"Potent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on some days the devil reigns with a more potent sway over people than on others. To-night he has certainly entered into the boys. He often does a little, but this evening he is holding a great and mighty carnival among them. While father's strong, hard ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... it is!" she cried, joyfully. "And now let us see if it is potent. The stingy wizard didn't give me much of it, but I guess there's enough ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... the mind first dwell upon the word "I," identifying it with the Self, and then let it pass on to the word "AM," which signifies Reality, and Being. Then combine the two with the meanings thereof, and the result a most powerful focusing of thought inward, and most potent Statement of Being. ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... crown, Whilst crowns and orbs and sceptres starred his breast. All gleamed compact and green with scale on scale, But special burnishment adorned his mail And special terror weighed upon his frown; 20 His punier brethren quaked before his tail, Broad as a rafter, potent as a flail. So he grew lord and master of his kin: But who shall tell the tale of all their woes? An execrable appetite arose, He battened on them, crunched, and sucked them in. He knew no law, he feared no binding law, But ground them with inexorable ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... open portal wooed Maya, but wooed in vain. Once, upon the steps of a quaint and picturesque cottage stood an artist, with eyes that flashed heaven's own azure, and lit his waving curls with a gleam of gold. His pleading look tempted the Child of the Kingdom with potent affinities of land and likeness; his fair cottage called her from wall and casement, with the spiritual eyes of ideal faces looking down upon her, forever changeless and forever pure; but when, from purest pity, kindness, and beauty-love, she would have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... by the return of my long lost brother."—Parker's Exercises in English Composition, p. 5. "Such singular and unheard of clemency cannot be passed over by me in silence."—Ib., p. 10. "I perceive my whole system excited by the potent stimulus of sun-shine."—Ib., p. 11. "To preserve the unity of a sentence, it is sometimes necessary to employ the case absolute, instead of the verb and conjunction."—Ib., p. 17. "Severity and hard hearted opinions accord with the temper of the times."—Ib., p. 18. "That poor man was put ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... challenging intricacy and imaginative genius. The only other stories of the supernatural to find place in the Committee's first list are Maxwell Struthers Burt's "Buchanan Hears the Wind" and Mary Heaton Vorse's "The Halfway House." In all of these, suggestion, delicately managed, is the potent element ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... light, the artistic luxury of the place and its surroundings, the exquisite robes of soft-voiced women, the cultivated tone and manner of the men, with a sort of subtle and distinguished aroma of British nobility shed over the whole—all of these things held for Edward Macleod a potent witchery. This evening he was in unusually good spirits, and was entertaining a group of gentlemen, who had gathered about him in the centre of the large drawing-room, by an amusing account of his hunting experiences in the backwoods. The sounds of subdued mirth that followed his recital ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... longer I reflected, the more positive I became that there existed a more potent reason for the Celebrity's disguise than ennui. As actions speak louder than words, so does a man's character often give ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... which Weary felt bound to answer; everyone knew Patsy, who was almost as much a part of Dry Lake scenery as was Old Dock, and it was gratifying to a Flying-U man to see the sympathy in their faces. But Patsy needed something more potent than sympathy, and ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... Vishnu, in N.W. India, 10,000 ft. high; much frequented by pilgrims for the sacred waters near it, which are believed to be potent to cleanse ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... connection with this that we must chew our food fine before we can digest it, and that the same food given in large lumps will choke and kill which in small pieces feeds us; or, again, that that which is impotent as a pellet may be potent as a gas. Food is very thoughtful: through thought it comes, and back through thought it shall return; the process of its conversion and comprehension within our own system is mental as well as physical, and here, as everywhere else with mind and evolution, there must be a cross, but not too wide ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... PAGE. 'Las, no sooner did I say All that you told me, than he gives the word, 'A guest, a guest, a very potent guest,' Takes me a goblet brimful of strong wine And hands it to me, mocking, on his knee. This I decline, when on his back they lay Your faithful Page, nor set me on my legs Till they had drenched me with this fiery stuff, That ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... evening, did I observe the magic power of that hand and voice—the one gentle yet potent as the other. On the next morning, breakfast being over, I was preparing to take my departure when my host informed me that if I would wait for half an hour he would give me a ride in his wagon to G— —, as business required him to go ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... why rush to praise or blame, to eulogy or reprobation, when we should do better simply to explore and enjoy? Moral imperfection is ever a grievous curtailment of life, but many exquisite flowers of character, many gracious and potent things, may still thrive in ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... Laura played with her rings. The artist, leaning forward in his chair, looked with vague eyes across the room. And no interval of time since his return, no words that had ever passed between them, had been so fraught with significance, so potent in drawing them together ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... however, is closed by ice three months in the year, though that of Hammerfest, situated a thousand miles further north on the same coast, is never frozen, owing to the genial influence of the Gulf Stream,—an agent so potent as to modify the temperature of the entire coast of Scandinavia ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... more far-seeing upholders of the present system are keenly conscious of this danger. And this danger (even though most of the expansionists may not realize it), is one of the most potent causes of the Imperialism, Militarism, and Jingoism which are at present disgracing the civilized world. England in Africa, and America in the Philippines are pursuing their present criminal policies, not solely to open ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... countries beat in unison, makes them more enamored of harmony, more sensitive to discord. Honor to the men of genius who made two hemispheres thrill to the same electric touch, who at the same time, and with the same potent spell, are ruling the hearts of men in the mountains of Scotland, the forests of Canada, the hillsides of New England, the prairies of Illinois, and the burning plains of India. Their influence, so far as it extends, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... were sitting up on end, like monster rabbits on a bank, pawing the air and screaming out their hearts in the wild delirium of unlimited power and ungovernable fury. Still, although they moved a little, the sleepers did not awake—so potent is the force of habit! However, it did not last long. The red lights removed their ban, the white lights said "Come on," the monster rabbits gave a final snort of satisfaction and went away—each with its tail of live-stock, or minerals, ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... expense, the exceeding dignity of the Supreme Court, could only admire and approve. As for his speech, it was a straightway argument; not a superfluous or a sophomoric word, not an attempt at rhetoric. His argument—There is the logic that is potent but answerable; there is the logic that is unanswerable, that gives no opportunity to any sane mind, however prejudiced by association with dispensers of luxurious hospitality, of vintage wines and dollar cigars, however enamored of fog-fighting and hair- splitting, to refuse ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... length to tell the doings of Yehl. His uncle tried to slay him, and, when he failed, "he imprecated with a potent curse a deluge upon all the earth. . . . The flood came, the waters rose and rose; but Yehl clothed himself in his bird-skin, and soared up to the heavens, where he stuck his beak into a cloud, and remained until ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... the grasses, and it was as though he lay also amid the wide, simple, first growths of a larger, more potent living. Now and again, through years, he had been aware of approaches, always momentary, to this condition, to a country that lay behind time and space, cause and effect, as he ordinarily knew them. The lightning ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... approaching calm. Thunder I send by cold moonshine,— Mine is the bane and mine the balm. My beck upwhirls the hurricane: The sun and moon and stars in vain Their wonted course would keep; Honey from out the rock doth weep When I command. My potent wand, Stretched on the mighty northern wave, Or seas that farther India lave, Subdues their mountain billows hoarse, To inland brooklets' murmuring course. What is on earth, what is in sea, In air and fire, ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... to give way before the potent influences of character, education, and wealth. And these are necessary to the growth of the race. Without wealth there can be no leisure, without leisure there can be no thought, and without thought ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... proves that they not only can pull still, but pull well too. I am ashamed to say how these two beloved women had almost to carry me, a stout youth; and even all their strength might have been insufficient but for the potent spur of the dragoons' return. With an arm round the neck of each, and resting almost my entire weight on their shoulders, I managed to scuffle along, very slowly and with fearful pain, towards Les Arenes. We paused now and then, under the deep shadow of a wall, ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... material for dramatic representation. In his view the Jews never created dramatic poetry, partly because of the Mosaic prohibition against plastic delineation of their Deity, partly because the tragic element, which was so potent an influence in the development of the Greek drama, was wanting in their heroes. The theory that the Song of Songs, that canticle of canticles of love, was a pastoral play had no lodgment in his mind; the poem seemed less ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... general an English judge and English counsellors would almost be forced to subject themselves in such cases to the close custody which jurymen are called upon to endure. But, as a rule, good taste and good feeling are as potent ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... incontestable legal right, Newmark soon found himself fighting on the defensive. Heinzman wanted the improvements already existing condemned and sold as a public utility to the highest bidder. He offered further guarantees as to future improvements. In addition were other and more potent arguments proffered behind closed doors. Many cases resolved themselves into a bald question of cash. Others demanded diplomacy. Jobs, fat contracts, business favours, influence were all flung out freely—bribes as absolute as though stamped with the dollar mark. Newspapers ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... people, would perhaps have resolved not to resume the unequal struggle with Rome; but Philip, in whose character the sense of honour was the most powerful of all noble, and the thirst for revenge the most potent of all ignoble, motives, was deaf to the voice of timidity or of resignation, and nourished in the depths of his heart a determination once more to try the hazard of the game. When he received the report of fresh invectives, such as were wont to be launched against Macedonia at the Thessalian ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... principiant equal valuation of the two phenomenal manifestations of the absolute, nature and spirit, Spinoza tends to posit thought in dependence on extension (the soul represents what the body is), while in Schelling, conversely, the Fichtean preference of spirit is still potent (the state and art stand nearer to the absolute identity than the organism, although, principiantly considered, the greatest possible approximation to the equilibrium of the real and the ideal is as much attained in the one as in the other). The ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... discoveries, but one above the rest, which I will now impart under the promise of eternal and inviolable secrecy. Know, then, that I have found out an easy and expeditious combination of common materials, the effect of which is equal or superior to the most potent and destructive agents in nature. Neither the proudest city can maintain its walls, nor the strongest castle its bulwarks, against the irresistible attacks of this extraordinary composition. Increase but the quantity, and the very rocks ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... examine a little nearer the nature of that influence which is thus potent over the human youth. Beauty, whose revelation to man we now celebrate, welcome as the sun wherever it pleases to shine, which pleases everybody with it and with themselves, seems sufficient to itself. The lover cannot ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... acting upon the blood, climate has wrought and is working such changes upon man. But why are constantly-acting causes so slow in producing their effects? How is it that countless generations must pass away before purely climatic causes, potent as they are, begin to manifest themselves in physical changes in the races of men ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... I myself must guard against. I do not say that no unintelligible strings of obsolete words may continue to live in the popular mouth. Old hymns, ritual speeches, and charms may and do survive, though unintelligible. They are reckoned all the more potent, because all the more mysterious. But an unintelligible riddle or poetical saying does not survive, so we cannot thus account for mythology as a disease ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... silent company for an hour, and was more useful in that way than he could have been if he had poured out the gathered knowledge of an encyclopaedia upon him. He gave that dumb sense of sympathy which, in hours of deep distress, is so very much more potent than the spoken word. Paul at last rose and shook him by ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... gone to? The very emptiness of that once potent phrase is beyond description! A regiment of Bryans could not compete with Mr. Roosevelt in harrying the trusts, in bringing wealth to its knees, and in converting into the palpable actualities of action the wildest dreams ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... see a man that hath bin long Possessed with a furie of the shades: after some prayers and many a sacred song, with blessed signes, the euill spirit vades, so fell his rudenesse from him, and her shine, Made all his earthie parts pure and diuine. O potent loue, great is thy power be falne, That makes the wife mad, & ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... made of the platinum-iridium type, mostly with thermal devices to regulate the temperature of the burner and prevent its being melted by an excess of current. The study of apparatus for obtaining more perfect vacua was unceasingly carried on, for Edison realized that in this there lay a potent factor of ultimate success. About August he had obtained a pump that would produce a vacuum up to about the one-hundred-thousandth part of an atmosphere, and some time during the next month, or beginning ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... like Mike, not a farmer, properly so called, and even as two blacks will not make a white, so will the joint credit of Mike and Thady not rise to the height of five one-pound notes. But they have a potent ally in Tim, who married Thady's wife's cousin. Tim is a prudent man, has worked hard at his farm, and, as a rule, has a matter of twenty or thirty pounds on deposit note at the bank, receiving for the same interest ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... he began a magic song to chant, towards the north looked, potent runes applied, a spell pronounced, an answer demanded, until compelled she rose, and with deathlike ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... too potent for his resistance. Accompanying her downstairs to the cabin, he opened the desk from which the other papers had been taken, and against his better judgment handed her the ominous communication of Jocelyn St. Cleeve which lay in the envelope ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... curiously straight, long, and narrow; and in the shape of its head, which has straight perpendicular sides, and a quadrilateral upper surface. It has double, or nearly double, the number [Note 1.] of the teeth of the crocodile of the Nile, though the latter is well enough supplied with these potent implements ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... perhaps a wandering lover is seen as a hero, to the lady's eyes, of these later times. On the outside of the structure are posted up by the hundred pictures of once woebegone ladies, now rejoicing in the potent influence of the Tamiya shrine to restore to them the strayed affections of husband or lover. Next in line is an open, shed-like structure. It is a poor chance if here the casual visitor does not encounter one or two of the ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... prophecy and promise. Nor was that the end. Every bitterness that the heart of man can conceive, that the heart of man can inflict, that the heart of man can endure, was poured into our cup, and we drained it to the dregs. Of that saddest yet most potent time we shall record enough to show not only what befell through our age of darkness, but also, so far as may be, what miraculous intent underlay it, what promise the darkness covered, of our future light; what golden rays of dawn ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... he said. "And, by the bones of Kosciusko, you have chosen a proper subject, The Fortune Teller! Were you filling our warrior with dreams of empire? Well, well, I don't know which is more potent with monarchs, woman or dynamite. In Alec's case I fancy I should bet on the woman. Here, for example, is one that shook Heaven, and I have always thought that Eve was not given fair treatment, or she would surely have twisted the serpent's ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... Rochefoucauld—those who are known as leaders of more or less celebrated salons. Of these, Mme. de Rambouillet and Mme. de Sable were among the best representative types of their time, and the first of the long line of social queens who, through their special gift of leadership, held so potent a sway ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... of worry than these, sickness, loss, impending disasters. Yet how futile to help and how potent to increase these ills is worry. The darkest days and the deepest sorrows need that we should be at our best to meet them. To yield to fear and fretting is to turn the powers of heart and brain from allies ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... the best opportunity for observation, as they are carefully attended to and well understood. Many breeders have expressed a strong opinion on this head. Thus, Mr. Mayhew remarks, "The females are able to bestow their affections; and tender recollections are as potent over them as they are known to be in other cases, where higher animals are concerned. Bitches are not always prudent in their loves, but are apt to fling themselves away on curs of low degree. If reared with a companion of vulgar appearance, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... the noblest of them, highly connected both on the father's and the mother's side, and sprung from one of the most distinguished families in your own state, which is the greatest in Hellas, and having many friends and kinsmen of the best sort, who can assist you when in need; and there is one potent relative, who is more to you than all the rest, Pericles the son of Xanthippus, whom your father left guardian of you, and of your brother, and who can do as he pleases not only in this city, but in all Hellas, and among many and mighty barbarous ...
— Alcibiades I • (may be spurious) Plato
... shadows were deep against the hill, and in the deepest stood the Thunder Bird, slim, delicately sturdy, every wire taut, every bit of aluminum in her motor clean and shining, a gracefully potent creature of the air. Across her back her name was lettered crudely, blatantly, with the blobbed period where Johnny had his first mental shock of Sudden's changed attitude ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... complementary to each other. The German Jewish student does not come to the university with a mind open and free as to Judaism. He comes there with definite views on the subject which have already been crystallized under the influence of early training. Judaism, of whatever shade it may happen to be, is more potent a factor in the domestic life of German Jews and in the bringing up of the young than it is with us here. Jewish boys there evince a keener interest in Judaism than do Jewish boys in America. Their intelligent understanding of Judaism ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... denial of the practicability of giving the Dominions a direct share in control of Great Britain's foreign policy is considered, the Jebb-Laurier view would appear one to which Sir Robert Borden, cautious statesman, must be led by recognition that potent influence on foreign policy cannot but come to Dominions energetically providing at once for their own defense and for their power to aid Great Britain all ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... that occurred during my service, may be worth the narration. Shortly after reaching Randolph, one of our sergeants named Brown imported his better-half from Memphis, and for some days they agreed remarkably well; but the sergeant obtaining a jug of whiskey one day, and imbibing too much of the potent fluid, made up his mind that Mrs. Brown should not drink any more, and informed her of his decision. He argued in a masterly way that, as they two were one, he would drink enough for both; and she being fond of the crathur, ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... the whole strange talk he had had was under a spell of suggestion from the extraordinary vivid boy who had once been a man; all his own excitement, his acceptance of the incredible had been merely the effect of a stronger, more potent will imposed on his own. How strong that will was, he guessed from his own instantaneous obedience to Frank's suggestion of sleep. And armed with impenetrable commonsense he came down to breakfast. Frank had already begun, ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... forget his other sorrows, she was sitting alone with her mother. It was natural that their conversation should turn to Alaric and Harry. Alaric, with his happy prospects, was soon dismissed; but Mrs. Woodward continued to sing the praises of him who, had she been potent with the magi of the Civil Service, would now be the lion of ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... descent to the burn, the snow ceased, the clouds parted, and a faint worn moon appeared. She looked just like a little old lady too thin and too tired to go on living more than a night longer. But her waning life was yet potent over Kirsty, and her strange, wasted beauty, dying to rise again, made her glad as she went down the hill through the snow-crowned heather. The oppression which came on her in Steenie's house was gone entirely, and in the face of the pale ancient ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... shape, or become, so to speak, conscious of its own purposes. But its doctrinal views, its peculiar vein of religious sentiment, its respect for antiquity and tradition, its proneness to casuistry, its taste for symbolism, were already potent influences working on the more susceptible of the younger minds. On Mr. Gladstone they told with full force. He became, and never ceased to be, not merely a High-churchman, but what may be called an Anglo-Catholic, in ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... wrecking crew worked on by the light of lamps, lanterns, and candles, for the inducement of double pay was potent. ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... part of happiness to have some taste, occupation, or pursuit, adequate to charm and engross us—a ruling passion, a favourite study. Accordingly, the victims of dulness and ennui are often advised to betake themselves to something of this potent character. Kingsley, in his little book on the "Wonders of the Shore," endeavoured to convert mankind at large into marine naturalists; and, some time ago, there appeared in the newspapers a letter from Carlyle, regretting that he himself had not been indoctrinated ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... hide than to bring to light the object sought for. It would be doing them injustice to assume that this has been done with deliberate intention. It is much more likely due to professional bias, which exercises over the minds of members of definitely limited professions incessant and potent domination. When alluding to occurrences included in the enumeration given above, they exhibit signs of a resolve to defend their profession against possible imputations of inefficiency, much more than a desire to get to the root of the matter. This explains the unremitting ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... the end of this time of solitary waiting, his change of attitude was complete. It was evident to him that his anticipation of her failure, potent as it had been over his life, had never been half so real, half so vivid, as this new and strange foreboding of her true success. Marie must be right. He had been a mere blind hair-splitting pedant, ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to scoff at this apparition as a heretical innovation, there was still the story of Concepcion, the Demon Vaquero, whose terrible riata was fully as potent as the whaler's harpoon. Concepcion, when in the flesh, had been a celebrated herder of cattle and wild horses, and was reported to have chased the devil in the shape of a fleet pinto colt all the way from San Luis Obispo to ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... her softly shining eyes and the nut brown gloss of her hair. Felicity was too beautiful for words; and even the Story Girl, between excitement and the crimson silk array, blossomed out with a charm and allurement more potent than any regular loveliness—and this in spite of the fact that Aunt Olivia had tabooed the red satin slippers and mercilessly decreed that ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... they had stolen, but brought it all to Josephus, to Tarichee. Hereupon he blamed them for the violence they had offered to the king and queen, and deposited what they brought to him with Eneas, the most potent man of Taricheae, with an intention of sending the things back to the owners at a proper time; which act of Josephus brought him into the greatest danger; for those that had stolen the things had an indignation at him, both because they ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... for the distemper, and acquainted with the mode of treating it prescribed by the College of Physicians, Bloundel was at no loss how to act, but, rubbing the part affected with a stimulating ointment, he administered at the same time doses of mithridate, Venice treacle, and other potent alexipharmics. ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... at a written memorandum which he held in his hand. "My master, King Louis, sends greeting to his royal brother, and hopes that no cause of difference may ever arise to darken the blue sky of peace that now hangs over two kings, potent as are your Majesty and my master, and two nations, happy, rich, and powerful as are the noble realms of France and England. Believing the possession by either monarch of cities or territory within the other's realm to be a constant menace to this much-desired peace and amity, my master, the king ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... from the same part in the parents... The external conditions of life, as climate and food, &c., seem to have induced some slight modifications. Habit, in producing constitutional differences, and use, in strengthening, and disuse, in weakening and diminishing organs, seem to have been more potent in ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... any mortal this world has known. Upon his weak frame time had done its work, and, true it is, "the surest poison is time." And yet, his feeble piping voice—now scarcely heard an arm's length away—was potent in the contentions of the great hall when he was the honored associate of men whose public service reached back to the formation of the Government. In the old hall near by—now the Valhalla of the nation—he ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... certain violent emotions, certain moods of the soul, certain spiritual fevers, if I may so call them, which directly open the inner being to a cognizance of this astral region I have mentioned. In your case it happened to be a peculiarly potent drug that did it." ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... intensity to the yearnings of the day. He walked about as in a dream, seeing nothing, heeding nothing, while this one strong desire—to see Edith once more—throbbed and throbbed with a slow, feverish perseverance within him. Edith—Edith, the very name had a strange, potent fascination. Every thought whispered "Edith,"—his pulse beat "Edith,"—and his heart repeated the beloved name. It ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... everlasting record, has put forth her potent reorganizing power to celebrate the ushering in of the ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... of the time-spirit was not confined to the Christian Church. For the city of Alexandria, where that spirit seems to have been peculiarly potent as shown in the transfigured Judaism of Philo, was the birthplace of the Neo-Platonic school already mentioned above. And among its greatest members, such as Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, the religious influence of the East was distinctly ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... is the function of these atmospheric and ground electric currents? Many scientists are agreed that certain forms of precipitation are due to electrical action; but my observations have led me to believe conclusively that electricity is a potent factor in the economy of nature, and has more to do with the growth and development of plants than has hitherto been known. Davy succeeded in the decomposition of the alkalies, potash and soda, by means of electric currents. In our laboratories, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... such a thing as a Parenchyma, that certainly would, like a hungry Sponge, immediately swell up in several parts, (which without much difficulty might be discover'd in the dissection) and more eminently, where it should find the pores most potent: And in the dissection of such Muscles it would be very strange, not to find some, if not many, pieces of them in various shapes, to the great inconvenience of the parts, in which they are seated: Which yet I confess I could never ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... chap, with not so much of the "bucko" in his bearing as his reputation led one to expect. But at the moment I was impressed only by his big body and stern face. In truth, even that impression was hazy, for the drink I had taken from the Swede's bottle a moment before proved to be surprisingly potent. No sooner did I set foot upon the deck than I commenced to feel a heavy languor ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... A very potent medicine called eucalyptus oil is brewed from gum-leaves, and a favourite Australian "house-wives'" remedy for rheumatism is a bed stuffed with gum-leaves. So the gum-tree is useful as well ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... latter. You will readily conceive how much these circumstances must give persons of property in this kingdom a leaning towards government; how necessarily they must make them apprehensive for themselves, placed between such potent enemies; and how naturally it must make them look up to English government, in whatever hands it may be, for that strength and support, which the smallness of their numbers prevents their finding among themselves; and consequently you will equally perceive that those political or party ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... the same at my window. It seemed years upon years of time till they were enabled to open the door and let me out. I rushed out bareheaded, forgetful of the intense cold, thinking first of all of the, priest Pere Le Jeune, so strong is habit, so potent are traditions. I knew where he lived, up the first turning in a small red brick house next the church of St. Jean Baptiste. I told him the facts of the case as well as I could and he came back at once with me. There was nothing to be done. Visitation of God or whatever the ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... of social life; in immigration; in intellectual progress, the free States outstripped the slave States by leaps and bounds. And, again, in the conscience of humanity,—in mankind's sense of right and wrong, which grows ever a more potent factor in the world's affairs,—the tide was setting steadily and swiftly against slavery. To impatient reformers who, as Horace Mann said, were always in a hurry, while God never is,—the tide might seem motionless or refluent, as to him who looks hastily from the ocean shore; but as the sea ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... hammer-shafts, and there they remain to this day. The motto was, Non arte sect marte, "Not by art but by war" In my time I have reversed the motto (Non marte sed arte); and instead of the broken hammer-shafts, I have adopted, not as my "arms" but as a device, the most potent form of ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... Pele's the god of my choice: Let heaven and earth in silence wait Here is awa, potent, sacred, Bitter sea, great Hiiaka's root; 5 'Twas cut at Mauli-ola— Awa to the women forbidden, Let it tabu be! Exact be the rite of your awa, O ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... times, that the inner travail, the evolution and the diversity are by no means arrested. Like the nations of Europe, China has had its evolution; the causes were analagous, its destiny the same. This is especially felt in the history of its painting. When the potent inspiration of the Southern School began to wane, the style of the North took the upper hand for ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... night-rest, and neighbourhood, Instructions, manners, mysteries and trades, Degrees, observances, customs and laws, Decline to your confounding contraries; And let confusion live!—Plagues, incident to men, Your potent and infectious fevers heap On Athens, ripe for stroke! Thou cold sciatica, Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt As lamely as their manners! Lust and liberty Creep in the minds and manners of our youth, That 'gainst the stream of virtue they may strive, And drown ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... lustreless though it was, with the small services which it had been doing here and there about the world—had proved a talisman, fragrant with good, and deserving to be set in gold and worn next her heart. It was as potent, and perhaps endowed with the same kind of efficacy, as a galvanic ring! Hepzibah, at all events, was indebted to its subtile operation both in body and spirit; so much the more, as it inspired her with energy to get some breakfast, at which, still the better to keep up her ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the Magi, what were these spells of theirs, so potent and occult? On all hands it was agreed, that they derived their greatest virtue from the fumes of certain compounds, whose ingredients—horrible to tell—were mostly obtained from the human heart; and that by variously mixing these ingredients, they ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the sage struck the inclosed part, it yawned wide, and admitted him into a cavern in the very bowels of the earth, where never human foot before had trod; and the various spirits, which inhabit the different regions of nature, were here obedient to his potent word. The cavern had been formed by the great inundation of waters, when the approach of a comet forced them from their source; then, when the fountains of the great deep were broken up, a stream rushed out of the centre of the earth, where ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... —— The Potent Enemies of America laid open: being some Account of the baneful Effects attending the Use of distilled spirituous Liquors, and the Slavery of the ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... partly as conquerors against odds, and partly because their demand for independence was thought too natural to be resisted at the sword's point by a Government founded on the right of insurrection only. To these merely sentimental and not very cogent considerations was added the more potent and weighty reflection that what the Southerners had done no Power, whether American or European, could succeed ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... trumpets, it is not easy to keep one's head clear, and mistakes may be made which will cause disappointment to many and retard the progress of electrical science. We confidently expect that electricity will prove a potent agent by and by in the hands of the speculator for extracting gold from the pockets of the public, and we write now to warn our readers in time, and to endeavor to clear the air of some of the mists with which it is obscured. There is, no doubt, a great future ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... consigned to oblivion. They have followed, one may say, the goodly custom prescribed by the governor of the Cana marriage feast; they put forth in the beginning their good wine, and they fall back upon inferior brands only when the public, having well drunk of the potent vintage, will swallow anything from a favourite author. We may regret that Thackeray's start as a man of letters should have furnished an exception to this salutary rule; and in surveying, after the lapse of many years, his collected works, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... was hardly touched or affected in character he had been immensely influenced. In her and to her the whole thing seemed almost accidental, a worry, as she put it, and not much more; with him it was the governing fact in life, and had been the force most potent in moulding him. The trouble came into her head when something from outside put it there; it never left his brain. And she had no adequate conception of what it was to him. Even his scheme of marrying Janie Iver and his vivid little phrase about living with the check by him failed ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... Quixote on his potent steed. "Who art thou? Speak! or, by the eternal vengeance of mine arm, thy whole machinery shall perish at sound of this ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... the loneliness of her own shaded rooms at Luckenough than any society the humdrum neighborhood could offer her. And when at the call of social duty she did go into company, she exercised a refining and subduing influence, involuntary as it was potent. ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... truth some of these estimates may contain, they fall far short of a correct idea of what the Reformation was, or wherein lay the vital spring of that wondrous revolution. Its historic and philosophic centre was vastly deeper and more potent than either or all of these conceptions would make it. Many influences contributed to its accomplishment, but its inmost principle was unique. The real nerve of the Reformation was religious. Its life was something different from mere earthly interests, utilities, aims, or passions. ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... LOVE is gentler than CONSCIENCE,) has this little urchin suggested in her favour. He pretended to know both our hearts: and he would have it, that though my love was a prodigious strong and potent love; and though it has the merit of many months, faithful service to plead, and has had infinite difficulties to struggle with; yet that it is not THE RIGHT SORT ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... that they shall come out of the pot fresh and new and unembarrassed. These great conjurors are generally sought for in the City; and in truth the cauldrons are kept boiling though the result of the process is seldom absolute rejuvenescence. No greater Medea than Mr Melmotte had ever been potent in money matters, and Mr Longestaffe had been taught to believe that if he could get the necromancer even to look at his affairs everything would be made right for him. But the necromancer had explained to the squire that property could not be created by the ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... the Belief of Immortality 4. The Examination of the Notion of Self 5. Nature is the Mother of All Things 6. Real Self 7. The Awakening of the Innermost Wisdom 8. Zen is not Nihilistic 9. Zen and Idealism 10. Idealism is a Potent Medicine for Self -Created Mental Disease 11. Idealistic Scepticism concerning Objective Reality 12. Idealistic Scepticism concerning Religion and Morality 13. An Illusion concerning Appearance and ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... to the duties of Court Poet those of political pamphleteer and theological controversialist. The strength of his attachment to the office, his sense of the honor it conferred, and his appreciation of the salary we may infer from the potent influence such considerations exercised upon his conversion to Romanism. In the admirable portrait, too, by Lely, he chose to be represented with the laurel in his hand. After his dethronement, he sought every occasion to deplore the loss of the bays, and of the stipend, which in the increasing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... substances, in quantities proportionate to the state of perfection of the substance. Thus, gold being most nearly perfect would contain more, silver less, lead still less, and so on. The "essence" contained in the more nearly perfect metals was thought to be more potent, a very small quantity of it being capable of creating large quantities of gold and ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... that correct breathing is one of the fundamentals of correct voice-production. No wonder, therefore, that incorrect breathing is one of the most potent factors in the misuse of the voice that sends the singer as a patient to the physician. I have stated that there are three kinds of breathing—clavicular, costal and diaphragmatic; and these have been described. It has also been pointed out that the teacher who instructs in one kind ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... of these forces passes through the centre of the earth, and consequently the resultant force which expresses the joint result of all the individual forces must also be directed through the centre of the earth. A force of this character, whatever other potent influence it may have, will be powerless to affect the rotation of the earth. If the earth be rotating on an axis, the direction of that axis would be invariably preserved; so that as the earth revolves around the sun, it would still continue ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... over Life, Light, and Aerial Phenomena. Jupiter is lord of life in its widest and most comprehensive signification, having absolute power over life and death, in which respect he differed from the Greek Zeus, who was to a certain extent controlled by the all-potent sway of the Moirae or Fates. Zeus, as we have seen, often condescends to visit mankind, either as a mortal, or under various disguises, whereas Jupiter always remains essentially the supreme god of heaven, ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... while the knife Has hack'd and sliced the latter. In the midst Stands the dread throne whence breathes supreme command, And in a lock'd recess well known, is laid The dread regalia, gifted with a charm Potent to the rebellious. When the bell Tinkles the school hour, inward streams the crowd, And bending heads proclaim the task commenc'd. Upon his throne with magisterial brow The teacher sits, round casting frowning looks As the low giggle and the shuffling foot Betray ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... repulsive pharmacopoeia. We shall find evidence in the practice of our New-England physicians of the first century, that they often employed chemical remedies, and that, by the early part of the following century, their chief trust was in the few simple, potent drugs of Paracelsus. ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... was the most rational and the most dispassionate of men. The conduct of his life was guided by a philosophy based on Combe's "Constitution of Man," and I used to feel that the law of the land was a potent instrument in shaping his paternal affections. His method of seeking a wife was so far unique that it may not be devoid of interest, even at this date. From careful study he had learned that the age at which a man should marry was twenty-five. A healthy ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... glimmered from the galley door, where the decrepit watchman slumbered at his ease. There was nothing to detain him. The great yards, upon which he had fought down the sodden and frozen canvas in gales off the Horn, spread over him. She was fine, she was potent, with a claim upon a man's heart; and she was notorious for a floating, hell upon the seas. It was her character; she was famous for brutality to seamen, so that they deserted at the first opportunity and forfeited their wages. And Noble would have ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... hopeful, the dull man happy. These things happen in houses which are barred and shuttered and bolted. The power of the Night penetrates even into the luxurious apartments of kings, even into the cellars of the slums. But if it is potent in these, how much more is it potent in its free unrestricted domain, the open country. He who sleeps under the stars is bathed in the elemental forces which in houses only creep to us through keyholes. I may say from experience that he who has ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... activity exerts a sterilizing influence upon both sexes is alike a doctrine of physiology, and an induction from experience. And both physiology and experience also teach that this influence is more potent upon the female than upon the male. The explanation of the latter fact—of the greater aptitude of the female organization to become thus modified by excessive brain activity—is probably to be found in the larger size, more ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... the air it rang, And waked the echoes all about. Straightway the morning brighter grew, The pale sky turned a deeper blue, The merry Christmas bells pealed out. And, from that day, whoever hears The wee maid sing, sheds happy tears (So potent is her power of song), Forgetting pain and care and wrong, Rememb'ring only heaven is nigh, Where dwells the Christ who came to die On earth, that we might live alway, And who was born ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various |
