"Attainment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I had time, on the top of my mule for musing upon how melancholy a thing is success. Whilst failure inspirits a man, attainment reads the sad prosy lesson that all ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... powers themselves, in consequence of which some one of them has acquired a predominating influence in the moral system. This usually results from habit, or frequent indulgence, as we shall see in a subsequent part of our inquiry. A man, for example, may desire an object, but perceive that the attainment would require a degree of exertion greater than he is disposed to devote to it. This is the preponderating love of ease, a branch of self-love. Another may perceive that the gratification would impair his good name, or the estimation in which he is anxious to stand in the eyes of other men;—this ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... nature had made him perfect he would have had no wants; and it is only by supplying his wants that utility can be developed. The development of utility is therefore the object of our being, and the attainment of this great end the cause of our existence. This principle clears all doubts, and rationally accounts for a state of existence which has puzzled ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... memorable resolution of abdicating the empire; an action more naturally to have been expected from the elder or the younger Antoninus, than from a prince who had never practised the lessons of philosophy either in the attainment or in the use of supreme power. Diocletian acquired the glory of giving to the world the first example of a resignation, [106] which has not been very frequently imitated by succeeding monarchs. The parallel of Charles the Fifth, however, will naturally offer itself to our mind, not only since ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... "New York Drawing Association" was formed, and Morse was chosen to preside over its meetings. It was not intended, at first, that this association should be a rival of the old Academy, but that it should give to its members facilities which were difficult of attainment in the Academy, and should, perhaps, force that institution to ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... and each one returning to his primeval nature had his original true love, then our race would be happy. And if this would be best of all, the best in the next degree and under present circumstances must be the nearest approach to such an union; and that will be the attainment of a congenial love. Wherefore, if we would praise him who has given to us the benefit, we must praise the god Love, who is our greatest benefactor, both leading us in this life back to our own nature, and giving us high hopes for ...
— Symposium • Plato
... themselves to waste shreds of time which might be applied to the attainment of knowledge—valuable knowledge—or to the work of doing good in a world where so much good needs to be done, who would not be willing to waste the smallest sum of money. I would not speak lightly of the habit of wasting money; but it must be admitted ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... be to get him married to some gentle, pretty, affectionate girl, whose influence would be exerted in favour of universal peace instead of war, and the moment she set eyes on Branwen, she became convinced that her ambition was on the point of attainment. Hence her unexpected and sudden display of interest in the fair captive, whom she meant to guard till the return of her son from a special marauding expedition, in which he was engaged at the time with a few ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... now for ever closed by the attainment of its goal. Moreover, His work of sacrifice and of offering, of suffering and of presentation, was for ever finished also. This is the burthen and message of the whole passage (verses 11-18). "Once ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... must dare to extend the thought of growth and progress and development even up to the height of all that we can realize of the Supreme Being—In some part of the universe perhaps already the ideal conception has been attained; and the region of such attainment—the full blaze of self-conscious Deity—is too bright for mortal eyes, is utterly ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... who interested him, to stay by himself, he was a hopeless enigma to his father, whose memories of youth, strengthened by contemporary examination of his "cash boys," were of a radically different sort. But with the attainment of High School and Mr. Hilton the world changed. For the first time since his mother's death Tom met a congenial spirit. Mr. Hilton was gay, he was humorous, he noticed important things which other people were too stupid to notice ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... action, and bows the knee in awe and reverence to the higher powers of its being. When refracted upon the human organism, we find that the cold, lonesome state, and weary struggle within the mineral realm, becomes love of self, directing its energies to the attainment of selfish ends. What could be ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... unselfish devotion to the uplift of others. In this mad rush of ambitious selfishness, such a life aim may seem chimerical, yet it is the only aim that will reach, attain, endure. For all earthly fame, ambitious attainment, honor, glory is evanescent and temporary. Like the wealth of the miser, it must be left behind. There is no pocket in any shroud yet devised which will convey wealth across the River of Death, and no man's honors and fame but that fade in the clear light ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... church came from the baths of Caracalla and was set up by Cosimo I, upon the attainment of his life-long ambition of a grand-dukeship and a crown. The figure at ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... with those who may have lent an ear to any of those vague calumnies from which no naval commander can secure his good name, who knowing the paramount necessity of regularity and strict discipline in a ship of war, adopts an appropriate plan for the attainment of these objects, and remains constant and immutable in the execution. To an Athenian, who, in praising a public functionary, had said, that every one either applauded him or left him without censure, a philosopher replied, "How seldom then must he ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... his fears, though I thought that we should very likely be attacked by ants, such as had almost taken the brig from us. I never like to be beaten in an object should it seem possible of attainment, and so I persevered, and again we all shouted, but with the same want of success as before. I thought that very possibly by this time we might be two or three miles away from the brig, just as likely as near her, for I confess I was extremely ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... altogether superfluous, mere badges of ostentation and luxurious wealth, or they point to some fifth function not so much as contemplated by other universities, and, at present, absolutely and chimerically beyond their means of attainment. Formerly we used to hear attacks upon the Oxford discipline as fitted to the true intellectual purposes of a modern education. Those attacks, weak and most uninstructed in facts, false as to all that ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... never persuade me that I am the better, or as well, for the thing that I have not. We look from different points of view, and yours is the point of attainment. Not that you do not truly say that, when all is done, we must come home to place our engines, and act by our own strength. I do not want material as material; no one does—but every life requires a full experience, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... and therefore ought I under all rebuke to humble myself, and to bear it meekly. Therefore mercifully forgive me as often as I have not done this, and grant me the next time the grace of greater endurance. For better unto me is Thine abundant pity for the attainment of Thy pardon, than the righteousness which I believe myself to have for defence against my conscience, which lieth wait against me. Although I know nothing against myself, yet I am not hereby justified,(4) because ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... nothing but prudence and coolness of judgment for its effective operation, but only that there is a possible ethical harmony, to which, partly by discipline, partly by the improvement of the conditions of life, men might attain, and that in such attainment lies the social ideal. To attempt the systematic proof of this postulate would take us into the field of philosophical first principles. It is the point at which the philosophy of politics comes into contact with that of ethics. It ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... filius nullius, which is boy's Latin, as if he had never seen a horn-book! Nevertheless, gentlemen, it is science, and not even the classics, that makes the man; as for a creature's getting the sciences by instinct, I shall contend it is against the possibilities, whereas the attainment of what you call seamanship, is ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... a will there is a way," is an old and true saying. He who resolves upon doing a thing, by that very resolution often scales the barriers to it, and secures its achievement. To think we are able, is almost to be so—to determine upon attainment is frequently attainment itself. Thus, earnest resolution has often seemed to have about it almost a savour of omnipotence. The strength of Suwarrow's character lay in his power of willing, and, like most resolute persons, he preached it up as a system. "You can only half will," he would ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... world where there are so many marriages and decisive battles, and where we all, at certain hours of the day, and with great gusto and despatch, stow a portion of victuals finally and irretrievably into the bag which contains us. And it would seem also, on a hasty view, that the attainment of as much as possible was the one goal of man's contentious life. And yet, as regards the spirit, this is but a semblance. We live in an ascending scale when we live happily, one thing leading to another in an endless series. There is always ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... advances. Yet even in the very moment she most denied him, she so contrived that the restrained fire should burn with tenfold fury within his heart—rendering him hourly more anxious for her possession, even as he became hourly less fastidious about the means of attainment. ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... (to obtain) is the conception of men, difficult is the life of mortals, difficult is the hearing of the True Law, difficult is the birth of the Awakened (the attainment ...
— The Dhammapada • Unknown
... be said that the consciousness of this attitude of society is favorable to the invert's attainment of a fairly sane and well-balanced state of mind. This is, indeed, one of the great difficulties in his way, and often causes him to waver between extremes of melancholia and egotistic exaltation. We regard all homosexuality with absolute ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... length; but the following extract from the Herbal of Sir John Hill, M.D., "Fellow of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Bordeaux," published in 1789, will show at how late a period such notions have been entertained by men of education and even scientific attainment:— ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... remarkable chance happens to suit the family fancy, the whole world is informed of the fact, and the bride elect inwardly pronounces John's blood relations to be "awfully gushing" or "desperately hypocritical." The happy medium is difficult of attainment. ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... spirit. It had broadened the sympathy of man; it had extended his vision beyond selfish limits. Vergilius and Arria had crossed the boundary of barbaric evolution under the leadership of love. The young man was now in the borderland of new attainment. He was full of the joy and the wonder of discovery. He was like a child—eager for understanding and impatient of delay. Now he thought with the pagans and ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... a certain fighting expression on his lips which Chester had learned to know meant that his whole purpose was set on the attainment of an end for which no price could be too great to pay, Burns went out to Johnny ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... organists of the world have to thank Cavaille-Coll chiefly for the assistance he gave Barker in developing the pneumatic lever, without which the present tonal system with its heavy wind pressures would have been impossible of attainment. ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... inquisitor—that time must come—we shall have the power to extend the sway of the sect of Loyola to the ends of the Christian world. The Inquisition itself our tool, posterity shall regard us as the apostles of intellectual faith. And thinkest thou, that, for the attainment of these great ends, we can have the tender scruples of common men? Perish a thousand Fonsecas—ten thousand novices, ere thou lose, by the strength of a hair, thy hold over the senses and soul of the licentious Philip! At whatever ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... laurels. If we may believe the Longinuses; and Aristotles of our newspapers, we have quite too many geniuses of the loftiest order to render a place among them at all desirable, whether for its hardness of attainment or its seclusion. The highest peak of our Parnassus is, according to these gentlemen, by far the most thickly settled portion of the country, a circumstance which must make it an uncomfortable residence for individuals of a poetical temperament, if love of solitude ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... same writer continues—it is absolutely mauvais genre to discuss a rational subject—pure pedanterie to be caught upon any topics beyond dressing, dancing, and a jolie tournure. Military prowess is ranked far above scholarly attainment, and a man in a uniform, no matter how depraved, takes precedence of one in plain clothes, whatever his achievements. All the energies of the nation are turned towards the army. Commerce, the law, and the civil employments are held in no esteem; all young men of any consideration ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... arranges for the enjoyment and suffering of the fruits of diverse kinds of karma, good or bad. Is'vara brings about this creation not for any selfish purpose but for the good of all beings. Even here sorrows have their place that they may lead men to turn from worldly attachment and try for the attainment of the highest good, mukti. Moreover Is'vara arranges for the enjoyment of pleasures and the suffering of pains according to the merits and demerits of men, just as in our ordinary experience we find that ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... fearlessly and candidly,—you are to attempt the correction of what is erroneous, by putting forth your own views in as simple a way as possible: not so as to induce the child to give up its own opinions and adopt yours, but in such a way as to direct it to the attainment of truth; to induce a comparison between its thoughts and yours, and thus to ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... however, would be complete which omitted all reference to his literary attainment; nor would it be in order in an essay of this extent not to seek to demonstrate that connection which always exists between the life and the work of an artist of distinctive temperament. The author has endeavoured, ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... to the welfare of the people, which depends on it. The Court of Directors is our only safeguard against these Machiavellian doctrines; and it may be rendered too powerless to stem them by the new arrangements for the Government of India. The objects which they propose for attainment—religion, commerce, &c.—are plausible; and the false logic by which they attempt to justify the means required to attain them, however base, unjust, and cruel, is no less so. I was asked by Dr. Duff, the editor of the "Calcutta Review," before he went home ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... imitative impulse is far less conspicuous because impulsive activity in general is checked and overruled by activity organized in a unified system. Civilized men imitate not so much because of immediate interest in the action imitated as with a view to the attainment of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... I in pride or wilful scorn Restrain my speech; 'tis wistful memory That rends my heart, when I behold myself Abased to wretchedness. To these new gods I and none other gave their lots of power In full attainment; no more words hereof I speak—the tale ye know. But listen now Unto the rede of mortals and their woes, And how their childish and unreasoning state Was changed by me to consciousness and thought. Yet not in blame of mortals will I speak, But as in proof of service wrought to ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... the power of communication; the moment of entrance into active life is marked by its attainment. ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... story Industry is held up for attainment, and Idleness receives a severe rebuke. The style and language, though perfectly intelligible to children, ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... beneficial mission. In one word, it shows its disciplinary character, and thus practically interprets the mystery of evil. It regards man as a spiritual being, thrown upon the theatre of this mortal life not merely for enjoyment, but for training,—for the development of spiritual affinities, and the attainment of spiritual ends. It thus reveals a weaning, subduing, ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... the polished manners and high-bred bearing which are so difficult of attainment, and so strictly personal when attained,—which are so much admired in society, from society are acquired. All that goes to constitute a gentleman,—the carriage, gait, address, gestures, voice; the ease, the self-possession, the courtesy, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the true object of life is not the attainment of happiness, yet if we attain the true object of life we find happiness. Those who are ignorant of life's true purpose and who seek happiness high and low, year after year, fail to find it. Like a will-o'-the-wisp, it for ever eludes them. On the other hand, ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin
... from the blinding influences of traditional prejudice, will find in the lowly stock whence Man has sprung, the best evidence of the splendour of his capacities; and will discern in his long progress through the Past, a reasonable ground of faith in his attainment of ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... the water, exactly over the two patches of sand which had so drawn and held them or their brethren two hours before. Whatever the ultimate satisfaction may have been, the attraction was something transcending humidity, aridity, or immediate possibility of attainment. It was a definite cosmic point, a geographical focus, which, to my eyes and understanding, was unreasonable, ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... The attainment of honours and dignities is not enjoyed without a portion of trouble and care, which, like a shadow, follows all temporalities. On the very evening of the same day that I was first chosen to be a bailie, a sore affair came to light, in the discovery ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... the Parisians ever testify for novelty, their very curiosity appeared to me a proof of the progress they had made in refinement. Yes, in the art of living—in the art of escaping from the cares which embarrass the first steps towards the attainment of the pleasures ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... inventive genius of the woman was therefore not slow to devise a project by which her friend might be served, while at the same time her own favorite design might be furthered—and that, too, without making, even prospectively, any essential encroachment upon the means of her husband. For the attainment of this object—or rather for the removal of so formidable an obstacle in the future career of her son—she had for a long while been taxing her inventive and diplomatic powers. An arrangement was therefore soon negotiated, by which the pedagogue received our hero under his own roof, ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... as a vehicle of Jewish "separatism," the Government next attacked the special Jewish "system of taxation," not to abolish it, of course, but rather to place it under a more rigorous control for the purpose of preventing it from serving in the hands of the Jews as an instrument for the attainment of specific Jewish ends. It is significant that on the same day on which the Kahal ukase was made public was also issued the new "Regulation Concerning the Basket Tax." [1] The revenue from this tax which had for ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... but seldom. He excused his limited correspondence on the plea that his studies left him no time for writing. I never blamed him for this apparent neglect—indeed I rather encouraged it, for my exhortations were always that he should address his time and energies towards the attainment of the object I knew him to have so much at heart—his becoming a ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... rewritten so as to be embraced in one volume (or at most two volumes) of ordinary and convenient size; and I respectfully recommend to Congress to consider of the subject, and if my suggestion be approved to devise such plan as to their wisdom shall seem most proper for the attainment of the end proposed. ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... evil in the soul,—the one answering to disease in the body, and the other to deformity. Disease is the discord or war of opposite principles in the soul; and deformity is the want of symmetry, or failure in the attainment of a mark or measure. The latter arises from ignorance, and no one is voluntarily ignorant; ignorance is only the aberration of the soul moving towards knowledge. And as medicine cures the diseases and gymnastic the ...
— Sophist • Plato
... and all things for the attainment of superhuman wisdom," said Glyndon; and his countenance was lighted up ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... term is 2.6, he is rather highly proficient in that study. A marking of two on a scale of three is equivalent to sixty-six and two-thirds per cent., and this does not seem, to the outsider, a difficult attainment. But the West Point speed of study! In a high school the young man is given the whole of the first year in which to qualify in simple algebra; in the second year he takes up plane geometry; in the third he comes upon solid geometry; in the fourth year of high ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... I lay wakeful and tossing in my bed, alternately fuming and rejecting plans for the attainment of that golden goal—the recovery of Mme. de Nole's pet dog. And the whole of the next day I spent in vain quest. I visited every haunt of ill-fame known to me within the city. I walked about with a pistol in my belt, a hunk of bread and cheese ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... when we examine more closely these systems, we find a conception of philosophy not really so very different from that which had obtained before. We do not find, it is true, that disinterested passion for the attainment of truth which is the glory of science. Man seems quite too much concerned with the problem of his own happiness or unhappiness; he has grown morbid. Nevertheless, the practical maxims which obtain in each of these systems ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... we may appreciate the desirability of some sort of fireplace, there seems to be a rather widespread impression that the attainment is largely a matter of chance. Too many home-builders have instructed their architects to provide a fireplace or two in the fond hope that the matter was then practically closed—a mere matter of time until they might be sitting before the fire's cheerful glow. Too frequently ...
— Making a Fireplace • Henry H. Saylor
... overwrought; and I ask myself, what is this man's aim? It must needs be something very high and far off to need all this unremitting tension of mind. I do much wish to see you more relaxed, and with more play. I know it is a more difficult attainment to be able both to work intensely and to relax thoroughly. But without it a man deteriorates. He becomes a keen, case-hardened tool, and no man. Our friends the Germans are not far wrong when they talk about developing what is universal in man, i.e. his humanity, which is a whole, ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... do efficient work. In the one-room rural school one teacher usually has eight grades and often more, and sometimes she is required to conduct thirty or forty different recitations in a day. Under such conditions the lack of time prevents the attainment of good results. ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... result is not suggestive of beauty. Many of the tropical and un-tree-like plants—such as the cactus tribe—strike us as odd and quaint, not as beautiful. Be this however as it may, I trust I have said enough to prove that in the vegetable world, at all events, the attainment of beauty cannot be held to have been an object aimed at, so to speak, for its own sake. Even if, for the purposes of argument, we were to suppose that all the forms and colours in the vegetable world are due to special design, there could be no doubt that the purpose of this design ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... otherwise? The object sought for is cheap sugar, and with a view to its attainment the production of sugar is stimulated in every quarter; and we all know that the more that is produced the larger will be the quantity poured into the market of England, and the greater will be the power of the people of that country to dictate ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... increase of correct information of the intricacies of navigation connected with the channels leading into the Thames, and with the river itself, and that the society was originally an association of seamen formed for the purpose of forwarding and assisting the attainment of the object. ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... on an honourable Christian life. He takes his place in the Church of Christ, and he puts out his hand to her work, till we begin to look forward with boastfulness to a life of great stability and great attainment for that man. Our Lord, as we see from so many of His parables, must have had many such cases among His first followers. Our Lord might be speaking prophetically, as well as out of His own experience, so well do His regretful and lamenting words fit into so many of our own cases to-day. ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... downwards and backwards with a suddenness that enables an observer to see with consternation the upward steps of many centuries retraced in a single lifetime. This has often occurred even within the period covered by history; and in every instance the turning point has been reached long before the attainment, or even the general advocacy on paper, of the levelling-up of the mass to the highest point attainable by the best nourished and ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... is mostly ambitious of carrying water colour to its greatest possible depth and power, and certainly, in this respect, the attainment is wondrous. In design, and other character, this society more than keeps its ground. We remember last year noticing Miss Setchell's little picture, as one of the best of the year; we have still a perfect recollection of the most lovely pathetic expression of the poor ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... to find, now that my prize was within my grasp, how inconclusive its attainment seemed. As a matter of fact I was worked out; the intense stress of nearly four years' continuous work left me incapable of any strength of feeling. I was apathetic, and I tried in vain to recover the enthusiasm of my first ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... to have this dear and timid girl brought forward to the notice of the world by such a method; a method which will subject her to all the impertinence of curiosity, the sneers of conjecture, and the stings of ridicule. And for what?-the attainment of wealth which she does not want, and the gratification of vanity which she does not feel. A child to appear against a father!-no, Madam, old and infirm as I am, I would even yet sooner convey her myself to some ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... marked as his piety. There is a charm about his name and the story of his life, that is not likely soon to pass away. He belonged to a class of men who seem to be chosen of Heaven to illustrate the sublime possibilities of Christian attainment—men of seraphic fervor of devotion, and whose one overmastering passion is to win souls for Christ and to become wholly like Him themselves. Into this goodly fellowship he was early initiated. There is something startling in the depth ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... in which the soul presses towards the mark, and gains the prize of its high calling, is the unitive or contemplative life, in which man beholds God face to face, and is joined to Him. Complete union with God is the ideal limit of religion, the attainment of which would be at once its consummation and annihilation. It is in the continual but unending approximation to it that the life of religion subsists.[21] We must therefore beware of regarding the union as anything more than an infinite process, though, as its end is part of ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... he discovers, both within and without himself a multitude of means which contribute not a little to the attainment of what is profitable to himself—for example, the eyes, which are useful for seeing, the teeth for mastication, plants and animals for nourishment, the sun for giving light, the sea for feeding fish, etc.—it comes to pass that all natural objects are considered as means for obtaining what ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... is, the greater our attainment is likely to be. The nobler our ideal, the nobler our success. It seems paradoxical to say it, but it is true, that no one ever reached a goal without starting from it; no one ever won a victory without beginning the battle with it; ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... is, O scorcher of foes, what I regard to be good policy. This is not the time for acting like a eunuch. On the other hand, that is time for the battle. I have performed many sacrifices. I have given away Dakshinas to Brahmanas, I have obtained the attainment of all my wishes. I have listened to Vedic recitations. I have walked upon the heads of my foes. My servants have all been well cherished by me. I have relieved people in distress. I dare not, O foremost of regenerate ones, address such humble words to the Pandavas. I have conquered ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... more I would say to the good Sister; nay, and I made so bold as to ask her whether Christ's behest that we should love our enemy were not too high for attainment by the spirit of man. This made her grave and thoughtful; yet she found no lack of comforting words, and said that the Lord had only showed the way and the end. That men had turned sadly from both; but that many a stream wandered through divers windings from ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... we are able is almost to be so; to determine upon attainment is frequently attainment itself. Thus earnest resolution has often seemed to have about it almost a ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... exact, both with regard to writings and to men. The knowledge of life was indeed his chief attainment; and it is not without some satisfaction that I can produce the suffrage of Savage in favour of human nature, of which he never appeared to entertain such odious ideas as some, who, perhaps, had neither his judgment nor experience, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... age of Thucydides were distinguished by their practical sagacity, their insight into motives, their skill in devising means for the attainment of their ends. A state of society in which the rich were constantly planning the oppression of the poor, and the poor the spoliation of the rich, in which the ties of party had superseded those of country, in which revolutions and counter-revolutions ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... individual can elevate himself up to the highest pinnacle of human power and glory, has always, and will always be regarded as an example to be followed, and the badge of success stretched to cover the means of its attainment. This is the universal custom where success has been attained, the failures being relegated to a well merited oblivion as unworthy of consideration either as lessons of warning or for any purpose. Our youth are very properly taught only the lessons ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... was now hard put to it, and again driven almost to despair. She might have succeeded in the attainment of that she thirsted for most in life so easily had she known the character with which she had to deal. Had she known to have soothed her high and afflicted spirit: but that opportunity was past, and the hour of examination at hand. She once thought of going ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... different thing from that profound indebtedness which makes a great man attain his truest originality; and Gluck's training practically deprived him of Bach's direct influence, useful as that would have been to the attainment of his aims in harmonic and choral expression. The indirect influence no one could escape, for whatever in modern music is not traceable to Sebastian Bach is traceable to his sons, who were encouraged by their father in the cultivation ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... means, there must be a practical exhibition among Christians at the present time, and in all time to come, of a love to Christ superior to the love which we owe to father, mother, son or daughter. And this love is not spoken of as a high attainment in piety, but as an indispensable condition of discipleship. The missionary enterprise presents many instances of stern necessity to test and exhibit ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... he tasted bread so sweet!—and the strips of boiled bacon in between came surely from a most unusual pig—a porker of sorts, without a doubt, and of most extraordinary attainment in the nice balancing of lean and fat, and the induing of both with vital juices of the utmost strength and sweetness. Truly, a most celestial pig!—and he was ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... Chang, in a tone of well-merited humiliation; "and the attainment of never having yet applied a design in such a manner that the copy might be mistaken for the original has entirely flattened-out ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... creeds are concerned, not by assenting to true propositions, but by loving them because they are discerned to be true, and by possessing a faculty of discernment sharpened by the love of truth. Such are God's true apostles, differing enormously in attainment and elevation, but all born to ascend. For these to quarrel between themselves because they do not agree in opinions, is monstrous. Sentiment, surely, not opinion, is the bond of the Spirit; and as the love of God, so the love of truth is a high and sacred sentiment, in comparison ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... now it came like a ghoul to devour my happiness. It assumed concrete form in a picture of Doctor Todd when I went to him empty-handed, and I could not help feeling that it would have been better had I not let suspicion and jealousy hurry me to the attainment of what could have been mine a year later ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... of fact, men have never dreamed of wishing to do without the "trammels" of organized society, for the very good reason that those trammels are in reality no trammels at all, but indispensable aids and spurs to the attainment of the highest and most enjoyable things man is capable of. Political society, the life of men in states, is an abiding natural relationship. It is neither a mere convenience nor a mere necessity. It is not a mere voluntary association, not a mere corporation. ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... life. But on the other hand the Latin religion sank into an incredible insipidity and dulness, and early became shrivelled into an anxious and dreary round of ceremonies. The god of the Italian was, as we have already said, above all things an instrument for helping him to the attainment of very substantial earthly aims; this turn was given to the religious views of the Italian by his tendency towards the palpable and the real, and is no less distinctly apparent in the saint-worship of the modern inhabitants of Italy. The gods confronted man just as a creditor confronted ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... marked the national character of a people whose resentment has always been the more deeply dangerous, that they will, without relaxing their determination of vengeance, submit with patience to all delays which are necessary to ensure its attainment. The multitude, therefore, received their magistrates with a loud cry, in which the thirst of revenge was announced, together with the deferential welcome to the patrons by whose direction they expected to obtain it in ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... that a direct, natural and spontaneous response, of the kind I have in my mind, to these famous works, were easy enough of attainment. Nothing, on the contrary, is more difficult to secure or ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... tendencies are on the whole inevitably satisfactory. The future welfare of man he believes in effect may be trusted to the spontaneous and planless activities of people of goodwill, and nothing but state intervention can effectively impede its attainment. And curiously close to this extreme optimistic school in its moral quality and logical consequences, though contrasting widely in the sinister gloom of its spirit, is the socialism of Karl Marx. He declared the ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... subject before the world in making known the abuses of the practice and voicing a condemnation of its cruelties wherever discerned. I have elsewhere expressed the opinion that, even if their ideals are beyond present possibility of attainment, the constant, persistent, and unwearied protest of these societies against the cruelties and abuses of vivisection have helped, more than anything else, to keep ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... becomes eminent for prowess and wealth or plunged into misery, that person who directs his mind towards these (attributes that I have spoken of), is sure to cross the ocean of life which is so difficult to cross. Without speaking of the results of the attainment of Brahma by yoga, it may be said that he who sets himself to only enquiring after the Soul transcends the necessity of observing the acts laid down in the Vedas. The body with jiva within it is an excellent car. When sacrifices and religious rites are made ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... the quantity but with the quality of its citizens, and the premium should be placed not on the families that reach a certain size but on the individual children that reach a certain standard; the attainment of this standard could well be based on observations made from birth to the fifth year. A premium on this basis would be as beneficial to a State as that on the merely ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... it signifies technical efficiency coupled with poetic insight, freedom from conventionally accepted standards, the attainment of a more varied personal expression along individual lines. It may be realized, of course, only to a degree, since the possessor of absolute 'Violin Mastery' would be forever glorified. As it is the violin master, ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... been said, the principal point in education is that one's knowledge of the world begins at the right end; and the attainment of which might be designated as the aim of all education. But, as has been pointed out, this depends principally on the observation of each thing preceding the idea one forms of it; further, that narrow ideas precede broader; so that ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... personal knowledge is too slight to judge how far she deserves the report, never departs from the truth; and yet is so gentle, good, and considerate, that she never wounds anybody's feelings. If this is so, it deserves a higher title than tact, and appears to me a great attainment in the prime grace of Christianity. I have always believed that where love—charity—abounded, truth might, and could, and would abound without offence. Which of the great French divines said, "Quand ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... stirrup of Sheddad son of Aad, king of the world; and he bade also such as he would of his women and of his female slaves and eunuchs make them ready for the journey. They spent twenty years preparing for departure, at the end of which time Sheddad set out with his host, rejoicing in the attainment of his wish, and fared forward till there remained but one day's journey between him and Item. Then God sent down on him and on the stubborn unbelievers with him a thunderblast from the heavens of His power, which destroyed them ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... out, through all his life to come, as "The Shagganappi," and when the time came for him to go to the great Eastern college in Ontario he went with his mind made up that no boy living was going to shoulder him into a corner or out-do him in the race for attainment. ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the states are reserved to the states respectively or to the people." The Supreme Court long ago said: "A state may grant acts of incorporation for the attainment of those objects which are essential to the interests of society. This power is incident ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson
... the ordinary history of men, no man or woman that has fallen, can be restored to the position formerly held. Such must rise to a yet higher place, whence they can behold their former standing far beneath their feet. They must be restored by the attainment of something better than they ever possessed before, or not at all. If the law be a weariness, we must escape it by taking refuge with the spirit, for not otherwise can we fulfil the law than by being above the law. To escape the overhanging rocks of Sinai, we ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... an essential part of the general argument for immortality. For since we have admitted, as a necessary and self-evident principle, that righteousness is the foundation of immortality, and Scripture presents to us in Abel an instance of the attainment of righteousness by faith, it follows that faith is a means of partaking of immortality. This doctrine will be farther treated of in the sequel; but in the mean time it will be well to explain that I consider "righteousness" to consist in obedience by word and deed ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... church of Santa Maria Novella. "In the face of the oldest of the kings," says Vasari, "there is the most lively expression of tenderness as he kisses the foot of the Saviour, and of satisfaction at the attainment of the purpose for which he had undertaken his long journey. This figure is the portrait of Cosimo de'Medici, the most faithful and animated likeness of all now known of him. The second of the kings is the ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... — N. learning; acquisition of knowledge &c 490, acquisition of skill &c 698; acquirement, attainment; edification, scholarship, erudition; acquired knowledge, lore, wide information; self- instruction; study, reading, perusal; inquiry &c 451. apprenticeship, prenticeship[obs3]; pupilage, pupilarity[obs3]; tutelage, novitiate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... a multiplicity of engagements, fevers of eagerness in the attainment of pleasures and ambitions, anxieties, small and large terrors, and a whirl of days left no time for the regarding of pathetic aspects. The tiny house up whose staircase—tucked against a wall—one ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Sowerby was now fifty; he had enjoyed his chances in life; and as he walked back, up South Audley Street, he could not but think of the uses he had made of them. He had fallen into the possession of a fine property on the attainment of his manhood; he had been endowed with more than average gifts of intellect; never-failing health had been given to him, and a vision fairly clear in discerning good from evil; and now to what a pass had he brought himself! And that man ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... and true judgment; for government is the pivot of the edifice of the world, which world is the road to futurity; since Allah Almighty hath made the world for His servants as viaticum to the traveller for the attainment of his goal; and it befitteth each man that he receive of it such measure as shall bring him to Allah, and that he follow not herein his own mind and his individual lust. If folk would take of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... he who has the right to pursue that end has, of course, a right to employ all the means necessary for its attainment." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... The highest attainment then of literary power is the "exquisite expression of exquisite—that is to say, rarely intense or subtle—impressions." The language, said Wordsworth, should be the "incarnation of the thought." The highest gift of the writer is to make his words and ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... the black-head race, to enlighten the land, and to further the welfare of the people." The Assyrians show a distinct Negroid strain and early Egypt was predominantly Negro. These earliest of cultures were crude and primitive, but they represented the highest attainment of mankind after tens of thousands of years in ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... chances often in his after life; but only when the taking of chances might further the attainment of some cherished end—and, ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... charming. It is with a sort of intoxication that they inhale the smell of gunpowder, perhaps even that of blood. A hotly contested victory is more agreeable to them than one too easily gained. Fortune is, in their eyes, a difficult mistress, whose favors seem the dearer, the harder they are of attainment. What a satisfaction for a proud man to be absolute commander of an army which, before the fight, shouts like the ancient gladiators: Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant! "Hail, Caesar, those about to die salute you!" an ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... American force. The general was well aware that the enemy were ready to give him battle, and he ardently desired it. But in pursuance of the settled policy of the United States, another effort was made for the attainment of peace, without the shedding of blood. The savages were exhorted by those who were sent to them, no longer to follow the counsels of the bad men at the foot of the Rapids, who urged them on to the war, but had neither the power nor the inclination to protect them; that to listen to the propositions ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint |
