"Unessential" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... intended to evolve the phenomena of the universe. On the other hand, if the teleologist assert that this, that, or the other result of the working of any part of the mechanism of the universe is its purpose and final cause, the mechanist can always inquire how he knows that it is more than an unessential incident—the mere ticking of the clock, which he mistakes for its function. And there seems to be no reply to this inquiry, any more than to the further, not irrational, question, why trouble oneself about matters ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... English is another debated question. As far as the teaching of grammar is concerned, it is unessential. If inductive drill takes the place of explanations and abstract rules, the question is very largely eliminated from practical consideration. In those very rare cases when theoretical discussions might seem desirable, it does not make much difference whether a few minutes a week are devoted ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... on one point. Dr. MacRae does not pick out his own clothes. He leaves all such unessential trifles to his housekeeper, ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... argumentation is the ability to be convinced intelligently. The good arguer is not likely to be carried away by specious arguments or fallacious reasoning. He can weigh every bit of evidence; he can test the strength and weakness of every statement; he can separate the essential from the unessential; and he can distinguish between prejudice and reason. A master of the art of argumentation can both present his case convincingly to others, and discover the truth in a matter that is presented ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... I value them too much to risk the loss of them." That friendly temper, combined with his ability, made him a valuable member of this Convention: but for the critical work of bringing men's minds together, of sifting the essential from the unessential, he was a bad exchange for Sir ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... &c. (underestimate) 483; catch at straws &c. (overestimate) 482. Adj. unimportant; of little account, of small account, of no account, of little importance, of no importance &c. 642; immaterial; unessential, nonessential; indifferent. subordinate &c. (inferior) 34; mediocre &c. (average) 29; passable, fair, respectable, tolerable, commonplace; uneventful, mere, common; ordinary &c. (habitual) 613; inconsiderable, so-so, insignificant, inappreciable. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... type. In the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries the writing of each century may be discerned, while the general tendency is towards complication, use of abbreviations and contractions, and development of unessential ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... administration, the chief event of which was the putting away by the princes and people of the heathen wives whom they had married. That Ezra was the author of this book is generally acknowledged. The first three verses are a repetition, with some unessential variations, of the last two verses of Chronicles, of which he is also believed, on good grounds, to have been the author. In certain passages he speaks of himself in the third person; Ch. 7:1-26; ch. 10; but there is no reason to deny, on this ground, that he was their author. Jeremiah ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... anatomy shows us the infinitely multifarious formation of the same organ in the Animal Kingdom, it furnishes us at the same time with the means, by the comparison of these various forms, of recognising the truly essential, the type of these organs, and separating therefrom everything unessential. In this, developmental history serves it as a check or test. Thus, as the idea of development is not that of mere increase of size, but that of progress from what is not yet distinguished, but which potentially ...
— Facts and Arguments for Darwin • Fritz Muller
... would be intolerable, and would so cumber the mind with useless rubbish as to destroy its usefulness. We have surely all had some experience with the type of persons whose associations are so complete and impartial that all their conversation teems with unessential and irrelevant details. They cannot recount the simplest incident in its essential points but, slaves to literalness, make themselves insufferable bores by entering upon every lane and by-path of circumstance ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... close and friendly relations with Constantinople. Through these relations, and through studying the masterpieces brought home by the Crusaders, Venetian artists recovered the antique feeling for pure form, and founded a school which was classical in spirit, Christian only in external and unessential features. The learning and literature which the Eastern Empire inherited from Rome and Athens had no attraction for Venetian merchant princes. But north of the Alps, and especially at Paris, the thirteenth century saw an increasing interest in the Greek ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... Pulci's determination to write a poem of a mixed order, which should retain for him the ear of the many, and at the same time give rise to a poetry of romance worthy of higher auditors; second, his banter of what he considered unessential and injurious dogmas of belief, in favour of those principles of the religion of charity which inflict no contradiction on the heart and understanding; third, the trouble which seems to have been given him by critics, "sacred and profane," in consequence ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... parsonages in England, where from year to year have dwelt men of the same class, education, income, tastes, and circumstances generally, and so bringing from generation to generation nearly the same requirements, with the unessential changes brought in from time to time by new wants or individual fancies, here and there putting out a bay-window or adding a wing, but always in the spirit of the original building, and the whole getting each year more weather-stained and ivy-grown, and so toned into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... for your gracious readiness to grant the men an interview," said Pierre de l'Hopital, having regard to the essential matter and disregarding the unessential manner. ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... Figure is an unessential variation in syllogistic form; and the consequent absurdity of Reducing the syllogisms of the other figures ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... attacked Von Eichhorn's army along the Dvina River, but were thrown back with severe losses. On August 11, 1915, Von Scholtz's group occupied the bridgehead at Vilna, which had been stubbornly defended until the Russian retreat had progressed far enough to make its further possession unessential. The same forces succeeded in crossing the Gac River, south of the Nareff, capturing during three days' fighting almost 5,000 men. Von Gallwitz with his army stormed on the same day Zambroff and then pressed on through Andrzejow toward the east. South of the Nareff, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... be noted, however, of Nelson, that this accuracy of mental perception, this power of penetrating to the root of a matter, disregarding unessential details and fastening solely on decisive features, was largely dependent upon the necessity laid upon him for action; which is probably equivalent to saying that it was usually elicited by a sobering sense of responsibility. In his letters ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... of appreciation to be discussed is the appreciation of humor. Perhaps this does not belong with the other type, but it certainly has many of the same characteristics. Calkins defines a sense of humor as "enjoyment of an unessential incongruity.... This incongruity must be, as has been said, an unessential one, else the mood of the observer changes from happiness to unhappiness, and the comic becomes the pathetic. A fall on the ice which seemed to offer only a ludicrous contrast between the dignity and grace ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... have asserted—not entirely without cause—that the type of photoplay comedy-dramas originated by Douglas Fairbanks are less than one-half action, the rest being merely clever but often unessential sub-titling. While this criticism is rather severe, it cannot be denied that certain stories of the kind mentioned, featuring this star and others, have been far too dependent for their appeal to the spectator upon the humorous, epigrammatic sayings ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... their own country beautifully, Claude was living in Rome, creating imaginary landscapes. He called his pictures by the names of Scriptural incidents, and placed figures in the foreground as small and unessential as those of Turner. These classical landscapes, with their palaces and great flights of steps leading down to some river's edge, and the sea in the distance covered with boats carrying fantastic sails, never for a moment make the impression of reality. But they are beautiful compositions, ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... prison strong, this huge convex of Fire, Outrageous to devour, immures us round Ninefold, and gates of burning Adamant Barr'd over us prohibit all egress. These past, if any pass, the void profound Of unessential Night receives him next Wide gaping, and with utter loss of being 440 Threatens him, plung'd in that abortive gulf. If thence he scape into what ever world, Or unknown Region, what remains him less Then ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... anonymously; but the public is accustomed now to see a proper name on the title page. If it does not find one, its curiosity is excited, and what I particularly wished to avoid comes to pass, namely, the diversion of attention from the essential to the unessential." ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... renders Religion more burdensome and difficult than it is in its own Nature, betrays many into Sins of Omission which they could not otherwise be guilty of, and fixes the Minds of the Vulgar to the shadowy unessential Points, instead of the more weighty and more ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... as means of locomotion, of apples as eatables. They recognize such things by their serviceable qualities; their individuality, the universal in these particulars, escapes them. In a picture of a boat or an apple they look for those unessential qualities which minister to their pleasure, and of which alone they are aware. The cleverness of a man who can paint fruit that tempts urchins impresses them; but the artist who feels, and tries to express, the soul of fruit and flowers ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... greatest of these is frightening. Ares, the god of war, has two satellites, Terror and Affright. Fear is the Gorgon's head. The serpents are very real, very effective, in their way, but logically they are unessential tresses. The Gorgon stares you out of countenance, and that suffices. The object is the removal of an obstacle. Killing and wounding are but means to an end. Hand-to-hand fighting is rare, and it would be easy to count the instances in which cavalry meets ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... questionable from the fact that a large number of women are not sick, are not good for nothing, are not childless, and, therefore, do not consult physicians; but the reasoning which shall judge and weigh the facts presented, assigning to each its proper value, and, discarding unessential elements, shall draw a just conclusion, is not limited to ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... the medical curriculum by culling out of it everything which is unessential, we may next consider whether something may not be done to aid the medical student toward the acquirement of real knowledge by modifying the system of examination. In England, within my recollection, it was the practice to require ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... against the victorious Saxon or English heathen. But from the very beginning the Church of England has retained the traces of her early origin, when Gregory the Great was Pope, when the claim to be universal bishop was deemed untenable, when even the ritual of the Mass was still in unessential ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... these from the normal syllogistic form are said to constitute differences of Figure (see Sec. 2); and the processes by which they are shown to be unessential differences are called Reduction ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... doubt he is the wiser for his experience, and for the lesson which Hewitt did not forget to rub well in: that it is useless and worse to place a confidential matter in the hands of a man of Hewitt's profession, and at the same time withhold particulars of the case, however unessential they may appear ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... instruction at all, these pupils are allowed to withdraw at the times when it is given. If no essential points of Christianity had ever been brought into dispute, it might have been wise to avoid those unessential points that had been; or if religion were a matter of indifference or secondary consequence, then it might be well to provide for pupils withdrawing beyond the reach of its voice. But since neither of these suppositions are true, the system of the Australian College ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... little tale which Giovanni Verga wrote and which supplied the librettists, G. Targioni-Tozzetti and G. Menasci, with the plot of Mascagni's opera. Sententious as the opera seems, it is yet puffed out, padded, and bedizened with unessential ornament compared with the story. This has the simplicity and directness of a folk-tale or folk-song, and much of its characteristic color and strength were lost in fitting it out for music. The play, which Signora Duse presented to us with a power which no ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... security against excess of power in the diocesan by overslaughing his authority through exorbitant powers conferred upon a periodical mixed synod, legislating for a whole continent, even in matters confessedly variable and unessential. In the later evolution of the system, this superior limitation of the bishop's powers is supplemented from below by magnifying the authority of representative bodies, diocesan and parochial, until the work of the bishop is reduced as nearly as possible ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... relations with his demonstrators were typical of his judgment of men, his distinction between the essential and the unessential, which made ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... story of the wax tapers is related both by Asser and William of Malmesbury, differing a little in the unessential parts of it. It is this: Alfred commanded six wax tapers to be made, each 12 inches in length, and of as many ounces in weight. On these tapers he caused the inches to be regularly marked; and having found that one taper burnt just ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Arthur Berkeley, that Ernest was angry at his treatment of the Schurzian leader: 'My dear Le Breton, I enclose cheque for eight guineas, for your two articles. I hope you didn't mind the way I was obliged to cut them up in some unessential details, so as to suit the policy of the paper. I kept whatever was really most distinctive as embodying special information in them. You know we are above all things strictly moderate. Please send us another ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... immediately upon his return avenges his father's murder, and, still nearer the type, Malcolm and Donaldbane flee and Malcolm returns and avenges his father's murder. But the matter of type is, in this connection, unessential. There is no doubt that the Hamlet story exerted an influence on the Hroar-Helgi story, nor can there be any doubt that the Macbeth story ...
— The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf • Oscar Ludvig Olson
... little way from him, as if she felt he might exact a husband's right of farewell, which the absence of witnesses made quite unessential. ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... may be, since strangeness is not in the nature of a thing, but in its relation to something extrinsic—in this case an unessential observer." ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself. I can't make it more clear; it's only something which I am beginning to comprehend, which ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... importance or from its style, reached the standard of his discrimination he took it up, enlarged upon it, illuminated it, until what had come to him as crude material for conversation assumed a new form, everything unessential rejected, everything essential disclosed in the clear and vigorous English which was the vehicle ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... Greenwich Observatory, for the information of Sir George Airy, the astronomer-royal, a similar document, still preserved among the archives. A fortnight afterwards Airy wrote asking for information about a point in the solution. Adams, who thought the query unessential, did not reply, and Airy for some months took no steps to verify by telescopic search the results of the young mathematician's investiation. Meanwhile, Leverrier, on the 10th of November 1845, presented to the French Academy a memoir on Uranus, showing ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... understood among men, be the latest evolutionary form of a series of mistakes, fallacies, and illusions, if its germ be a blunder, and its present form only the result of progressive but unessential refinements on that blunder, the inference that religion is untrue—that nothing actual corresponds to its hypothesis—is very easily drawn. The inference is not, perhaps, logical, for all our science ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... out that all sketches will not bear elaboration if their merit depends on extreme licence, for instance. Next, that a man who had a standard of proportion could see wherein the deviations of his sketched figure were essential to the effect he wished it to produce, and wherein they were unessential. Then, if he drew the normal figure large, he would be able to deviate from it in exactly the right places and to the right degree to reproduce the desired effect. But to do this he must also have a general notion of how deviations ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... at the unessential query. "Don't know,—one of the river miners, I reckon. It's an urgent case. I'll go and get everything ready. You'd better," he added, with an ominous glance at her gray frock, "put something over your dress." The ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... "Englishman of Britain." It is a convenient term and, so essentially one are they in his eyes, there is no need to distinguish between the peoples. Mr. William Archer's remark is worth quoting, that "It is amazing how unessential has been the change produced in the Anglo-Saxon type and temperament [in America] by the influences of climate or the admixtures ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... made light of the assemblage of evil spirits at Boolabong which had seemed so important to Jacko, he by no means did regard the news as unessential. Of Nokes's villany he was convinced. Of Boscobel he had imprudently made a second enemy at a most inauspicious time. Georgie Brownbie had long been his bitter foe. He had prosecuted and, perhaps, persecuted Georgie for various offenses; but as Georgie ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... had made it a life's enterprise to order, adjust, and settle the character of her daughters; and when we use the word character, as Mrs. Grey understood it, we mean it to include both face, figure, dress, accomplishments, as well as those more unessential ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... breeding, That I shall not do so, is for the reason that while theoretically I recognize the important part that breeding plays in all animal production, for the practical proposition of producing poultry products at the lowest possible cost, a knowledge of the technical science of breeding is unessential and may, by diverting the poultryman's time to unprofitable efforts, prove an ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings |
