"Abortive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The Royal Society was incorporated in 1663 as the Royal Society of London for promoting Natural Knowledge. In the same year there was an abortive insurrection in the North against the ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... an error while retrieval was possible. The Persians, we may be sure, grew dispirited under such a leader; and the Egyptians naturally took heart. It seems to have been shortly after the return of Cambyses from his abortive expedition against Ethiopia that symptoms of an intention to revolt began to manifest themselves in Egypt. The priests declared an incarnation of Apis, and the whole country burst out into rejoicings. It was probably now that Psammenitus, who had hitherto ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... Snaggs explained to them exactly what they ought to have done, and what they had failed to do, in order to ensure the success of their campaign against play-acting in the Fair; a campaign which now for several years past had been abortive—largely (it was rumoured) owing to the secret jealousy of the Church ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... attracted by prurient sexual adventures. A vulgar work obviously meant to appeal to a neurotic taste for sexuality, it includes no attack on Swift as it explores at length some topics to which Gulliver in his memoirs only tangentially alludes. The second abortive effort, an animal satire of exotic talking fowl, also resembles Swift's satire as it touches on several similar topics—the hypocrisy of the people, the scepticism of their nobility, the love of luxury of the higher clergy—but again because it includes no comment on Swift's ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous
... to be cashiered. I suppose "he" (as Rogers calls everybody's husband) went out hunting with the idea of diverting his mind from dwelling on its loss. Abortive effort! ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... confined to the southern portion of the province of San Paulo, and are called by the Brazilians Bugres — that is, slaves. A more unfitting name it would have been impossible to hit upon, as all efforts to civilize them have proved abortive, and to-day they still range the forests, attacking small parties of travellers, and burning isolated farm-houses. The Brazilians assert that they are cannibals, but little is known positively as to this. What has altered them so entirely ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... a distant colony. But whatever causes may have produced the situation which so grievously affects our interests, it exists, with all its attendant evils operating directly upon this country and its people. Thus far all the efforts of Spain have proved abortive, and time has marked no improvement in the situation. The armed bands of either side now occupy nearly the same ground as in the past, with the difference, from time to time, of more lives sacrificed, more property destroyed, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... filled my heart with sunshine, God snatched me away from her. And where is she now? Yonder, alone, friendless, a child new-born into the world at the mercy of liars and libertines. And where am I? Here, like a beast in a trap, uttering abortive groans, toothless, stupid, powerless, mad. No, no, not mad, either! Tell me, ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... the enthusiastic baronet, "I shall prove that this, the richest jewel in a monarch's crown, which cannot be imitated by any art of man, either in the beauty of its form or the brilliancy and lustre produced by a central illuminated cell, is the abortive egg of an oyster enveloped in its own nacre, of which it receives annually a layer of increase during the life of the animal, who will not be struck with wonder and astonishment?" And, we must add, that the proofs are very much in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various
... the promptings of their long-checked ambition. Soon several hundreds of waggons drawn by long teams of oxen came lumbering into Natal, for the purpose of establishing there the Republic, which had so often been planned out in imagination and never yet found any but an abortive existence. This ideal State was eventually formed and called the Republic of Natalia, and it enjoyed for several years an ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... think, a campaign at Twickenham furnishes as little matter for a letter as an abortive one in Flanders. I can't say indeed that my generals wear black wigs, but they have long full- bottomed hoods which cover as little entertainment ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... of these abortive conferences, however interesting historically, appears to me to have no bearing upon the legality of martial law, and I have no intention of returning to ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... of which they are extremely proud; and a gaudily picturesque group they were. The chief, however, had undergone a transformation that well-nigh upset the gravity of our hunters, and rendered Dick's efforts to look solemn quite abortive. San-it-sa-rish had once been to the trading forts of the Pale-faces, and while there had received the customary gift of a blue surtout with brass buttons, and an ordinary hat, such as gentlemen wear at home. As the coat was ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... hair, and an ashen cheek. Any expert will prove that. I can never believe that any one would be lured to destruction by those birds of paradise whom one has met in the stuffy, over-gilded, and, happily, abortive night-clubs and cabarets. If a consensus were taken, I think it would be found that wickedness gaily apparelled is seldom successful. It is the subtle and the sinister, the dark and half-known, that make ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... retinues that accompany most of the intellectuals: ushers, bearers, valets, extraneous tentacles and muscles, as it were, to replace the abortive physical powers of these hypertrophied minds. Porters almost invariably accompany them. There are also extremely swift messengers with spider-like legs and 'hands' for grasping parachutes, and ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... know what to say to the public about this abortive Romance, though I know pretty well what the case will be. I shall never finish it. Yet it is not quite pleasant for an author to announce himself, or to be announced, as finally broken down as to his literary faculty. It is a pity that I ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... foot again. Pleasant to pass along this extensive walk, watching the surf-wave;—how sometimes it seems to make a feint of breaking, but dies away ineffectually, merely kissing the strand; then, after many such abortive efforts, it gathers itself, and forms a high wall, and rolls onward, heightening and heightening, without foam at the summit of the green line, and at last throws itself fiercely on the beach, with a loud roar, the spray flying above. As you walk along, you are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... truth believes in the Marxian Materialistic Conception of History. The political, legal, ethical and all human institutions have their roots in the economic soil, and any reform that does not go clear to the roots and affect the economic structure of society must necessarily be abortive. Any thing that does go to the roots and does modify the economic structure, the bread and butter side of life, will inevitably modify every other branch and department of human life, political, ethical, legal, religious, etc. This makes the ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... waited restlessly, a week of weary sightseeing and abortive attempts at holiday making. No answer came. On the eighth day he moved on to Vienna ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... had already sent to his cousin; but he did begrudge any furtherance afforded to the iniquitous schemes of Sir Felix. He felt all but sure that the foolish mother had given her son money for his abortive attempt, and that therefore this appeal had been made to him. He alluded to no such fear in his letter. He simply enclosed the cheque, and expressed a hope that the amount might suffice for the present emergency. But he was disheartened and ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... to be ridiculous?" This question, which had so harassed him the other night, left him troubled but inert. He did not try to solve it, but decided to leave everything to chance, since the best planned strategy was almost always abortive. ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... you, I fly naked to your arms. Only remember, that 'twas not the workman, but his instruments that fail'd: I was ready to engage, but wanted arms. Who rob'd me of them I know not; perhaps my eager mind outrun my body; or while with an unhappy haste I aim'd at all; I was cheated with abortive joys. I only know I don't know what I've done: You bid me fear a palsie, as if the diseast cou'd do greater that has already rob'd me of that, by which I shou'd have purchas'd you. All I have to say for my self, is this, that I will certainly pay with interest ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... the power of destroying the god of Light. And the distribution of the fragments of the mistletoe among their pious worshippers, was to assure them that henceforth a similar attempt of Lok would prove abortive, and he was thus deprived of the means of effecting ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... believe in a God of absolute and unbounded love, therefore I believe in a loving anger of His, which will and must devour and destroy all which is decayed, monstrous, abortive, in His universe, till all enemies shall be put under His feet, to be pardoned surely, if they confess themselves in the wrong and open their eyes to the truth. And God shall be All in All. Those ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... practicability of protecting our important cities on the seaboard by fortifications and other defenses able to repel modern methods of attack. The time has now come when such defenses can be prepared with confidence that they will not prove abortive, and when the possible result of delay in making such preparation is seriously considered delay seems inexcusable. For the most important cities—those whose destruction or capture would be a national humiliation—adequate ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Chester A. Arthur • Chester A. Arthur
... easy seemed the justification of her desire for obscurity. From regarding it as a high instinct she passed into a humour that gave that desire the appearance of a whim. But could she really set in train events, which, if not abortive, would take her to ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... drawing-rooms where she still appeared—and what were they but marriage markets?—one or two affairs did spring up—tentative approachments on the part of scions of wealth. They were destined to prove abortive. One of these youths, Pedro Ricer Marcado, a Brazilian, educated at Oxford, promised much for sincerity and feeling until he learned that Berenice was poor in her own right—and what else? Some one had whispered ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... pursued by the Fifth Column in different countries falls into like patterns. In Austria, before it was swallowed, Nazi agents first established propaganda organizations as the bases from which to work. When, after the abortive attempt to seize the Austrian Government, the Nazis were made illegal, they went underground but continued to get aid from Germany. Eventually Berlin ordered Standarte II organized as a specific body prepared to provoke disturbances. When the Austrian police quelled them, the provocations ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak
... along to inquire after me; and if I happened to be awake, and the doctor permitted it, they would sit and chat with me for half an hour or so before retiring to their cabins, by which means I gradually acquired all the missing links in the story of the squadron's abortive cruise. ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... seemed to Eustace, who knew "Jemima's Vow" and also her previous abortive work almost by heart, that he was very intimately acquainted with Augusta, and as he was walking home that May evening, he was reflecting sadly enough of all that he had lost through that cruel shipwreck. He had lost Augusta, and, what was more, he had lost his uncle and his uncle's ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... refinement,—but skill only to live coarsely and serve the Devil?—to acquire a little worldly wealth, or fame, or liberty, and make a false show with it, as if we were all husk and shell, with no tender and living kernel to us? Shall our institutions be like those chestnut-burs which contain abortive nuts, perfect only ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... fleshiness of Captain Vauvenarde and the rolls of fat at the back of his neck, but I portrayed the villainous physiognomies of his associates very neatly. I concluded by repeating my assertion that our project had proved itself to be abortive. ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... the ocean do I indulge at such times, and so respectfully do I regard the sailors who may chance to pass, that Prue often says, with her shrewd smiles, that my mind is a kind of Greenwich Hospital, full of abortive marine hopes and wishes, broken-legged intentions, blind regrets, and desires, whose hands have been shot away in some hard battle of experience, so that they cannot grasp the results towards ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... in his penitential years, viewing some of those pieces that had been loosely—God knows, too loosely—scattered in his youth, he wished they had been abortive, or so short-lived that his own eyes had witnessed their funerals; but, though he was no friend to them, he was not so fallen out with heavenly poetry, as to forsake that; no, not in his declining age; witnessed then by many divine sonnets, and other high, holy, and harmonious composures. ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... of the conspirator was anticipated, and met by some corresponding measure, which rendered it abortive. Nor was it, any longer, difficult for him to penetrate the designs of Catiline, since the peasantry and mountaineers, who had throughout that district been favorable to the conspiracy in the first instance, and who were prepared to favor any design which ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... object are not clear. Reference has already been made to them in the descriptions of several ruins, and for want of a better name they have been designated chimney-like structures. At the time that they were examined they were supposed to be new, and the first hypothesis formed was that they were abortive chimneys, but further examination showed that this idea was not tenable. Subsequently Nordenskioeld's book on the Cliff Dwellers of the Mesa Verde was published, and it appears therefrom that this feature is very common in the region treated; so ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... of the governor to effect the permanent civilization of these miserable people proved utterly abortive. ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... in his closet pent, He toils to give the crude conception vent Abortive thoughts, that right and wrong confound, Truth sacrific'd to letters, sense to sound; False glare, incongruous images combine, And noise and nonsense chatter through ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Conference proved abortive, Russia refusing to accept the third point, and though a compromise was proposed by Austria, which was favoured by the British and French Plenipotentiaries, their respective Governments did not ratify their views. The ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... to his lips; had he uttered it, he might have cast himself at the same moment on the body of Huish, might have picked him up, and flung him down, and wiped the cabin with him, in a frenzy of cruelty that seemed half moral. But the moment passed; and the abortive crisis left the man weaker. The stakes were so high—the pearls on the one hand—starvation and shame on the other. Ten years of pearls! the imagination of Davis translated them into a new, glorified existence for himself and his family. The ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... trust Upon unstaid perverseness! Know ye not That we are worms, yet made at last to form The winged insect, imp'd with angel plumes That to heaven's justice unobstructed soars? Why buoy ye up aloft your unfleg'd souls? Abortive then and shapeless ye remain, Like the untimely embryon of a worm! As, to support incumbent floor or roof, For corbel is a figure sometimes seen, That crumples up its knees unto its breast, With the feign'd posture stirring ruth unfeign'd In the beholder's fancy; so I saw These fashion'd, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... of useless members, of rudimentary and abortive limbs, does seem, at first sight, to be unfavorable to the idea of supremacy of purpose and all-pervading design. It should be remarked, however, that this is an argument based upon our ignorance, and not upon our knowledge. It does not by any means follow that ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... failed in Italy; whereas in Spain, on the contrary, all endeavours to model the theatre according to the rules of the ancients, and latterly of the French, have from the difference of national taste uniformly been abortive. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... May. Catkins appearing with the leaves, spreading, stalked,—sterile 1-2 inches long; stamens 2-4, usually 2; filaments distinct, pubescent below; ovary abortive: fertile catkins slender; stigma nearly sessile; capsule long-conical, ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... her "county of Illinois" to the National domain in 1784. Jefferson's effort to provide for the exclusion of slavery from the new Territory at that date proved abortive. Consequently, when James Lemen arrived at the old French village of Kaskaskia in July, 1786, he found slavery legally entrenched in all the former French possessions in the "Illinois country." It had been introduced by Renault, in ...
— The Jefferson-Lemen Compact • Willard C. MacNaul
... Felton" was written; but the manuscript, thrown aside, was mentioned in the Dedicatory Preface to "Our Old Home" as an "abortive project." As will be found explained in the Introductory Notes to "The Dolliver Romance" and "The Ancestral Footstep," that phase of the same general design which was developed in the "Dolliver" was intended to take the place of this ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... prove insurmountable. In fine, there are few men who do not look back in secret to some period of their {p.226} youth, at which a sincere and early affection was repulsed or betrayed, or became abortive from opposing circumstances. It is these little passages of secret history, which leave a tinge of romance in every bosom, scarce permitting us, even in the most busy or the most advanced period of life, to listen with total indifference ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... Of all areas in London thus defined, this Square of St. John is probably the most irregular in outline. It is cut in two by Clerkenwell Road, and the buildings which compose it form such a number of recesses, of abortive streets, of shadowed alleys, that from no point of the Square can anything like a general view of its totality be obtained. The exit from it on the south side is by St. John's Lane, at the entrance to which stands a survival from ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... affairs were more disturbing. Several attempts were made on the life of the King of the French, while an abortive insurrection with a view of establishing a military empire was made by Louis Bonaparte at Strasburg. The Prince was allowed to leave the country and go to the United States, but his accomplices were detained for trial. In Algiers the French Government determined to prosecute operations ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... was simply a-flutter with torn-out leaves from his A.B. 153, representing his abortive attempts to put down his application succinctly and plausibly, we all began to take an interest in his case. We crowded round and offered him most valuable hints. Together we got through two very pleasant evenings and three or four A.B.'s 153, and still the application ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... Tarbes,[116] and at the first conference the Bishop raised a question in the name of his government, on the validity of the papal dispensation granted by Julius the Second, to legalise the marriage from which she was sprung. The abortive marriage Scheme perished in its birth, but the doubt which had been raised could not perish with it. Doubt on such a subject once mooted might not be left unresolved, even if the raising it thus publicly ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... known, to ascertain that it came from Robertson; and from the date, it appeared to have been written about the time when Andrew Wilson (called for a nickname Handie Dandie) and he were meditating their first abortive attempt to escape, which miscarried in the manner mentioned in the beginning ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... freedom only limited by the exigencies of poetic passion. From the time of Drummond of Hawthornden to our own, some of the noblest flights of English poetry have been taken on the wings of this verse; but with ordinary readers it has been more or less discredited by the far greater number of abortive efforts, on the part sometimes of considerable poets, to adapt it to purposes with which it has no expressional correspondence; or to vary it by rhythmical movements which are destructive ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... kitchen midden—to apply a very dignified title to a long deserted camp— interesting testimony to the diligence and patience of the deceased occupants was obtained. It was evident that the sea had been largely drawn upon for supplies, if only on account of the many abortive and abandoned attempts at fishhooks in more or less advanced stages of completion. The brittleness of the fabric and the crudeness of the tools employed had evidently put the patience of the makers to severe task, who for one satisfactory hook must ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... obtain just water enough to keep us alive. The party who had tried to sink a well had invariably been stopped by hard limestone rock in every place they had tried, and all their attempts to penetrate it by means of a cold chisel and pickaxe had proved abortive. The party which had been out with me searching for water had not seen the slightest sign which indicated its presence on the island: we had taken a spade with us, but wherever we dug had come down upon the solid rock. Under these circumstances I reduced the allowance to ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... prolonged the discussion that the war was over before a decision was reached; but Connecticut seized the Dutch lands at Hartford, and Roger Ludlow, who had moved to Fairfield from Windsor after 1640, began an abortive military campaign of his own. The situation remained unchanged as long as the Dutch held New Netherland, and the region between Greenwich and the Bronx continued to be what it had been from the beginning of settlement, a territory occupied only by Indians and a few straggling ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... attack the employment of fomentations, or especially a turpentine stupe, gives great relief, and occasionally in the non-specific form this treatment, combined with a good dose of calomel and salts, may render the attack abortive. Some relief is always obtained by inhalations, and theoretically, an acute specific bronchitis should be successfully treated by inhalation of antiseptic and soothing remedies. In practice, however, it is found that the strength cannot be sufficiently ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... imperial progress made Through terror-haunted days. A shock, a cry Whose echoes ring the globe—the spectre's laid. Hurled o'er the abyss, see the crowned martyr lie Resting in peace—fear, change, and death gone by. Fit end for nightmare—mist of blood and tears, Red climax to the slow, abortive years. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... dwelling upon such abortive disparagement, the only importance of which arises from its being annexed to and associated with a standard political text-book, let us refresh our memories, our patriotism, our best sympathies of mind and heart, by tracing once more the services and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... gave in a true report; where you lodge, why you came, how long you mean to stay; with twenty more inquisitive speeches, which to a subject of more liberal governments must necessarily appear impertinent as frivolous, and make all my hopes of bringing home the most trifling presents for a friend abortive. So there is an end of that felicity, and we must sit like the girl at the fair, ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... for retirement should be alloted?" [sic—KTH] Every expression is incorrigibly bad, the meaning of which cannot be known. Expression? Nay, expression it is not, but only a mock utterance or an abortive attempt at expression. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... "golden opportunity" of syphilis. It seldom lasts more than two weeks from the first appearance of the primary sore or chancre, and its duration is more often only a matter of four or five days before the disease is in the blood, the blood test becomes positive, and the prospect of what we call abortive cure is past. Nothing can justify or make up for delay in identifying the trouble in this early period, and the person who does not take the matter seriously often pays the price of his indifference many ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... Couch's corps was now brought up, and Carroll's brigade struck the rebels on the left, and doubled them back on the centre, capturing a great many prisoners and confusing and rendering abortive Hill's attack in front. Hill sent for his reserves to come up, and three rebel brigades were thrown against Carroll, who was supported by the remainder of French's division and a brigade from Humphrey's division of ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... and the Senators on the 27th of October had proved abortive. On the 6th of the next month a meeting was held in the house of one Marcus Porcius Laeca, at which a plot was arranged for the killing of Cicero the next day—for the killing of Cicero alone—he having been by this time found to be the one great obstacle in their path. Two knights ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... have two; but the other is but an average performer. Anything so rich and clear as the pipe of our first fiddle, it never entered into the heart of man to fancy. How the years slip away, Colvin; and we walk little cycles, and turn in little abortive spirals, and come out again, hot and weary, to find the same view before us, the same hill barring the road. Only, bless God for it, we have still the same eye to see with, and if the scene be not altogether unsightly, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... reverence for individual belief, as a matter between the Deity and man's soul, and with which no other has a right to interfere. With the feeling here described, and with his acute intellectual perception of the abortive character of all intolerant measures, as defeating their own ends, it strikes one as nothing less than ludicrous that he should be charged with desiring to retain this obsolete enactment, standing, as it does, as a merely gratuitous and otherwise inoperative stigma upon ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Quirk, with the shrewdness natural to him, and which had been quickened by his great experience, had soon seen through the ill-contrived and worse-concealed designs upon Titmouse of Mr. Tag-rag; and justly considered that the surest method of rendering them abortive would be to familiarize Titmouse with a superior style of things, such as was to be found at Alibi House—and a more lovely and attractive object for his best affections in Miss Quirk—Dora Quirk—the lustre of whose charms and accomplishments there could be no doubt, he thought, would instantly ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... up with ashen under-lip, to say that such a scheme, it seemed to him, must remain for ever abortive, unless enforced by ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... the splendid prospects of this undertaking my father determined if possible to surpass it. He wrote to Fiel of Paris and expected to be able to secure an objective of 4 feet diameter, exceeding that of the Lick Observatory by one foot, a hopeless and as it proved an utterly abortive design. He spent an entire year in New York after leaving Irvington examining the various possible locations for his new observatory. The requisites were nearness to the equator, an equable climate, elevation and a clear atmosphere. During this year my father heard that Prof. Hertz ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... said refusal was also an act of great disrespect to the Court of Directors and to his Majesty, and, by rendering abortive their said measures, solemnly and deliberately taken, and ratified and confirmed by his Majesty, tended to bring the authority of the Court of Directors and ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... science since the Peace —the poems of Schiller, Goethe, and Byron, the prose writings of Scott, Jean-Paul, Berzelius, Davy, Cuvier, Lamartine, and many more. They warmed themselves beside these great hearthfires; they tried their powers in abortive creations, in work laid aside and taken up again with new glow of enthusiasm. Incessantly they worked with the unwearied vitality of youth; comrades in poverty, comrades in the consuming love of art and science, till ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... medium of its natural motives of fidelity to the Government on the one hand, and of its artificial delusion on the other. He may now go to the bottom of Southern society, and find in its conflicting elements the antagonistic motives that render the plans of treason abortive. These will be sure to continue, and sure to strengthen on the side of fidelity to the National Government. When the South is made a solid, compact unit in political motive, it will become so, disarmed of all purposes ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... Scotsman does not?) that in the middle 'fifties coal-boring in Scotland was not the honourable profession that it now is. More than once, speculators procured lying reports that there were no minerals, and after landowners had been ruined by their abortive preliminary experiments, stepped in, bought the land, and boomed it. In one notorious case a family, now great in the public eye, bribed a laird's own borers to conceal the truth, and then buying the Golconda from its impoverished owner, laid the ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... I had any fixed income, I should go at least to Paris, and I shall go the moment I have one." And again in December of the same year she writes to Claire, addressing her as Mdlle. de Clairmont, chez Mdme. de Hennistein, Vienna. She mentions an approach to Sir Timothy, through lawyers, abortive as yet; how she detests Genoa; "Hunt does not like me." Her daily routine is copying Shelley's manuscripts and reading Greek; in her despair, study is her only relief. She sees no one but Lord Byron, and the Guiccioli ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... alternative. Yes, it was quite as bad as that—death at her own hands was preferable. Balked, outwitted, the plans of the criminal coterie, of which Danglar appeared to be the head, rendered again and again abortive, and believing it all due to the White Moll, all of Danglar's shrewd, unscrupulous cunning would be centered on the task of running her down; and if, added to this, he discovered that she was masquerading as Gypsy Nan, ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... then, that Sedgwick had full possession of the town, and Gibbon and Howe had returned from their abortive attempt to turn the enemy's flanks, the sun was some two hours high. As the works could not be captured by surprise, Sedgwick was reduced to the alternative of assaulting them ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... all the literature based upon that conception has become irrelevant and meaningless in the light of the new ideal. We no longer conceive the individual save as one in a chain of births. Fatherless, he is inconceivable; sonless, he is abortive. His soul, if he have one, is inseparable from its derivation from the past and its tradition to the future. His duty, his happiness, his value, are all bound up with the fact of paternity; and ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... the extreme south. His object was to tap the rice-fields of Central China and obtain a food supply which could not be interfered with by those daring sea-robbers, the redoubtable Japanese, who had destroyed his fleets and rendered abortive his attempt at conquest. Of the Great Wall, it may be said that the oppression inseparable from its construction hastened the overthrow of the house of its builder. The same is probably true of the Grand Canal. The myriads of unpaid labourers ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... Longstreet to bring the enemy to an engagement outside of Knoxville proving abortive, the commanding General determined to close the campaign for the season, and to put his troops in as comfortable winter quarters as possible. This was found on the right or east bank of the Holston, near Morristown and the little hamlet of Russellville. ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... by a deep green shade, which fell far over his face, but failed to conceal a blue scar that crossing his cheek ended in the angle of his mouth, and imparted to that feature, when he spoke, an apparently abortive attempt to extend towards his eyebrow; his upper lip was covered with a grizzly and ill-trimmed mustache, which added much to the ferocity of his look, while a thin and pointed beard on his chin gave an apparent length to the whole face that completed its rueful character. ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... officials and storekeepers, too slack even to be sick of their surroundings, and a few degraded families of Bushmen of uninteresting habits and extremely filthy, constituted the inhabitants. There was but little game in the small strip of British territory, and Halloran had made one or two abortive attempts to arrange a shooting and exploring trip into the German hinterland. Every one had warned him of the extreme peril from the shifting sand-dunes. Moreover, the war between the Germans and the Hereros was at its height, and ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... high sea up which makes us labour a good deal. Had altitude longitude by then 143 degrees 13 minutes 40 seconds, these agree with the dead reckoning within 3 or 4 miles. Latitude 39 degrees 12 minutes 33 seconds. This weather has again rendered abortive my plan of getting the direct line of bearing and distance between Cape Farewell and Cape Albany Otway. I shall only observe that I never experienced such length of bad weather at any time of year or in any country since ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... to-day's work is not therefore the less satisfactory. The title botanist—and I suppose you have found out that I make some pretensions to that character—is not content with merely having flowers, leaves, and parts of plants in his hortus siccus, or even abortive specimens in his garden and his hot-house: he wants to see the whole plant where nature placed it, and study its character and habits there. Who is satisfied with seeing a Turk in London? To know him as he is, we look for ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... and the abundant hopes whose voices call a young man to Paris, God only knows what may intervene; what contending ideas have striven within the soul; what poems have been set aside; what moans and what despair have been repressed; what abortive masterpieces and vain endeavors! Every suicide is an awful poem of sorrow. Where will you find a work of genius floating above the seas of literature that can compare with ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... try to explain myself. It was useless for Mrs. Finch (who had made several abortive efforts to put in a word or two, on her own part) to attempt to pacify her husband. All the poor damp lady could do was to beg me to write to her from foreign parts. "I'm sorry you're in trouble; and I should really be glad to ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... Jacques could invent! And to come to such an abortive story—was that the reason of ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... of the Medici, Machiavelli, who for a few weeks had vainly hoped to retain his office under the new masters of Florence, was dismissed by decree dated 7th November 1512. Shortly after this he was accused of complicity in an abortive conspiracy against the Medici, imprisoned, and put to the question by torture. The new Medicean people, Leo X, procured his release, and he retired to his small property at San Casciano, near Florence, where he devoted himself ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... destitute of their well-beloved daughters, the fathers cursing the days and the hours wherein they were married, and the mothers howling and crying that it was not their fortune to have brought forth abortive issues when they happened to be delivered of such unfortunate girls, and in this pitiful plight spend at best the remainder of their time with tears and weeping for those their children, of and from whom they expected, (and, with good reason, should have obtained and reaped,) in these latter ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... all over. He lay under his memorial, a junk pile of twisted metal, inching his way toward death, the abortion of an abortive miracle, alone, tearless, ...
— A Choice of Miracles • James A. Cox
... afterward, when the people were asked by Manilius Mancinus, one of their tribunes, whom they would appoint to carry on the war against Jugurtha, they, in a full assembly, voted it to Marius. The senate had previously decreed it to Metellus; but that decree was thus rendered abortive.[204] ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... gives that pretended lady the small-pox. Other contrivances in his head to bring Clarissa back, if she should get away. Miss Howe's scheme of Mrs. Townsend is, he says, a sword hanging over his head. He must change his measures to render it abortive. He is of the true lady-make. What that is. Another conversation between them. Her apostrophe to her father. He is temporarily moved. Dorcas gives him notice of a paper she has come at, and is transcribing. In order to detain the lady, he presses for the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... his wife soon after: "Executive force and vigour are rare qualities; the President is the best of us." And Lincoln's generosity was no less; his private secretary, Nicolay, saw these papers; but no other man knew anything of Seward's abortive rebellion against Lincoln till after they both were dead. The story needs no explanation, but the more attentively all the circumstances are considered, the more Lincoln's handling of this emergency, which threatened the ruin of his Government, throws ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... the day-time and evening, but the females are usually very sluggish and inactive." (8/77. Stephen's Illustrations, 'Haustellata' volume 2 page 35. See also Capt. Hutton 'Transact. Ent. Soc.' ibid page 152.) In several moths of this family the females have abortive wings, but no instance is known of the males being incapable of flight, for in this case the species could hardly have been perpetuated. In the silk-moth both sexes have imperfect, crumpled wings, and are incapable of flight; but still there is a trace of the characteristic difference in the ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... 'Gan thunder, and both ends of heav'n: the clouds From many a horrid rift abortive poured Fierce rain with lightning mixt, water with fire In ruin reconciled; nor slept the winds Within their stoney caves, but rush'd abroad From the four hinges of the world, and fell On the ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... perfection of the art had disappeared with the limits within which the Giottesques had been satisfied to move; instead of the intelligible and solemn conventionalism of the Giottesques, we see only disorder, half-understood ideas and abortive attempts, confusion which reminds us of those enigmatic sheets on which Leonardo or Michel Angelo scrawled out their ideas, drawings within drawings, plans of buildings scratched over Madonna heads, single flowers upside down next to ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... onye impediment to Normound Leslie or his complicies, that thai may frelie cum to Edinburgh to the Parliament and allege thair defensis, and frelie to pas and repas," &c.—(Treasurer's Accounts.) Some overtures to Parliament for their remission having proved abortive, the persons referred to were declared guilty of high treason, and their lands and goods forfeited. The chief persons mentioned in the summons were—Norman Lesley, Fear of Rothes; Peter Carmichael of Balmadie; James Kirkaldy of the Grange; William Kirkaldy, his eldest ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... prime of life, may almost be called the abortive Alfred of Scotland. Had he lived, he might have made important contributions to her literature as well as laws, and given her a standing among the nations of Europe, which it took long ages, and even an incorporation with England, to secure. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... one birth or another, and no creature can open its womb sooner, or shut it longer, than the appointed and prefixed season. There is no miscarrying as to him whose decrees do properly conceive them though to us they seem often abortive. Now, join unto this, to make the allusion full, as long as they are carried in the womb of time, they are hid from all the world. The womb is a dark lodging and no understanding nor eye can pierce into it, to ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... remarkable. In early life he had been, like Bunyan, a thoroughly depraved character; like him had entered the army, and had been promoted to the rank of a major in the royal forces. Having made an abortive attempt to raise a rebellion in his native county of Kent,[90] he and eleven others were made prisoners, tried by martial law, and condemned to the gallows. On the night previous to the day appointed for his execution, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Unfortunately, one of those thick fogs, so common on the Peruvian coast, arose, in which the Lautaro parted company, and did not rejoin the flag-ship for four days afterwards, when the carnival being at an end, our plan was rendered abortive. ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... the continuity of the collective mind; that is manifestly a primary necessity for Socialism. The attempt to realize the Marxist idea of a democratic Socialism without that, might easily fail into the abortive birth of an acephalous monster, the secular development of administrative Socialism give the world over to a bureaucratic mandarinate, self-satisfied, interfering and unteachable, with whom wisdom would die. ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... that her son Charles, who had been bidden to cajole and talk over the Huguenot chiefs, had been attracted by their honesty and uprightness, and was ready to throw himself into their hands, and escape from hers. An abortive attempt on Guise's part to murder the Admiral Coligny led to all the Huguenots going about armed, and making demonstrations which alarmed both the queen and the people of Paris. Guise and the Duke of Anjou were, therefore, allowed to work their will, and to rouse the bloodthirstiness ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... they have not themselves created the wave which bears themselves, and humanity, onwards. The artificial social movements which have had their origin in the arbitrary will of individuals, guided with however much determination and reason, have of necessity proved ephemeral and abortive. An Alexander might will to weld a Greece and an Asia into one; a Napoleon might resolve to create of a diversified Europe one consolidated state; and by dint of skill and determination they might for a moment ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... besides forming this masonry all down the tree, protected a bud at the base of its own stalk. From this bud, unless rendered abortive, a new shoot would spring next year. Now, supposing that out of the leaf-buds on each shoot of a pentagonal tree, only five at its extremity or on its side were permitted to develop themselves, even under this limitation the number ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... conciliation. The aristocratic free-booters who had enriched themselves by harassing the Spanish Indies were succeeded by a less romantic but more business-like generation, which devoted itself to trade and planting. Abortive attempts at colonization had been made in the sixteenth century. The Dutch, who were trading in the West Indies as early as 1542, by 1580 seem to have gained some foothold in Guiana;[58] and the French Huguenots, under the patronage of the Admiral ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... body in which it acts. The machine which constitutes the visible man, bears no proportion to our thoughts, our wishes and desires. Hence we are never satisfied; we always feel the want of something we have not; and this uneasiness is continually pushing us on to precipitate and abortive resolves. ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... classes are a substitute for Aristotle's abortive Categories. As they comprise all nameable things, every fact is made up of them or some of them; those that are called subjective facts being composed wholly of feelings as such, and the objective facts, though composed wholly or partly of substances and attributes, being grounded on corresponding ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... adopt some different course of action. Shalmaneser had discovered during his abortive campaign that there were discords and jealousies among the various Phoenician cities; that none of them submitted without repugnance to the authority of Tyre, and that Sidon especially had an ancient ground of quarrel with her more powerful sister, and always cherished the hope of recovering her ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... town; and all the way, I was meditating upon some means of escape for myself and my children. My friends had made every effort that ingenuity could devise to effect our purchase, but all their plans had proved abortive. Dr. Flint was suspicious, and determined not to loosen his grasp upon us. I could have made my escape alone; but it was more for my helpless children than for myself that I longed for freedom. Though the boon would have been precious to me, above all price, I would not have ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... infant's pity-moving cry? That feeble sob, unlike the new-born note Which came with vigour from the op'ning throat, When air and light first rush'd on lungs and eyes, And there was life and spirit in the cries; Now an abortive, faint attempt to weep Is all we hear; sensation is asleep: The boy was healthy, and at first express'd His feelings loudly when he fail'd to rest; When cramm'd with food, and tighten'd every limb, To cry aloud ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... like a meteor; and an after-recollection of a certain French tragedy-queen, Agrippina, showed me that the ground was still further preoccupied. But it is high time to tell the destined name of my abortive play; in four ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... and the "Unknown." She was the wife of Count de Valmont, and mother of Florian, "the foundling of the forest." In order to come into the property, Baron Longueville used every endeavor to kill Eugenia and Florian, but all his attemps were abortive, and his villainy at length was brought to light.—W. Dimond, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... and to re-sell them after amalgamating, enlarging, and re-distributing what are now called "uneconomic" holdings. Provisions to this end had been inserted in earlier Acts, but, in the absence of administrative machinery and financial resources, they remained abortive. It had for long been evident that the small, impoverished holdings, which had supported a dense population before the famine, stood in need of fundamental remodelling if they were to support even a largely reduced population. The efforts made by wealthy ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... travelled through so many years, each station of which was marked by disillusions and failures. Since the war on the nobles had begun in 1789, all their efforts at resistance, disdainful at first, stubborn later on, blundering always, had been pitifully abortive. Their rebuffs could no longer be counted, and there was some justification in that for the scornful hatred on the part of the new order towards a caste which for so many centuries had believed themselves to be possessed of all the talents. Many of ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... Ammocoetes.... At a later period the basis cranii of vertebrate animals contains three parts analogous to the bodies of vertebrae, the most anterior of which, in the majority of animals, is generally small, and its development frequently abortive, whilst in man and mammiferous animals the three are very distinct. These parts are developed by the formation of three distinct points of ossification, one behind the other, in ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... deputation to ask counsel of the old sage. He, if any one, would find some means of averting or, at any rate, mitigating the fearful calamity impending over the town and country, and against which prayer, sacrifice, processions, and pilgrimages had proved abortive. They were quite resolved to leave no means untried, not even if heathen magic ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Memorial never would be finished. It was quite an affecting sight, I used to think, to see him with the kite when it was up a great height in the air. What he had told me, in his room, about his belief in its disseminating the statements pasted on it, which were nothing but old leaves of abortive Memorials, might have been a fancy with him sometimes; but not when he was out, looking up at the kite in the sky, and feeling it pull and tug at his hand. He never looked so serene as he did then. I used to fancy, as I sat by him of ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... contemplation. The possibility of forming such an establishment at the present time in England, may be reasonably called in question. The attempt made some ten years ago, though commended by the minister of the day, was signally abortive; and the subsequent endeavour of a popular musician to open a theatre for the performance of English operas, was equally futile and unsuccessful. One thing of primary importance—the patronage of the higher classes—was wanting to both these efforts. Were the stamp of fashion once impressed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... precautions of the Protector and Council had been commensurate. The projected Overton revolt in Scotland and the Wildman-Sexby plot in England having been brought to nothing, the Royalists had to act for themselves. Two abortive risings in March, 1654-5, exhausted their energy. One was in Yorkshire, where Sir Henry Slingsby and Sir Richard Malevrier appeared in arms, but were immediately suppressed. The other was in the West, and was more serious. On the night of Sunday, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... is setiform, slightly flexuous, white above, then tawny, deep shining brown at the base, striate, hollow, frequently branched and sarmentose, with or without abortive pilei.—M. J. B. This plant is very common in woods on fallen twigs. The plants in Figure 108 were collected near Cincinnati. This plant has a wide distribution. It is ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... the two World Wars, Lithuania was annexed by the USSR in 1940. On 11 March 1990, Lithuania became the first of the Soviet republics to declare its independence, but Moscow did not recognize this proclamation until September of 1991 (following the abortive coup in Moscow). The last Russian troops withdrew in 1993. Lithuania subsequently restructured its economy for integration into Western European institutions; it joined both NATO and the EU ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... in her favor, or had even been arranged for. Some bold coup d'etat might be in contemplation, and although the many and diverse interests in the country were probably sufficient to render any attempt abortive in itself, yet such an attempt might be the one thing needed to fan the smouldering ashes into flame, starting a conflagration which would burn throughout Europe. Such fires never die ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... proved abortive. Goldsmith said, "I think our friend Abercrombie can write better about plants than I can." And so doubtless he could, so far as knowledge of their habits went. Eight years after, Abercrombie prepared a book called "Every ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... under arms to protect the dockyard, and fully expected to have warm work. The people who formed the rebel bands had been instigated to revolt by the revolutionists of the southern colonies, who had formed a plan at this time to invade Canada, which happily proved abortive. They themselves, as far as I could learn, had ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... or later a man's talents, and if not his talents, his tastes, appear through the mists of youth, and henceforth they lead him. Willy's efforts in society had resulted in abortive dinner- parties, his efforts in sport had been cut short by nerves, his efforts in dissipation had left him with a tolerably well-filled wardrobe, his efforts in love had brought him tears and a commonplace mistress, whom he kept in the necessaries of life in various lodging- houses. ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... the pecan or the black walnut, sets its fruit in the spring, you will find that there are cross-pollinated and self-pollinated fruits. These will begin to drop their nuts or their fruit at definite stages. Furthermore we will find the abortive seeds are not one size. This means that there were definite stages of the pollination and of the fertilization. I should like to work that up and find ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... distance—for how should a true image of him pass from town to town, by forest and mountain, throughout all that vast empire? The Master's life alone made clear to me what I had failed to gather from his followers. Just as their delirious dancings and shrieks and spasms were abortive attempts to produce his prayer-ecstasy, so in all things did they but caricature him. But now that he is dead, and these extravagances are no longer to be checked by his living example, so monstrous are the deeds wrought ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... francs per annum. They have the peculiar privilege of receiving their salary, and the prerogative of "not opposing" the promulgation of the laws. They are all illustrious personages."[2] This is not an "abortive Senate,"[3] like that of Napoleon the uncle; this is a genuine Senate; the marshals are members, and the cardinals and ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... count allowed—excessively difficult as it continually is to secure perfect accuracy—should prove defective in point of law, the prisoner, though guilty, must either escape scot-free, or become the subject of reiterated and abortive prosecution—a gross scandal to the administration of justice, and grave injury to the interests of society. If these observations be read with attention, and borne in mind, they will afford great assistance in forming a clear ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... master of belles lettres at Alexandria, he set himself to oppose and make war against the Pythagorean doctrine, and that of natural philosophy; seeking by means of his logical ratiocination to propose definitions and notions, certain fifth entities and other abortive portions of fantastical cogitations, as principles and substance of things, more anxious about the esteem of the vulgar stupid crowd, which is influenced and governed by sophisms and appearances which are found ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... finding that their design had proved abortive, went directly to the place of rendezvous, and told the first of his troops whom he met that they had lost their labour, and must return to their cave. He himself set them the example, and they all returned as ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... "Other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold." The design of the picture is to reveal the various causes which at different times and places render the husbandman's labour abortive and leave his garner empty. This done, there is no need of more. The seed, when none of these things impeded it, prospered as a matter of course, under the ordinary care of man and ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... friends, and the pleasantest kind of acquaintance, those who like to be social, are repulsed by it. The failure therefore is general, involving the loss of nearly all that is valuable in society, by an abortive attempt ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... actions, and sometimes even determine them, by a process analogous to that of suggestion upon a hypnotized person, and this is so because of the tendency in every idea to resolve itself into action—an idea being simply an inchoate or abortive act. It was this notion that suggested to Fouillee his theory of idea-forces. But ordinarily ideas are forces which we accommodate to other forces, deeper and ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... Great Britain, and being at length join'd by France, which brought us into great danger; and the laboured and long-continued endeavour of our governor, Thomas, to prevail with our Quaker Assembly to pass a militia law, and make other provisions for the security of the province, having proved abortive, I determined to try what might be done by a voluntary association of the people. To promote this, I first wrote and published a pamphlet, entitled PLAIN TRUTH, in which I stated our defenceless situation in strong lights, ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... the toil had been intolerable and disproportioned to the object. Nero, however, who longed to achieve things that exceeded credibility, exerted all his might to perforate the mountains adjoining to Avernus, and to this day there remain traces of his abortive project. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... seven and twenty Yeas. The Ministers gave in their Arguments yesterday, else it had hardly gon, because several have married their wives sisters, and the Deputies thought it hard to part them. 'Twas concluded on the other hand, that not to part them, were to make the Law abortive, by begetting in people a conceipt that such Marriages were not ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... is at hand, And to our presence leads Evander. All Thy dark complottings, and thy treach'rous arts, Have prov'd abortive. ...
— The Grecian Daughter • Arthur Murphy
... parliament did not come forward with adequate relief; while he proclaimed their measures totally inadequate, and showing either ignorance of the state of the country, or want of sympathy for its sufferings. He affirmed that in the ruin which had fallen on the land, any attempt to levy rates would be abortive, and drive the people to desperation. The honourable and venerable member depicted the condition of the people with truthful eloquence, and he was no less correct in showing the shortcomings of the government schemes of relief. His speech was delivered in a faint voice, and with every symptom ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... until the Committee was properly armed and had seized Kruger, he suddenly crossed the border with his forces. The Raid was a fizzle and the commander and all his men were captured by the Boers. This abortive attempt was the real prelude to the Boer War, which came four ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... aided by the diary which I kept at the time. A few extracts from the latter will carry me on to those scenes which are indelibly fixed in every detail upon my memory. I proceed, then, from the morning which followed our abortive chase of the convict and our other strange experiences ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... sentence will be supplied by the next,' have been recommended by Dr. Samuel Johnson to 'attend to the History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.' They are characterised by a hectic hopefulness. Nothing damps them. They rise from the ruins of one abortive sentence, to launch forth into another with unabated vigour. They have all the manner of an orator. From the tone of their voice, you would expect a splendid period—and lo! a string of broken-backed, disjointed clauses, eked out with stammerings and throat-clearings. ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... powers of absorption of any subject there can be no question. It has been urged, as against this, that the Japanese possess the defect not uncommon among people of any race, viz., that the capacity for rapidly assimilating knowledge is to some extent counteracted or rendered abortive by an incapacity to practically apply that knowledge. I may say for myself that though I have often heard this objection urged I have not seen any indications of this lack of ability to practically apply knowledge on the part of the Japanese. I should have thought that the Russo-Japanese war ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... he shall not regret having come, as he wanted change of air, is much the better for the journey, and has had the satisfaction of seeing his sister in Paris. Nevertheless, if this effort to settle himself to his mind in England proves abortive, I do not think the Grevilles will get him ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... so far as they have professed to be infallible, are, from the Catholic standpoint, abortive ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... and easy process, a quiet unfolding of leafy green in a bright and windless air. If I recognize the delight of expansion, I recognize also the pain of repression—the thwarted desire, the unfulfilled hope, the passion vain and abortive. I do not say even whether or no, in this dim travail of the spirit, pleasure prevails over pain, evil over good. The most I would claim is to have suggested a meaning for our life in terms of Good; and my view, I half hoped, would have ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... w-wit w-with nine-ninet-teen out of t-twenty.' — 'And affected stuttering for humour: replied our landlord, tho', God knows, there is an affinity betwixt them.' It seems, this wag, after having made some abortive attempts in plain speaking, had recourse to this defect, by means of which he frequently extorted the laugh of the company, without the least expence of genius; and that imperfection, which he had at first counterfeited, was now become so habitual, that ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... wild dark eyes gleamed, as Captain Truck passed the lamp before his face, and it was sufficiently apparent that he fancied a very serious misfortune had befallen him. As any verbal communication was out of the question, some abortive attempts were essayed by the two mariners to make themselves understood by signs, which, like some men's reasoning, produced results exactly contrary to ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... of these bodies to us lies in the question, What is their history? Can they have been once a single planet broken up? or are they rather an abortive attempt at a planet never yet ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... separated peoples, been attached to the remarkable group of which Alcyone is the chief. But since Maedler's time it has been demonstrated that the Pleiades cannot be the center of revolution of the universe, and, as already remarked, all attempts to find or fix such a center have proved abortive. Yet so powerful was the hold that the theory took upon the popular imagination, that even today astronomers are often asked if Alcyone is not the probable site of ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... if the seaman's exertions would prove abortive, but something in the spirit of the wounded bull suddenly changed the aspect of affairs. Whether it was the stinging pain of the small shot in its flank, or the indignation in its breast that influenced it we cannot ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... sacrificed to their offspring. In our superior human civilisation, in which quantity ever tends to give place to quality, the higher value of the individual involves an effort to avoid sacrifice which sometimes proves worse than abortive. An avian philosopher would be unlikely to feel called upon to denounce nests as the dark places of the earth, and in laying down our human moral laws we have always to be aware of forgetting the fundamental biological relationship of parent and child to which all such moral laws must conform. ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... Immediately an abortive blow from the poet's puny arm swished the air. Pinchas was roused, the veins on his forehead swelled, his heart thumped rapidly in his bosom. Wolf shook his knobby fist laughingly at the poet, who made no further effort to use any other weapon ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... courage of the defenders in the two cases was not the same; but, throwing out of consideration this chance, it must be granted that the difficulties of a position, when properly taken advantage of, need not be insurmountable in order to render the attack abortive. At Elchingen the great height and steepness of the banks, rendering the fire almost ineffectual, were more disadvantageous ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... you powers divine! spare all this noise, This rack of heaven, and speak your fatal pleasure. Why breaks yon dark and dusky orb away? Why from the bleeding womb of monstrous night, Burst forth such myriads of abortive stars? Ha! my Jocasta, look! the silver moon! A settling crimson stains her beauteous face! She's all o'er blood! and look, behold again, What mean the mystic heavens she journies on? A vast eclipse darkens the labouring planet:— Sound there, sound all our instruments of war; Clarions ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... the Civil War the great majority of legal practitioners obtained their preparation in a law office. Though the University of Pennsylvania attempted to establish a law school in 1791, and Columbia in 1797, both attempts were abortive, and it remained for Harvard to establish the first permanent law school in 1817. Even this was but a feeble affair until Justice Joseph Story became associated with it in 1830. Up to 1870 but three terms ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... difficulties, it was quite impossible to find enough competent teachers who would undertake the work of instruction, so the matter fell through, and, as I do not believe in the "blind leading the blind," I am convinced that any attempt to establish an English Dramatic Academy will prove abortive. ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... and, swinging the hammer with a will, discharged a smashing blow on his own knuckles. With admirable presence of mind he crushed down an oath and substituted the harmless comment, "Butter fingers!" But the pain was sharp, his nerve was shaken, and after an abortive trial he found he must desist from ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from the room. Since the night of the abortive raid upon The Cedars he had showed a marked aversion from the society of newspaper men. Regarding the facts of his donation to the fund he had vouchsafed no word to Zoe. Closely had the story of ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... of false and untenable theories regarding the resurrection of our Lord are cited as examples of the numerous abortive attempts to explain away the greatest miracle and the most glorious fact of history. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is attested by evidence more conclusive than that upon which rests our acceptance of historical events in general. Yet the testimony ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... entry] June 6. Latitude 16 degrees 30 minutes, longitude (chron.) 134 degrees. Dry night and wind steady enough to require no change in sail; but this A.M. an attempt to lower it proved abortive. First the third mate tried and got up to the block, and fastened a temporary arrangement to reeve the halyards through, but had to come down, weak and almost fainting, before finishing; then Joe tried, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... jargon. All which, if it were to be first rased from his book (as just so much of nothing to the purpose) how little would remain to give the trouble of an answer! To which let me add, that the spirit or genius, which animates the whole, is plainly perceived to be nothing else but the abortive malice of an old neglected man,[8] who hath long lain under the extremes of obloquy, poverty and contempt; that have soured his temper, and made him fearless. But where is the merit of being bold, to a man ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... there," and kneeling, busied himself with opening a way to the wound. Out over the flats swung the long skirmish line, picturesque in the variety of its undress, Cutler striding vociferous in its wake, while a bugler ran himself out of breath, far to the eastward front, to puff feeble and abortive breath into unresponsive copper. And still the same flutter of distant, scattering shots came drifting back from the brakes and canons in the rocky wilds beyond the stream. The guard still pursued and the Indians still led, but they who knew anything well knew it could not be long ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... give up law, not, however, to return to theology, but to begin the study of medicine. But medicine, though at first it seemed more attractive, failed, like law, to call forth his full energies. In the mean time another interference on the part of the Duke proved even more abortive, and to a certain extent determined the path which Schiller's genius was to take in life. The Duke had prohibited all German classics at his Academy; the boys, nevertheless, succeeded in forming a secret library, and Schiller read the works of Klopstock, Klinger, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... imitate this style and to lead, by means of the romance itself, a reaction against the false heroism that the romance had introduced, proved sadly abortive. These attempts have fallen into a still more profound oblivion than those of the story-tellers of Shakespeare's time. The English were not yet masters of the supple, crisp and animated language which suited that kind of tale, and which the French possessed from the thirteenth century. ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... They proceeded to sustain their purpose of secession by arms against the force which the United States brought to bear against them. Were their arms victorious? If they were, then their secession was an accomplished fact. If not, it was nothing more than an abortive attempt—a purpose unfulfilled. They failed to maintain their ground by force of arms. In other words, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine |
