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Negative   Listen
noun
Negative  n.  
1.
A proposition by which something is denied or forbidden; a conception or term formed by prefixing the negative particle to one which is positive; an opposite or contradictory term or conception. "This is a known rule in divinity, that there is no command that runs in negatives but couches under it a positive duty."
2.
A word used in denial or refusal; as, not, no. Note: In Old England two or more negatives were often joined together for the sake of emphasis, whereas now such expressions are considered ungrammatical, being chiefly heard in iliterate speech. A double negative is now sometimes used as nearly or quite equivalent to an affirmative. "No wine ne drank she, neither white nor red." "These eyes that never did nor never shall So much as frown on you."
3.
The refusal or withholding of assents; veto. "If a kind without his kingdom be, in a civil sense, nothing, then... his negative is as good as nothing."
4.
That side of a question which denies or refuses, or which is taken by an opposing or denying party; the relation or position of denial or opposition; as, the question was decided in the negative.
5.
(Photog.) A picture upon glass or other material, in which the light portions of the original are represented in some opaque material (usually reduced silver), and the dark portions by the uncovered and transparent or semitransparent ground of the picture. Note: A negative is chiefly used for producing photographs by means of passing light through it and acting upon sensitized paper, thus producing on the paper a positive picture.
6.
(Elect.) The negative plate of a voltaic or electrolytic cell.
Negative pregnant (Law), a negation which implies an affirmation.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Negative" Quotes from Famous Books



... one morning after prayers, in which I had given out Cowper's famous hymn about "The Fountain Filled with Blood," "Do you really believe there is a literal application of the blood of Christ to the soul?" My negative reply then is my negative reply now. The Bible statement agrees with all physicians, and all physiologists, and all scientists, in saying that the blood is the life, and in the Christian religion it means simply that Christ's life was given for our life. Hence all ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... is the issue. We are tired of negative things. To-night you sign the paper and give us your word of honour to keep silent, or before morning, when the tide is full, you go ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the following Fifteen Battles has been selected will, I trust, appear when it is described. But it may be well to premise a few remarks on the negative tests which have led me to reject others, which at first sight may appear equal in magnitude and importance ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... you, Dolly darling," began her mother, and the tears welled up in Dolly's blue eyes. This beginning meant a negative decision, that was self evident, but Dolly Fayre was plucky by nature and she was not the ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells

... the public was concerned, because it amounted to no more than attacking the credibility of a witness who pretended to describe only what he himself had seen—and there is nothing so hard as to prove a negative. ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... of Augustus and that of Tiberius, who applied the same principles with still greater vigour, was above all a negative policy. Accordingly, it could please only those denying as useful to progress another kind of men, the great agitators of the masses. Shall we therefore conclude that Augustus and Tiberius were useless? So doing, we should ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero

... roads are made; no lands levelled; no drains digged; no quarries worked, nor any of the changes made on the earth's surface that might reveal fragments of the primitive manufacture of stone. Yet but little could be inferred from the negative evidence, were it not accompanied by the fact that flint does not exist in any part south of the equator. Quartz might have been used, but no remains exist, except the half-worn millstones, and stones about the size of oranges, used for chipping ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... thinkers were generally inclined to hold, with Locke, that the proper function of government is principally negative, to preserve order and defend life and property, not to aim directly at the improvement of society, but to secure the conditions in which men may pursue their own legitimate aims. Most of the French theorists believed in the possibility of ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... the camera men to take a 'still' of the hermit, develop it for us, and send the negative to Ben. He and Uncle Jabez must remember how ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson

... as the depilatory is withdrawn. The effect of the depilatory is the same, in this respect, as that of a razor, and the latter is, unquestionably, the better remedy. It must not, however, be imagined that depilatories are negative remedies, and that, if they do no permanent good, they are, at least, harmless; that is not the fact; they are violent irritants, and require to be used ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... surrounded with a case or frame of sheet metal or other suitable material, and a negative cast is taken with some elastic material, if there are undercuts; the inventor uses agar-agar. The usual negative or mould having been obtained as usual, he prepares a gelatine mass resembling the hektograph mass, by soaking the gelatine first, then melting it and adding ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various

... and in his article on Wagstaffe in the DNB. Paul V. Thompson, "Swift and the Wagstaffe Papers," Notes and Queries, 175 (1938), 79, supports the notion of Wagstaffe as an understrapper of Swift. The negative part of Dilke's thesis is perhaps the more plausible. A Comment Upon Tom Thumb, as Dilke himself confesses (Papers, p. 377), scarcely sounds ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe

... friends nearer than New Orleans. I asked myself whether I ought not to abandon the raft, and take passage in a steamboat; but I had not money enough to pay the passages of the party, and I was obliged to answer the question in the negative. But I could pay Emily's fare, and place her in charge of the officers of some boat. I concluded to adopt this course at the first large town we reached, where a steamer would be ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic

... the sofa," he advised. "The chairs are a job lot bought at the sale after the suppression of the Holy Inquisition in Spain. This is a pretty good negative," he went on, holding it up to the light with his head at the angle of discriminating judgment. "Washed enough now, I think. Let us leave it to dry, and get rid of ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... cooperation, about which he had been so slow, would infuse new blood into the business. It was maddening at times to have so many good uses for money, and to be unable to command it at the crucial moment. He had approached Eugene Larue on that past Sunday afternoon, only to find him cautiously negative where once he had seemed ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various

... the proper division of local from Federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbid our Federal Government to control as to slavery in our Federal Territories? Upon this Senator Douglas holds the affirmative, and the Republicans the negative. This affirmation and denial form an issue, and this issue—this question—is precisely what the text declares our ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... governess. The housekeeper looked after him a little, mended his clothes, saw that he took his bath Saturday nights, and that he did not dig tunnels under the garden walks. But her influence was entirely negative and prohibitory and the two were constantly at war. Vandover grew in a haphazard way and after school hours ran about the streets almost ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris

... is a fragment; I will interpolate long periods to account for all the changes. I say, in reply, if you deny my conclusion, grounded on positive evidence, I toss back your conclusion, derived from negative evidence,—the inflated cushion on which you try to bolster up the defects of your hypothesis." [The punctuation of the imaginary dialogue is slightly altered from the original, which is obscure in one ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... my opinion in the Westminster Review, at the time, in the affirmative. Mrs. Jacob Bright, Mrs. Ellen Battelle Dietrick of Boston, Kate Field, in her Washington, agreed with me. Many other women spoke out promptly in the negative, and with a bitterness against those who took the opposite view ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... Gosford, the previous Governor, to declare that the ulterior object of the French Canadian politicians was "the separation of this country from England, and the establishment of a republican form of government," and who met the imaginary demand with a sharp and scornful negative, would soon have brought Canada to the verge ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... power of that mental culture which Johnnie was assimilating so avidly. That reading things in a book should enable her—a child, a girl, a helpless woman—to negative their wishes smilingly, this would have been a thing quite outside the ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... illusory side of our life and insanity may be seen in another way. All illusion has as its negative condition an interruption of the higher intellectual processes, the due control of our mental representations by reflection and reason. In the case of passive illusions, the error arises from our inability to subordinate the suggestion made by ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully

... sent on repeated messages of enquiry whether the Regent had returned, constantly brought back a negative answer, and added the information that he had found the body of old Hekt lying on the open ground. The widow's heart sank with fear; she was full of dark forebodings while she listened to the shouts of the people engaged in putting out the fire, the roll of drums, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... too, our livers waxed torpid, and our blood boiled in vain. The potato was gone; the benefits conferred on posterity by Sir Walter Raleigh were at length realised in a negative way. Miniature "Murphies" fetched four pence halfpenny each, while an adult member of the genus at ninepence was worth two of the little ones. Mr. Rhodes may have luxuriated on potatoes (cum grano salis!) but ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... I wrote Miss Wilson at length, reiterating and enlarging on all that I had said, telling her I would wait until she felt she could give me a definite answer, and begging her not to hasten her decision if it was to be negative. ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell

... of savings will insure to them the future annual income they desire to obtain. There is no need to be dogmatic upon any of these points. The psychology of saving is both complex and obscure. Our conclusion must be the negative one that we have insufficient evidence to warrant the assertion that the particular rate of interest which happens to prevail is a measure of the sacrifice involved in saving, even in the case of what we might regard as the "marginal saving." And, if we cannot assert ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson

... Has modern society met the demands for a natural life, especially as concerns the female sex? If the question is answered in the negative, this other rises: Can modern society meet the demands? If both questions must be answered in the negative, then this third arises: How can these ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... short of at least fifty pounds to spend for her mumbo-jumbo and gimcracks. She would talk in a very smooth voice to those she got in her web—about the flow of vital energy and the power of positive and negative currents over the valves of the heart and circulation of the blood. She would roll up her eyes and complain of how the treatments, which consisted of laying her fingers on a person's temples and wrists, exhausted her, and ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child

... interpretation will not do. The subsequent conversation with Ursula Petulengro under the hedge might be only a companion piece; even the more wonderful, though much less interesting, dialogue with the Irish girl in the last chapters of Wild Wales might be so rendered by a hardy exegete. But the negative evidence in all the books is too strong. It may be taken as positively certain that Borrow never was "in love," as the phrase is, and that he had hardly the remotest conception of what being in love means. It is possible that he was a most cleanly liver—it is possible that he was quite the ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... letters to the Ducs de Mayenne and de Rohan, to the Marechal de Lesdiguieres, and to several other great nobles, soliciting their support in the impending struggle; but with the sole exception of M. de Rohan, they all returned cold and negative replies, informing her that the duty which they owed to the King would not permit them to comply with her request; after which they forwarded her letters to the Court, together with the answers which they had made, thus purchasing ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... coffee and a piece of dry toast, and skimmed the papers. From eight-thirty till ten I dictated a special article on our modern English hostesses—"The Hostesses of England: Is Hospitality Declining?", a question I answer in the negative—— ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero

... resulting from rationalism and championed in this country by Unitarianism is merely negative and destructive, is evidenced on every hand. Dr. Pearson, in the Missionary Review, has recently pointed out its fatal effects in the mission fields, and still more recently it has been compelled to confess its own defeat in Germany, where it originated and where ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz

... bodies by virtue of which it cannot change its own condition of rest or motion. In other words it is the negative quality of passiveness either in recoverable ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... left until we have some demonstrable evidence to show.... Mr. Myers proposes himself for April 14-21.... I should suggest the keeping of a diary, in which every one willing to do so should make entries, negative or affirmative." ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various

... for the honor of the Earls of Downe than of Pope to make out the connection, we must observe that Lord Guildford's testimony, if ever given at all, is simply negative; he had found no proofs of the connection, but he had not found any proofs to destroy it; whilst, on the other hand, it ought to be mentioned, though unaccountably overlooked by all previous biographers, that one of Pope's anonymous enemies, who hated him ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... upon every visitor, as in duty bound, to engage their services. To say them nay, and to suggest that your legs are quite capable of bearing you to the town, is only provocative of an incredulous smile, or a negative shake of the head. Never was seen such patience and importunity as that displayed by boy and beast. The most striking thing about them is their names—shared in common—which furnish one with a running commentary on current events in Europe. For example, there were the "Prince of Wales" and ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

... made a negative gesture. "Florida be hanged! What he wants is to sell his group. That would set him up quicker ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... peace and reduce the danger of nuclear war. But let's have no illusions. Three years of steady decline in the value of our annual defense investment have increased the risk of our most basic security interests, jeopardizing earlier hard-won goals. We must face squarely the implications of this negative trend and make adequate, stable defense spending a top goal both this ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... said that a criticism is negative if it searches for what a writer lacks instead of what he possesses. We should soon reach a zero if we only registered the absence of "necessary" traits in our poet. He is so unlike his contemporaries—with a solitary exception—that his curious genius seems composed of a bundle of negatives. ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... of America, if not of the world, as models of passionless logical analysis. Whether passionless logical analysis is ever an essential quality of true literature, is a matter on which opinions will differ; but until the question is settled in the negative, Calhoun's claims to be considered a writer of marked force and originality cannot be ignored. It is true that circumstances have invalidated much of his political teaching, and that it was always negative and destructive rather than positive and constructive; it is ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... the refrain, but the general tone was negative. It was not so much a question of upholding anything as of throwing down ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... preachers do not feel this more and so recover their consciousness of an indispensable mission. One wonders that the churches can be so timid and dull and negative, that our sermons can be so pallid and inconsequential. One wonders why in the pulpit we have so many flutes and so few trumpets. For here is a world with the accumulating energies of the new science in its hands, living ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick

... have been one priest who left that testimony at his death, but that all priests do not. True, there is a great deal more to be said about religion, which I believe to be an eternal necessity of human nature, but no man has uttered the negative side of the matter with so much candor ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier

... dropped lifeless from their statute books, for want of sustaining power that had been relinquished to Congress";[523] and Madison's assertion, late in life, that power had been granted Congress over interstate commerce mainly as "a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the States,"[524] carries a ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... of sulphuric acid; the second was browned, declaring the presence of the alkali soda. The dissolved salt, therefore, arranged in this fashion, was decomposed by the machine, exactly as it would have been by the voltaic current. When instead of using the positive conductor he used the negative, the positions of the acid and alkali were reversed. Thus he satisfied himself that chemical decomposition by the machine is obedient to the laws which rule ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall

... Agriculture: dominated by stock breeding (sheep and cattle) and dairy farming; main crops are potatoes, hops, hemp, and flax; although self-sufficient and having an export surplus in these commodities, Slovenia must import many other agricultural products and has a negative overall trade balance in this sector Illicit drugs: NA Economic aid: NA Currency: Slovene Tolar (plural - Tolars); 1 Tolar (SLT) 100 NA Exchange rates: Tolars (SLT) per US$1 - 28 (January 1992) Fiscal ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... intellectual, divine principle penetrates matter as the positive element, which under definite conditions steadily works upon the negative element of the original substance and forces the same under constant changing of form and combining parts, to realize definite, universally similar ideas, and to attain definite aims; and wherever matter in the process of development offers certain conditions, there ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various

... our aristocracy that we must look (if at all, in Appallachia), for the spirituality of a British boudoir. But we have seen apartments in the tenure of Americans of moderns [possibly "modest" or "moderate"] means, which, in negative merit at least, might vie with any of the or-molu'd cabinets of our friends across the water. Even now, there is present to our mind's eye a small and not, ostentatious chamber with whose decorations no fault can be found. The proprietor ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... were enjoying the negative luxury of being liberated from a ship, at the Fountain Inn, I strolled about the place. You know that I had twice visited England professionally before I was eighteen; and, on one occasion, the ship I was in anchored off this very ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... stand she took against common incentives to dissipation and irreligion—such as card-playing and Sunday entertainments—against the introduction of questionable topics, unseemly language, and vacuous frivolity into conversation. Her religious influence, thus far, was almost a silent or negative one; but it had its effect on others, and laid the foundation of that direct searching and far-reaching influence, which, under the Divine blessing, ...
— Excellent Women • Various

... commonly Ma af'al. Ma and La are synonymous negative particles, differing, however, in application. Ma (Gr. ) precedes definites, or indefinites: La and Lam (Gr. ) only ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... roses and tulips, in a word, to horticulture, but above all a lover of choice fruit. An arbor is visible, or rather the wreck of an arbor, and under it a table still stands not entirely destroyed by time. At the aspect of this garden that is no more, the negative joys of the peaceful life of the provinces may be divined as we divine the history of a worthy tradesman when we read the epitaph on his tomb. To complete the mournful and tender impressions which seize the soul, on one of the walls there is a sundial graced with this ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac

... intractable brains! How is it that, in spite of the trouble we daily take, we cannot teach you to speak with congruity? In putting not with no, you have spoken redundantly, and it is, as you have been told, a negative too many. ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)

... or the holder of an ordinary insurance policy is a negative rather than a positive factor in economic control. Not only does he exercise no power over the dollar which he has placed with the bank or with the insurance company, but he has thereby strengthened the hands of these organizations. ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing

... of coarseness in papa; or perhaps I should say—for the impression it leaves is primarily negative, as of something manque—an incompleteness in the sensitive equipment. As yet it can hardly be said to embarrass me; though I foresee a time when I shall have to apologise for it to strangers. There is ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... extinct &c adj.; die out; disappear &c 449; melt away, dissolve, leave not a rack behind; go, be no more; die &c 360. annihilate, render null, nullify; abrogate &c 756; destroy &c 162; take away; remove &c (displace) 185; obliterate, extirpate. Adj. inexistent^, nonexistent &c 1; negative, blank; missing, omitted; absent &c 187; insubstantial, shadowy, spectral, visionary. unreal, potential, virtual; baseless, in nubibus [Lat.]; unsubstantial &c 4; vain. unborn, uncreated^, unbegotten, unconceived, unproduced, unmade. perished, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... asked Belding, waving his hand toward the corrals. The Indian's beautiful name for Nell meant "shower of gold," and Belding used it in asking Yaqui if he had seen her. He received a negative reply. ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... into the saddler's pocket: that's a positive good. He may or may not take thereby ten dollars out of your pocket: that's a negative injury. In this case there was no injury, for you had already cost Lacasse—how much had you cost him, Dauphin?" continued the Seigneur, with a half-malicious smile. "I've been out of Chaudiere for near a year; I don't know the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... tea-parties and carpet dances that took place in the social circle to which he belonged; but, beyond such slight beguilements of "life's dull weary round," his existence was uneventful. His character altogether might be said to have been a negative one, as the only speciality for which he was particularly distinguished was for the variety of intonation and meaning which he could give to his two favourite exclamations, "Yaas," and "Bai-ey Je-ove!"—thus economising his conversational powers to a considerable extent, which ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson

... put that innocent query to the first mate he knew very well Mr. Schultz would reply in the negative—which he did—for the reason that Michael J. Murphy had privately informed Mr. Reardon that the little cockney steward, Riggins, had charge of the bedbug ammunition. Riggins, who had been standing with his back against the wall, eyeing Mr. ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... late when we arrived, and we spent a restless night, for the inoculation "took." It wasn't any worse than a light attack of the grippe, and in the morning we were both all right again, after the passing of what is called the "negative phase." I, for one, ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve

... or ballot of the people of Rome (who gave their votes by throwing tablets or little pieces of wood secretly into urns marked for the negative or affirmative) was a welcome constitution to the people, as that which, not impairing the assurance of their brows, increased the freedom of their judgment. I have not stood upon a more particular description of this ballot, because that of Venice exemplified ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... tired of this negative criticism and asked his evangelists to give him more substantial food, they put him on some exoteric doctrine calculated to appeal to a young imagination by its poetic or philosophical colouring. The catechumen was not ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... merely not so comprehensive. I have contented myself thus far with a negative theory, if I ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer

... fresh-water drenching bestowed by the clouds. Can you fancy the discomfort of such a situation? Then you were never at sea, or at least you left your imagination ashore; for I defy any person not well inured to it, to look on such a scene with so negative a feeling as discomfort; it will excite either terror or delight sufficient to engross ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth

... yielded, in a negative sort of way. She ceased to make resistance when her unknown friend, taking the little twist of paper from the hand still fast closed over it with the half-conscious grasp of pain, dexterously unrolled it, and ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... pleasant fellow, seemingly of that negative pleasantness that lies in inoffensiveness, but otherwise dull and of an untutored mind—rustic, as might be expected in one the greater part of whose life had been spent in his native province, and of a rusticity ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini

... electric streams, l. 21. It is the opinion of some philosophers, that the electric ether consists of two kinds of fluids diffused together or combined; which are commonly known by the terms of positive and negative electricity, but are by these electricians called vitreous and resinous electricity. The electric shocks given by the torpedo and by the gymnotus, are supposed to be similar to those of the Galvanic pile, as they are produced in water. Which water is decomposed ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... the tent or send it up by the camp wagon?" Roy Blakeley asked, as he and the others crowded each other off the train at Catskill Landing. "Answer in the positive or negative." ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... them to a resisting medium, which, while according to Encke's hypothesis of increasing density around the sun, it explains the anomalies of one periodical comet, requires a different law of density for another, and a negative ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... Authoress of the Odyssey", and have added two which I hope may bring the outer court of Ulysses' house more vividly before the reader. I should like to explain that the presence of a man and a dog in one illustration is accidental, and was not observed by me till I developed the negative. In an appendix I have also reprinted the paragraphs explanatory of the plan of Ulysses' house, together with the plan itself. The reader is recommended to study this ...
— The Odyssey • Homer

... Maria, The Monk, or The Poor Man's Ass of Sterne, be read with more delight, or have a better chance of immortality, had they without any change in the diction been composed in rhyme, than in their present state? If I am not grossly mistaken, the general reply would be in the negative. Nay, I will confess, that, in Mr. Wordsworth's own volumes, the Anecdote for Fathers, Simon Lee, Alice Fell, The Beggars, and The Sailor's Mother, notwithstanding the beauties which are to be found in each of them where the poet interposes the music ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... in which he eagerly appropriated the results of the philosophising of his time, in so far as he could use these to sustain his own positions, and caustically rejected those which he could not thus use. He soon got by heart the negative lessons of Voltaire and found, to use the words which he puts into the mouth of Faust, that while it freed him from his superstitions, at the same time it made the world empty and dismal beyond endurance. In the mechanical philosophy which presented itself in the Systeme de la Nature ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... in the divine order of sanctification purifying the heart by faith is preparatory to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. He must have a pure heart in which to make his abode. However, there is no lapse of time perceptible between the negative and positive phase of sanctification. How easily this is understood by those who have truly received the Pentecostal experience. How the "anointing" teaches us and witnesses in our hearts to the testimony of Peter; but to those who have not yet had their Pentecost, and especially such as are ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers

... produced upon the House, that Mr. Pitt and Lord Grenville, as I have heard, not only consulted with each other as to whether it was necessary they should take the trouble of answering it, but decided in the negative. Yet doubtless, at the present moment, if Lord Grenville—master as he is of all the knowledge that belongs to a statesman and a scholar—were asked to point out from the stores of his reading the few models of oratorical composition, to the perusal ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... be astonished at the negative thus conveyed by the beautiful mute; and he even manifested a sign of ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... through Landa, and the deductions immediately involved in these. We know the day and month signs, the numbers, including 0 and 20, four units of the archaic calendar count (the day, tun, katun and cycle), the cardinal point signs, the negative particle. We have not fully solved the uinal or month sign, which seems to be chuen on the monuments and a cauac, or chuen, in the manuscripts. We are able to identify what must be regarded as metaphysical or esoteric applications ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates

... effect on the vital powers that makes us insensible to all the virtues and graces of the proprietor of one of these life-absorbing organs. When they touch us, virtue passes out of us, and we feel as if our electricity had been drained by a powerful negative battery, carried about ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... so upset that his Skin, reacting to the negative fields racing over the Skin and the hormone imbalance of his blood, writhed away ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer

... at this proposal. How could the good young gentleman be so inconsiderate, she thought, as to propose to his visitor for lunch what was by and by to come up for dinner? She was quite relieved, however, by Cecil's eager negative, and went off to her kitchen well satisfied; while Mr. Yorke, after saying grace, proceeded to do the honours of ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford

... still, then, or why was he here? And then the thought that she had done something for him too warmed her heart still more toward him. And there was nothing for her to repel now, for he lay motionless; there was nothing for her to escape—he did not pursue her; nothing to negative—he did not propose anything to her. Her instinct of defense had nothing to lay hold of; so, womanlike, she had a strong impulse to wake him and be kind to him—as kind as she could be without committing herself. But, on the other hand, ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... and the likeness may be followed out to the limit of its value. In the same manner it is often of value to tell what a thing or a proposition does not resemble, to contrast it with one or more ideas, and by this means exclude what might otherwise be confusing. Note that after the negative comparison the paragraph closes with what it is like, or ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... their lives, it is obviously possible that the Globigerinae may be similarly derived; and if they were so, it would be much more easy to understand how they obtain their supply of food than it is at present. Nevertheless, the positive and negative evidence all points the other way. The skeletons of the full-grown, deep-sea Globigerinae are so remarkably solid and heavy in proportion to their surface as to seem little fitted for floating; and, as a matter of fact, they are not to be found along with the Diatoms and Radiolaria, in the uppermost ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... would be far more disastrous than it is. The opportunity for initiative and decision, the mental stir of camp and dept life is nil compared with that of service in the fighting line. And for one month at the front a man spends perhaps five at the rear. Military life, on its negative side, is more or less a suspension of the usual channels of mental activity. By barrack and camp life the normal civilian intellect is, as it were, marooned. On that desert island it finds, no doubt, certain new and very definite forms of activity, ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... nature—in a word, genuine selfishness; whereas this quality was rather less remarkable in those who had less to be selfish about. I do not say therefore that they had less of it.—I soon saw that their profanity had chiefly a negative significance; but it was long before I could get sufficiently accustomed to their vileness, their beastliness—I beg the beast's pardon!—to keep from leaving the room when a vein of that sort was opened. But I succeeded in schooling myself to bear it. ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald

... finished the affected man, but there was not much in it[419]. However, this was circulated as wit for a whole winter, and I believe part of a summer too; a proof that he was no very witty man. He was an instance of the truth of the observation, that a man will please more upon the whole by negative qualities than by positive; by never offending, than by giving a great deal of delight. In the first place, men hate more steadily than they love; and if I have said something to hurt a man once, I shall not get the better of this, by saying many ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... polished diamond appears superior to that which is rough from the mine. In some parts of the world, women have attained to so little knowledge and so little consequence, that we consider their virtues as merely of the negative kind. In England they consist not only in abstinence from evil, ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous

... industry is gradually lifting the worker and the world. We only need to know more about planning and methods. The best results can and will be brought about by individual initiative and ingenuity—by intelligent individual leadership. The government, because it is essentially negative, cannot give positive aid to any really constructive programme. It can give negative aid—by removing obstructions to progress and by ceasing to be a burden upon ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford

... to the fact that Romanes in his latter days was led to abandon the negative attitude which he had taken in his earlier life. The story of the change is to be found as told by himself in the volume of Life and Letters edited by his widow, and in the Notes which he left behind him. ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson

... be robbed of the fruits of victory? The reply is in the negative. Therefore, when next June comes along and you yearn for the early filberts, do not be fretty. Remember that I am gathering in fruits of another and a nobler ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various

... restrained from evil by fear. He went further: he regarded external restraints as means to bad, since they come between a man and his conscience and blunt the moral sense. "So long as I keep to the rules," says the smug citizen, "I am of the righteous." Ibsen loathed the State, with its negative virtues, its mean standards, its mediocrity, and its spiritual squalor. He ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... he said as he carefully removed the negative to a dark place, 'I have developed a considerable sense of quiet humour. You will find a large Gainsborough hat in that corner—might I trouble you to put it on for ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey

... even to the columns of the Argus. It had been observed by more than one of us that these had of late suffered from the depression of their editor. Their general tone had been negative. Now they spoke in a lightsome tone of self-sufficiency. They were gay, even jaunty. It was in this very epoch that the verse was born which for many years sang blithely from the top of the first column—sang of Denney's public-spirited optimism as to Slocum ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... a Welsh University, and was strong on "the methodical filing of State and other documents." He stayed two days. On the first night (after inquiring whether we were expecting guests that evening, and receiving an answer in the negative) he came down to dinner in a sort of alpaca smoking-jacket and a tartan tie. On the second, having evidently decided to treat us to all the resources of his wardrobe as soon as possible, he appeared in more or less ordinary evening attire. He wore a small white satin bow-tie, attached to his ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay

... A solitary negative vote against the resolve of the Legislature directing Mr. Hoar to be expelled was cast by C. S. Memmenger, afterward Secretary of the Treasury of the Southern Confederacy. He is said to have been a Union man ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... the bar and Blacky, having a leisure moment, came forward and stood ready to serve him. A short nod of greeting passed between the three, and Blacky placed a bottle on the bar and reached for a glass. Dakota made a negative sign with his ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer

... she did not know it, had himself been a candidate for the situation of clerk; and intended probably to keep the equation precisely as it was with respect to the allowance of credit, only to change places with the handsome lady—keeping her on the negative side, himself on the affirmative—an arrangement that you know could have made no sort of pecuniary ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... economic activity was largely the result of Israeli closure policies - the imposition of generalized border closures in response to security incidents in Israel - which disrupted previously established labor and commodity market relationships between Israel and the WBGS. The most serious negative social effect of this downturn has been the emergence of chronic unemployment; average unemployment rates in the WBGS during the 1980s were generally under 5%; by the mid-1990s this level had risen to over 20%. Since 1997 Israel's use of comprehensive closures has decreased and, in 1998, ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... a politician by circumstances, a boss by evolution, and a grafter by choice. He became grand sachem of Tammany and chairman of the general committee. This committee he ruled with blunt directness. When he wanted a question carried, he failed to ask for the negative votes; and soon he was called "the Boss," a title he never resented, and which usage has since fixed in our politics. So he ruled Tammany with a high hand; made nominations arbitrarily; bullied, bought, and traded; became President of the Board of Supervisors, thus holding the key to the ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth

... same time, even Lanfear's critics felt that he should be succeeded by a man who held his views and would continue his teaching. This was not in itself a difficulty, for German criticism had so far been mainly negative, and there were plenty of good men who, while they questioned the permanent validity of Lanfear's conclusions, were yet ready to accept them for their provisional usefulness. And then there was the added inducement of the Laboratory! The Columbia Professor of Experimental Evolution has at his disposal ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... central tower at Rouen. But these are after all minor imperfections—seldom, if ever, in aught but pleasurable anticipation, do we see in the masterpieces of art or nature a perfect unity; so why seek to negative their virtues by futile criticism? It would seem to be all-sufficient that such details, sins of omission or commission, should be noted merely, that we may pass on to other charms which must ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... had been purely negative to him, and he regarded her with kindly indifference. The girl's personality seemed as ashen as her hair, as colourless as her face. Her dull eyes seemed to see nothing, to care for nothing. Within the last few ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... faithfully nursed by her two neighbours, while the weak-eyed child, and the pale sewing girl who had helped to finish Evelina's wedding dress, took turns in minding the shop. Every morning, when her friends appeared, Ann Eliza lifted her head to ask: "Is there a letter?" and at their gentle negative sank back in silence. Mrs. Hawkins, for several days, spoke no more of her promise to consult her husband as to the best way of tracing Mrs. Hochmuller; and dread of fresh disappointment kept Ann Eliza from bringing up ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton

... seemed greatly pleased, grasped my hand, and launched at once into extended conversation. His great anxiety was to know who was to be the future king of our Republic, and he asked especially whether Washington had left any direct descendants. On my answering in the negative, he insisted that we would have to find some descendant in the collateral line, "for,'' said he, "you can't escape it; no nation can get along for any considerable time without ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... French, my lords, oppose us with other arguments, arguments which, indeed, receive their force from folly and credulity; but what more powerful assistance can be desired? They promise not mere negative advantages, not an exemption from remote oppression, or an escape from slavery, which, as it was yet never felt, is very little dreaded; they offer an immediate augmentation of dominion, and an extension of power; they propose ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson

... mentioned. The mechanical doctrines are used in the attempt to interpret the empirical knowledge. This fact is well brought out in the following passage from Kofler: "The teacher must imitate the wrong muscle-action and tone of his pupil as an illustration of the negative side." (The Art of Breathing, N. Y., 1889.) Kofler does not touch on the question, how the teacher is able to locate the wrong muscle-action of the pupil. He takes this ability for granted; it is so purely an ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor

... Russia over the Slav world. The Austrian press insisted that the Balkan states were of age and could take care of themselves. If not, it was for Europe, not for Russia, to control them. The political horizon grew still darker when one week later Dr. Daneff answered the Servian note in the negative. This resulted in the Servian Minister withdrawing from ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... percentage of sugar? Will future varieties of wheat and other grain produce heavier crops than our present varieties? These questions cannot be positively answered; but it is certain that we ought to be cautious in answering by a negative. In some lines of variation the limit has probably been reached. Youatt believes that the reduction of bone in some of our sheep has already been carried so far that it entails great delicacy of constitution.[595] But seeing the great improvement ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... a rage for saying something, when there's nothing to be said." Mr. Burney then asked him whether he had seen the letter which Warburton had written in answer to a pamphlet addressed "To the most impudent Man alive[981]." He answered in the negative. Mr. Burney told him it was supposed to be written by Mallet. The controversy now raged between the friends of Pope and Bolingbroke; and Warburton and Mallet were the leaders ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... did not reflect that he had not put himself in the way of it: but now the strangeness of the sensation overwhelmed him. He inquired of himself whether it was pleasant, but he found himself compelled to answer the question with a negative. It should have come from him, but not yet; not yet, probably, for some weeks. But it had been done, and by the doing of it she had sealed him utterly as her own. There was no getting out of it now. He did feel that he ought not to attempt to get out of it after what had ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... generally supposed that the magatama represented a tiger's claw, which is known to have been regarded by the Koreans as an amulet. But the ornament may also have taken its comma-like shape from the Yo and the Yin, the positive and the negative principles which by Chinese cosmographists were accounted the great primordial factors, and which occupy a prominent place in Japanese decorative art as the tomoye.* The cylindrical jewels evidently owed their shape to ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... natural fresh water resources in some areas; the policies of former Communist regimes promoted rapid urbanization and industrial growth that had negative effects on the environment; the burning of soft coal in power plants and the lack of enforcement of environmental laws severely polluted the air in Ulaanbaatar; deforestation, overgrazing, and the converting of virgin land to agricultural production increased ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... peculiarly conscious of his gaze. The words represented an illusion, and Longueville asked himself quickly whether it were not his duty to dispel it. The answer came more slowly than the question, but still it came, in the shape of a negative. The illusion was but a trifling one, and it was not for him, after all, to let his friend know that he had already met Miss Vivian. It was for the young girl herself, and since she had not done so—although she had the opportunity—Longueville said to himself that ...
— Confidence • Henry James

... the a day's work, lavishing her sympathy on the individual, without much general sense of pity and waste. Yes, she had worked really hard, had "done her bit"; but of late she had felt rising within her the old vague craving for "life," for pleasure, for something more than the mere negative admiration bestowed on her by her "Tommies." Those old letters—to look them through them had been a sure sign of this vague craving—had sharpened to poignancy the feeling that life was slipping away from her while she was ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... Phineas' feeling against Captain Hunniwell had softened at all. Leander's reply was a vigorous negative. ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln

... of liberty negative 291 Influence of the Revolution upon the conception of liberty 293 Why present-day conservatives advocate the eighteenth century view of liberty 295 Liberty to the framers meant the limitation of the power of the ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith

... youth returned an evasive answer, and withdrew; but the next day he was there again. On this occasion, Mr. Bloundel pointed him out to Leonard Holt, and asked him if he had seen him before. The youth's back being towards them, the apprentice unhesitatingly answered in the negative, but as the subject of investigation turned the next moment, and looked up, revealing features of feminine delicacy and beauty, set off by long flowing jet-black ringlets, Leonard started, ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... quieted the fears of the West and Northwest, destroyed the hopes of the secession element in Kentucky, renewed the drooping spirits of the East Tennesseans, and demoralized the disunionists in Middle Tennessee; yet it was a negative victory so far as concerned the result on the battle-field. Rosecrans seems to have planned the battle with the idea that the enemy would continue passive, remain entirely on the defensive, and that it was necessary only to push forward ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... we must support the props. The aristocracy must bear them on their shoulders. If your Squire stays away from church, he may be called a heathen with propriety, though a Liberal. And why? Because he makes public exposure of himself as a heathen negative! He is bound to keep up the church factor in the community. Otherwise he runs straight aground ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... endeavor to interpret them—not always very faithfully— represent them as a party of movement and change, following a Bergsonian elan vital, without needing any very clear prevision of the goal to which it is to take them. Nevertheless, the negative part, at any rate, of their objects ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell

... Nativity had previously been celebrated at Rome on January 6 is a matter of controversy; the affirmative view was maintained by Usener in his monograph on Christmas,{6} the negative by Monsignor Duchesne.{7} A very minute, cautious, and balanced study of both arguments is to be found in Professor Kirsopp Lake's article on Christmas in Hastings's "Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics,"{8} and a short article was contributed by the same writer ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles

... gentleman, the kindness of a friend, and my heart swells as it would burst, with warm emotions and ardent wishes! It may be it is not gratitude—it may be a mixed sensation. That strange, shifting, doubling animal man is so generally, at best, but a negative, often a worthless creature, that we cannot see real goodness and native worth without feeling the bosom glow with ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... the word appears to be that given by Gesenius (s.v.); that it is compounded of the root [Hebrew: zabal] (habitavit, cohabitavit) and the negative [Hebrew: 'eiyn], and that its meaning is the same as [Greek: alochos], casta: comp. Agnes. Isabel, in fact, would be a name nearer the original than the form in which ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various

... guns seemed only a negative form of sound after the bomb, and clearly above the firing could be heard a howl. The Vicar's dog, still howling, ran into ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson

... the author of the Shakespearean plays and poems, and does not value Baconian cryptograms. In the following chapters I make endeavours, conscientious if fallible, to state the theory of Mr. Greenwood. It is a negative theory. He denies that Will Shakspere (or Shaxbere, or Shagspur, and so on) was the author of the plays and poems. Some other party was, IN THE MAIN, with other hands, the author. Mr. Greenwood cannot, or does not, offer a guess as to who this ingenious Somebody was. He does not affirm, and ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang

... a feeling of despair and lonesomeness that Burrell lighted every lamp and candle in the place to dispel, in some measure, the gloom that had fallen upon him. There are those who believe that in passing from daylight to darkness a subtle transition occurs akin to the change from positive to negative in an electrical current, and that this intangible, untraceable atmospheric influence exerts a definite, psychical effect upon men and their modes of thought. Be this as it may, it is certain that as the night grew darker the Lieutenant's ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach

... reveal adequate cause for the lameness in any higher part of the limb, one is led, by a process of negative deduction, to suspect the foot. If 'pointing' is a symptom, its manner is noticed. The foot is compared with the other for any deviation from the normal. In some cases the two fore or the two hind feet may differ in size. Though this may not necessarily ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks



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