"Revert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with scant interest. The Giants had knocked the Braves' pitcher out of the box, and an earthquake seemed a small matter. His mind did not once revert to the mysterious message from Pax the day before. He was thinking ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... his eye with such a steady gaze of understanding, though not of sympathy, that he found himself needing to repeat the by-now almost magic phrase to himself: "Not in my lifetime anyway." Would some intelligent life form develop to supplant man? Or would the planet revert to a primeval state of mindless innocence? He would never know and he didn't really care ... no point in speculating over ...
— The Most Sentimental Man • Evelyn E. Smith
... probably to be found in Kansas. The general principles are that no franchise can be given but for a limited time, that it must be bought at public auction, that the earnings beyond a certain percentage on investment must revert to the city, and that there must be a referendum to popular vote in the locality interested. In 1899 Michigan declares the municipal ownership of street railways unconstitutional, but Nevada passes a statute for municipal ownership of telephone lines. In 1903 the municipal ownership of gas and oil ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... was known far and wide. That had been his own work. Plants, animals, a multitude of distressful growing children would conspire irresistibly to force the world to revert again to the Food, whatever happened in the present struggle. "The thing is done," he said, with his mind swinging round beyond all his controlling to rest upon the present fate of the Children and his son. Would he find them exhausted ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... that all the hydrochloric acid gas gets mixed with fire-gases, and consequently is condensed in a weaker and less pure form than from ordinary pots and muffles. This has led some factories which had introduced such furnaces to revert ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... on the part of said Directors to strictly comply with any of the conditions herein contained shall constitute a breach thereof, and the title hereby conveyed shall revert to the grantor Mary Baker G. Eddy, her heirs and assigns forever, upon her entry upon said land and taking possession thereof ...
— Manual of the Mother Church - The First Church of Christ Scientist in Boston, Massachusetts • Mary Baker Eddy
... To revert to trees—fascinating, haunting trees. Much credulity was at one time attached to the tradition that the tree on which Jesus Christ was crucified was an aspen, and that, thenceforth, all aspens were afflicted with a peculiar shivering. Botanists, scientists, and matter-of-fact people ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... not revert to the conversation which had taken place the previous evening. He appeared to regard the visit of the fisherman as simply an act of politeness, and received him cordially, and began talking about the weather ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... desires of my soul?" Quoth the Wazir, "Yes, I can tell thee what will restrain thee from relapsing into this fault, and it is that thou doff the garment of ignorance and don that of understanding, and disobey thy passions and obey thy Lord and revert to the policy of the just King thy sire, and fulfil thy duties to Allah the Most High and to thy people and apply thyself to the defence of thy faith and the promotion of thy subjects' welfare and rule thyself aright and forbear the slaughter of thy people; and look to the end of things and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... Let me revert once more to my diary, for a specimen of the sharp changes and sudden disappointments that may come to troops in service. But for a case or two of varioloid in the regiment, we should have taken part in the battle of Olustee, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... that will surround you when you leave college or your special training school will be as potent to drag you down as those that cause the young Indian to revert to barbarism. The shock you will receive in dropping from the atmosphere of high ideals and beautiful promise in which you have lived for four years to that of a very practical, cold, sordid materiality will be a severe test to ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... opened to Madame Campan. At Coubertin, surrounded by her nieces, she was fond of directing their studies. This occupation caused her ideas to revert to the subject of education, and awakened once more the inclinations of her youth. At the age of twelve years she could never meet a school of young ladies passing through the streets without feeling ambitious ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... and when Societies and individuals failed to extract my secret, they never failed to traduce the inventor and the invention. Among the learned Societies, the Royal Society of London played a very base part. When I have more space and time at my disposal, I will revert to this ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... the two—we have no proof that a plant ever develops into an animal. Here is one of the gaps which the theory of Evolution, true as it is to a certain extent, cannot bridge over; and we must not overlook the fact. We shall revert to it hereafter. ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... with the teaching of the Upanishads themselves; and, secondly, by a comparison of the purport of the Sutras—as far as that can be made out independently of the commentaries—with the interpretations given of them by /S/a@nkara. To both these points we shall revert later on. Meanwhile, I only wish to remark concerning the former point that, even if we could show with certainty that all the Upanishads propound one and the same doctrine, there yet remains the undeniable fact ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... other writings Alfred manifests a partiality for the Transposed order in dependent clauses, except in the case of substantival clauses introduced by t. Such clauses show a marked tendency to revert to their Normal oratio recta order. The norm thus set by the indirect affirmative clause seems to have proved an important factor in the ultimate disappearance of Transposition from dependent clauses. The ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... adjoining population held general holiday; bands played, banners waved, and assembled thousands cheered the passing trains amidst the occasional booming of cannon. The proceedings were usually wound up by a public dinner; and in the course of the speeches which followed, Mr. Stephenson would revert to his favourite topic—the difficulties which he had early encountered in the promotion of the railway system, and in establishing the superiority of the locomotive. On such occasions he always took great pleasure in alluding to the services ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... towards still canals and gliding gondolas. I will write to you and to my dear mother the day I arrive. And I trust to write cheerfully, with full accounts of all I see and encounter. Do not, dearest father, in your letters to me, revert or allude to that grief which even the tenderest word from your own tender self might but chafe into pain more sensitive. After all, a disappointed love is a very common lot. And we meet every day, men—ay, and women ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... professional king. These gentlemen are plentiful in Europe. They are the "noble Chairmen" who lend their names for a consideration to any enterprising company which may be speculating in Liberty. When we see these things, we revert to the old lines in which Persius tells how you cannot turn Dama into a freeman by twirling him round your finger and calling him ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... I must revert now to those moments in the tower room when Tarrano dissolved the isolation barrage which Wolfgar had thrown around us. Georg escaped, as I have recounted. Tarrano—there in the tower room—rendered me unconscious. I came to myself ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... radical differences between the President and myself in regard to the League of Nations and the inclusion of the Covenant in the Treaty of Peace with Germany, it is necessary to revert to the early days of the negotiations at Paris in order to explain the divergence of our views as to the necessity of a definite programme for the American Commission to direct it in its work and to guide its members in their ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... effects would sink of themselves, and could not be renewed until a fresh surface of the sulphuret had been applied to the positive pole. This was in consequence of peculiar results of decomposition, to which I shall have occasion to revert in the section on Electro-chemical Decomposition, and was conveniently avoided by inserting the ends of two pieces of platina wire into the opposite extremities of a portion of sulphuret fused in a glass tube, and placing this arrangement ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... showing the geographical distribution of Eastern rug-making reveals the relation of the industry to semi-arid or saline pastures, and makes the mind revert at once to the blankets of artistic design and color, woven by the Navajo Indians of our own rainless Southwest. Rug weaving in the Old World reached its finest development in countries like Persia, Turkestan, ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... booksellers have now no other security in future for any literary purchase they may make but the statute of the 8th of Queen Anne, which secures to the authors assigns an exclusive property for 14 years, to revert again to the author, and vest in him for 14 years more.' Ann. Reg. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... task. It supposes essentially the destruction of the victim; and the act is an eloquent acknowledgment, in language that is as plain as it possibly can be made, that God is the supreme Lord of life and death, that all things that exist come from Him, and revert to Him as to their ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... questioned. We are not perhaps at Rome, nor is that Mark Antony—for we never knew Mark Antony to recognise him—but this mimic world has assumed an independent life and reality of its own. When, indeed, the passion subsides, and the eloquence of the poet is mute, things revert to their matter-of-fact condition, the actor is again there, and the boards of the stage ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... to God in the name of the people for the preservation of the United States is my first duty in addressing you. Our thoughts next revert to the death of the late President by an act of parricidal treason. The grief of the nation is still fresh. It finds some solace in the consideration that he lived to enjoy the highest proof of its confidence by entering on the renewed term of the Chief Magistracy to which he had been elected; that ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... ability to pass a "leaving" examination is the only valid proof of the usefulness of elementary education. If these influential critics, who are showing in various ways that they care more for machinery than for life, could have their will, they would probably revert to the "good old days" of cut-and-dried syllabuses, formal examinations of individual scholars, percentages of passes, and the like. As I have already taken pains to explain what the regime of the "good old days" really meant, I need ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... the same size, were used in weighing commodities, and were subsequently split, for convenience's sake, into sixteen equal parts, each about one-third heavier than the English ounce. For measures of capacity, we must revert to the millet-grain, a fixed number of which set the standard for Chinese pints and quarts. The result of this rule-of-thumb calculation has been that weights and measures vary all over the empire, although there actually exist an official ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... the angels' coming, tried to induce the people to desist from their purpose, saying to them, "My brethren, the generation of the deluge was extirpated in consequence of such sins as you desire to commit, and you would revert to them?" But they replied: "Back! And though Abraham himself came hither, we should have no consideration for him. Is it possible that thou wouldst set aside a ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... record of anything of the sort and he was a careful business man. I do not think he would have loaned money without making some memorandum of it. He held several mortgages but they, of course, revert to his heirs." ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... the presence of these, and when enough of these are presented to us we remember everything. So, if the development of an embryo is due to memory, we should suppose the memory of the impregnate ovum to revert not to yesterday, when it was in the persons of its parents, but to the last occasion on which it was an impregnate ovum. The return of the old environment and the presence of old associations would at once involve recollection of the course that ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... honorable to die for one's country; and to feel proudest among his family memories of the names of those who successfully fought or bravely died in defence of the national flag. Often he had had occasion to feel, and to mark the mingled sensation of pride and of sorrow with which friends revert to those who gallantly died in the field. Even at this now remote day he could not travel in Mississippi without having the recollection of his fallen comrades painfully revived by meeting a mother who mourns her son with the agony of a mother's grief; a father, whose stern nature ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... tali kulo (tie of relationship) is broken the wife's family can no longer claim bangun or fine: they revert to ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... full oft revert to this, To show man's true descent From Him who is the source of bliss, Tho' now ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... calendar bade him be hearty, He should do the Middle Age no treason In resolving on a hunting-party, Always provided, old books showed the way of it! What meant old poets by their strictures? And when old poets had said their say of it, {230} How taught old painters in their pictures? We must revert to the proper channels, Workings in tapestry, paintings on panels, And gather up woodcraft's authentic traditions: Here was food for our various ambitions, As on each case, exactly stated— To encourage your ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... tendencies are always rather Oriental than Anglo-Saxon. As an illustration, I may point out piller (English Gipsy) to attack, having an affinity in pilna (Hindustani), with the same meaning. Many readers will at once revert to pill, piller, and pillage—all simply implying attack, but really meaning to rob, or robbery. But piller in English Gipsy also means, as in Hindustani, to assault indecently; and this is almost conclusive as ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... been unexpectedly called out of town, so the three dined together most unconventionally. The ladies talked over old hospital days, and Polly, greatly to her relief, was left much to herself. But although she rarely joined in the converse, her thoughts were not allowed to revert to their unpleasant channel, with the result that when she returned to school things had regained a little of their accustomed brightness, and she was ready to smile ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... ambitious, and a devotee of pleasure—yet dependent for food and clothing upon her mother's life-interest in an estate, not one penny of which would revert to her children at her decease; without kindred and without society in the elegant suburb they had inhabited for four or five years, might have been elated at a less brilliant match than that she had made. The "best people" of the aforesaid suburb were exclusive; slow to form intimacies ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... and call to warranty those principles of original justice from whence alone our title to everything valuable in society is derived? Can it be thought to arise from a superfluous, vain parade of displaying general and uncontroverted maxims, that we should revert at this time to the first principles of law, when we have directly under our consideration a whole body of statutes, which, I say, are so many contradictions, which their advocates allow to be so many exceptions ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Suffolk, whom he induced to return to England with a pardon. In 1501, however, the Earl again betook himself to the Continent and made a direct appeal to Maximilian for assistance. But Henry was now on particularly good terms with the Archduke Philip, and Maximilian was inclining to revert to friendly relations with England. He was in his normal condition of impecuniosity, and Henry was prepared to provide a loan to help him in a Turkish war if his own rebellious subjects were handed over. The issue of these negotiations, towards the end of 1502, was a loan ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... the same fear, and, knowing that I had been talking of going to Scotland, entreated me not to be long absent, for he felt convinced that as soon as he should be left alone, his thoughts and wishes would at once revert to America. ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... all around, a peasantry composed of either colons or serfs. The seignior deducts a portion of all their crops in provisions or in cattle, and, at their deaths, a portion of their inheritances. If they go away their property revert to him. His servants are chastised like Russian moujiks, and in each outhouse is a trestle for this purpose "without prejudice to graver penalties," probably the bastinado and the like. But "never did the culprit entertain the slightest idea of complaint or ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... thoughts would revert to Virginia and Carolina; and also to the historical fact, that the African slave-trade once constituted the principal commerce of Liverpool; and that the prosperity of the town was once supposed to have been indissolubly linked to its prosecution. ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... entirely unexpected event of the efforts of science being unable to reanimate the Colonel, all my effects shall revert to Nicholas Meiser, my ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... which must, the Mim says so, go in this morning's mail. But my limited time does not diminish my affection for you, Annie, nor prevent my thinking of you and wishing for you. I long to see you through the dilatory nights. At dawn when I rise, and all day, my thoughts revert to you in expressions that you cannot hear or I repeat. I hope you will always appear to me as you are now painted on my heart, and that you will endeavour to improve and so conduct yourself as to make you happy and me joyful all our lives. Diligent and earnest attention to all ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... he would lay aside his Browning——even in a knotty passage wherein the Doctor was wont to take much pleasure, and revert to type thus: ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... selected plants and so furnish his own supply. It must be borne in mind, however, that plants can be improved by cross breeding and that by keeping a variety too long on the same ground its quality deteriorates, and the plant tends to revert to the type ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... be worth while to revert for a moment to the distinction drawn in a preceding paragraph between the pusher propeller and the tractor which revolved in front of the aviator and of his machine gun. It would seem almost incredible that two heavy blades of hard wood ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... counter-attacked so effectively that they had fallen back. Again they advanced; again they took the trenches; again they were driven out. It began to look as if the victory upon the left would be fruitless, that the position would become an untenable salient and the Haricot Redoubt revert to the enemy. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... workers are nomads, and, as the woods get cut out, move on to fresh camping grounds, leaving the woods to revert to their former solitude, a haunt for the wild animals, who creep back once silence ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... researches that had been undertaken by the learned physicist, Raoul Pictet, in order to demonstrate theoretically and practically the forms that are required for a fast-sailing vessel, and since we pointed out how great an interest is connected with the question, while at the same time promising to revert to the subject at some opportune moment. We shall now keep our promise by making known a work that Mr. Pictet has just published in the Archives Physiques et Naturelles, of Geneva, in which he gives the first results of his labors, and which we shall analyze rapidly, neglecting in doing so ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... Italian, even, I suppose, the Czech, drops his costume, his manner, his language, his traditions, his beliefs, and retains only his common Western humanity. Transported to this continent all the varieties developed in Europe revert to the original type, and flourish in unexampled vigour and force. It is not a new type that is evolved; it is the fundamental type, growing in a new soil, in luxuriant profusion. Describe the average Western man and you describe ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... suicide at one time or other of their lives. Their thoughts seem to revert to romance as soon as they find themselves in a corner. No," he added. "I never believe in threats of suicide in either man or woman. Life is always too precious for that, and especially if a woman loves, as ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... quickly transferred to the French ships, and the soldiers were turned loose to loot the fort. The Indians fled, among them Moses Norton's gentle daughter, now in her twenty-second year. She could not revert to the loathsome habits of savage life; she dared not go to the fort filled with lawless foreign soldiers; and she perished of starvation outside the walls. Matonabbee had been absent when the French came. He returned to find the fort where he had spent his life in ruins. ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... had it, Willoughby; she has had it in plain Saxon and in uncompromising Olympian. There is, I conceive, no necessity to revert to it." ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... vital currents of the universe, and that what it holds of living forms were not arbitrarily imposed upon it from without, but vitally evolved from within and that man himself is one of its products as literally as are the trees that stand rooted to the soil. Revert to the time when life was not, when the globe was a half-incandescent ball, or when it was a seething, weltering waste of heated water, before the land had yet emerged from the waves, and yet you and I were there in the latent ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... chefs prepare their combinations of fish, flesh, fowl, and herbs, in order that we might put them down, giving recipes of dishes whose memories linger in the minds of world wanderers, and to which their thoughts revert with a sigh as they partake of unsatisfactory viands in other countries and other ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... I revert, therefore, to the statement that to make the kind of spiritual progress which will overcome fear it will be often necessary to let go the thing we have outlived. Often the thing we have outlived will be something ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... humble dependent of her husband; and if she deserves his regard by possessing such substantial qualities, she will not find it necessary to conceal her affection, nor to pretend to an unnatural coldness of constitution to excite her husband's passions. In fact, if we revert to history, we shall find that the women who have distinguished themselves have neither been the most beautiful nor the most gentle ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... came into my mind as soon as I awoke. Another year is separated from the chain of ages, and drops into the gulf of the past! The crowd hasten to welcome her young sister. But while all looks are turned toward the future, mine revert to the past. Everyone smiles upon the new queen; but, in spite of myself, I think of her whom time has just wrapped in her winding-sheet. The past year!—at least I know what she was, and what she has given me; while this one comes ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... monopoly to exist in the United States," i.e., "the control by any one corporation of so large a proportion of any industry as to make it a menace to competitive conditions." But is it necessary to destroy this splendidly efficient concentration of industry in order to avoid its evils? The proposal to revert to the older competitive plan is reminiscent of the outcry against machine production a century earlier, and the earnest pleas then made to return to the hand-tool method. "Big business" constitutes one of the greatest advances in human ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... Signor Fogazzaro in choosing his hero revert to that outworn type? He sees very clearly how many of the Catholic practices are what he calls "ossified organisms." Why did he set up a lay monk as a model for 20th century Christians who long to devote their lives ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... completion, not expecting that many people will read them, but desirous, in doing so, of defending myself against a charge which may possibly be made against me by the critics,—as to which I shall be unwilling to revert after it shall have ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... felt an impulse to reveal all, but refrained. He knew his Aunt Olive too well. If she found out that he had parted at a heavy loss with this valuable property, her whole attitude towards him would change,—or, rather, it would revert to her normal attitude, which was not unlike that of a severe nurse to a weak-minded child. Even in his agony there had been a certain faint consolation, due to the entirely unwonted note of respect in the voice with which she had addressed him since the fall of the ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... these romantic surroundings and conditions that he should revert to his almost forgotten jealousy. Suppose Spaulding had stumbled upon something.... But he had been asked for no such evidence.... It would be a damnable liberty.... It might be inextricably woven with the business in hand.... There were other men besides Doremus whom Helene saw constantly.... ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... gift bestowed on man. It is a boundless source of pleasure to most all persons, unless their lives have been fraught with crimes of so daring a nature, that it makes the the heart revolt at the very thought of them. It is pleasant at times to revert to the scenes of by-gone days, and recall one beloved companion and another, that have passed away, and to think of the many happy interviews we have ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... length he consented to sell his farm for whatever it would bring, and to rejoin her in Detroit. This was another piece of generalship on the part of the widow, as, did they remain in Canada, she could not, in the event of her husband's death hold the property which would revert to her hated sister-in-law; but that being now converted into cash she was at liberty to squander it during her husband's life-time, retaining the fortune left by her first husband for the future use of ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... of affairs was changed; liberty was to succeed the dictatorship, now that the salvation of the revolution had been effected, and that it was necessary to revert to legal order, in order to preserve it. An exorbitant and extraordinary power, like the confederation of the clubs, would necessarily terminate with the defeat of the party which had supported it, and that party itself expire with the circumstances ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... outer pressure in the world, cannot make a stone become larger by cutting, cannot make colour less complex by mixing, cannot make the ear perceive a dissonance more easily than a consonance, cannot make the human mind turn back from problems once opened up, or revert instantaneously to effects it is sick of; and a number of such immutable necessities constitute what we call the organism of an art, which can therefore respond only in one way and not another to the influences of surrounding civilisation. ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... Captain Cook's remark has often been exemplified in other instances. The tendency to revert to barbarism is so strong, as to need to be continually checked by the despotism of refined manners, and all the healthful emulations of civilized societies. Perhaps the rather harsh observation of Dr Johnson, that there is always a great deal of scoundrelism in a low man, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... near Perigneux, which caved in Oct. 22, 1885, under circumstances that are still fresh in the minds of all, have gained a celebrity that renders it unnecessary for us to revert to the details of the catastrophe. It will suffice to recall the fact that after the accident a private committee was formed for the purpose of making an attempt to save the five victims who had been surprised in the drifts, and who happened to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... the latter once more, detecting, as he believed, an attempt on the part of the skipper to revert to his original objectionable ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Indians. M. Destournier has settled quite a plantation of them, and my sister has believed in their conversion. But when one knows them well—he has not so much faith in them. They are apt to revert to the original belief, ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... and with all the appurtenances; provided that the said Cuthbert gave the said abbot fifty pounds therefore, and each year entertainment for one night, or thirty shillings in money; (29) provided also, that after his decease the said lands should revert to the monastery. The king, Offa, and King Everth, and Archbishop Hibbert, and Bishop Ceolwulf, and Bishop Inwona, and Abbot Beonna, and many other bishops, and abbots, and rich men, were witnesses to this. In the days of this same Offa was an alderman, of the name of Brorda, who ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... absorbed everything, and while much of the caricature is admirable, especially in the detail of witty and trenchantly satirical dialogue, the central idea of a fountain of self-love is not very well carried out, and the persons revert at times to abstractions, the action to allegory. It adds to our wonder that this difficult drama should have been acted by the Children of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel, among them Nathaniel Field with whom Jonson read Horace and Martial, and whom he taught later how to make plays. Another ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... regurgitate; recoup, reimburse, compensate, indemnify; remit, rehabilitate; repair &c. (make good) 660. [transitive] reinvest, revest, reinstate. redeem, recover &c. (get back) 775; take back again. [intransitive] revest, revert. Adj. restoring &c. v.; recuperative &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of the national existence which Homer described, and to the consolidation of which he powerfully ministered, let us revert to the state in which he found and left the elements of a national religion. A close observation of the poems pretty clearly shows us that the three races which combined to form the nation had each of them their distinct religious traditions. It is also plain enough that with this diversity there ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... revert to my narrative. Though partly won over by the reasons which I had advanced, my wife, nevertheless, was anxious to have some confirmation of them from one of greater knowledge in such matters, and she ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... than individual habits, because any change in collective habits practically necessitates the consent of all the individuals who make up the social group. We know also that even in individual life old habits are not easily supplanted by new ones and that there is always a tendency to revert to the old. All historical evidence shows that revolutions are always followed by periods of reaction, and that this reaction is usually proportionate to the extent and suddenness of change in ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... on the table at his elbow, and he asked me if I had seen it, and made some joke about his having had the good luck to read it, and have it lying by him a few days before when the author called. I do not know whether he schooled himself against an old man's tendency to revert to the past or not, but I know that he seldom did so. That morning, however, he made several excursions into it, and told me that his youthful satire of the 'Spectre Pig' had been provoked by a poem of the elder Dana's, where a phantom horse had ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... that crowds, skilfully influenced, are not capable of heroism and devotion and of evincing the loftiest virtues; they are even more capable of showing these qualities than the isolated individual. We shall soon have occasion to revert to this point when we come to ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... no separate species of warfare should be overdone, lest a nausea of sentiment should revert upon the authors, and thus lead to a reaction more sanguinary than the force of the philosophers could control. In all those cases Condorcet was the prime mover and the agent concerned. He communicated with Voltaire on every new theory, and advised him when ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... increasing proportions of acetone. These results prove that washing with the diluted acetone not only rendered the nitrate perfectly stable, but that the product was more stable than that obtained by the ordinary process of purification, viz. long-continued boiling and washing in water. We shall revert to this point after briefly dealing with the associated phenomenon of structural disintegration. This begins to be well marked when the proportion of acetone exceeds 80 p.ct. The optimum effect is obtained with mixtures of 90 to 93 acetone and 10 to 7 water ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross
... exasperated country ever rise in its might and demand his blood. It was rumoured that the Seahound was ballasted with bars of solid gold and provisioned for a two years' cruise. Mr. Buller, however, claimed that the tendency of nature was to revert to original conditions, and that some fine morning Druce would hoist the black flag, sail away, and ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... Looking from its throne of clouds o'er half the (New) World—and indeed, as we have shown, constructively over the Old as well—it summoned us to the wholesome moral exercise of pausing a moment in our rapid career to revert to first principles, moral, social and political, and to explore the germs of our marvelous material progress. Nor could we assume this office as exclusively for our own benefit. The rest of Christendom silently assigned it to the youngest born for the common good. Circumstances ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... will not conquer, and find no heights which it will not be able to scale. Prophecy is the art of reading history forward. The spirit having come thus far, it is not possible to believe that it can ever permanently revert to the conditions from which it has emerged; neither can we believe that it will fail of reaching that development of which its every power and faculty is so distinct ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... showed himself a worthy workman! Simon Armour declared there was nothing the fellow could not do; and said to himself there never was such a baronet in the old Hall as his boy Dick would make. If only, he said, all the breeds worn out with breeding-in, would revert to the old blood of Tubal Cain, they might recover his lease of life. The day was coming, he said to himself, when there would be a sight to see at Mortgrange—a baronet that could shoe a horse better than any smith in the land! If his people then would not stand up for a landlord ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... even the most diverse and disharmonious quarters. Trusting, therefore, that the practical administration of the war is drifting into the right policy, based on the true theory of its causes and legitimate termination, we may leave these merely political and military questions, and revert, in conclusion, to the possible remaining eventualities of the war. These may be, for the time, (1.) Seemingly prosperous and fortunate, or, (2.) Seemingly accompanied with disaster, discouragement, and dismay—ulterior even to the eventual triumph of our arms over the open enemies ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... were these conditions: that the ceded territory should be formed into a separate state or states; and that if Congress should not accept the lands thus ceded and give due notice within two years, the act should be of no force and the lands should revert to North Carolina. No sooner did this news reach the Western settlers than they began to mature plans for the organization of a government during the intervening twelve months. Their exposed condition on the frontiers, still harassed by the Indians, and North Carolina's ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... they say he is quite a new man, and it is not merely a splash, but real and bona-fide business that he does. The Chancellor talked over some of the passages of the Queen's trial, to which he loves to revert. It was about the liturgy. The negotiations which had taken place at Apsley House between the Duke of Wellington and Lord Castlereagh on one part and Brougham and Denman on the other were broken off on that point. It was then ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... "Suppose we now revert to the difficulty which we have not conquered yet," said the captain. "Let us say that I do violence to my own habits and feelings; that I allow the considerations I have already mentioned to weigh ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... to describe the work of what is termed artistic printing. Every plate is a subject to be treated by itself, and no hard and fast rule can be applied. It is really a matter of artistic feeling, and to revert to the simile of the angler, one cannot explain how a trout should be played, but can only say that it depends on the fish, the water, and the circumstances. A fisherman can show you, if you are on the spot, and so can ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... you, Mary Penrose, are leaning toward cosmos and reading in the seed catalogue of their size and wonderful dawn-like tints, remember that the best of highly hybridized things revert unexpectedly to the commonest type, and somewhere in this family of lofty Mexicans there must have been a totally irresponsible wayside weed. Then turn backward toward the front of the catalogue, find the letter ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... strongly, that when a people have been once thoroughly accustomed to the working of such a Parliamentary system as ours, they never will consent to revert to this clumsy irresponsible mechanism. Whether we shall be able to carry on the war here long enough to allow the practice of Constitutional Government and the habits of mind which it engenders to take root in these provinces, may be doubtful. But it may be ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... comprised in the University should be called "McGill College." If the College was not erected in the time specified the conveyance to the Royal Institution was to be null and void; and the estate and endowment were to revert to his widow, and after her death to her first husband's nephew, Francis Desrivieres and to his legal heirs. He named as executors of the will John Richardson, James Reid, John ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... serial story which Mrs. EWING wrote, and I believe the subject of it arose from the fact that in 1883, after having spent several years in moving from place to place, she went to live at Villa Ponente, Taunton, where she had a settled home with a garden, and was able to revert to the practical cultivation of flowers, which had been one of the ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... his services being too valuable to lose, notwithstanding his promise to remain on the estate and work. Unfortunately these people have no children; therefore on their death their property, now considerable, will revert to the master. Had they children, as the woman is free, they might inherit the mother's property; and there is nothing to prevent the father's making over all he earns to her. I wish I had the talent of novel writing, for the sake of this slave's story; ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... exclude Titan, their elder brother, from his birthright, and raise Saturn to his father's throne. Their design so far succeeded, that Titan was obliged to resign his claim, though on condition, that Saturn brought up no male children, and thus the succession might revert to the Titans again. Saturn, it is said, observed this covenant so faithfully, that he devoured, as soon as they were born, his legitimate sons. His punctuality, however, in this respect, was at last frustrated by the artifice of Vesta, who, being delivered of twins, Jupiter and ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... sighs, the hollow-sounding waves Bring, save their own hoarse murmurs, no reply. Alas for him! who friendless and alone, Remote from parents and from brethren dwells; From him grief snatches every coming joy Ere it doth reach his lip. His restless thoughts Revert for ever to his father's halls, Where first to him the radiant sun unclos'd The gates of heav'n; where closer, day by day, Brothers and sisters, leagu'd in pastime sweet, Around each other twin'd the bonds of love. ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... had he known the state of his wife's mind at that moment towards her late visitor. During the whole of her journey down to Hamworth she tried to think what she would say to Lady Mason, but instead of so thinking her mind would revert to the unpleasantness of ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... present. That cause is unfortunate which retains as its advocate one whose rhetoric persuades all, while his logic convinces none; and the too readily believing converts of his enthusiasm and splendid diction, their sympathetic fire abated, revert with an implacable bitterness to their former traditions. With all our respect for Ruskin, we think that he has asserted many things, but proved next to nothing. He has utterly misunderstood and misstated ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... wouldn't do it quite that way. Your stepmother is getting old, and, in all probability, will not live many years. I would settle the property upon her for use during her lifetime, to revert to you ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... up but a small space in the large, cold room; there was no fire in the grate, no books or papers lying about, to beguile the tedious hour before bedtime. Was it any wonder that his thoughts should revert to the earlier hours of the evening? that he should hear again in fancy the soft voice that said, "I am Valmai Powell," and that he should picture to himself the clustering curls that escaped from ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine |
