"Attrition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... words: "This really involves the problem of the 'three bodies,' or disturbing forces so celebrated in dynamical mathematics, and it is further complicated by another quantity, the 'coefficient of attrition,' or work done by the grinding material, as well as the mischief done by capillary attraction and nodal points of superimposed curves in the path of the tool. These complications tend to cause rings or waves ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... and occasionally from the South—parties of from five to twenty each—the most wonderful proofs of what Nature can produce, (the survival of the fittest, no doubt—all the frailer samples dropt, sorted out by death)—as if to show how the earth and woods, the attrition of storms and elements, and the exigencies of life at first hand, can train and fashion men, indeed chiefs, in heroic massiveness, imperturbability, muscle, and that last and highest beauty consisting ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... have been that hearthstone, whose rose-coloured reminiscences linger so tenderly around your heart, and survive the attrition of a long residence in Paris. Your repertoire of charming memories tempts me almost to the verge of covetousness. In what portion of the ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... when it first caught my eye from the lofty cliffs of Gamrie-head, at the distance of some ten or twelve miles, as different in character from all the other features of the prospect. The country generally is moulded on a framework of primary rock, and presents headlands of hard, sharp outline, to the attrition of the waves; whereas this single headland in the midst,—soft-lined, undulatory, and plump,—seems suited to remind one of Burns's young Kirk Alloway beauty disporting amid the thin old ladies that joined ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... From this attrition and conflict the natural result was Scott's triumph. It was not reached, however, until the fifty-third ballot and until the fifth day of the convention. It was brought about by the votes of some Fillmore delegates, both in the North and the South, who felt that the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... had done nothing to offend her. He had been studiously polite; and that was all. Not by one word had he reminded Violet of that moonlight walk in the Pavilion garden; not by so much as a glance or a sigh had he hinted at a hidden passion. So far she could make no complaint against him. But the attrition of frequent intercourse did not wear off the ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... "NYMPHS! Your soft smiles uncultur'd man subdued, 210 And charm'd the Savage from his native wood; You, while amazed his hurrying Hords retire From the fell havoc of devouring FIRE, Taught, the first Art! with piny rods to raise By quick attrition the domestic blaze, 215 Fan with soft breath, with kindling leaves provide, And lift the dread Destroyer on his side. So, with bright wreath of serpent-tresses crown'd, Severe in beauty, young MEDUSA frown'd; Erewhile subdued, round WISDOM'S ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... evidences of final cause and providential design, we may surely look upon this as a worthy possible solution of the mystery of Providence in the planting of the church in America in almost its ultimate stage of schism—that it is the purpose of its Head, out of the mutual attrition of the sects, their disintegration and comminution, to bring forth such a demonstration of the unity and liberty of the children of God as the past ages of church history ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... lonely hills, and be fed by many a mountain rill in the solitude, and the men who are to keep the freshness of their Christian zeal, and of the consecration which they will ever feel is being worn away by the attrition even of faithful service, can only renew and refresh it by resorting again to the Master, and imitating Him who prepared Himself for a day of teaching in the Temple by a night of communion on ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... the incessant note of the hyla with which the woods ring in the spring, the nonchalance of the butterfly carrying accident and change painted in a thousand hues upon its wings, or the brook minnow stoutly stemming the current, the lustre of whose scales worn bright by the attrition ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... rectangular turns. They often come thundering down upon you unawares, and as the streets are generally very narrow, it is difficult to secure a retreat in good time. At the corners of the streets are large stone posts, to protect the houses from the otherwise constant attrition from the wheels. The streets are paved with large stones, and the noise of the wheels, arising from the rapidity of their motion,—re-echoed by the height of the houses, is no trifling trial ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... which, genius—I mean that kind which depends on the imaginative power—perhaps cannot exist to great extent. The wheels of a machine, to play rapidly, must not fit with the utmost exactness, else the attrition diminishes ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... joined us at Fort Benton, whither he had come on a steamboat, up the Missouri. This was his maiden venture upon the plains, and his habit of querulous faultfinding had, on the first day out, secured him the sobriquet of Old Pernicketty, which the attrition of time had worn down to Old Nick. He knew no more of wolves and other animals than a naturalist, and he was now a trifle frightened. He was crouching beside his saddle and kit, listening with all his soul, his ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... there was left of her after seventy-four years of time's attrition—had a way of speaking which made it easy enough to believe that she had, in her day, been a beautiful singer. As her message to the world was usually one of promise and reassurance, she had the gift of dwelling with songlike ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... wherein is Vishnu, when one reads that Mudgala "attained that highest eternal bliss the sign of which is Nirv[a]na" (iii. 261. 47), he can only suppose that the word means here absorption into brahma or union with Vishnu. In fact Nirv[a]na is already a word of which the sense has been subjected to attrition enough to make it synonymous with 'bliss.' Thus "the gods attained Nirv[a]na by means of Vishnu's greatness" (iii. 201. 22); and a thirsty man "after drinking water attained Nirv[a]na," i.e., ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... middle of the seventeenth century an agent which all experience since that time shows to be necessary to the most productive intellectual activity was wanting. This was the attrition of like minds, making suggestions to one another, criticising, comparing, and reasoning. This element was introduced by the organization of the Royal Society of London and the ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... too there was a way out. Complete contrition included love to God as its motive, and the truly contrite man was not always easy to find; but some of the scholastic Doctors had discovered a substitute for contrition in what they called "attrition." viz., incomplete contrition, which might have fear for a motive, and which the Sacrament of Penance could transform into contrition. When, therefore, a man was afraid of hell or of purgatory, he could make his confession to the indulgence-seller or his ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... it took several years before they decided on sending their commissioners to Benares to report on the Veda and its real character. Yet that mission was, Ibelieve, the result of a slow process of attrition produced by the contact between native and European minds, and as such I wished to present it in my address at ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... dragged on its weary way. Victories and occasional defeats marked the stages of attrition by which the bravery and obstinacy of a determined foe was gradually worn down. On August 16th, 1901, Lord Kitchener issued his proclamation banishing all Boer leaders taken in arms after September 15th: three days later the Duke of Cornwall landed at Cape Town; on ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... the drinking of tea, is more a proof of its attrition of the solids than any stimulus to a wholesome desire of food. This quality accounts for the acrimonious effects too many have experienced by its use. Many have not only had their blood impoverished, but corrupted by the constant drinking of these teas. Whether ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... attrition of glacier, the erosion of water, the cracking of frost, the weathering of rain and wind and snow—these it had eternally fought and resisted in vain, yet still it stood magnificent, frowning, battle-scarred and undefeated. Its sky-piercing peaks were as cries ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... distinguished Philadelphia family, so proud of its name that in his instance they had doubled it, the usual bluntness and roughness of the sea were tempered by this gentle birth and breeding, and by frequent attrition with men and women of the politest society of the largest and most important city of the colonies. Offering his services as soon as the news of Lexington precipitated the conflict with the mother country, he had already made his name known among that gallant band of seamen ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... with literature, nor seemed to have conversed with cultivated minds, yet the results of such acquaintance and converse were here. Middleton was inclined to think him, however, an old man, one of those itinerants, such as Wordsworth represented in the "Excursion," who smooth themselves by the attrition of the world and gain a knowledge equivalent to or better than that of books from the actual intellect of man ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and left German shores to do what damage they might to the British navy. It was hoped, perhaps, that the naval forces of the two powers could be equalized and a battle fought on even terms after the Germans had cut down British advantage by a policy of attrition. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... such a comfortable and honored one as Dr. Leslie's. What his friends were apt to call his notions were not of such aggressive nature that he was accused of outlawry, and he was apt to speak his mind uncontradicted and undisturbed. He cared little for the friction and attrition, indeed for the inspiration, which one is sure to have who lives among many people, and which are so dear and so helpful to most of us who fall into ruts if we are too much alone. He loved his friends and his books, though he understood both as few scholars can, and he cared little for social pleasure, ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett |
