"Attribute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... absolute, and admitted no exceptions. On the one hand, he said, "The functionary can make no mistake; the magistrate is never the wrong." On the other hand, he said, "These men are irremediably lost. Nothing good can come from them." He fully shared the opinion of those extreme minds which attribute to human law I know not what power of making, or, if the reader will have it so, of authenticating, demons, and who place a Styx at the base of society. He was stoical, serious, austere; a melancholy dreamer, humble and haughty, like fanatics. His glance was like a gimlet, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... many kinds of tropical vegetation, without much care being bestowed upon them, although the plants are regularly cultivated and hoed. The planters are not troubled with that foe of most tobacco fields, "the worm." They attribute this in part to the excellence of their soil and partly to the abundance of birds and yellow jackets. The planters do not always "top" the Havana and do very little "suckering." If the ground is rich, and free from weeds they let one of the suckers from that root grow, and ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... ago," she said, "my father was robust and active in spite of his age. He was cheerful, busy, and optimistic. But he fell into a decline. It has not been a sudden sapping of his strength. If it were that I should not worry so much; I'd attribute it to disease. But every day something of vitality goes from him. He is fading almost from hour to hour, as slowly as the hour hand of a clock. You can't notice the change, but every twelve hours the hand makes a complete revolution. ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... is blind and deaf, or runs away and hides from his fellows like a coward; for brutality, alas, is a very human attribute and slumbers more or less in each one of us, let us ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... others, because they could give a good account who their own fathers were, which not every one of the rabble that poured into the city at first could do; others, from patronage, their word for protection of inferiors, the origin of which they attribute to Patron, one of those that came over with Evander, who was a great protector and defender of the weak and needy. But perhaps the most probable judgment might be, that Romulus, esteeming it the duty of the chiefest and wealthiest men, with a fatherly care and concern to look after the meaner, and ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the law ascribes to the king the attribute of sovereignty, or pre-eminence. "Rex est vicarius," says Bracton[l], "et minister Dei in terra: omnis quidem sub eo est, et ipse sub nullo, nisi tantum sub Deo." He is said to have imperial dignity, and in charters before the conquest is frequently ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... Balbus. For myself I do not quite know what to think. I have my suspicions; but I haven't yet followed them up to my satisfaction. Certainly whoever wrote it was very foolish;'—that sentence was from his heart!—'but even more to blame is the man who published it. To my surprise some people attribute it to me, merely on the ground of style, when it is nothing like my style, if I am any judge: though it would not be very wonderful if others did write like me, seeing that my books are in all men's hands. I am told that your Reverence is inclined ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... how can we account for Lady Chesterfield's conduct, unless we attribute it to the disease incident to most coquettes, who, charmed with superiority, put in practice every art to rob another of her conquest, and spare nothing ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... born, as Nelson's and Gladstone's were! I have considered that possibility too, and rejected it. I cannot cite all the stories about Caesar which seem to me to show that he was genuinely original; but let me at least point out that I have been careful to attribute nothing but originality to him. Originality gives a man an air of frankness, generosity, and magnanimity by enabling him to estimate the value of truth, money, or success in any particular instance quite independently of convention and moral generalization. He therefore will not, in the ordinary ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... reasonable interpretation of the heathen worship.(191) The same dualist theory extinguishes the idea of the incarnation, as a degradation of God; and also the doctrine of the fall, inasmuch as psychological deterioration is impossible if the soul be pure, and if evil be a necessary attribute of matter.(192) With the fall, redemption also disappears, because the perfect cannot admit of change; Christ's coming could only be to correct what God already knew, or rectify what ought to have been corrected before.(193) Further, ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... that they shall be uniform, certain, and unquestionable in their operation; and this it can do only by a timely show of power, and by an appeal to that authority which is of divine right, inasmuch as its office is to maintain that order which is the single attribute of the Infinite Reason that we can clearly apprehend and of which we have ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... false 91 Not distinguishing between IDEAS of sight and touch, cause of mistake in this matter 92 The case of one born blind, proper to be considered 93 Such a one might by touch attain to have IDEAS of UPPER and LOWER 94 Which modes of situation he would attribute only to things tangible 95 He would not at first sight think anything he saw, high or low, erect or inverted 96 This illustrated by an example 97 By what means he would come to denominate visible OBJECTS, high or low, etc. 98 Why he should think those OBJECTS ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... this author wholly avoids the use of psychological terms, seeking to limit himself to a strictly objective presentation of results, it is clear from an unpublished manuscript (thesis for the Doctorate of Philosophy, deposited in the Library of Harvard University) that he would attribute to monkeys simple forms of ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... if the injustice which you were maintaining to be profitable had been admitted by you as by others to be vice and deformity, an answer might have been given to you on received principles; but now I perceive that you will call injustice honourable and strong, and to the unjust you will attribute all the qualities which were attributed by us before to the just, seeing that you do not hesitate to rank injustice with ...
— The Republic • Plato
... the shipwrecked seamen. The navigator who should distribute ten thousand cocoa nuts amongst the numerous sand banks of the Great Ocean and Indian Sea, would be entitled to the gratitude of all maritime nations, and of every friend to humanity. I may be thought to attribute too much importance to this object in saying, that such a distribution ought to be a leading article in the instructions for any succeeding voyage of discovery or investigation to these parts; but it is from having suffered ourselves ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... from laughter, or it will collapse under its own strain, and we may be betrayed into thinking that the cynic is the best judge of life. It is the imagination exercising itself among things real, but not of the first order of importance. If you attribute to them that importance, you are guilty of false sentiment. The facts of life ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... winning and cherishing them with every endearing act, and at last dying on the cross to redeem them! And how bright the closing scene of Revelation—the new heaven and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness—yes, he can appreciate that attribute—the curse gone, death abolished, and all tears wiped from the ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... report. You must read this letter, dear Ellen, without thinking of the writing, for I have indited it almost all in the twilight. It is now so dark that, notwithstanding the singular property of "seeing in the night-time" which the young ladies at Roe Head used to attribute to me, I can scribble no longer. All the family unite with me in wishes for your welfare. Remember me respectfully to your mother and sisters, and supply all those expressions of warm and genuine regard which the increasing ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... much better made, that they can eat, grow, and propagate their species. The imputation of acting by instinct cuts both ways. We, too, are creatures of instinct. We breathe and eat by instinct: but we talk and build houses by reason. And so may the birds. It is more philosophical, surely, to attribute actions in them to the same causes to which we attribute them (from experience) in ourselves. 'But if so,' some will say, 'birds must have souls.' We must define what our own souls are, before we can define what kind of soul or no-soul a bird may or may not ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... fighting instinct rose hot within him. His heart had been full of thoughts of love and human bliss; now there arose a sense of coming battle, and the lust of fighting which is in every human heart, and which, in a righteous cause, may be even a God-like attribute, flamed up within ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... religious teachers and writers attribute to Adam and Eve, in their first state, an amount of knowledge, and a perfection of righteousness, which the Scriptures nowhere ascribe to them, and which, if they had possessed them, would have rendered it impossible, one would think, that they should ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... the public understanding, and, as usual, the people are right and the specialists are wrong. We do not find desire, as here understood, in plants and the lowest development of animal life, it being particularly an attribute of the higher biogeny. As the more perfect the animal organism the more acute the sensations of pleasure and pain, it follows that in man, most complex of earthly creatures, is found the most powerful ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... altogether thrilling to read that civilised people of ancient times wove fabrics for dress and decoration, but it certainly is interesting to learn that they were masters of an art which we carelessly attribute to Europe of six centuries back, and to find that the weaving apparatus and the mode of work were almost identical. The Coptic tapestry of the Third Century is woven in the same manner as the tapestries that come to us from Europe as the flower of comparatively recent times, ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... unusual occurrence to lose a man—they subsequently became ashamed of their panic, and met the troops carrying Spencer rifles, with more confidence than those armed in any other way. It would be very convenient to attribute every whipping we ever got to the use of breech-loading rifles by our antagonists, but it would be very wide of the truth. It was impossible, however, to obtain, when we were organizing at Knoxville, the ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... good deal of them, in fact, I rather cultivated them. They might perhaps even have thought me a little patronizing, if they had been given to thinking that sort of thing. But they were not; that is not in their line. English people are very apt to attribute motives,—some of them attribute much worse ones than we poor simpletons in America recognize, than we have even heard of! But that is only some of them; others don't, but take everything literally and genially. That was the case with the Bernardstones; ...
— The Path Of Duty • Henry James
... difficult to obtain. A large percentage of the population, especially in rural areas, derives its living from agricultural activity, often on a subsistence basis. On a per capita basis, real income has stagnated at 1980 levels. Most observers attribute Paraguay's poor economic performance to political uncertainty, corruption, limited progress on structural reform, and deficient infrastructure. The economy rebounded between 2003 and 2007, posting modest growth each year, ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... must be a strange household, Eugenia having told her that Augustine managed everything, the ancient negress included—Augustine who was naturally devoid of all acquaintance with the expurgatory English tongue. By far the most immoral sentiment which I shall have occasion to attribute to Charlotte Wentworth was a certain emotion of disappointment at finding that, in spite of these irregular conditions, the domestic arrangements at the small house were apparently not—from Eugenia's peculiar ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... base-ball of 1748, 1798, and 1852 were the same as our base-ball we would have been informed of that fact long ago, and it would never have been necessary to attribute the origin of our game to rounders. And when, in 1874, the American players were introducing base-ball to Englishmen, the patriotic Britain would not have said, as he then did, that our game was "only ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... beneficial to him as the destruction of Ireland would be to us: of countries I speak differing in language from the French, little habituated to their intercourse, and inflamed with all the resentments of a recently conquered people. Why will you attribute the turbulence of our people to any cause but the right—to any cause but your own scandalous oppression? If you tie your horse up to a gate, and beat him cruelly, is he vicious because he kicks you? If you have plagued and worried a mastiff dog for years, is he mad because he flies ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... A Carlylean anthology, or volume of the master's sentences, might easily be composed, that should contain the highest form of private liturgy accepted by the best of the industrial classes, masters or men. They forgive or overlook the writer's denunciations of Beaver Industrialisms, which they attribute to his caprice or spleen. This is the worst of an emotional teacher, that people take only so much as they please from him, while with a reasoner they must either refute by reason, or else they must ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... am for liberty, that attribute of Gods! Glorious liberty! that theme of modern declamation. I would have all men kings. I would be a king myself. We have all naturally an equal right to the throne: we are all originally equal. This is my opinion, and was once the opinion of a set ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... have passed—find it hard to realize the tremendous magnetism and brilliancy of a man who has been so long dead, or properly to estimate the high historical significance of such a life. The human attribute which is the most immediately impelling in direct intercourse—personality—is the most elusive to preserve. If Webster's claim to remembrance rested solely upon that attribute, he would still be worthy of enduring fame. But his gifts flowered at a spectacular climax ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... about it first. I called to explain it to you. You see I've been investigating the causes of epidemic diseases. Some scientists think they are spread by molecules in the air; others attribute them to gases generated in the sewers; others hold that they are conveyed ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... this: it is impossible that in such circumstances one can extend the slightest sympathy with a race of men who probably had a hard struggle for existence, especially when the fishing or the harvests were bad. The most one can do is to attribute such unreasoning and unwarranted cruelty to the ignorance and the coarseness which had been bred in undisciplined lives. Out of that seething, vicious mob there was only one man who had a scrap of humanity, and even he could not prevent his ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... tried to find shelter under a tree, which was so thick that it would never have been penetrated by common English rain; but here, in a couple of minutes, a little torrent flowed down the trunk. It is to this violence of the rain that we must attribute the verdure at the bottom of the thickest woods: if the showers were like those of a colder clime, the greater part would be absorbed or evaporated before it reached the ground. I will not at present attempt to describe the gaudy scenery ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... myself on acting in good faith, although this lowered me in the eyes of others. As a matter of fact the world has a considerable respect for cleverness, whatever form it takes, and success justifies everything. So the world was pleased to attribute to me all the good qualities and evil propensities, all the victories and defeats which had never been mine; credited me with conquests of which I knew nothing, and sat in judgment upon actions of which I had never been guilty. I scorned ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... was written by an Irish priest, Shemus Cartan, who had taken orders in France; but its date is not given. I like it for its own beauty, and because its writer does not, as so many Irish writers have done, attribute the many griefs of Ireland only to 'the horsemen of the Gall,' but also to the faults and shortcomings to which the people of a country broken up by conquest are perhaps more liable than the people of a country that has kept its own ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... be asked, to attribute to sea power alone the greatness or wealth of any State? Certainly not. The due use and control of the sea is but one link in the chain of exchange by which wealth accumulates; but it is the central link, which lays under contribution other nations for the benefit of the one holding ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... the truth, and use no unfair weapons in carrying out your purposes, I shall have nothing to forgive. I presume you think I am not entitled to the income I receive from the hospital, and that others are entitled to it. Whatever some may do, I shall never attribute to you base motives because you hold an opinion opposed to my own and adverse to my interests; pray do what you consider to be your duty; I can give you no assistance, neither will I offer you any obstacle. Let me, however, suggest to you that you can in no wise ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... be called entirely a creature of imagination, as comports with the faith of the reader; he is not, however, endowed with a single miraculous attribute; for which the general belief of ages, even among christians, may not be ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... tenderness innate Moves his great soul. Soon at his high command Rebuked, the disappointed, hungry pack Retire submiss, and grumbling quit their prey. Great Prince! from thee, what may thy subjects hope; 600 So kind, and so beneficent to brutes? O mercy, heavenly born! Sweet attribute! Thou great, thou best prerogative of power! Justice may guard the throne, but joined with thee, On rocks of adamant it stands secure, And braves the storm beneath; soon as thy smiles Gild the rough deep, the foaming waves subside, And all the noisy ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... other bodies, or what is happening on the other side of the planet, and enables us to view the future as you do the past. The eyes of all but the highest angels require some light, and can be dazzled by an excess; but this attribute of divinity nothing can obscure, and it is the sense that will first enable us to know God. By means of these new and sharpened faculties, which, like children, we are continually learning to use to better advantage, we constantly increase our knowledge, and this is ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... the vocabulary of wrath and abuse. Invention was tasked to furnish discreditable reasons for all that he said and did. That inexhaustible capacity of devising base motives for conduct, which is an especial attribute of mean minds, had now opportunity to put forth its full powers in the way of insinuation and assertion. It did not go unimproved. A common charge brought against him after the publication of the "Letter to His Countrymen" was that it had been written for the sake of gaining ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... was supposed to intrude upon him there; but such suppositions are ineffectual against children. From time to time the adamantine gates fell ajar, and in we slipped. It seemed a heavenly place, tenanted by a being possessed of every attribute that our imaginations could ascribe to an angel. The room and its tenant glimmer before me as I write, luminous with the sunshine of more than fifty years ago. Both were equipped for business rather than for beauty; ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... greatest danger to herself. She was horribly afraid. She knew this man far better than he suspected, realized the treachery and the unscrupulousness of him. She knew he would stop short of nothing, that he was without honour and without a single attribute ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... all—since I was beginning, it would seem, to be quite "thick" with my host—that there was no fitness in my appealing to her for sympathy in such a case; before we separated, I say, she remarked to me with her quick, round, well-bred utterance, "I dare say you attribute to me ideas that I have n't got I don't take that sort of interest in my husband's proof-sheets. I consider his ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... of private persons he bore with gently, but those of rulers he looked upon as grave; since the mischief wrought in the one case was so small, and so large in the other. The proper attribute of royalty was, he maintained, not an avoidance of responsibility, but a constant striving ...
— Agesilaus • Xenophon
... the year was immaterial. Whenever I felt a touch of home-sickness, and at frequent intervals, I got out my sheet of the largest-sized narrow-ruled imperial paper—I think it was called "imperial"—and entered into spiritual intercourse with "Home." To this long-letter writing I attribute whatever small amount of facility in composition I may have acquired. Yet not the faintest idea of story-writing crossed the clear sky of my unliterary imagination. I am not conscious of having had, at that time, a ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... insupportable, Chicot; and I now attribute to you ambitious projects and intrigues of which I formerly believed ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... swift glance at her from under narrowed brows. "But why attribute so much importance to it?" he asked. "To be sure, it may have some bearing upon our investigation, although at present I can see no connecting link. You feel, perhaps, that the violent emotions superinduced by that secret interview, added to your father's heart-trouble, ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... providence, shewed himselfe alwaies a severe visitour of these irreligious Synagogues) God (I say) set fire on this building twise within the compasse of one hundreth yeeres after the erection of the same." He then goes on to attribute the quarrels between Bishop Gilbert de Glanvill and the monks, and the church's losses through these, and its spoliation by King John's troops, to the same divine judgment. His book contains a great amount of accurate information, but often, as here, and in his account, quoted ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... limits of the trade winds were, for the first time, determined by Dampier in 1666.) the polar winds, which, in the low regions of the atmosphere bring back the cold air of the high latitudes toward the equator. To the general impulsion which these trade-winds give the surface of the sea, we must attribute the equinoctial current, the force and rapidity of which are not sensibly modified by the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless'd; It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes: 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown; His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptred sway; It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... perhaps you are right; but to what fortunate circumstances am I to attribute the honor of a visit from ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... stalking an ibex on the hillside. A bullet had whistled close by his ear, and it had been fired from behind him. He was never quite sure whether his father or the Mullah was responsible for that bullet, but he inclined to attribute it to ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... saints—living and departed, to intercede for us with the great Head of the body in which we all are members. To accept a primacy in St. Peter, and yet hold it immaterial to the organisation of the Church. To acknowledge one Church, and then divide the unity into fragments. To attribute to the Church the power of the keys, and then deny the force of her indulgences while admitting her absolutions. To approve confession, and practically set it aside. To do and hold these and many other contradictions—what is it ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... pith and marrow of our attribute] The best and most valuable part of the praise that would be otherwise ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... within and without the kingdom, that there is nothing to be astonished at, if many people have represented him as faithless, atrocious in his hatred, and inflexible in his vengeance. But no one, nevertheless, can deny him the gifts that this world is accustomed to attribute to its greatest men; and his most determined enemies are forced to confess that he had so many and such great ones, that he would have carried with him power and prosperity wherever he might have had the direction of affairs. We may say that, having brought back unity ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... into the porch of the vicarage. At Wykeham there is a very plain cross of uncertain age, and Ellerburne, Lastingham, Sinnington, Kirkdale, Kirby Misperton, and Middleton are all rich in carved crosses and incised slabs. Pickering church only possesses one fragment of stone work that we may safely attribute to a date prior to the Conquest. It seems to be part of the shaft or of an arm of a cross, and bears one of the usual types of dragon as well as knot or interlaced ornament. The font, which has been thought by some to be of Saxon origin, seems to be formed from part of the inverted base of ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... properties flow a number of others, such as density, figure, colour, ponderosity, &c. Thus, relatively to us, matter is all that affects our senses in any manner whatever; the various properties we attribute to matter, by which we discriminate its diversity, are founded on the different impressions we receive on the changes ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... address was given to the boys by Miss Macpherson. When she ceased, first one and then another gentleman stood up and gave their earnest, hearty sympathy with and approval of the work, and of the character of the boys. And here I must tell you, in passing, we attribute much to the loving, tender training of your Hampton Home. It is not that Canadian farmers would put up with anything, or that a bad boy is so useful that his faults are overlooked; for here every single boy ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... Many witches are affirmed to be in this isle, and no place in this sea hath more shipwrecks than upon Bornholm. Some give the reason thereof from the strait pass between this isle and the continent; yet is the coast clean and without rocks, and hath good roads; others attribute the cause of these shipwrecks to the great and dangerous sands about this and the other isles of this sea, which (especially about this isle of Bornholm) do lie out far and shallow in the sea, on which many ships have been struck and lost; ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... sometimes the air of being divided between them. Anne longed for the power of representing to them all what they were about, and of pointing out some of the evils they were exposing themselves to. She did not attribute guile to any. It was the highest satisfaction to her to believe Captain Wentworth not in the least aware of the pain he was occasioning. There was no triumph, no pitiful triumph in his manner. He had, probably, never heard, and never thought ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... a law of unexampled power for enabling them to war against the law of sin in their members and not to serve it in the lusts thereof. The book which contains this invaluable law they call the Word of God, and attribute to it, as I have said, and as, indeed, is perfectly well known, a reach and sufficiency co-extensive with all the wants of human nature. This might, no doubt, be so, if humanity were not the composite thing it is, ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... only thirty-nine had pustules that suppurated; viz., out of the first hundred, nineteen had pustules; out of the second, thirteen; and out of the last hundred and ten, only seven had pustules. Thus it appears that the disease has become considerably milder; which I am inclined to attribute to a greater caution used in the choice of the matter, with which the infection was communicated; for, lately, that which has been employed for this purpose has been taken only from those patients in whom the cow-pox proved very mild ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... the personages of a story that had clutched his imagination and heart, until he reeled a little with responsive enchantment; though it is hard to say about what he cared if not about the romancer's powerful allies, who carried his meaning for him. Mr. Motley tries to attribute to the scenes he knew so well in reality, under their new guise of dreamy vividness, the spell which came, I believe, from the reality of moral grandeur, in both its sin and its holiness, but which we so entirely ignore ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... attribute many of the diseases with which the poor are afflicted; but they are by no means so common as diseases of an opposite nature, which arise from a too free use of food. I shall confine myself here to the consideration of what is more strictly called food, and afterwards ...
— A Lecture on the Preservation of Health • Thomas Garnett, M.D.
... philosophers that the actions of mortals are determined and foreordained of the immortal Gods, wherefore some will have it that all that is or shall ever be done is of necessity, albeit there be others who attribute this necessity to that only which is already done. If these opinions be considered with any diligence, it will very manifestly be seen that to blame a thing which cannot be undone is to do no otherwhat than to seek to show oneself wiser ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... morning of this day. I was in my bed, sir; the maid had come in with my tea and toast. 'Stop,' said I, sternly. She stopped. And in those few moments of undisturbed reflection, sir, the thought came to life, the thought which you so falsely attribute to the Chinese, a savage tribe whose sole distinction is its ability ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... a dozen different ways during an evening (though never, of course, on the end of a knife), and I tremble to think of the diabolically composite nature which the modern Wellingtons of the table must attribute to me. In future I see that I must concentrate on one method. If only I could remember the one which shows ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... are to give the Scotch full credit for superior domestic economy, a practice which we had frequently an opportunity of observing, some five or six years since in Edinburgh, astonished us, we confess, not a little; and which, had we heard of, not beheld, we should rather have been inclined to attribute to our ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various
... poetic tumblings in the azure of any school of painting. His palette is ever cool and fastidiously restricted. It has been said that he lacks imagination, as if creation or evocation of character is not the loftiest attribute of imagination, even though it deals not with the stuff ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... that madnesse. But on the other side, the same Graecians, did often ascribe madnesse, to the operation of the Eumenides, or Furyes; and sometimes of Ceres, Phoebus, and other Gods: so much did men attribute to Phantasmes, as to think them aereal living bodies; and generally to call them Spirits. And as the Romans in this, held the same opinion with the Greeks: so also did the Jewes; For they calle mad-men Prophets, or (according as they thought the spirits good or bad) Daemoniacks; ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... disease, for it is no peculiarity of individuals, but a property of the race. It is not a decay, for it grows with the growing mind, being feeblest in childhood, when desires are simplest and most easily satisfied, and strongest where mental life is the most vigorous. It is an attribute of great minds in proportion to their greatness. To be without it, would be to live a minor in point of intellect, not much removed from imbecility. It is not a waste of energy, rather it furnishes the motive-power to all human volition. It comes of the natural working of the understanding ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... platonic friendship. She jumped up from her chair and gave me a look. I remembered then, and could have bitten out my tongue. It took me a long while to make my peace, but she came round in the end, consenting to attribute my blunder to mere stupidity. She was quite convinced herself, she told me, that the thing was pure imagination. It was only when in company with the others that any doubt as to this crossed her mind. Her own idea was that, if everybody ...
— The Philosopher's Joke • Jerome K. Jerome
... shall always attribute my recovery to you, at all events; and so will my good mother, who I hope will some day be able to thank you in person for all that you've done for ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... present happiness, of joyous spirits, of confidence in my proceedings, possesses me on this, the third day of my stay. I do nut say that it is reasonable to experience this sudden accession, or that everybody is expected to attribute it to the course of treatment so recently commenced. I only say, so it is; and I look for a confirmation of this happy frame of mind, when supported by ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... elective franchise is the highest attribute of an American citizen, and when guided by virtue, intelligence, patriotism, and a proper appreciation of our institutions constitutes the true basis of a democratic form of government, in which the sovereign ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... logic and reason and by historical witnesses to the deeds of the Saints and our blessed Saviour." As he pronounced this sacred name the holy man devoutly crossed himself. "Men would believe no more readily to-day," he added easily, "even if they should see miracles of healing, for they would attribute them to the human mentality, to suggestion, hypnotism, hallucination, and the like. Even the mighty deeds of Christ were attributed to Beelzebub." The complacent Father settled back into his chair with an air of having disposed for all time of ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... relation to the sickness he claims to have had during his service, but is quite a natural result of "an injury while logging," to which some of the witnesses examined in a special examination of the case attribute it. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... Him who had protected and preserved them—these are all matters which need not to be told. I have said that they were truly happy; and without strong affection and humanity of heart, and gratitude to that Being whose code is Mercy, and whose great attribute is Benevolence to all things that breathe, happiness can ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... the bulls with a mane is equally gratuitous; Cole, who was park-keeper for more than forty years, and of course had ample means of observation, distinctly informed me that they had no mane, but only some curly hair, about the neck, which is likewise an attribute of the Kyloe Oxen. ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... Industry and neatness prevail and everything nesessary [is] foreseen and provided for. No wonder my wife and I agree so well now these thirty-five years as she happens to be equal in every moral attribute which I pretend to.... We are in friendship with everybody, because we do justice impartially and really without vanity have assisted many persons in forming farms and providing for the support of familys; although thereby not in the way of enriching ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... as other men"; fathering upon thyself, yea, upon God and thyself, a stark lie; for thou art as other men are, though not in this, yet in that; yea, in a far worse condition than the most of men are. Nor will it help thee any thing to attribute this thy goodness to the God of heaven: for that is but a mere toying; the truth is, the God that thou intendest, is nothing but thy righteousness; and the grace that thou supposest, is nothing but thine own good and honest ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... blood, is no longer virtue, or wisdom, but wretched and degenerate cowardice; no, never let him that was born to execute judgment secure his honours by cruelty and oppression. Hath not thy Koran told thee that fear and submission is a subject's tribute, yet mercy is the attribute of Allah, and the most pleasing endowment of the ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... nature. If so, they probably belonged to the lowest orders, for it was not until the third and fourth centuries that men of erudition and skilled artisans began to arrive. Modern Japanese historians seem disposed to attribute this movement to the benign administration of the Emperor Ojin and to the repute thus earned by Japan abroad. Without altogether questioning that theory, it may be pointed out that much probably depended on the conditions existing in China herself. Liu Fang, founder ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... slightest instinct of honor in the creature to whom these words were addressed, the appeal would not have been in vain. But his original stock of this attribute had been limited, and he had long since disposed of the little he once possessed. Such an attribute as honor or pity was viewed by him as a useless incumbrance, for he was a miserable, heartless wretch, seeking the gratification ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... Honor to Bacchus the President of the Nymphs, Satyrs, and the other Country Gods, perhaps because he delighted in the Country; and others attribute it to Apollo called Nomius the God of Sheapards, and that he invented it then when he served Admetus in Thessaly, and fed his Herds: For, tis likely, he to recreate himself, and pass away his time, applied his mind ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... answered with a spice of her old archness. 'I may have a tolerable opinion of my own attractions—women commonly have, it is said. But I am not so foolish, my lord, as to suppose that on the three or four occasions on which I have seen you I can have gained your heart. To what I am to attribute your sudden—shall I call it whim or fancy—' Julia continued with a faint blush, 'I do not know. I am willing to suppose that you do not ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... Black Bruin was climbing the mountainside on the way to his fastness when the wind brought him a new scent that he had sometimes smelled before, but what to attribute it to he had never known. The scent was very strong and Black Bruin knew that the intruder of his domain was near at hand. At last he made out a dim gray shape, near the trunk of a tree. Its color so blended with its surroundings that he might not have noticed it at all, ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... Hircania,' in folio, which he read quite through." He adds, what one would not readily suspect, that the doctor, when a boy, "was immoderately fond of reading romances of chivalry, and he retained his fondness for them through life. . . I have heard him attribute to these extravagant fictions that unsettled turn of mind which prevented his ever fixing in any profession." Percy talked over his project with Johnson, who would seem to have given his approval, and even to have added his persuasions ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... imperfect application in many single examples, to correspond with two really distinct cases. The derivative varieties are distinguished from the parent-species by some single, but striking mark, and often this attribute manifests itself as the loss of some apparent quality. The loss of spines and of hairs and the loss of blue and red flower-colors are the most notorious, but in rarer cases many single peculiarities may disappear, thereby constituting a variety. This relation of varieties ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... went slowly toward the house. On the terrace, watch in hand, Mr. Higginson stood alone and conspicuous, shining in his single attribute of honesty. ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... attribute more and more intelligence 62:21 to matter, but less and less, if we would be wise and healthy. The divine Mind, which forms the bud and blossom, will care for the human 62:24 body, even as it clothes the lily; but let no mortal inter- fere with God's government ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... situation will naturally cast under four distinct heads the review of their names and characters; but I may escape some needless repetition, by observing at once, that courage and the exercise of arms are the common attribute of these Christian adventurers. I. The first rank both in war and council is justly due to Godfrey of Bouillon; and happy would it have been for the crusaders, if they had trusted themselves to the sole conduct ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... public taste, which followed that of the dramatic writings, equally show its competency to effectuate good. Rousseau, who had little less dislike to plays and players than Jeremy Collier, says, in a letter to D'Alembert, "Let us not attribute to the stage the power of changing opinions or manners, when it has only that of following and heightening them. An author who offends the general taste may as well cease to write, for nobody will read his works. When Moliere reformed the stage he attacked modes and ridiculous customs, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... toward the lake. I know that you always have your windows open day and night—a habit that used to cause great annoyance to your Aunt Caroline when you were a boy. Thus you were exposed to the full effect of the water gases. That you did not feel the effects every night I attribute to differences in the wind, that from some directions would blow the fumes away from the house, thus relieving you. I gather from your account that the phenomena were most pronounced in close, foggy weather, when the poisonous ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... fir adjunto, herewith agradable, agreeable, pleasant arpillera, bagging asegurar, to insure atribuir, to attribute el billar, billiards bola, ball calzado, footwear camas, armazones de cama, bedsteads carne seca, jerked beef chalecos, vests consignacion, consignment correas, belts, belting (machinery) corresponsal, correspondent egoista, selfish encaminar, to forward entrar en el ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... the fashion of extravagant feats, such as swallowing nauseous draughts in honour of a mistress, was quite uncalled for. Your correspondent would insinuate that I attribute to Shakspeare's time "what in reality belongs to the age of Du Guesclin and the Troubadours." Does he mean to infer that it did not in reality equally belong to Shakspeare's age? or that I was ignorant ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various
... house, the house we most haunted after our own, was that of our cousin Albert, still another of the blest orphans, though this time of our mother's kindred; and if it was my habit, as I have hinted, to attribute to orphans as orphans a circumstantial charm, a setting necessarily more delightful than our father'd and mother'd one, so there spread about this appointed comrade, the perfection of the type, inasmuch as he alone was neither brother'd nor sister'd, an ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... candlelight, and no feelings in particular, which prevailed in town. Perhaps the one condition which could work up into a permanent feeling the passing revival of his fancy for a woman whose chief attribute he had supposed to be sprightliness was added now by the romantic ubiquity of station that attached to her. A discovery which might have grated on the senses of a man wedded to conventionality was a positive pleasure to one ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... through this kind of pass, and emerged two by two upon the shore. Our error, however, did not strike us till it was too late to repair it; so we were fain to console ourselves with the reflection that the Mexicans would be much more likely to attribute our negligence to an excess of confidence in our resources, than to the inexperience in military matters, which was its real cause. We resolved to do our best to merit the good opinion which we thus supposed them to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... sees, standing in their midst, the meek and lowly Jesus, calm as an evening zephyr over Judea's plains, from whose eye flows the gentle love of an infinite divinity,—his face beaming in sympathy with every attribute of goodness, faith and humanity,—all this, too, before his mad, unjust accusers, from whose eyes flash in mingled rays the venom of scorn and hate,—his mind grows strong with a sense of right. His feelings will not longer be restrained, and, unconscious of his position, forgetting for ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... of a man who, watching the movements of a herd of cattle and paying no attention to the varying quality of the pasturage in different parts of the field, or to the driving of the herdsman, should attribute the direction the herd takes to what animal happens ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Amshashpands, who formed the council of Ormazd, and in a certain sense reflected his glory. These were Vohu-mano or Bahman, Ashavahista or Ardibehesht, Khsha-thra-vairya or Shahravar, Spenta-Armaiti or Isfandarmat, Haurvatat or Khordad, and Ameretat or Amerdat. Vohu-mano, "the Good Mind," originally a mere attribute of Ormazd, came to be considered a distinct being, created by him to be his attendant and his councillor. He was, as it were, the Grand Vizier of the Almighty King, the chief of the heavenly conclave. Ormazd entrusted to him especially the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... disdaining to imitate Burns' poetry slavishly, and some of them not writing in verse at all, they found in Scottish subjects ample scope for the exercise of their genius; and in some measure to his influence we may attribute the fictions of Mrs Hamilton and Miss Ferrier, Scott's poems and novels, Galt's, Lockhart's, Wilson's, Delta's, and Aird's tales and poetry, and much of the poetry of Campbell, who, although he never writes in Scotch, has embalmed, in his "Lochiel's ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... proper, the Compositions will easily shew. From the inferior or lower Cadences, the first, or full Tone Shake is for ever excluded.[33] If the Difference of these two Shakes is not easily discovered in the Singer, whenever it is with a Semitone, one may attribute the Cause to the want of Force of the Auxiliary to make itself heard distinctly; besides, this Shake being more difficult to be beat than the other, every body does not know how to make it, as it should be, and Negligence ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... of Mrs. Frankland were heard with these surroundings, one felt that it would be wrong to attribute to ambitious motives her desire for such an environment. She might rather be said to have been drawn here by an inspiration for artistic harmony. The resonant periods of Bossuet would hardly have echoed through the modern centuries if he had not ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... on to make provision for its wholesomeness—we begin, generally speaking, by fantastic abuse of this reading as a whole and indignant surprise that the errand-boys under discussion do not read 'The Egoist' and 'The Master Builder.' It is the custom, particularly among magistrates, to attribute half the crimes of the Metropolis to cheap novelettes. If some grimy urchin runs away with an apple, the magistrate shrewdly points out that the child's knowledge that apples appease hunger is traceable to some curious literary researches. The boys themselves, ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... artificial lighting, the candle stood preeminent among early light-sources. It did not emit appreciable smoke or odor and it was conveniently portable and less fragile than the oil-lamp. Candles have been used throughout the Christian era and some authorities are inclined to attribute their origin to the Phoenicians. It is known that the Romans used them, especially the wax-candles, in religious ceremonies. The Phoenicians introduced them into Byzantium, but they disappeared under the Turkish ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... few seconds every green blade and leaf upon his tiny domain, for which he pays an enormous rental, sometimes as much as L12 sterling an acre. Yet the contadino takes his chances with a seraphic resignation that we do not usually attribute to the southern temperament. After the eruption of 1872, which covered the rich Paduli with a deep coating of grey ashes, a young peasant girl was heard deploring the loss of her carefully tended gourds and melons; "Oh come ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... period, corresponding to what has been called the Khandas and Mantra periods, would be succeeded by the Brahmana period, and Dr. Haug would place the bulk of the Brahmanas, all written in prose, between 1400 and 1200 B.C. He does not attribute much weight to the distinction made by the Brahmans themselves between revealed and profane literature, and would place the Sutras almost contemporaneous with the Brahmanas. The only fixed point from which he starts in his chronological ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... Bergson represent the more modern and revolutionary variety. But both these sorts of evolutionism have in common the emphasis on progress, that is, upon a continual change from the worse to the better, or from the simpler to the more complex. It would be unfair to attribute to Hegel any scientific motive or foundation, but all the other evolutionists, including Hegel's modern disciples, have derived their impetus very largely from the history of biological development. To a philosophy which derives a law of universal progress from this history there are two ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... beautiful compatriot; but I remember that when some writer in 'Fraser's Magazine' styled me 'that Irish she wolf-dog,' I felt complimented by the epithet, since to attack the enemies of Ireland, and to worry when they could not destroy them, was the peculiar attribute of the species. ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... one sometimes,' I answered, 'the very solitude and repose which steal over one, enfeebles the spirit and makes life too harmonious for improvement either of the mind or heart. Continued life in a place like this, would rob an American of his last attribute,—a love of progression. Rest and sensuous enjoyment were not intended for a people like us. Yet the place is so lovely, I feel like ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... of life and death in his own territories, Ferdinand had much to fear. Yet selfish apprehension soon yielded to a more noble sorrow. He mourned the fate of Hippolitus, and the sufferings of Julia. He could attribute the failure of their scheme only to the treachery of Robert, who had, however, met the wishes of Ferdinand with strong apparent sincerity, and generous interest in the cause of Julia. On the night of ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... vengeance," exclaimed Mr. Saulsbury, "can not last forever. The eternal God who sits above, whose essence is love, and whose chief attribute is mercy, says to all his creatures, whether in the open daylight or in the silent hours of the night, 'Be charitable; ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... come into sympathy and spiritual communion with his brothers of the animal kingdom, whose inarticulate souls had for him something of the sinless purity that we attribute to the innocent and irresponsible child. He had faith in their instincts, as in a mysterious wisdom given from above; and while he humbly accepted the supposedly voluntary sacrifice of their bodies to preserve his own, he paid homage ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... different station to that he how occupied. He was by birth and education a gentleman; but partly owing to his own mismanagement and extravagance, and partly from misfortunes altogether unavoidable (though he chose to attribute his reverses wholly to the latter cause), he found himself suddenly plunged from competence into utter destitution. He had hitherto practised painting as an amateur, but now he was forced to embrace it as the only means afforded him of supporting ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... requisite, for one so good and kind as you are, to turn away and dishonor, not only the young girl herself, but every member of her family as well. You know that the whole city has its eyes fixed upon the conduct of the female portion of the court. To dismiss a maid of honor is to attribute a crime to her—at the very least a fault. What crime, what fault has Mademoiselle de ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... often expressed amazement at the uniform success which attends my treatment of even my most difficult cases, both medical and surgical, but especially the surgical; and I know, from the remarks you have made, that you attribute those successes purely to the extent of my knowledge. Well, of course, knowledge has something to do with it; but the true secret of my success lies in the free use which I make of hypnotism. Yes, no doubt you are surprised; for you have never seen me employ ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... philosopher were always to state facts in the following form—"There is a shower: but whatever is, is; therefore, there is a shower,"—his reasoning would be perfectly sound; but we do not apprehend that it would materially enlarge the circle of human knowledge. And it is equally idle to attribute any importance to a proposition, which, when interpreted means only that a man had rather do ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... hardiness of the plant, the easiness of the culture, and the quantity of the produce. Of the quality there is some dispute not yet settled amongst the planters themselves; nor can they distinctly tell when they are to attribute the faults of their indigo to the nature of the plant, to the seasons, which have much influence upon it, or to some defect in ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... Spenlow, with a gracious smile, 'you have not known my partner, Mr. jorkins, as long as I have. Nothing is farther from my thoughts than to attribute any degree of artifice to Mr. jorkins. But Mr. jorkins has a way of stating his objections which often deceives people. No, Copperfield!' shaking his head. 'Mr. jorkins is not to ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... render bread doughy, badly raised, sticky, and incapable of swelling in water. On the other hand, although some distinguished chemists deny or exalt the nutritive properties of bran, agriculturists, taking practical observation as proof, attribute to that portion of the grain a physiological action which has nothing in common with plastic alimentation, and prove that animals weakened by a too long usage of dry fodder, are restored to health by the use of bran, which only seems to act by its presence, ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... teaching was the idea that wisdom is the attribute of the Godhead, and Plato, for twenty years the companion and most favoured pupil of Socrates, was imbued with that doctrine, and, having arrived at the conclusion that the impulse to find out TRUTH was the necessity of ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... Christianity which finds in Christ the source and embodiment of all its own refined and exalted conceptions is inclined to look away from all this millennial prophecy; to weaken or ignore its significance, or to attribute it to the misconception of the disciples. This modern Christianity fastens its attention on those teachings of purely spiritual and universal truth in which Jesus indeed spoke as never other man spoke. ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... wonder Elizabeth has been very good. However, I do not attribute it to any unusual change of temperament; simply the cold, wet weather. I anticipate a catastrophe very shortly if she ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... cannot sleep for ever; that, considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events; that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... and less recognized causes, some would attribute this spirit of lawlessness to the rampant individualism, which began in the eighteenth century, and which has steadily and naturally grown with the advance of democratic institutions. Undoubtedly, the excessive emphasis upon the rights of man, which marked the political upheaval of the close ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... said to tend to the Roman, as the Roman to the Anglican. The spirit of the volume is not so gentle to the Church of Rome, as Tract 71 published the year before; on the contrary, it is very fierce; and this I attribute to the circumstance that the volume is theological and didactic, whereas the Tract, being controversial, assumes as little and grants as much as possible on the points in dispute, and insists on points of agreement as well as of difference. A further and more direct ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... promise I made you of writing you when I arrived home, I hope you will attribute it to anything but forgetfulness of that promise. The confusion and derangement consequent on such an afflicting bereavement as I have suffered have rendered it necessary for me to devote the first moments of composure to looking about me, and to collecting and ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... [17]: Most commentators attribute a higher principle to the partiality of Rebekah; they imagine that it was founded upon the prophecies, choosing him whom the Lord had chosen: but I can perceive no good ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... disagree with you," he broke out angrily. "You are wronging Lucilla and wronging Nugent. Lucilla is incapable of saying anything against you to Grosse; and Nugent is equally incapable of misleading her as you suppose. What horrible ingratitude you attribute to one of them—and what horrible baseness to the other! I have listened to you as patiently as I can; and I feel sincerely obliged by the interest which you have shown in me—but I cannot remain in your company any longer. Madame Pratolungo, your ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... to attribute this faculty for enjoying and describing scenery to the influence of antiquity alone, for, save the younger Pliny, I know of no Roman under the Empire who possessed it, and, besides, we do not know how far Pius II. was acquainted with ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... 'America;' and what is your thought of it like? If I were an American, it would make me rabid, and certain of the free citizens are furious, I understand, while others 'speak peace and ensue it,' admire as much of the book as deserves any sort of admiration, and attribute the blameable parts to the prejudices of the party with whom the writer 'fell in,' and not to a want of honesty or brotherhood in his own intentions. I admire Mr. Dickens as an imaginative writer, and I love the Americans—I cannot possibly admire or love this book. Does Mr. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... introversion we are very much inclined to attribute Mr. Coleridge's never having seriously undertaken a great heroic poem. The "Paradise Lost" may be thought to stand in the way of our laying down any general rule on the subject; yet that poem is as peculiar ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... as we were about to start up country, I received an answer from him, sent by some boat that followed us very closely. In it he said that he quite understood the position, and whatever happened would attribute no blame to me, whom he should always regard with friendly feelings. He told me that, in the event of any difficulty or want of money, I was to draw on him for whatever might be required, and that he had advised ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... of the composition of white light, Newton had been everywhere triumphant—triumphant in the heavens, triumphant on the earth, and his subsequent experimental work is, for the most part, of immortal value. But infallibility is not an attribute of man, and, soon after his discovery of the nature of white light, Newton proved himself human. He supposed that refraction and chromatic dispersion went hand in hand, and that you could not abolish the one without at the same time ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... "light that never was on sea or land." A less practical conduct, a more ideal view of right and wrong—sometimes a little fantastic even—always imbued with something of the knightliness which sat upon him as a natural attribute. Ritterlich, Karl Linders called him, half in jest, half in earnest; and ritterlich ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... Intelligence officer knew little about the science of his new office, yet he had common-sense, which is a soldier's most valuable attribute, and he knew better after eighteen months of war than to ride haphazard into a farm-house, even though the farm-house was in Cape Colony. He borrowed two men from the advance-guard, and, with the aid ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... punishing Burr on even more serious grounds; but Gallatin was keen enough to discover the cause for selecting the Western people as tools. It was not a novel idea to suggest better means of communication between the East and the West; but it was novel to attribute Western disaffection to a lack of touch and sympathy between the people of the two sections. Trade and intrigue with foreign neighbours, so Gallatin thought, could be suppressed more easily by kindness than by punishment. ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... most unaccountable reluctance to pass these ruins on my way home. My curiosity was intense; and yet it was all my mind could do to pull my body along. I daresay the scientific people would describe it the other way, and attribute my cowardice to the state of my stomach. I went on; but if I had followed my impulse, I should have turned and bolted. Everything in me seemed to cry out against it: my heart thumped, my pulses all began, ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... probable fate of Jephthah's daughter. Some think that she was merely sequestered in some religious retreat, others that the Lord spoke to Jephthah as He did to Abraham forbidding the sacrifice. We might attribute this helpless condition of woman to the benighted state of those times if we did not see the trail of the serpent through our civil laws ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... on a cord. But all this proves nothing more than that there is progress on this side also and that the devil is backward, or at least a conservative, as are all who dwell in darkness. Otherwise, we must attribute to him the weakness ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... of Mythologic History, the Allah of Alkoran, and the Jehovah of 'Holy Scripture,' if entities at all, are assuredly entities that baffle human conception. To 'frame clear and distinct ideas of them' is impossible. In respect to the attribute of unknown ability all ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... months had elapsed, however, that I personally had much say in regard to those very questions which a Director of Military Operations would, from his title, seem necessarily to be closely concerned with. The change that then took place I attribute very largely to an incident which on that account deserves recording. It happened that, on the very day after welcome tidings came to hand by cable from Sir I. Hamilton to the effect that he had successfully landed 29,000 troops on the Gallipoli Peninsula ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... liveth. When I was there, in August last, the Valley, and the Mountains too, out of which the Mercury was dug, were of as pleasant a verdure, as if it had been in the midst of Spring, which they there attribute to the moistness of the Mercury; how truly, I dispute not. That Mine, which we went into, the best and greatest of them all, was dedicated to Saint Barbara, as the other Mines are to other Saints, the depth of it was 125. paces, every pace of ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... many Boer wives and daughters were arriving in the laagers. They were seen, especially on Sunday, parading quite prettily in white frocks. This report has roused the liveliest indignation, which I can only attribute to envy. In our own vulgar land, companies would be running cheap excursions to witness the siege of Ladysmith—one shilling extra to see "Long Tom" ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... are not.' 'Then the beautiful and the good in their own nature are unknown to us?' 'It would seem so.' 'There is a worse consequence yet.' 'What is that?' 'I think we must admit that absolute knowledge is the most exact knowledge, which we must therefore attribute to God. But then see what follows: God, having this exact knowledge, can have no knowledge of human things, as we have divided the two spheres, and forbidden any passing from one to the other:—the gods have knowledge and authority in their world only, as ...
— Parmenides • Plato
... as Beauclerc, yet unknown to fame, not only to challenge the combat but to obtain the victory, was intolerable; and the more so, because his young opponent appeared no ways elated or surprised, but seemed satisfied to attribute his success to the goodness ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... found, to all appearance dead, to the fakir, Abdul Achmet, the one man of all others I would have directed you to? And the blind fools of Europe would call this chance, as they do everything which they cannot attribute to their own forethought ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... contribution to the language, and is said to mean "halfbreed," possibly suggesting that the Coyote looks like a cross between the Fox and the Wolf. Such an origin would be a very satisfactory clue to his character, for he does seem to unite in himself every possible attribute in the mental make-up of the other two that can contribute ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the female sex especially but will acknowledge, with either the smile or the sigh called forth by early recollections, that much of their youthful happiness was due to our presence; and some will even go so far as to attribute to our influence many a habit of housewifery, neatness, and industry, which ornaments ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown
... that his justice cannot sleep forever; that considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible events; that it may become probable by supernatural interference. The Almighty has no attribute that can take side with us in such a contest. But it is impossible to be ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... likely to exclude so important a question as that of the construction and diction of the libretto, and the poem of 'Orfeo' shows so marked an inclination to break away from the conventionality and sham sentiment of the time that we can confidently attribute much of its originality to the influence of the composer himself. The opening scene shows the tomb of Eurydice erected in a grassy valley. Orpheus stands beside it plunged in the deepest grief, while a troop of shepherds and maidens bring flowers to adorn it. His despairing ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... fact that such commanders as Halleck, etc., sit in cities and fight through those under them; and there are ignoble flatterers trying to attribute these victories to McClellan, and to his strategy. As if battles could be commanded by telegraph at one thousand miles' distance. It is worse than imbecility, it is ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... because it is so; and any one but you, possessing a less noble ignorance of evil, would long since have discovered the truth. To what do you attribute Sarah's implacable enmity? To the memory of your offences on the occasion of her wedding? Poor child! If that had been all, her indifference would have given you back your place months ago. Jealousy alone is capable of that fierce ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... not as good or wicked, ugly or handsome, wise or foolish, but as grandsons, nephews, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters-in-law, cousins and second cousins. You might have supposed, to listen to her, that human beings were susceptible of no attribute but that of a dwindling or thickening consanguinity. There was a certain expectation that she would leave rather formidable memoirs. In Mme. de Brecourt's eyes this pair were very shabby, they didn't payer de mine—they fairly smelt of their province; "but ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... Flanders, the fair ideal of civic freedom was blurred and defaced by party feuds and personal ambitions, by the fickleness and passion of the mob, by the lust of conquest and the fratricidal jealousies of neighbouring republics. Yet to the influence of this ideal we must attribute both the solidarity of the Italian city-state and the wealth of individual genius which it fostered. The Italian Renaissance was little more than the harvest-time of medieval Italy, the glorious evening of a day which had dawned with the Fourth Crusade and had reached ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... whatever one does not understand! "Law,"—how ready to explain away the inexplicable! Up to this point death had struck me as a most unfortunate phenomenon. Its personal disabilities I found it easy to attribute to some natural law with which my previous education had left me unfamiliar. Now, standing baffled there in that incredible manner half of tragedy, half of the absurd,—even the petty element of the undignified in the position adding to my distress,—a houseless, homeless, outcast spirit, ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... with a smile—"Women who are habitual smokers are not easily insulted! They are past that, believe me! The fine susceptibilities which one might otherwise attribute to them have been long ago blunted. They do not command respect, and naturally, they can scarcely ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli |
