"Complex" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... intellectual plane of present-day civilization demands more of us than the world demanded then, when the avenues to honor and to power lay over fields of conquest, and the passport to favor was the sword. The complex problems of today call for a more thorough cultivation of our mental powers, which, to bring into play upon the multifarious concerns of our life, is the object of broad education. A well cultivated mind makes a man monarch of all that ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... plunging came to our ears, and the effect of his possible failure received consideration, or I thought of the business explosion which would follow any open breach between Jim and Cornish (though this seemed too remote for serious consideration), I began to ponder on the enormously complex system of ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... aspire to journalistic success are to be found in his prose. He has in the first place the gift of perfect lucidity no matter how complicated the subject he is expounding; such a book as his Complete English Tradesman is full of passages in which complex and difficult subject-matter is set forth so plainly and clearly that the least literate of his readers could have no doubt of his understanding it. He has also an amazingly exact acquaintance with the technicalities of all kinds of trades ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... of the well, which I have drawn as accurately as possible (not an easy thing to do when one is standing upon a rope ladder), will give an idea of the form of this strange pocket formed in the limestone of the mountain through the most complex dislocations and erosions. Two lateral pockets attracted my attention because of the enormous quantity of clay and bones that obstructed them. The first, to the left, was about 15 feet from the orifice. When we had entirely emptied it, we ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... as impossible as it seems. The operator at the sending station has a small sending key connected by electricity with a relay at the receiving station. By means of a lever and certain complex paraphernalia this key can be used as the sending key for the main apparatus. Thus the station operated by distant control carries on a duplex system of transmission so that both sending and receiving stations are kept in touch ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... Mr. Bailey are unable to find in Racine—they miss in him no less suggestions of the mysterious and the infinite. No doubt this is partly due to our English habit of associating these qualities with expressions which are complex and unfamiliar. When we come across the mysterious accent of fatality and remote terror in a single perfectly ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... I don't think you've been immunized. It confuses the mind too much for us to interrogate you about these complex matters under its influence but we will surely find out if you have been answering our ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... toward the gun, peering nearsightedly up at it. "Quite complex, isn't it? All those vanes and tubes. I suppose this is some sort of a telescopic sight." His gloved hand touched the end of ...
— The Gun • Philip K. Dick
... not!" declared Reay, decisively—"There are plenty of rag-books called novels—but they are not real 'novels.' There's nothing 'new' in them. There's no touch of real, suffering, palpitating humanity in them! The humanity of to-day is infinitely more complex than it was in the days of Scott or Dickens, but there's no Scott or Dickens to epitomise its character or delineate its temperament. I want to be the twentieth century Scott and Dickens rolled into one stupendous ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... that he accomplished all this and more, much more: learned law and its intricacies; and the complex procedure of the law courts; and all about soldiering, and sailoring, and the manners and customs and ways of royal courts and aristocratic society; and likewise accumulated in his one head every kind of knowledge the learned then possessed, and every ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... is massed in villages and cities for reasons that have nothing to do with either civilization or self-defence. The causes that bring about the massing of urban population are many and their operation is complex. In general, however, it is to facilitate one or more of several things, namely—the receiving, distribution, and transportation of commodities, the manufacture of products, the existence of good harbors, and the existence of minerals and metals ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... Hadow, is no "builder of the lofty rhyme," but the poet of the single line, the maker of the phrase exquisite. This is hardly comprehensive. With the more complex, classical types of the musical organism Chopin had little sympathy, but he contrived nevertheless to write two movements of a piano sonata that are excellent—the first half of the B flat minor Sonata. The idealized dance forms he preferred; the ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... She attacked a complex tangle of ropes vigorously. Miss Rutherford, with Frank leaning on her shoulder, staggered up the beach. Just as they reached the tents the head of a young man appeared under the flapping canvas. Then his ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... considerable value, as well as a promissory note of future performance. The quick senses of the child, her keen powers of observation and introspection, her impressionability both to sensations and complex emotions—these are the very things out of which literature is made; the raw stuff of art. Her capacity to handle English—after so short a residence in America—shows that she possesses also the instrument of expression. More fortunate than the poet ...
— From Plotzk to Boston • Mary Antin
... her silent room, Weaves upon the upright loom; Weaves a mantle rich and dark, Purpled over, deep. But mark How she scatters o'er the wool Woven shapes, till it is full Of men that struggle close, complex; Short-clipp'd steeds with wrinkled necks Arching high; spear, shield, and all The panoply that doth recall Mighty war; such war as e'en For Helen's sake is waged, I ween. Purple is the groundwork: good! All the field is stained with blood— Blood poured out for Helen's sake; (Thread, ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... If we judged only from this case, it would seem that Phinuit was merely a secondary personality of Mrs Piper, possessing the extraordinary power of reading people's minds unhindered by distance. But let us say at once that a number of other cases render the problem much more complex. The conclusion to be drawn from what follows is, that if Phinuit is really what he asserts that he is, he does not draw his information only from disincarnated spirits, whom he is supposed to perceive objectively; he also reads the minds of the living, and with ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... of the southerners differs from that of the northerners in that it does not mingle the different elements and forms in literature, and remains lucid in its outbreaks. In our most complex natures you never encounter the entanglement of directions, relations, and figures that characterizes a Carlyle, a Browning, or a Poe. For this reason the man of the north always finds fault with the man of the south for his ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... them to be imperative upon other people. To write "I believe" is not only less presumptuous and aggressive in such matters than to write "it is true," but it is also nearer the reality of the case. One knows what seems true to one's self, but we are coming to realize that the world is great and complex, beyond the utmost power of such minds as ours. Every day of life drives that conviction further home. And it is possible to maintain that in perhaps quite a great number of ethical, social, and political ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... Singelsby said, studied that complex question very earnestly and for some time, and to his mind it had resolved itself to this: not how to suppress vagrancy, but how to make of the vagrant an honest and useful citizen. Repressive laws were easily passed, but it appeared to him ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... (surroundings,—soil, climate, etc.) account for and explain the various species that have existed in the past and now exist upon earth, man included. That there are no gaps in the process but that there is demonstrable a steady ascent from lower to higher (simple to more complex) forms of life, until man is reached, the acknowledged highest product ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... affected with a frivolous sense of humor which plunges him at the most inopportune moments into paroxysms of imperfectly suppressed laughter. Cusins is a spectacled student, slight, thin haired, and sweet voiced, with a more complex form of Lomax's complaint. His sense of humor is intellectual and subtle, and is complicated by an appalling temper. The lifelong struggle of a benevolent temperament and a high conscience against impulses of inhuman ridicule and fierce impatience has set up a chronic strain which has visibly ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... growing out of the war. These they have for the most part met and discharged with zeal and efficiency. This acknowledgment justly includes those consuls who, residing in Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, Japan, China, and other Oriental countries, are charged with complex functions ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... understanding of it. It is the process of upward growth, the stairs by which simple organisms climb to become more complex organisms." ...
— Hellhounds of the Cosmos • Clifford Donald Simak
... bow bent; but Tazewell's mind was always on the stretch, or, in a stricter sense, was never on the stretch at all. The most intricate combination of figures he saw through at a glance; and in the arts the most complex machinery was easily understood by him, and readily made plain to others by his familiar explanations. Processes of reasoning the most elaborate seemed rather the play of his mind than a serious exercise of its powers; and in his most refined ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... the Ammophilae in stinging their prey is more complex than that of any other predatory wasp. The larvae with which they provision their nests are made up of thirteen segments, and each of these has its own nervous centre or ganglion. Hence if the caterpillar is to be reduced to a state of immobility, or to state so nearly ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... came into existence among the ruins of the Roman civilization in Gaul, a new language was at the same time slowly evolved. This language, in spite of the complex influences which went to the making of the nationality of France, was of a simple origin. With a very few exceptions, every word in the French vocabulary comes straight from the Latin. The influence of the pre-Roman Celts is almost imperceptible; while the number of words introduced ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... text writers listed, toolmakers by the end of the 18th century gave buyers a wide choice. The catalogue of Sheffield's Castle Hill Works offered 20 combinations of ready-stocked tool chests; the simplest contained 12 carpenter's tools and the most complex, 39, plus, if desired, an additional assortment of gardening implements (fig. 11). In 1857, the Arrowmammett Works of Middletown, Connecticut, producers of bench and molding planes, published an illustrated catalogue that offered 34 distinct types that included everything from hollows and rounds ...
— Woodworking Tools 1600-1900 • Peter C. Welsh
... which are wrought of purest imaginative texture call solely for a scenic setting which should convey effective suggestion. The machinery to be employed for the purpose of effective suggestion should be simple and unobtrusive. If it be complex and obtrusive, it defeats "the purpose of playing" by exaggerating for the spectator the inevitable interval between the visionary and indeterminate limits of the scene which the poet imagines, and the cramped and narrow ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... observations on the psycho-physical complex, Spirit and Destiny, we hope we shall not be misunderstood when for the sake of brevity we speak as if the spirit of the new order were determined by its material construction, while in reality it incorporates itself therein. The structure is the easier ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... enabling him to support the great and curious pain and pleasure attending a first penetration of that delicious narrow aperture, dedicated to the obscene god. It ended in his complete initiation into our orgies with the footman. His addition to the orgy enabling more complex and lustful combinations than two men and a woman alone ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... a stage of complex perfection. To penetrate to the inside hut, the stranger reverently steps through a hole in the snow to the veranda, then by way of a vestibule with an inner and outer door he has invaded the privacy of the work-room, from which with fear and trembling he passes by a third door into the sanctum sanctorum. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... gathered round them by reason of their employment through a hundred generations of song. In the words of Mr. Myers, "without ceasing to be a logical step in the argument, a phrase becomes a centre of emotional force. The complex associations which it evokes, modify the associations evoked by other words in the same passage, in a way distinct from logical or grammatical connection." The poet suggests much more than he says, or as Milton himself has phrased it, "more ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... the moment that we rode forward a dozen hands at least were busied in this evil-averting ceremony. Antonio instantly turned and crossed himself in the Greek fashion,—much more complex and ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... carriages and trucks, and returning with trains or with 'empties' within fixed periods so punctually, that he shall not interfere with, run into, or delay, the operations of the hundreds of drivers whose duties are as complex, nice, important, and swift as ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... for various reasons desire to adopt a vegetarian diet I would say, do not substitute bread and vegetables for meat. Do not spend your energy making new and complex dishes as advocated in fashionable vegetarian cook books. Compounds containing several soft proteins such as beans, nuts, eggs and cream, besides starches, are a burden to the liver and alimentary canal and lay the ...
— Food for the Traveler - What to Eat and Why • Dora Cathrine Cristine Liebel Roper
... Classic" of the Queen Anne reformers bear the test of a critical comparison with the "seven lamps" of Vitruvius or the dictum of Roscoe? are such designs true exponents of "high art," and do they meet the requirements of the complex and artificial life of to-day? I propose to confine my investigations to the style of domestic buildings, ecclesiastical and municipal edifices being usually and by general consent designed in a broader and more masculine ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... a brief analysis, chiefly psychological in character, of the four great activities of the human mind and imagination—religion, art, science, and morals. These are discussed as normal though complex activities developed, through the process of reflection, in the fulfillment of man's inborn impulses and needs. Thus descriptively to treat these spiritual enterprises implies on the part of the author a naturalistic viewpoint whose main outlines ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... The experience of Miss Emmerson went no further than the simple evolutions of the country dance, or the deliberate and dignified procession of the minuet. No wonder, therefore, that her faculties were bewildered by the complex movements of the cotillion: and, in short, as the good lady daily contemplated the improvements of the female youth around her, she became each hour more convinced of her own inability to control, or in any manner to superintend, the education of her orphan niece. Julia was, consequently, ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... was pondering on these things in this land of pastures and lonely ponds, with the wall of the Jura black against the narrow bars of evening—(my pain seemed gone for a moment, yet I was hobbling slowly)—I say as I was considering this complex doctrine, I felt my sack suddenly much lighter, and I had hardly time to rejoice at the miracle when I heard immediately a very loud crash, and turning half round I saw on the blurred white of the twilit road my quart of Open Wine all broken ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... in an infusory animal, or an intestinal worm, or coral polypus, or earthworm being highly developed? If no advantage, they would not become highly developed: not but what all these animals have very complex structures (except infusoria), and they may well be higher than the animals which occupied similar places in the economy of nature before the Silurian epoch. There is a blind snake with the appearances and, in some respects, habits of earthworms; but this blind snake does ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... the annexed provinces present a strangely complex patchwork and oft-repeated palimpsest, civilization after civilization overlapping each other. If Alsace-Lorraine has produced no Titan either in literature or art, she yet shows a ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... to Haggai and Zechariah, though doubtless unreliable, are of interest in suggesting the liturgical importance of the period following the return from the exile. This period seems to have produced several psalms. Psalm cxxvi,, with its curiously complex feeling, apparently reflects the situation of that period, and the group of psalms which proclaim Jehovah as King, and ring with the notes of a "new song," were probably composed to celebrate the joy of the return and the resumption of public worship in the temple (xciii., ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... granted the perpetuation of the monarchy as an integral part of the governmental system. In the general bombardment to which the hereditary House of Lords was subjected hereditary kingship wholly escaped. The reasons are numerous and complex. They arise in part, though by no means so largely as is sometimes imagined, from the fact that monarchy in England is a venerable institution and the innate conservatism of the Englishman, while permitting him from time to time to regulate and modify it, restrains him from doing anything ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... other work of the kind in the world; the planning of our office-buildings is unrivalled anywhere, and some of our apartment-houses will bear comparison with the best in Paris—which are the best anywhere—and are more interesting, on account of the more complex character of the services which we must provide for. Besides this, many details of American construction, such as the encased iron framing-and isolated pier foundations of the Chicago architects, and the heating and ventilating systems ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... beyond all others in which this may be confidently looked for, it is that part in which the Divine Architect describes His own work. We know how difficult it is to understand a complicated process, or a complex piece of machinery, from a mere written description; and how our difficulty is lessened if we have the opportunity of inspecting the machinery or the process. Just in the same way we may expect to encounter difficulties, and to form ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... corresponding periods of development the same living forms inhabit all? It would be assuming the eternal sterilization of the functions of Nature to suppose that our earth is the only body that can produce them." "The world of organic life is so much more complex," replied Cortlandt, "than that of the crystal, that it requires great continuity. So far we certainly have seen no men, or anything like them, not even so much as a monkey, though I suppose, according to your reasoning, Jupiter has not advanced far enough to produce even that." ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... We're all so complex nowadays that one can't possibly satisfy us. Two would just do it. Two would serve to relax the tension of married life, and yet would not lead to what the newspapers call licence. Everyone would have another chance, and what the first partner ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... savages. It takes an exceptionally shrewd white man even to unravel the customs of voluntary or obligatory wife sharing or lending which prevail in all parts of Australia, and which must have required not only hundreds but thousands of years to assume their present extraordinarily complex aspect; customs which form part and parcel of the very life of Australians and which represent the lowest depths of sexual depravity, since they are utterly incompatible with chastity, fidelity, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... be their terms of peace. These terms must be divided into many classes, ranging from those in which only one of the Allies has an interest to those in which all have an interest. Of course, the latter will be the most complex, and it is time now to begin with the complexities of the most far-reaching situation. This is Mesopotamia and the ...
— The Audacious War • Clarence W. Barron
... quantity of tiny round coloured objects—closely related, as I subsequently had occasion to ascertain, to the Bellaria angelica,—which they raised to their mouths with astonishing and unerring aim in the complex Handling-Machines, or Tenticklers, which form part of ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... the slope again. Far away, widely scattered, he caught glimpses of this rash and gallant attack. He was aware of that strange complex odour which rises from a battlefield. It affected him as horrible and as unlike any other unpleasant smell. Feeling better, he busied himself directing those who were aiding the wounded. A general officer he did not know said to him, "Stop ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... about them and but little more secrecy. The first step having been taken in that direction, the next followed as a matter of course. Next came associations to prevent future crime by punishing past crime. These organizations were more complex in their character and of wider range in ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... three questions—which, in reality, were but three forms of a single question—upon the same day, the 24th of January. His reply was as complex as the demand had been simple. It consisted of a proposal in six articles, and a requisition in twenty-one, making in all twenty-seven articles. Substantially he proposed to dismiss the foreign troops—to effect a general pacification of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... which had decidedly influenced his artistic sensibility. The brilliant city had not smirched his soul, but it had helped to form his taste. That was very modern, and very un-British. Alston had a sort of innocent love for the strange and the complex in music. He shrank from anything banal, and disliked the obvious, though his contact with French people had saved him from love of the cloudy. As he intended to make his career upon the stage, and as he was too young, and far too enthusiastic, not ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... so complex a process that the poetic representation of it, with its subtle suggestiveness, is always more complete and realistic than any possible philosophic analysis. Science can deal only with aspects and abstractions, and its method becomes more and more inadequate as its matter grows more concrete, ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... Tools may be either complex or simple in design, that is to say, each tool may form a complete design with enclosing border, as the lower ones on page 323, or it may be only one element of a design, as at fig. 100. Lines may be run with a fillet (see fig. 88), or ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... are so highly seasoned, are such strange and heterogeneous compositions, meer olios and gallimawfreys, that they seem removed as far as possible from the intention of contributing to health; indeed the messes are so redundant and complex, that in regard to herbs, in No. 6, no less than ten are used, where we should now be content with two or three: and so the sallad, No. 76, consists of no less than 14 ingredients. The physicians appear only to have taken care that nothing directly noxious was suffered ...
— The Forme of Cury • Samuel Pegge
... of all his faults and failings, in spite of the strange tissue of complex aims and motives which swayed his course, Lodovico Sforza was a man of great ideas and splendid capacities, a prince who was in many respects distinctly in advance of his age. His wise and beneficial ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... used with special precautions, the writer, as will be shown hereafter, has been able to prove that the temperature of the air, as traversed in the wayward course of a balloon, is probably far more variable and complex than has ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... following its natural, musical instinct. Notation and keyboards are simply symbols of music—cages in which the beautiful bird is caught. They are not music any more than the alphabet is literature. Unfortunately, our system of musical symbols and the keyboard itself are very complex. For the young child it is as difficult as are Calculus and Algebra for his older brother. As a matter of fact, the keys of F sharp, B, and D flat major, etc., are only difficult because fate has made them so. It would have served the musical purpose just as well if the pitch of the instruments ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... regular accompaniment of unchastity, it is both the cause and the result of poverty, it vitiates much charity, it is a leading cause of imbecility and insanity, and a provocative of crime. It stands squarely in the way of social progress. It is a complex problem. It is first a personal question, affecting primarily the drinker; secondly, a social question, affecting the family and the community; thirdly, an economic and political question, affecting society at large. Consequently the solution of the problem is not simple. Different phases of ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... thus that the young man gained the most congenial of the subjects that were to fill his summer months. The second, something bigger, though hardly more complex, was another opera—already bespoken by several impresarii, and founded on a translation of Keats's "Isabella." Into this subject he grew, slowly, but strongly and with full interest, till by August the tone-poem was nearly done, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... personality, and a facility for attracting affection. She is sensitive and proud—passionate even at times. She can be led but not driven. I tell you all this, Monsieur, not censoriously but that it may help you in dealing with a character that is extraordinarily complex, with a nature that both demands and repels affection, that longs for and yet scorns sympathy." She looked at Craven anxiously. His complete attention was claimed at last. A new conception of his unknown ward was forcing itself upon him, so that any humour there might ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... receive respecting the minds of other men. The sceptics whose reasonings I am here taking into consideration, admit, each man for himself, the reality of his own existence. There is such a thing therefore as human nature; for he is a specimen of it. Now the idea of human nature, or of man, is a very complex thing. He is in the first place the subject of sensible impressions, however these impressions are communicated to him. He has the faculties of thinking and feeling. He is subject to the law of the association of ideas, ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... city government arise in connection with the numerous administrative departments; these are quite complex in their operation. In large cities the number of officials and the variety of their duties render it almost impossible for the average citizen to become informed concerning these affairs; consequently, opportunities for fraud ...
— Our Government: Local, State, and National: Idaho Edition • J.A. James
... animated inhabitants of every portion of the earth's surface, whereby the tendency to excess in every class of animals is continually checked and repressed. And although it is certain that the causes of human suffering of all sorts, as of human diseases, are very generally complex, yet we may certainly assert, that this principle is essentially concerned, as a great and permanent predisposing cause, in all those sufferings which result from poverty, and must be carefully kept in view in all wise ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... of my father's flight by no means exhausts the question. Life is complex and every explanation of a man's conduct is bound to suffer from one-sidedness. Besides, there are circumstances of which I do not care to speak at the present moment, in order not to cause unnecessary pain to people still living. ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... prolonged, moreover, by the introduction of additional lines with alternate riming, with couplets and sometimes with triplets. There are many five-lined and six-lined stanzas, and one—the longest in the poem—of nine lines. But these metric variations are used with temperance. The stanza form is never complex; it is built up naturally from the ballad stanza upon which it rests and to which it constantly returns as its norm and type. Of the one hundred and forty-two stanzas in the poem, one hundred and six ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... sentence would lead some readers to suppose that De Brosses, in his speculations, was looking for the origin of religion; but, in reality, his work is a mere attempt to explain a certain element in ancient religion and mythology. De Brosses was well aware that heathen religions were a complex mass, a concretion of many materials. He admits the existence of regard for the spirits of the dead as one factor, he gives Sabaeism a place as another. But what chiefly puzzles him, and what he chiefly tries to explain, is the ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... fathers found themselves face to face with the complex questions of finance, they naturally fell back upon the experience and devices of their past history: they did as in such emergencies men always do,—they tried to meet the present difficulty without weighing maturely the future difficulties. The present ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... society has become so complex, that it could now scarcely be carried on without the presence of these despised auxiliaries; and detachments from the army of aunts and uncles are wanted to stop gaps in every hedge. They rove about, mental and moral Ishmaelites, pitching ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... discharge of a storage battery consists of the changing of the spongy lead and lead peroxide into lead sulphate, and the abstraction of the acid from the electrolyte. Considered electrically, the changes are more complex, and require further investigation. The voltage, internal resistance, rate of discharge, capacity, and other features must be considered, and the effects of changes in one upon the others must be studied. This proceeding is simplified considerably ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... other statesman who ever lived—for such, surely, would have been the meed of the man who abolished war. That mind of his, honest as the day, but far from great; strong but not broad, sees everything as simple, not as complex. Is there a wrong? Why, then, abolish it; it is as simple as A B C. War is wrong; therefore let us stop it. How? Why, get everybody to agree not to fight without taking a year to look into the thing. And he busied himself drafting and negotiating treaties with ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... globular bodies, slightly conical below and in cases flattened above. They range in size from one inch to nearly a foot in height, but the average capacity is not above a pint. Aside from the bottles there is a wide range of shapes. There are shallow bowls and various complex and compound forms. Animal forms are associated with all classes of vessels. Tripod supports are limited to rather modest proportions, and handles, although often present and greatly varied in style, do ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... production, and then having another go at it in the Sunday edition under the title of "Second Swats" or "The Past Week in the Theatre," which has made it pretty rocky going for dramatists who thus get it twice in the same place, and experience the complex emotions of the commuter who, coming home in the dark, trips over the baby's cart and bumps his ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... moves continuously, harmoniously, did in the same moment build a throne and take us in it. At once the life from us flowed out, and the life about flowed in. Surely these were days of large orchestras, and of wonderful and complex melodies. Zenobia moved like a queen over the scene, her rich garments sweeping over the soft grass, her graceful arms swinging as with secret blessings. All the living things of the day seemed eager to ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... him, slyly, what guarantee he had that any E would be listening if they did produce a review of the Eden complex, knowing he could give no ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... answering to Philip's description had been introduced the night of the escape by a man celebrated, not indeed for robberies, or larcenies, or crimes of the coarser kind, but for address in all that more large and complex character which comes under the denomination of living upon one's wits, to a polite rendezvous frequented by persons of a similar profession. Since then, however, all clue of Philip was lost. But though ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... understand Ireland we must begin by understanding England. On no other terms will that complex of facts, memories, and passions, which is called the Irish Question, yield up its secret. "You have always been," said a Lady Clanricarde to some English politician, "like a high wall standing between us and the ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... instinct is sufficiently powerful to render any but the most temporary isolations not simply disagreeable, but painful. The savage has all the privacy he needs within the compass of his skull; like dogs and timid women, he prefers ill-treatment to desertion, and it is only a scarce and complex modern type that finds comfort and refreshment in quite lonely places and quite solitary occupations. Yet such there are, men who can neither sleep well nor think well, nor attain to a full perception of beautiful objects, ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... following morning she was summoned early before her judges. They had not yet assembled; but some of the lower officials were pacing up and down, exchanging unintelligible jokes, looking sometimes at herself, sometimes at an iron machine, with a complex arrangement of wheels and screws. Dark were the suspicions which assaulted Paulina as this framework or couch of iron first met her eyes; and perhaps some of the jests circulating amongst the brutal ministers of her brutal judges would have been intelligible enough, had she condescended to turn her ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... revelation. What had seemed very complex and confused became here extremely simple; what had been especially dull became here perhaps the most exciting topic in all our history. And the secret of the advance is found to a large extent in the organization. Thus organization is a means ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... practical side. Two systems of computing planetary perturbations had been used, one by Leverrier, while the other was invented by Hansen. The former method was, in principle, of great simplicity, while the latter seemed to be very complex and even clumsy. I naturally supposed that the man who computed the direction of the planet Neptune before its existence was known, must be a master of the whole subject, and followed the lines he indicated. I gradually discovered the contrary, ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... in fact oftentimes at the very period of birth, is exposed to many dangerous and troublesome affections, the result of causes not less complex and multifarious than those that exert an influence over the human organization. Many diseases are the consequence of their domesticity and the hereditary defects of their progenitors, others are dependent upon accidental circumstances, bad treatment, and improper nourishment. Not a few, however, ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... said to have been kindred. The indications are that the inhabitants of both came from the east—possibly were intruders, which may have been the cause of the hostility entertained by both toward the Walpians. The problem is too complex to be solved with our present limited knowledge in this direction, and archeology seems not to afford very satisfactory evidence one way or the other. We may never know whether the Sikyatki refugees founded Awatobi or simply fled to that ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... the house and grounds he and his family have enjoyed, the value of the chickens, eggs, vegetables, fruit, milk, meat and other produce of the farm consumed—as he proceeds the problem becomes infinitely more complex until at last he ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... was that, at the very moment when the Government and the country were on the first occasion for a century confronted by a really grave and complex military situation, at the very moment when there was a scare as to German projects of an immediate invasion, that category of our land forces which was especially earmarked for the defence of the British Isles was not in a position to perform ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... to be answered, from the hitherto unpublished records, in the following chapters. But, in common charity, the reader must be warned that the exposition is inevitably puzzling and complex. Sprot, under examination, lied often, lied variously, and, perhaps, lied to the last. Moreover much, indeed everything, depends here on exact dates, and Sprot's are loose, as was natural in the circumstances, the events of which he spoke ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... a new, as-yet-untested ("Two experiments for the price of one," explained economy-minded officials) and unbelievably complex ...
— Subjectivity • Norman Spinrad
... proposition was accordingly acted upon; Mr. Ben Allen and Mr. Bob Sawyer betaking themselves to a sequestered pot-shop on the remotest confines of the Borough, behind the bar door of which their names had in other days very often appeared at the head of long and complex calculations ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... in two; Brandenburg-Baireuth was for his second son, Brandenburg-Anspach for his third: hereby again were two new progenitors of Culmbach Princes introduced, and a New Line, Second or "Younger Line" they call it (Line mostly split in two, as heretofore); which—after complex adventures in its split condition, Baireuth under one head, Anspach under another—continues active down to our little Fritz's time and farther. As will become but too apparent to us in ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... a very adaptable one and can be run in a great number of different ways. It can be as simple or as complex as any leader ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper
... of the virtues of "May-dew," but perhaps the complex superstition following may be less generally known. A respectable tradesman's wife in this town (Launceston) tells me that the poor people here say that a swelling in the neck may be cured by the patient's going before sunrise, on the 1st of May, to the grave of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various
... daughter-science of Astronomy; and these twain were worshipped by the greatest scientific intellects of the Greeks. But though we do not hear of them nor read of them, we must not suppose for a moment that the practical or technical sciences were lacking in so rich and complex a civilization. China, that most glorious of all living monuments of Antiquity, tells us nothing of her own chemistry, but we know that it is there. Peep into a Chinese town, walk through its narrow streets, thronged but ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... the crowd where Vogotzine's loud laugh alternated with the little cries of the Baroness, felt a complex sentiment: he wished his friends to enjoy themselves and yet he longed to be alone with Marsa, and to take her away. They were to go first to his hotel in Paris; and then to some obscure corner, probably to the villa of Sainte-Adresse, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... scientific inclinations of his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, and the patient, sturdy honesty of his other grandfather, Josiah Wedgwood. These developed under the stimulus of the long five-year voyage, face to face with the world of nature. This happy complex produced the master biologist. To believe that he came about purely by chance requires a great stretch of the imagination. "There's a ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... arms, shoulders, legs, head, feet for an attitude of complete rest. He repeated his illustration again and again, Susan watching and listening with open-eyed wonder and admiration. She had never dreamed that so simple a matter could be so complex. When he got her up beside him and went through it with her, she soon became as used to the new motions as a beginner at the piano to stretching an octave. But it was only after more than an hour's practice that ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... the strongest personal interest in doing so. He loved life with a mad passion for its own sake, and the only object of his study was to find a means of living longer than other men. All the aims and desires and complex reasonings of his being tended to this simple expression—the wish to live. To what idolatrous self-worship Keyork Arabian might be capable of descending, if he ever succeeded in eliminating death from the equation of his immediate future, it was impossible to say. The wisdom ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... first begin to understand, in a practical sense, what is meant by the unity of a political body, and we should approach to a more adequate appreciation of the powers which are latent in organization. For it must be considered that hitherto, under the most complex organization, and that which has best attained its purposes, the national will has never been able to express itself upon one in a thousand of the public acts, simply because the national voice was lost in the distance, and could not collect itself ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... possibility of a serious increase in ultraviolet radiation has been added to widespread radioactive fallout as a fearsome consequence of the large-scale use of nuclear weapons. And it is likely that we must reckon with still other complex and subtle processes, global in scope, which could seriously threaten the health of distant populations in the event of an all-out ...
— Worldwide Effects of Nuclear War: Some Perspectives • United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
... many well-meaning but misguided persons (some of them men of considerable intelligence) who seemed possessed of the idea that the coffee drink was an unpleasant medicine that needed something to take away its curse, or else that it required a complex method of preparation. Witness "Judge" Walter Rumsey's Electuary of Cophy, which appeared in 1657 in connection with a curious work of his called Organon Salutis: an instrument to cleanse the stomach.[73] ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... emphasis placed according to the needs of a particular class. All the suggestions are given in very simple form, chiefly from the standpoint of the first grade, for the reason that it is easier to add to the details of a simple problem than to simplify one which is complex. ...
— Primary Handwork • Ella Victoria Dobbs
... under the gathering shadows. The car lamps were lit. Maria still looked, however, out of the window; the lights in the house windows, and red and green signal-lights, gave her a childish interest. She forgot entirely about herself. She turned her back upon herself and her complex situation of life with infinite relief. She did not wonder what she would do when she reached Ridgewood. She did not think any more of herself. It was as if she had come into a room of life without any looking-glasses, and she was no longer visible to her own consciousness. ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... views concerning it. The following are a specimen: 'Expressions of this kind are condemned by some critics; but the usage is unquestionably of far better authority, and (according to my apprehension) in far better taste, than the more complex phraseology which some late writers adopt in its stead; as, "The books are now being sold."'—Goold Brown. 'As to the notion of introducing a new and more complex passive form of conjugation, as, "The bridge is being built," "The bridge was being built," and so forth, it is one ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... arrogant marvel of mobile curves. Her lips were finely made of deep carmine; the irises of her eyes were delicate, breakable blue, like china eyes. She was a complete, infinitely delicate, quite perfect thing of beauty, flowing in an even line from a complex coiffure ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex. But, if you wish, let us stay here. Yes, let us stay here. The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in ...
— A Woman of No Importance • Oscar Wilde
... think of a full-blown civilization without tailors than one can imagine a complex state of society in which, for example, the contemporary Saturday Evening Post would publish its Exclusive Saturday Evening Styles, and gentlemen would habitually buy their patterns by bust-measure and cut out their new suits at home on the dining-room table. The idea may seem practical, but ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... upon the nasal bone. The temporal arcades were quite developed, with prominent supra-orbital bosses. The orbital hollows were 51/2 cm. in diameter, whereas the external nares were 91/2 cm., the protrusion in front of the nostrils being 10 cm. long. The palate, of great length, had a peculiar complex shape, like a much-elongated U with another smaller U attached to it in the ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... It is not only the vocal cords that should set for the tone at the moment the air-column strikes them, the entire vocal tract takes part in the adjustment that prepares for the attack. It is indeed, as Mills says, a case of complex and beautiful adaptation. Therefore, the term coup de glotte imperfectly expresses what the modern physiologist of voice means by attack. For coup de glotte conveys the idea of shock, hence ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... opportunity and to accord certain treatment to ten million aspiring, education-and-property-acquiring people. In a word, the difficulty of the problem is not so much due to the facts presented as to the hypothesis assumed for its solution. In this it is similar to the problem of the solar system. By a complex, confusing, and almost contradictory mathematical process, by the use of zigzags instead of straight lines, the earth can be proved to be the center of things celestial; but by an operation so simple that it can be ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... open a new rule, farther on in Butler than addition and substraction. In short, she found herself lost in the maze of fractions, and could not extricate herself. When she jumped up from her easy-chair, she was trying to reduce the following complex fractions, into one simple one, ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... with slight embarrassment, "your mind interests me exceedingly. It is not complex, nor subtle, but remarkably intuitive. You have imagination and humor, ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... troubles us—once it was a simple enough matter to be a human being, but now it is deeply difficult; because life was once simple, but is now complex, confused, multifarious. Haste, anxiety, preoccupation, the need to specialize and make machines of ourselves, have transformed the once simple world, and we are apprised that it will not be without effort that we shall keep the broad human traits which have so far made the ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson
... had some knowledge of electricity, and could make intelligible sketches of machinery. A list of some other classes whose services were invited proves that though the air service was small its needs were many and complex. Men of the following trades were to be enrolled, by enlistment or transfer, in the Military Wing: blacksmiths, carpenters and joiners, clerks, coppersmiths, draughtsmen, electricians, fitters, harness-makers, instrument repairers, metal-turners, painters, ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... Etienne Despardieu, or Tiennet, the rustic narrator, tells, in the successive veillees of a month, the romance of his youth. It is a work of a very different type to the rural tales that had preceded it, and should be regarded apart from them. It is longer, more complex in form and sentiment, more of an ideal composition. Les Maitres Sonneurs, is a delightful pastoral, woodland fantasy, standing by itself among romances much as stands a kindred work of imagination, ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... migrations of the natural races are necessary and frequent, and the movements of the culture races have been even more complex. The leadership of these mass-movements and spatial reaccommodations necessarily rests with the men, who, in their wanderings, have become acquainted with larger stretches of space; and whose specialty ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas |
