"Acquirement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I are like to like. We come of the same race, we speak the same language, we worship the same God, we have the same ideas of culture and of pleasures. The difference is one that is not patent to the eye or to the ear. It is a difference of accidental incident, not of nature or of acquirement." ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... confined to that wearisome system of loud-voiced repetition which is so annoying a feature in Indian schools; and the Koran is, of course, the text-book in all forms of education. Every Afghan gentleman can read and speak Persian, but beyond this acquirement education seems to be limited to the physical development of the youth by instruction in horsemanship and feats of skill. Such advanced education as exists in Afghanistan is centred in the priests and physicians; but the ignorance of both is ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... is well known in America by reputation, and is one of the most able and judicious among the three hundred missionaries, whom the American Board sends forth throughout the world. Here at Gaboon, he preaches to the natives in their own language, which he represents as being very soft, and easy of acquirement. The people frequent divine services with great regularity, and are at least attentive listeners, if not edified by what they hear. Mrs. Wilson is a lady of remarkable zeal and energy. Reared in luxury, in a Southern city, she liberated her slaves, gave up a handsome ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... the arrangements of the household. The rest of the day was devoted to the enormous correspondence and affairs of administration which devolved upon him as first minister of state and treasury. He was very ignorant. He had no experience or acquirement in the arts either of war or peace, and his early education had been limited. Like his master, he spoke no tongue but Spanish, and he had no literature. He had prepossessing manners, a fluent tongue, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... criticism of painting that this truth most needs enforcing, for it is in popular judgments on pictures that that false generalisation of all art into forms of poetry is most prevalent. To suppose that all is mere technical acquirement in delineation or touch, working through and addressing itself to the intelligence, on the one side, or a merely poetical, or what may be called literary interest, addressed also to the pure intelligence, on the other;—this ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... of the treaty of peace with Spain. When the Philippine question was up in the Senate, I made a speech in which I compared Senator Hoar with his colleague, Senator Lodge, said that Senator Lodge had no such fear as did Senator Hoar on account of the acquirement of non-contiguous territory, and made the remark that Senator Hoar was far behind the times. He was not present when I made the speech, but afterwards read it in the Record. He came down to my seat greatly out of humor ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... thought to be never failing in its virtue to alleviate, if not to cure. Women in the last few years have been wiser than the doctors, for while they looked only at alleviation of pain, wives and mothers began to look beyond that, at the probable acquirement of the taste for drink, and now this prescription is becoming less frequent. Let the women of Canada banish this liquor from their sideboards and kitchens, and from their medicine chests. Let it be given as medicine, only as a last resort, and by the advice of a careful physician. ...
— Why and how: a hand-book for the use of the W.C.T. unions in Canada • Addie Chisholm
... plants: it is a great puzzle, but I fancy I partially see my way—too long for a letter and too speculative for publication. The groundwork of the acquirement of such peculiar fertility (for what you say about any other distinct individual being, as it would appear, sufficient, is very true) rests on the stamens and pistil having varied first in relative length, as actually ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... free schools, melting in a common crucible all differences of religion, language, and race, and giving to the child of the day laborer and the son of the millionaire equal opportunities to excel in the pursuit and acquirement of knowledge. This is an advantage and a blessing which the poor man enjoys in ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... may affect, a true knowledge of the art of painting is by no means an easy acquirement; it is not a natural gift, but demands much reading and study. Many there are, no doubt, who may be able to descant speciously enough, perhaps, on the perfections and defects of a picture; but, on that account alone, they are ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... place, isn't it, father?" Fred asked, following his father's look and thought from the Morris chair to the student's lamp, and all those other things which nowadays seem an inevitable part of the acquirement ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... from intellectual grounds; and he could hardly help seeing, if he thought at all on the subject, which is doubtful, that Hugh was as far behind Margaret in the higher gifts and graces, as he was before her in intellectual acquirement. But whether David perceived this or not, certainly Margaret did not even think in that direction. She was pure of self-judgment—conscious of no comparing of herself with others, least of all with those ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... to the former. Strife constitutes him. He is a war of elements; "hurled from change to change unceasingly." But rest is death; for it is the cessation of the spiritual activity, whose essence is acquirement, not mere possession, whether ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... be cultivated by yet another means, namely, by the acquirement of the characteristic known as positiveness. There is a beautiful legend in which it is related of Christ Jesus, that He, with others, passed the dead body of a dog. The others turned aside from the hideous sight, ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... be able to discover a single case of crime so far among them; and, finally, that in those instances where they were able to purchase a little land and stock, they have made as good progress toward the acquirement of homes and property as have the average poor white immigrants to the State. He will first learn, then, from the refugees themselves something of the desperate nature of the causes that drove them from the South, and secondly, from their lives here, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... with style, for all the arts rest on the imitation of accepted models. Many students in all schools of journalism come from immigrant families and are both inconceivably ignorant of English and inconceivably satisfied with their acquirement of English, as we all are with a strange tongue we have learned to speak. Even in families with two or more generations of American life, the vocabulary is limited, construction careless, and the daily contact with ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... Though some kinds of study and reading came as easily as boating to him, he was not of the material that usually makes the first-rate Eton scholar. There had sprung up in him a meditative yearning after wide knowledge which is likely always to abate ardor in the fight for prize acquirement in narrow tracks. Happily he was modest, and took any second-rate-*ness in himself simply as a fact, not as a marvel necessarily to be accounted for by a superiority. Still Mr. Eraser's high opinion of the lad had not been altogether belied by the youth: ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... no means meant as an aid to the acquirement of heavenly bliss alone. Many of the great sacrifices are for the gaining of good things on earth. In one passage there is described a ceremony, the result of which is to be that the warrior, who is the sacrificer, may say to a man of the people "fetch out and give ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... coming, and nothing in the way of a telling stroke had yet been struck—nothing worthy the vaulting ambition of a soldier accomplished. Fighting is a soldier's profession, and the peculiar opportunities afforded by a siege, for the acquirement of fame and distinction, were too rare to be let pass unseized. How much the Commander and his staff may have been influenced by considerations of this kind, is not easy to say. But signs were not wanting that a serious endeavour was to be made to induce Mahomet to ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... not in the suttas, but they deal somewhat elaborately with those that are already found in the suttas. Buddhagho@sa in distinguishing the special features of the suttas from the Abhidhammas says that the acquirement of the former leads one to attain meditation (samadhi) whereas the latter leads one to attain wisdom (pannasampadam). The force of this statement probably lies in this, that the dialogues of ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... out East Bridgeport, he was the author of the improvements on the water-front known as Seaside Park. The idea of such a thing occurred to him first in 1863, when he rode over the ground and observed its fitness for the purpose. He then began agitating the matter, and urging the immediate acquirement by the city of land for a park and public drive-way along the margin of the Sound. It was necessary, he represented, to do it at once, before the natural increase in the value of the land made such an undertaking too expensive. That it would be a profitable venture ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to metre. The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement, or communication, of truth; the proper and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure. This definition is useful; but as it would include novels and other works of fiction, which yet we do not call poems, there ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... instance; but it was that sort of curiosity, which appeared rather to be incited by the desire of looking narrowly at the persons of those who were to have the honour of being presented to their Great Emperor, than for the sake of gratifying the eye or the mind, by the acquirement of information or new ideas. The vessel, although so very different from their own, was an object of little notice; and although eager to get a transient glance at the passengers, their curiosity was satisfied in a moment, and was generally accompanied with some vague exclamation, in which the words ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... with the great laws of social existence; to have acquired the rudiments of the physical and psychological sciences, and a fair knowledge of elementary arithmetic and geometry. He should have obtained an acquaintance with logic rather by example than by precept; while the acquirement of the elements of music and drawing should have ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... Cousin Godfrey, would have done far more than all his intellectual labor upon her to lift her feet above such snares as she was now walking amid. She needed some play—a thing far more important to life than a great deal of what is called business and acquirement. Many a matter, over which grown people look important, long-faced, and consequential, is folly, compared with the merest child's frolic, in relation to the true ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... studied and spoken, particularly at Court, but English was a rare acquirement, still more Italian or Spanish. There was, however, a small inner circle where these languages were studied, chiefly in order to read the master-works of modern literature. And this was all the more creditable because there were ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... by dancing at the festivals of the Ghors, or Memlooks. Reasonably modest at first, the dancing of the Alme became, in the course of time, so conspicuously indelicate that great numbers of the softer sex persuaded themselves to its acquirement and practice, and a certain viceregal Prude once contracted the powers of the whole Cairo contingent of Awalim into the pent up Utica of the town of Esuch, some five hundred miles removed from the viceregal dissenting eye. For a brief season the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... interested in them. Where the concern is large, and can afford a remuneration sufficient to attract a class of candidates superior to the common average, it is possible to select for the general management, and for all the skilled employments of a subordinate kind, persons of a degree of acquirement and cultivated intelligence which more than compensates for their inferior interest in the result. It must be further remarked that it is not a necessary consequence of joint-stock management that the persons employed, whether in superior ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... development, or after the completion of the development any one of the inborn characters of an individual is modified by some occurrence, the change thus produced is known as an acquired character, or, shortly, as an acquirement. ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... possible the comforts of life. We claim no credit for preferring these lines of investment. We make no sacrifices. These are the lines of largest and surest return. In this particular, namely, in cheapness, ease of acquirement, and universality of means of subsistence, our country easily surpasses that of any other in the world, though we are behind other countries, perhaps, ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller
... refreshing than to gaze upon this charming pastoral scene? This azure earth, this verdant sky, this lovely maid who combined in her person all the simpering charms of youth, and never, for one misguided moment, troubled her ochre head over the acquirement of that higher knowledge which, as we all know, is the proud prerogative of man! What price shall I say for 'The Maiden's Dream'? No bids! Put it down if you please, Joshua. We have no art collectors ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... risings in Sicily, the local interest of which would naturally appeal to the author; On Rhetoric and Rhetorical Figures; an Alphabetical Selection of Phrases, intended to serve as a guide to the acquirement of a pure Attic style—the first example of an Atticist lexicon, mentioned by Suidas in the preface to his lexicon as one of his authorities; Against the Phrygians, probably an attack on the florid style of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... proportion of all the reading that is done, is oral reading. It is silent reading that is universally employed as an instrument of study, of business, of amusement. As a rule, however, very little provision is made for the acquirement of a facility in silent reading; this, it is thought, will result as a by-product of the regular training in oral reading. Almost the reverse of this is true. Ease and flexibility of articulation, quickness in catching the drift of ideas, and readiness in varying the tones of the voice ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... enable them to sell their services in the best theatrical markets of the world, which seems to me to be a pretty "useful" sort of a property for one to have in their permanent possession. If I here repeat that frequent practice on the part of the student is necessary for the correct acquirement of Musical Comedy dancing, I am merely stating what is right and necessary that all should understand who desire to make their services in this line of endeavor available for public approval and ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... actual ideas, feelings, and intellectual and moral tendencies of his own country and of his own age. The true practical statesman is he who combines this experience with a profound knowledge of abstract political philosophy. Either acquirement, without the other, leaves him lame and impotent if he is sensible of the deficiency; renders him obstinate and presumptuous if, as is more probable, he is entirely ...
— Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... sometimes effected, gives new vigor continually to the mind, and also leads to the habit of that "industry and patient thought" to which the immortal Newton attributed all he had done; while at the same time a vivid pleasure is taken in the acquirement of knowledge so obtained beyond any that can be conferred by reward ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... circumnutating, though often on a small scale. Even the stems of seedlings before they have broken through the ground, as well as their buried radicles, circumnutate, as far as the pressure of the surrounding earth permits. In this universally present movement we have the basis or groundwork for the acquirement, according to the requirements of the plant, of the most diversified movements. Thus the great sweeps made by the stems of the twining plants, and by the tendrils of other climbers, result from a mere increase in the amplitude of the ordinary movement ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell
... sort, which might have been more appropriately called the "Pleasures of a Single Man," seeing that the work had more to do with the hero's hopeless love for a fair damsel, and his hours at clubs, cafes, and other places of amusement in which I had no special interest, than it did with the acquirement of literature. Thus, with the delusive idea that I was to be ushered into some of the secret enjoyments of the pleasing diversion of book-buying, I presently found myself more familiar with the habits, vices, and various unimportant matters of the author's conception—points, ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... capable of being hardened into convictions; his natural gifts (and they were many) could be raised into talents; his life, in fact, could have been made a success by one influence—the love of a woman—the one influence that was forbidden: the single human acquirement that must for ever be beyond the priest's reach. This Christian Vellacott felt in a vague, uncertain way. He did not know very much about love and its influence upon a man's character, these questions never having come under his journalistic field of inquiry; but he had ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... called—nor that Marion who got upon a dolphin, and came out of the sea like a man riding on a hired mule—nor even that other great musician who built a city with a hundred gates and as many posterns—never a one of them invented an instrument half so easy of acquirement, so ready to the touch, so pleasing and simple as to its frets, keys, and chords, and so far from troublesome in the tuning and keeping in accord; and by all the saints, they swear that it was invented by a gallant of this very ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... excellence is to be referred to the very general acquirement of what we call "art cultivation" among American women, and this, in conjunction with a knowledge that her social world will be apt to judge of her capacity by her success or want of success in making her ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... gain of ten thousand dollars. I was doing well. I was putting by from two to three thousand dollars every year, and was in a fair way to get rich. But, as money began to accumulate, I grew more and more eager in its acquirement, and less concerned about the principles underlying every action, until I passed into a temporary state of moral blindness. I was less scrupulous about securing large advantages in trade, and would take the lion's share, if opportunity ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... without elevating them; and who, as might be expected in such a state of things, are the least respectable members of the community. The only unprofessional man that I know in Philadelphia (and he studied, though he does not practice, medicine) who is also a person of literary taste and acquirement, has lamented to me that all his early friends and associates having become absorbed in their several callings, whenever he visits them he feels that he is diverting them from the labor of their lives, and the ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... and gracefully, this extraordinary sentence. My mind was hopelessly lost in attempting to imagine the number of years of patient toil which must have preceded his first request for food, and I contemplated with astonishment the indefatigable perseverance which has borne him triumphant through the acquirement of such a language. If the simple request for something to eat presented such apparently insurmountable obstacles to pronunciation, what must the language be in its dealings with the more abstruse questions of theological and metaphysical ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... of strength, daring, and superhuman stature; and an undefinable curiosity for all that is connected with the Danish race began to pervade me; and if, long after, when I became a student I devoted myself with peculiar zest to Danish lore and the acquirement of the old Norse tongue and its dialects, I can only explain the matter by the early impression received at Hythe from the tale of the old sexton, beneath the pent-house, and the sight of the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... culture of modern society between civilised and the savage peoples, and, within the limits of our own land, the gulf made by education between the higher and the lower layers of our community—I speak not of higher and lower in regard to wealth or station, but in regard to intellectual acquirement and capacity—are greater than, perhaps, they ever were in the past. But yet over the gulf a bridge is thrown, and the gulf itself is being filled up. High above all the superficial distinctions which separate ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... emulated. The presence of his friend Brewster in the Wampanoge village, also gave it increased attractions in the eyes of Henrich. The good man was still his friend and preceptor; and with his assistance, he made considerable progress in the acquirement of the native language, as well as in every other kind of knowledge that Brewster was able to impart. But all the elder's instructions were made subservient to that best of all knowledge—the knowledge of God, and of his revealed Word; and in this his pupil advanced and grew in a manner that ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... essay as a seaman before the mast, and after the slight sketch which has been given of her and her skipper, it will be readily seen that he could scarcely have hit upon a craft where he would be likely to have more hard work, or better opportunities for the acquirement of a large measure of seafaring knowledge in a ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... commander at Manassas, and a trained soldier of unusual acquirement, was so hounded and worried by ignorant, impatient politicians and newspapers as to be scarcely responsible for his acts. This may be said of all the commanders in the beginning of the war, and notably of Albert Sidney Johnston, whose ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... and the East have many of them lacked also the chance to be drilled in the things that belong to private and personal habit demanded by our civilization. It may be that for such the public school is the only medium for the belated acquirement of such habits; but if publicity in drill and lack of reserve and modesty be the price paid for wholesale instruction it may injure those with good breeding at command in their own homes by lowering their standards, even while it helps upward those who need the school baths and the school ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... Beauchamp in the art of speaking on politics tersely, Lydiard was rather astonished at his well-delivered cannonade; and he fancied that his modesty had been displaced by the new acquirement; not knowing the nervous fever of his friend's condition, for which the rattle of speech was balm, and contention a native element, and the assumption of truth a necessity. Beauchamp hugged his politics like some ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of secondary acquirement, being representations of lesser power, having only indirect and mediate ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... merely to summon forth the banker's dogmatism, and Hodder's own opinions on such matters were now in a strange and unsettled state. Mr. Parr liked best to talk of his treasures, and of the circumstances during his trips abroad that had led to their acquirement. Once the banker had asked him about parish ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Roman boy differed from that of the Greek youth in being more practical. The Laws of the Twelve Tables were committed to memory; and rhetoric and oratory were given special attention, as a mastery of the art of public speaking was an almost indispensable acquirement for the Roman citizen who aspired to take a prominent part ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... of Porson, that "Life is too short to learn German ": meaning, I apprehend, not that it is too difficult to be acquired within the ordinary space of life, but that there is nothing in it to compensate for the portion of life bestowed on its acquirement, however little ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... situation requires the strictest application and on this account it is a valuable factor in the acquirement ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... probable, that inattention to this circumstance is the reason why so few people have distinct notions of natural philosophy. Learning by rote, or even reading repeatedly, definitions of the technical terms of any science, must undoubtedly facilitate its acquirement; but conversation, with the habit of explaining the meaning of words, and the structure of common domestic implements, to children, is the sure and effectual method of preparing the mind for the acquirement ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... as it is given. This is not education, it is training to do tricks. The worker does not take over what can be called experience from one task to another. He forms certain motor habits, called skill. But under the efficient methods of scientific management the acquirement of this skill is robbed even of the educational value that it had under the unscientific method of factory work, which within its limited field, left the worker to discover by trial and error what were the best methods of getting results. Moreover, the standards ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... quickness that is startling. The influence of mind and thought on mind and thought cannot be so quickly recognized, but tells with as much certainty, and enters more deeply into the character for life. The consideration of this is a great incentive to the acquirement of self-knowledge and self-discipline by those who have to do with children. The old codes of conventionality in education, which stood for a certain system in their time, are disappearing, and the worth of the individual becomes of greater importance. This is true of those who educate and of ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... he says, 'I am Culture, and intellectual acquirement; or my name is Education, and I am going to make the tree good in the most scientific fashion, because what makes men bad is that they do not know, and if they only knew they would do the right.' Now, I thoroughly believe that education ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... latter half of the eighteenth century samplers were mostly worked on canvas or sampler cloth, a material which was used almost as long as samplers were in fashion. Different stitches were employed; there was the early drawn and cut work, and then the silk embroidery showing the girl's acquirement of the darning stitch. ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... and the Louis, of whom France Newly is govern'd; born of one, who ply'd The slaughterer's trade at Paris. When the race Of ancient kings had vanish'd (all save one Wrapt up in sable weeds) within my gripe I found the reins of empire, and such powers Of new acquirement, with full store of friends, That soon the widow'd circlet of the crown Was girt upon the temples of my son, He, from whose bones th' anointed race begins. Till the great dower of Provence had remov'd The stains, that ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... waiting for him at the club trouble might have arisen. George understood his host's mood and respected it. Lucas drove rapidly and fiercely, with appropriate frowns and settings of cruel teeth; his mien indeed had the arrogance of the performer who, having given only a fraction of his time to the acquirement of skill, reckons that he can beat the professional who has given the whole of his time. Lucas's glances at chauffeurs who hindered his swiftness were masterpieces of high disdain, and he would accelerate, after ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... woman's life is the acquirement of power through love. It is because this power is freely recognised by the men who seek her in marriage that her vanity seldom has full scope until ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... possibly be filled with the subtle speculations of the Schoolmen; not improbably, the obtaining a mastery over the products of mediaeval thought might necessitate an even greater expenditure of time and of energy than the acquirement of the "New Philosophy"; but though such work engrossed the best intellects of Europe for a longer time than has elapsed since the great fire, its effects were "writ in water," so far as our ...
— On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge • Thomas H. Huxley
... of a paedagogus, after the Greek fashion, rising before daylight, and submitting to severe discipline, which, together with the absolute necessity for a free Roman of attaining a certain level of acquirement, effectually compelled him to learn to read, write, and cipher.[274] This elementary work must have been done well; we hear little or nothing of gross ignorance ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... has become a matter of great concern to the various governments, since national financial stability and the confidence of the public in the national credit are based largely upon the acquirement of an adequate gold reserve. Both in England and in the United States, committees of experts have been appointed to make exhaustive investigations and present recommendations for measures to stimulate ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... called softly. Sally thought she would not hear, but she did. Ferry's voice, even in its subdued tones, possessed that carrying quality which is the peculiar acquirement of the trained ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... electoral vote, desiring it in favour of property and not of intelligence or knowledge. If it ever overcomes the strong feeling which exists against it, this will only be after the establishment of a systematic National Education by which the various grades of politically valuable acquirement may be accurately defined and authenticated. Without this it will always remain liable to strong, possibly conclusive, objections; and with this, it would perhaps not ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... O'Sullivan, therefore, in the course of those oppressions which the French inflicted on the inhabitants of Corsica, acquired not only great experience in business, but also in military affairs; as well as knowledge in what is termed the art of making irregular war. To this acquirement he afterwards added another; for, having served a campaign on the Rhine, it was said by a French General, under whom he fought, that his knowledge of the regular art of war was equal to that of any General in Europe. To his abilities were attributed much of the rapid success of those whom ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... acquire much deep knowledge impossible to learn through nature study, however good, a kind of knowledge that is part of their being; but how far it affects them emotionally or enters into their scheme of life, is hard to say. As they grow up much of it is merely economic acquirement: if they are to work on the land, or rear cattle, or drive a van through the country, it is all to the good; but one thing is noticeable, that they take very quickly to such allurements of town life as a cinema, or a picture ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... players. After his return to Genoa he composed his first "Etudes," which were of such unheard-of difficulty that he was sometimes obliged to practice a single passage ten hours running. His intense study resulted not only in his acquirement of an unlimited execution, but in breaking down his health. His father was a harsh and inexorable taskmaster, and up to this time Paganini (now being fourteen) had remained quiescent under this tyrant's ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... the question of seat, as I think Britons, and especially our Colonial cousins, can beat them on that point; but it is evident, as can be seen any day and in any hunting field, that more study should be devoted to the acquirement of good hands. A course of school riding, especially on a made "school" horse, which is a very light-mouthed animal, would greatly lessen the clumsiness of heavy hands; or, if such instruction were unobtainable, good practice might be had on a young horse which ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... an only son, born and reared in the midst of that ostentatious greatness which he looked on as his own by divine right; whereas his father remembered that it had chiefly become his by fortuitous acquirement, and much of it by means not likely to look well in the sight of Heaven. This son was Charles, count of Charolois, afterward celebrated under the name of Charles the Rash. He gave, even in the lifetime of his father, a striking specimen ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... while Madame Berthe Louison and Captain Anstruther lingered au cabinet particulier, over their Chablis and Ostend oysters, the recouped gambler extended his store of mental acquirement, by tender converse with the two sprightly belles of the Windy City. In fact, the whistle of the steamer was heard long before Alan Hawke could extricate himself from the clinging tentacles of the audacious beauties. He was somewhat repaid for his social exertions, however, as he sped back to keep ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... Europe. A fine person,—the accomplishments of his time in literature and the arts,—the display of gorgeous prodigality,—raised him to a sort of chivalrous rivalry with Francis I. In mental culture he excelled George IV., who owes much of his reputation for capacity and acquirement to an imposing manner, and the eagerness to applaud a prince: stripped of this charm, his ideas and language appeared worse than common when he put them on paper. Both had the same dominant ambition to be distinguished and imitated, as the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... the mouth nearly closed. The Italian singer finds no difficulty in bringing out his voice; but the Englishman has first to conquer the habit of his life, and to overcome the obstacles his native tongue opposes to his acquirement of this new but necessary, mode of using the voice. The difficulty, of laying this only foundation of real sterling excellence in the vocal art, is very great, and much care and study is indispensable. Those who have occasion to use the voice loudly in the open air, insensibly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... require detailed description. Any one of the prescribed systems of breathing can easily be adopted, and the student of singing seldom encounters any difficulty on this point. Still most teachers attach great importance to the acquirement of the correct manner of breathing. Toneless mechanical exercises are generally given, by which the student is expected to master the muscular movements before applying in singing the system advocated ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... product of all that has preceded him in history? What if you and I, from the very fact that we are living now, have in the dim groundwork of our nature something that would not have been there had we lived one, three, twelve hundred years ago? What if there be such a thing as cumulative acquirement for the race of men, so that a new generation starts with an available capital of associations and ideas of which the generation last preceding it owned but a part? Take such words as "feudalism," ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... many tests, such as those in the upper years of the Binet system, could be regarded as most unfair. However, the simpler language tests she did fairly well, especially those where she could understand the commonsense questions. In regard to her acquirement of English, she has done better than her relatives, who continue to live in a neighborhood where their own Slavic dialect is spoken. When it came to dealing reasoningly with concrete situations, such as those presented by our performance tests, this young woman did comparatively well—quite above ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... man of various genius and acquirement, with whose writings people of many countries have been delighted, entered an office, holding in his hand two black-bordered notes, inviting him ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Happily they fell upon it by accident. But the Indians, according to their custom, had taken so much precaution to hide their trail, that they found themselves exceedingly perplexed to keep it, and they were obliged to put forth all the acquirement and instinct of woodsmen not to find themselves every moment at fault in regard to their course. The rear Indians of the file had covered their foot prints with leaves. They often turned off at right ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... in geography and in navigation, the discoveries really made in the rich tropical zones, the acquirement of a new world, and the rich products continually reaching Europe from it, for a time aroused Spain from her lethargy. The world opened east and west. The new routes poured their spices, silks, and drugs through ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... and a residuum. Very much of him, too much perhaps, had gone into the acquirement and perfect performance of the caecal operation; the man one met in the social world was what was left over. It had the effect of being quiet, but in its unobtrusive way knobby. He had a knobby brow, with an air about it of having recently been ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... Abyssinian travels, occurred to one's memory. The live tidbit is supposed to be eaten with the Japanese "Soy"—a sauce that makes everything palatable—but I let my portion of it pass. It is not possible to comply with all Japanese fashions at once. Time is necessary to the acquirement of taste. Cooked fish was next served, and that in great variety, including shell-fish. A sort of lime or small lemon was used as the flavoring to this dish. Then came boiled beans, with ginger roots, and some fried fish and horse-radish. To follow that came boiled fish and clams, the latter ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... school at the end of the first twelvemonth, after mastering that grand acquirement of my life,—the art of holding converse with books; and was transferred straightforth to the grammar school of the parish, at which there attended at this time about a hundred and twenty boys, with a class of about thirty individuals more, much looked down upon by the others, and not deemed greatly ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... at a lesson or two, the grim Doctor was satisfied of his skill. Under his instruction, with the stimulus of the Doctor's praise and criticism, Ned soon grew to be the pride of the Frenchman's school, in both the active departments; and the Doctor himself added a further gymnastic acquirement (not absolutely necessary, he said, to a gentleman's education, but very desirable to a man perfect at all points) by teaching him cudgel-playing and pugilism. In short, in everything that related to accomplishments, whether ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to Mrs. Knowles and yourself on the birth of a grand-daughter. I forget whether you have had any previous experience of the "Art d'etre Grandpere" or not—but I can assure you, from 14 such experiences, that it is easy and pleasant of acquirement, and that the objects of it are veritable "articles de luxe," involving much amusement and no sort of responsibility on the part of ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... more than ordinarily dull, you are sure to find them on opposite sides of the question. This is the sickening part of it. People do not seem to talk for the sake of expressing their opinions, but to maintain an opinion for the sake of talking. We meet neither with modest ignorance nor studious acquirement. Their knowledge has been taken in too much by snatches to digest properly. There is neither sincerity nor system in what they say. They hazard the first crude notion that comes to hand, and then defend ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... ignorance of the elementary principles of sex hygiene that this condition continues to exist. If they were warned against the possibility of self-abuse arising in innocent ways, as well as in more reprehensible ways, they would exert their influence against its acquirement. If however a boy discovers accidentally a condition of which he was innocent, and of which he does not know the significance, it is human nature that he should investigate the phenomenon and in the end suffer as ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... spend their youth under the glare of city lights. Some know Orion when he shines gloriously in the winter heavens. Many are able to point out the north star, or pole star, as everybody should be able to do. All this forms a good beginning, and may serve as the basis for the rapid acquirement of a general knowledge of the geography ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... a Magnetic Needle. The acquirement by a magnetic needle of its position of rest, with its magnetic ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... and experience of the higher education in its effect upon white races, that the result would be different from what it is. When the negro colleges first opened, there was a glow of enthusiasm, an eagerness of study, a facility of acquirement, and a good order that promised everything for the future. It seemed as if the light then kindled would not only continue to burn, but would penetrate all the dark and stolid communities. It was my fortune to see ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... see how often were given to Satan the time, thought, and strength that belonged to Christ. Sad is the record which angels bear to heaven. Intelligent beings, professed followers of Christ, are absorbed in the acquirement of worldly possessions or the enjoyment of earthly pleasures. Money, time, and strength are sacrificed for display and self-indulgence; but few are the moments devoted to prayer, to the searching of the Scriptures, to humiliation of soul ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... with the exception of some bad translations of Bossuet's admirable works, these establishments put forth nothing of the smallest value. It was indeed impossible for any intelligent and candid Roman Catholic to deny that the champions of his Church were, in every talent and acquirement, completely over-matched. The ablest of them would not, on the other side, have been considered as of the third rate. Many of them, even when they had something to say, knew not how to say it. They had been excluded by their religion from English schools and universities; nor had they ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... by Captain Glazier during his horseback ride from ocean to ocean, we shall gather most of the incidents of his journey—a journey, so far as we are aware, without any precedent, and having for its sole object the acquirement of knowledge. His intention was to lecture in the leading cities and villages through which he passed, in the interest of the relief fund of the "Grand Army of the Republic," to which order he ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... it is the quality, the nature of the knowledge, which I quarrel with. I know I used to have—I don't know whether I have now, but I had once upon a time—a bad reputation among students for setting up a very high standard of acquirement, and I dare say you may think that the standard of this old examiner, who happily is now very nearly an extinct examiner, has been pitched too high. Nothing of the kind, I assure you. The defects I have noticed, and the faults I have to find, arise entirely ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the tyranny of man, many ingenious arguments have been brought forward to prove, that the two sexes, in the acquirement of virtue, ought to aim at attaining a very different character: or, to speak explicitly, women are not allowed to have sufficient strength of mind to acquire what really deserves the name of virtue. Yet it should seem, allowing them to have souls, that ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... have been delivered in this work respecting heaven, the world of spirits, and hell, will appear obscure to those who take no pleasure in acquiring a knowledge of spiritual truths; but they will appear clear to those who take pleasure in that acquirement; and especially those who cherish an affection of truth for its own sake,—that is, who love truth because it is truth. For everything that is loved enters with light into the ideas of the mind: and this is eminently the case, when that which is loved is truth: for ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... or clairvoyance. This faculty, it appears, is now the hereditary property of the whole village, more developed in the blind man's immediate heirs than in his remoter relatives; but, strange to say, it is a faculty which, for a reason connected with the history of its acquirement, they enjoy only once a year, and that is on Christmas Eve. I know well," continued Mr. St. Aubyn, "all you have it in your mind to say. Doubtless, you would hint to me that the narrator of the tale was amusing himself ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... Longfellow: "Mr. Longfellow is not a scholar in the German sense of the word—that is to say, he is no pedant, but he certainly is a scholar in another and perhaps a higher sense. I mean in range of acquirement and the flavor that comes with it." Those words might have been written of himself. It is sixty-five years since Lowell was appointed to his professorship at Harvard, and during this long period erudition has not been idle here. It is quite ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... cases where a liquid is employed, the refrigerating action is produced by the change in physical state from the liquid to the vaporous form. It is, of course, well known that such a change can only be brought about by the acquirement of heat; and for the purpose of refrigeration (by which must be understood the abstraction of heat at temperatures below the normal) it is obvious that, other things being equal, that liquid is the best which has the highest heat of vaporization, because with it the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... promotion of Tibetan Buddhism, already spread to some extent among them, the readiest means of civilising his countrymen. But he may have been quite sincere in saying what is here ascribed to him in this sense, viz.: that if the Latin Church, with its superiority of character and acquirement, had come to his aid as he had once requested, he would gladly have used its missionaries as his civilising instruments instead of the Lamas and their trumpery. (Rubr. 313; Assemani, III. pt. ii. 107; Koeppen, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... defines an accomplishment as an "acquirement or attainment that tends to perfect or equip in character, manners, ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... an animal, closely associated with us by fable and in fact, which is doomed to extinction by the ruthless strides of civilisation, which is regarded by some as cleanly and decent, and by others as repulsive and direful? Plain, unromantic, unsensational statements make for the acquirement of knowledge illustrative of the habits and faculties of the creature against which the hand of the average man is raised with a mixture of wrath, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... a-always interested me c-considerably," admitted Mr. Prescott, "but heretofore the estate which I represent has confined itself chiefly to the acquirement of water-power sites and their development. They—they're good ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... comes almost of course to a person who has his various powers well in hand,—who knows what he can do, and what he cannot do, and does not attempt more than he can perform. On the other hand, it is an accomplishment very difficult of acquirement to a boy who has not yet found what he is good for, who has forty irons in the fire, and is changing from one to another as rapidly as the circus-rider changes, or seems to change, from ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... visible to men than any that came before him. For here we are in the presence of a great tradition which a long series of artists have in succession wrought, each adding a little that expressed the noblest insight of his own soul at its highest and best moments, and the newest acquirement of his technical skill. Raphael broke up painting, as later on Beethoven broke up music. Not that that blow destroyed the possibility of rare and wonderful developments in special directions. But painting and music alike lost for ever the radiant beauty of ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... politicians, and because he is privy to the minutiae of some sordid and degrading business or profession, say soap-selling or the law. But these empty talents, of course, are not really signs of a profound intelligence; they are, in fact, merely superficial accomplishments, and their acquirement puts little more strain on the mental powers than a chimpanzee suffers in learning how to catch a penny or scratch a match. The whole bag of tricks of the average business man, or even of the average professional ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... while he put on his skates. The young man was no great proficient in the art of skating as he was in that of swimming and riding (indeed, he was a most perfect equestrian, seeming to have some secret understanding and entente cordiale with every animal he ever bestrode), but with that facile acquirement of any physical accomplishment which ever distinguished him, he was soon perfectly at ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... this occasion were eminently characteristic of the special qualities of that great officer, in whom was illustrated to the highest degree the solid strength attainable by a man not brilliant, but most able, who gives himself heart and soul to professional acquirement. In him, profound and extensive professional knowledge, which is not inborn but gained, was joined to great natural staying powers; and the combination eminently fitted him for the part we have seen him play in Delaware Bay, at New York, before Rhode Island, in the Channel, and now at Gibraltar. ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... infancy, his will had never suffered restraint, and he thought nothing impossible. As a soldier, he was bold even to temerity; capable of the most hazardous enterprise, and laughing at the danger he provoked. His projects were the more elevated because the acquirement of renown was the intent of all his actions. In council he was dangerous; everything must be conceded to his views. To him the means by which his end was to ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... weathers, and despite all obstacles. Not only was it his wont to fish when he could, or how he could, but too often was he beguiled to fish at times and in ways that were decidedly improper; sometimes devoting those hours which were set apart expressly for the acquirement of Greek and Latin, to wandering by mountain stream or tarn, rod in hand, up to the knees in water, among the braes and woodlands of his own native country. And Frank's enthusiasm did not depend entirely on his success. It was a standing joke among his school-fellows ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... Music, for instance; what had she learned of music? She could play on an ancient spinet which was one of the chief treasures of the "best parlour" of Briar Farm, and she could sing old ballads very sweetly and plaintively,—but of "technique" and "style" and all the latter-day methods of musical acquirement and proficiency she was absolutely ignorant. Foreign languages were a dead letter to her—except old French. She could understand that; and Villon's famous verses, "Ou sont les neiges d'antan?" were as familiar ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... a very pretty child, and she lost none of her comeliness and none of her sweetness of character as she approached maturity. I was impressed with this upon my return from college. She, too, had pursued those studies deemed necessary to the acquirement of a good education; she had taken a four years' course at South Holyoke and had finished at Mrs. Willard's seminary at Troy. "You will now," said her father, and he voiced the New England sentiment regarding young ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... is another room, called "the library," in which there is not a book, but there is "the block," which speaks volumes; and as a library may, by a little forcing, be defined to be a chamber set apart for the acquirement of learning, this room ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... repeat that all that appertains to the sexual enlightenment must became part of the flesh and blood of the subject; only from this can we expect good results, whereas a sexual education which consists merely in the acquirement of information, is altogether valueless. But by a true sexual enlightenment, in the sense above defined, it is probable that many a girl may be safeguarded from prostitution; and many a child, boys as well as girls, may be better protected against the ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... in determining the ideas which the words are intended to express; but this does not in any manner invalidate the conditions which we impose. Whatever theory we may adopt of the relative part played by the knowing subject, and the external object in the acquirement of knowledge, it remains none the less true that no knowledge of the meaning of a word can be acquired except through the senses, and that the meaning is, therefore, limited by the senses. If we transgress ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... But Cyrus' acquirement of the chunk of hair was his last triumph. His downfall was near; and, although it involved Cecily in a most humiliating experience, over which she cried half the following night, in the end she confessed it was worth undergoing just ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... 'So necessary is the acquirement of this horizontal speed, even in commencing flight, that most heavy birds, when possible, rise against the wind, and even run at the top of their speed to make their wings available, as in the example of the eagle, mentioned ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... pardon his unpleasant features, his strange voice, even his very foppery and grimace, if one found these disadvantages connected with living talent and any spark of genuine goodness. If there is nothing more than acquirement, smartness, and the affectation of philanthropy, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... studies of ivied rocks and twisted roots! A little stream tinkled lonely through the hollow. Poor Milly! In her odd way she made herself companionable. I have sometimes fancied an enjoyment of natural scenery not so much a faculty as an acquirement. It is so exquisite in the instructed, so strangely absent in uneducated humanity. But certainly with Milly it was inborn and hearty; and so she could enter into my raptures, and ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... royal road to learning, no short cut to the acquirement of any valuable art. Let photographers and daguerreotypers do what they will, and improve as they may with further skill on that which skill has already done, they will never achieve a portrait of the human face divine. Let biographers, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... of her choice propped up before her; and by the style of the novel jotted down in the rough, almost simultaneously with her reading, we know that to her the study of German was not—like French and music—the mere necessary acquirement of a governess, but an influence that entered her mind and helped to shape the fashion of ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... fro." The intellectual progress of the race during the last half century has indeed been great. But admiration is not the only feeling of the thoughtful mind when observing this striking advance in intellectual acquirement. We see that man has not yet fully mastered the knowledge he has acquired. He runs to and fro. He rushes from one extreme to the other. How many chapters of modern history, both political and religious, are full of the records of this mental vacillation of our race, of this ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... years of age. He had already done a prodigious amount of work for his years. He was always busy. Every spare moment of his evenings was devoted either to writing his literary letter, to the steady acquirement of autograph letters in which he still persisted, or to helping Mr. Beecher in his literary work. The Plymouth pastor was particularly pleased with Edward's successful exploitation of his pen work; and he afterward wrote: "Bok is the only man who ever seemed to make my literary work go ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... The acquirement of this mastery of means is the student's business. Everything he does which aids him in this makes him so much nearer to being a painter. But he must remember that he is still a student, and as he hopes to be a painter, must ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... with the dry chronicles of a law office. The acquirement of learning is a slow process in life, and perchance a slower one in the telling. I lacked not application during the three years of my stay in Richmond, and to earn my living I worked at such odd tasks as ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... pollen, cross-fertilisation being thus ensured, how can it be any advantage to a plant to be sterile with half its brethren, that is, with all the individuals belonging to the same form? Moreover, if the sterility of the unions between plants of the same form had been a special acquirement, we might have expected that the long-styled form fertilised by the long-styled would have been sterile in the same degree as the short-styled fertilised by the short-styled; but this is hardly ever the case. On the contrary, there is sometimes the widest difference in this respect, as between ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... had neglected nothing. He gave his days and nights to the acquirement of various sciences. He understood anatomy better than any surgeon of his time; he knew history like a Benedictine, and the antiquities of Rome as a botanist does his favourite flora. But architecture was the art which ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... in republics become the origin of the most forceful aristocracies. As a rule commerce enriches the cities and their inhabitants, and increases the laboring and mechanical classes, in opening more opportunities for the acquirement of riches. To an extent it fortifies the democratic element in giving the people of the cities greater influence in the government. It arrives at nearly the same result by impoverishing the peasant ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... phenomena of the residual electrostatic charge; the gradual acquirement or loss by a condenser of a ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... reception, nor is that which was not, brought into existence: still, to the being who attains it, there is Nirwana." According to this statement, taken in connection with the hundreds similar to it, Nirwana seems to be a simple mental perception, most difficult of acquirement, and, when acquired, assimilating the whole conscious being perfectly to itself. The Asangkrata Sutra, as translated by Mr. Hardy, says, "From the joyful exclamations of those who have seen Nirwana, its character may be known by those ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Dr. Lardner of his day,—a man of general scientific acquirement, an indefatigable worker, venturing hazardous predictions, writing some fifteen or twenty volumes upon subjects connected with agriculture, foisting himself into the chair of Botany at Cambridge by noisy reclamation, selling his name to the booksellers for attachment to other men's wares,[6] and, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... above the occupation for which he was designed, from repining led him to resist, and from resisting, to rebel. He eloped from his friends, and contrived to enter the army. But, fond of the polite arts, and eager for the acquirement of knowledge, he found not this way of life much better adapted to his inclination than that from which he had escaped; he soon grew weary of it, was reconciled to his father, and entered at the Temple. But here, too volatile for serious study, and too gay for laborious application, he made little ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... civilizations like our own, one which we carry on simply in order to achieve social perfection, but it is rather something which is necessary for the survival of large and complex groups. Otherwise, as we have pointed out, the conflicts in the acquirement of habit and character on the part of individuals would be so great that there would be no possibility of their working together harmoniously in a common social life. Just so far as the system of education is defective, ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... disposition to learn that we have to ascribe the rareness of good scholars, so much as to the want of patient perseverance. Grammar is a branch of knowledge; like all other things of high value, it is of difficult acquirement: the study is dry; the subject is intricate; it engages not the passions; and, if the great end be not kept constantly in view; if you lose, for a moment, sight of the ample reward, indifference begins, that is followed by weariness, and disgust and despair close the book. ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... undertaking. During two years this eccentric plan occupied his thoughts by day, his dreams by night: all the smiles of prosperity could not tranquillise the restless spirit, and while he anticipated an acquirement of fame, he little considered the perils that ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... and even smarter at church. Religious fervour, if it ran to limpness of dress, or form, or mind, was punishable according to law. A wholesome spirit of competition was encouraged, not in the taking of many prizes, the attending of many services, or the acquirement of much Euclid, but in dress, ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... the older Sagas of Cuchulain. He confused the cycles, it is true, taking the Red Branch heroes for contemporaries of the Fianna, which is much as if one should make Heracles meet Odysseus or Achilles in battle; but he had these earlier legends by heart, a rare acquirement among ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... was gone over this evening in the course of a few hours! Alfred had reason to be more and more convinced of the truth of his father's favourite doctrine, that the general cultivation of the understanding, and the acquirement of general knowledge, are essential to the attainment of excellence in any profession, useful to a young man particularly in introducing him to the notice ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... considerable speed; while in one remarkable instance (on the Virginia Central Railroad, before named) we find the extreme minimum of 234 feet. Such a track does not admit of high speeds, and its very use implies the existence of natural obstacles which prevent the acquirement of great velocities. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... accomplishments which, too often, in the present day, supercede the cultivation of the mind. Endowed with a brilliant intellect, she excelled in whatever she attempted, and the fond anticipations of her friends were more than realized. The acquirement of literature was to her a source of exquisite delight. Her thirsty soul drank at the fountain of knowledge, with as much avidity as the weary traveller slakes his thirst at the fountain of cool waters, ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... I have unquestionably met in New York with many most intelligent and accomplished gentlemen, still I think the fact cannot be denied,—that the average of acquirement resulting from education is a good deal lower in this country than in the better circles in England. In all the knowledge which must be taught, and which requires laborious study for its attainment, I should say the Americans are considerably ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the dull and witless, that he has established a class for the acquirement of an elegant and ready style of punning, on the pure Joe-millerian principle. The very worst hands are improved in six short and mirthful lessons. As a specimen of his capability, he begs to subjoin two ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... quinine both afford the basic quinoline under certain conditions, but on oxidation of cinchonine, an acid—cinchoninic acid (C{10}H{7}NO{2})—is the principal body formed, while in the case of quinine, quininic acid (C{10}H{9}NO{3}) is the principal product. The acquirement through experiment of such knowledge as that is, however, so much gained. We find, indeed, that obstacles are gradually being cleared away, and the actual synthetic formation of such alkaloids as piperidine and coniine ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... this infinite may possess would fall to its portion; it would only be incoherent, inactive, and vague. Whereas by seeking it in ourselves, where it truly is; by observing it there, listening to it, marking how it profits by every acquirement of our mind, every joy and sorrow of our heart, we soon shall learn what we best had do to purify and ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... details of the conditions of life of the genera concerned. But from the sporadic distribution of scent-scales in Lepidoptera, and from their occurrence or absence in nearly related species, we may conclude that fragrance is a relatively modern acquirement, more recent ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... to rest and work, fast and eat at such times as might be convenient. He was considered by his friends to be a rather cold, steady man, who concealed under an indifferent manner an almost insatiable ambition. He certainly had given way to an entire absorption in his profession, and in the dogged acquirement of one language after another ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... instance "The Flash Dictionary," "The Book of Etiquette," "A Guide to the Kens and Cribs of London," "The whole Art of Tying the Cravat," and "The Hand-book of Boxing;" but it remains for us to remove the disadvantages which attend the acquirement of each of these noble arts and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841 • Various
... how nearly he has done it. In judging his own technical skill in the accomplishment of his aim, it is easy for him to be absolutely unbiased, technique being a thing wholly apart from one's self, an acquirement. But, in a poem, the way it is done is by no means everything; something else, the vital element in it, the quality of inspiration, as we rightly call it, has to be determined. Of this the poet is rarely ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... the acquirement of speech by the child, auditory feelings are still necessary for articulate speech processes; for if it were not so, how could we explain the fact that a child up to the fifth or sixth year in full possession of speech will become dumb if it loses the ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... the acquirement of forty years, supervened, and informed her wild heart, with all the cold arrogance of sagacity, that these imaginings were vain. She felt that she must write a brief and firm letter to Arthur and tell him to desist. She saw with extraordinary clearness that this course ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... Catholic. Ralph Waldo Emerson declared Mr. Cushing to be the most eminent scholar of the country, and Wendell Phillips went still further and said: "I regard Mr. Cushing as the most learned man living." His habit was one of constant acquirement. He was what I should call "a Northern man with Southern principles," an expression which originated in 1835, and was first applied to Martin Van Buren. I have heard Cushing defend slavery with great eloquence and although, like him, I was ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... terms for three years, and was duly called to the Bar; but no evidence came home as to the acquirement of any considerable amount of law lore, or even as to much law study, on the part of the young aspirant. The learned pundit at whose feet he had been sitting was not especially loud in praise of his pupil's industry, though he did ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... of the things that interested him, but reluctant to proceed with studies which, in his eyes, seemed to have nothing to recommend them. Books possessed no attraction for him, although he knew his alphabet and could even read imperfectly. The acquirement of book-learning he found a dull and dolorous business, to which he was driven only by the threats or entreaties of his parents, who showed some concern lest he should ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... devices unless our lives are big enough and fine enough to warrant such a course. The remedy for the mental unrest, which is in itself an illness, lies not in an enlightened knowledge of the harmfulness and ineffectiveness of worry, not even in the acquirement of an unconscious conscience, but in the living of a life so full and good that worry cannot find place in it. That idea of worry and conscience, that definition of serenity, simplifies life immensely. To overcome worry by substituting ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... and farsighted town, which has not springs or deep wells, is looking toward the acquirement of some such area as this for its source of pure water. Many great cities go from thirty to fifty miles, and some even a hundred and fifty miles, in order to reach such a source, carrying the water into the city in a huge water-pipe, or aqueduct. ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... Borrow, we see, was less than a year in Ireland, and he was only thirteen years of age when he left the country. But it seems to have been the greatest influence that guided his career. Three of the most fascinating chapters in Lavengro were one outcome of that brief sojourn, a thirst for the acquirement of languages was another, and perhaps a taste for romancing a third. Borrow never came to have the least sympathy with the Irish race, or its national aspirations. As the son of a half-educated soldier he did not come in contact with any but the vagabond element ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... preliminaries might have been avoided by changing the peg in the scale of creation, and the studies of the boy might have begun where now they end. Twenty-five years in the span of life would thus have been saved, had what must be a universal acquirement been incorporated into the original programme of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... word used by Sainte-Beuve a propos of Benjamin Constant has struck me: it is the word consideration. To possess or not to possess consideration was to Madame de Stael a matter of supreme importance—the loss of it an irreparable evil, the acquirement of it a pressing necessity. What, then, is this good thing? The esteem of the public. And how is it gained? By honorable character and life, combined with a certain aggregate of services rendered and of successes obtained. It is not ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is one of Maitland's most noticeable characteristics and is, I think, rather remarkable in a man of such strong emotional tendencies and lightning-like rapidity of thought. No doubt some small portion of it is the result of acquirement, for life can hardly fail to teach us all something of this sort; still I cannot but think that the larger part of it is native to him. Born of well-to-do parents, he had never had the splendid tuition of early poverty. As soon as he had left college he ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... the whole education of children is directed to the cultivation of their heads or intellectual faculties alone. The heart, with all its moral and mysterious emotions, is entirely neglected. Every mental power and acquirement is intended and directed to promote their prosperity, success, and happiness in this life; at least this is what is sought and promised as the reward of study and application. They are constantly presented with the bright ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... instructed in such elegant arts as those in which the ladies of France and England excelled—not remembering that, in a young, forward, and ill-educated woman, the dangerous desire of display succeeds the acquirement of accomplishments as surely and as ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... may be rejected, and that that which has proved itself inimitable may be appropriated; in general, so that it may be kept up to the requirements of the times. And, finally, the school must, by examinations and reports, aid the pupil in the acquirement of a knowledge of his real standing. The examination lets him know what he has really learned, and what he is able to do: the report gives him an account of his culture, exhibits to him in what he has made improvement and in what he has fallen behind, ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... lifetime fitting beef for the royal table, and a king of France slighted the business of an empire for the acquirement of this art, and a king of England knighted a roast; but they all died and were buried without tasting beef as it ought to go into a man's mouth. I write it first. A Polled-Angus heifer, fed and watered and cared for like a child, should be killed suddenly without fright, and butchered properly; ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... for believing that attention directed to personal appearance, and not to moral conduct, has been the fundamental element in the acquirement of the habit of blushing will now be given. They are separately light, but combined possess, as it appears to me, considerable weight. It is notorious that nothing makes a shy person blush so much as any remark, however slight, on his personal appearance. One cannot notice ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... children of the concierge! But beneath these conventional fictions the truth was that the concierge held the whip. At last he was using it. And he had given himself a half-holiday in order to celebrate his second acquirement of the ostentatious furniture and the crimson lampshades. This was one of the dramatic crises in his career as a man of substance. The national thrill of victory had not penetrated into the flat with the ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... pleasure. If they come, without too ardent seeking, in the good pleasure of Providence, as the reward of useful and honest labour, then they may increase the delights of life; but never otherwise. If the heart is set on them, their acquirement will surely end in disappointment. Possession will create satiety; and the mind too quickly turns from the good it has toiled for in hope so long, to fret itself because there is an imagined higher good ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur |
