics and obtained the degree of Bachelor of Science at the College of Perpignan at the early age of 16. He was a student at the Polytechnic Institute when the Franco-German War of 1870 broke out. Joffre was placed in charge of a large part of the defense of Paris ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... their children to be educated; alleging the danger, lest their children become stumbling blocks, through the apparent little difference between them and the heathen children. And the difficulty is not, that they cannot there, as well as here, be taught Latin, Greek, Mathematics—all the received sciences-the branches of what is nominally education. It is not so much, that they cannot there be shielded from evil influences abroad; as that their children there want, what our children enjoy—the sight of magnificent enterprises; ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington
... verses and my declamation. I shall then translate the Greek and Latin. The first time of going over I shall mark the passages which puzzle me, and then return to them again. But I shall have also to rub up my Mathematics, (by the bye, I begin the second book of Euclid to-day,) and to study whatever History may be appointed for the examination. I shall not be able to avoid trembling, whether I know my subjects or not. I am however intimidated at nothing but Greek. Mathematics suit my taste, although, before ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan |
