"Concrete" Quotes from Famous Books
... written anything in the ordinary style of religious verse, the style of Herbert, of Keble, of the hymn-writers. The spirit which runs through all his work is more often felt as an influence than manifested in any concrete and separate form. Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day, La Saisiaz and Ferishtah's Fancies are the only prominent ... — An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... centre table—Ditmar's children! Was Ditmar there? Impelled irresistibly by a curiosity overcoming repugnance and fear, she went forward slowly across the street, gained the farther pavement, stepped over the concrete coping, and stood, shivering violently, on the lawn, feeling like an interloper and a thief, yet held by morbid fascination. The children continued to romp. The boy was strong and swift, the girl stout and ungainly in her movements, not mistress of her body; he caught her and twisted ... — The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Definite.—Both the writer and the reader are more interested in definite and concrete subjects than in the general and abstract ones, and we shall make our writing more interesting by recognizing this fact. One might write about "Birds," or "The Intelligence of Birds," or "How Birds Protect their Young," or "A Family of Robins." The last is a specific subject, ... — Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... drove on, through, endless boulevards, some bustling, some dingy, some tawdry and flaring, some melancholy and mean; rows of garden gods, planted on the walls of yards full of vases and divinities of concrete, huge railway halls, monster hotels, dissenting chapels in the form of Gothic churches, quaint ancient almshouses that were once built in the fields, and tea-gardens and stingo-houses and knackers' yards. They were in a district far beyond the experience ... — Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... before them at the little marble tables at the back. The gaudy, gilded, tobacco-smoke and humanity-filled theatre seemed to be unreal, the stage but a phantom cloud effect. I wondered why I, a creature from the concrete world, was there. I had an insane impulse to fly from it all, to go out into the streets, and wander, wander for ever, away from the world. I was walking along the promenade, lost in this lunacy, when I stumbled against a fellow-promenader and the ... — The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... When a man of gigantic strength, like Michael Angelo, found the brush and the palette too soft for his strong hands, he turned to sculpture and to architecture, and hacked the most terrific creatures out of heavy blocks of marble and drew the plans for the church of St. Peter, the most concrete "expression" of the glories of the triumphant ... — The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... the validity of the second assumption. And we must proceed to inquire what is the real meaning of the word "contemporaneous" as employed by geologists. To this end a concrete example may be taken. ... — Geological Contemporaneity and Persistent Types of Life • Thomas H. Huxley
... the total number of airports. The runway(s) may be paved (concrete or asphalt surfaces) or unpaved (grass, dirt, sand, or gravel surfaces), but must be usable. Not all airports have facilities for refueling, maintenance, or ... — The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... had never made her a present there was nothing of this kind to discard. It had been part of his non-committal, impersonal attitude toward her that he had never given her a concrete sign that she meant anything to him whatever. He had thanked her on occasions for the comforting quality he found in her presence. He had, in so many words, recognized the fact that when he got into a tantrum of nerves she could bring ... — The Dust Flower • Basil King
... connected with the relief. He was given a freedom in this respect enjoyed by no other man. He moved almost without hindrance and undetained by formalities freely in and out of England, France, Holland, occupied Belgium and France, and Germany itself, with person and traveling bags unexamined. It was a concrete expression of confidence in his integrity and perfect correctness of behavior, that can only be fully understood by those who had to make any movements at all across frontiers in the tense days ... — Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... system of government this meant that these States were more or less responsive to their demands. It was greatly to the interest of the frontiersmen that their demands should be gratified, while other citizens had no very concrete concern in the matter one way or the other. In addition to this, and even more important, was the fact that there were large classes of the population everywhere who felt much sense of identity with the frontiersmen, and sympathized with them. The fathers ... — The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... The economy of the recipient's mental energy, into which are thus resolvable the several causes of the strength of Saxon English, may equally be traced in the superiority of specific over generic words. That concrete terms produce more vivid impressions than abstract ones, and should, when possible, be used instead, is a thorough maxim of composition. As Dr. Campbell says, "The more general the terms are, the ... — The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... past have arisen out of a difference of opinion arising through a difference in temperament. The question is as live today as it was two thousand years ago—what expression is best? That is, what shall we do to be saved? And concrete absurdity consists in saying we must all ... — Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... mean that man should immediately cut off his head and try to develop a pair of eyes in his breasts. But it does mean this: that an idea is just the final concrete or registered result of living dynamic interchange and reactions: that no idea is ever perfectly expressed until its dynamic cause is finished; and that to continue to put into dynamic effect an already ... — Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... more by suggestion than set delineation, but such hints that it was "a gentle hostelry," that its rooms and stables were alike spacious, that the food was of the best and the wine of the strongest go further with the imagination than concrete statements. ... — Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... not understand Janet's point of view. It was all too new and foreign to everything life had taught him, and in his mind he fought her ideas doggedly, clinging to his own concrete, practical thoughts and hopes, but on the train homeward bound, and in his own room later, he turned over and over in his mind the things she had said and tried in a dim way to grasp the bigness of the conception ... — Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... in Heaven. The personal appearance of the Christian God is described in The Revelation, and however much that description may be explained away by commentators as symbolical, it is certainly taken by most straightforward believers as a statement of concrete reality. Now if we are going to insist upon this primary meaning of person and individual, then certainly God as he is now conceived is not a person and not an individual. The true God will never promenade an Eden or a Heaven, ... — God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... acres is needed for the various preparation processes on the larger plantations; the plant including concrete-surfaced drying grounds, large fermentation tanks, washing vats, mills, warehouses, stables, and even machine shops. In Mexico this place is known as ... — All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... and our capacity for discipline, the classic land of organized grumbling; and the classic land, too, of anti-semitism which deprived us of the very forces we stood most in need of—productive scepticism and the imagination for concrete things. Organized grumbling is not the same thing as political creation. A Socialism and Radicalism poorer in ideas than the post-Marxian German Socialism has never existed. Half of it was merely clerical work, and the ... — The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... slightest glimmering of what domestic content might be theirs. Surely the word "home" for the artisan should signify something more than a place where he is badly fed. Still, it is a solemn fact that no more concrete definition of the word has ever been forthcoming. Now, such a state of affairs cannot be excused on the score of expense, for the crowning triumph of good Cookery is its ... — The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... infinite space they opened up with their aloofness and indefiniteness, until, alas! they took concrete shape when chosen as title to the picture of a robust, Royal Academy, Fed-on-Virol looking babe, which doubtless, when trying to grab some passing Olympian butterfly, fell off the lap of the Gods into a ... — Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... and that he appropriated their property in the same way. Shelley was a poet, and perhaps idealized his friends. He saw them, probably, in a state of pure intellect. I am not a poet; I look at people in the concrete. The most obvious thing about my friends is their avoirdupois; and I prefer that they should wear their own cloaks and suffer me to wear mine. There is no neck in the world that I want my collar to span except my own. It is very exasperating to me to go to my ... — Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... "To be concrete, unfortunately, I cannot do so," the Russian said. "I must speak of this lady we are both interested in—pray, try to listen to me calmly, sir, for we are here for the settling of a matter which concerns the ... — The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... the concrete. All the universe is God's temple, yet the chill breath of the abstract freezes our hearts; and we pray best in some pillared niche consecrated and set apart, I recall a day in Umbria, when the wonderful light of sunset fell on ... — At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... concrete oil formed in the interstices of the cellary tissue. It sometimes agglomerates in animals whom art or nature has so predisposed, such as pigs, fowls, ortolans and snipe. In some of these animals it loses its insipidity and acquires ... — The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... of these two conceptions will be found in a clear recognition of the two modes in which God is apprehended and consequently loved by the human mind and heart; the one concrete and experimental, accessible to the simplest and least cultured, and of necessity for all; the other, abstract in a sense—a knowledge through the ideas and representations of the mind, demanding a certain degree ... — The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... side, Aaron had nailed thin, horizontal strips of wood about a foot apart, hoping to encourage the mud-daubing birds he'd seen on the wall at Datura to plaster their nests onto his barn, and shop for insects in his fields. Lacking concrete, he'd constructed a roofless stone hut abutting the barn to serve as his manure shed. The farmhouse itself was a bit gay, having an inside toilet to cheat the Murnan winters and a sunporch for Martha's bacteriological equipment. As the nearest Amish Volle Diener—Congregational Bishop—was ... — Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang
... chiefly the search of causes and productions of things concrete, which are infinite and transitory, and not of abstract natures, which are few and permanent. That these natures are as the alphabet or simple letters, whereof the variety of things consisteth; or as the colours mingled in the painter's shell, wherewith he is able to make infinite ... — Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... her for a moment with a dubious expression and then began to explain the new method of building with large prepared units and shaped pieces of reinforced concrete instead of separate bricks that Messrs. Prothero & Cuthbertson had organized and which had enabled him to create this artistic corridor so simply. It was a rather uncomfortable three-cornered conversation. Sir Isaac addressed his exposition exclusively ... — The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... a man brave, cool, and unscrupulous; I need a resolute man to aid me in the one purpose of my life! I wish to go out to India to face this Hugh Fraser, to lift up the curtain of the dead past, and I need a protector—a paid champion—a man who values the only thing which is concrete power in life; a man who knows the power of money! For, gold is irresistible!" Her ... — A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... Capes. She could not help thinking of Capes. Surely Capes was different. Capes looked at one and not over one, spoke to one, treated one as a visible concrete fact. Capes saw her, felt for her, cared for her greatly, even if he did not love her. Anyhow, he did not sentimentalize her. And she had been doubting since that walk in the Zoological Gardens whether, indeed, he did simply care for her. Little ... — Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... fragmentary notes remain. At any rate, while Coleridge's chief distinction lay in the enunciation of general principles, Hazlitt's practice, in so far as it took account of these general principles at all, assumed their existence, and displayed its strength in concrete judgments of individual literary works. His criticism may be said to imply at every step the existence of Coleridge's, or to rise like an elegant superstructure on the solid foundation which the other had laid. Hazlitt communicated to the general public that love and appreciation ... — Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... was presently beyond Meynell's resisting. And in Mary, the freedom of it, no less than the sense of personal conflict and tragic possibilities that lay behind it, awakened the subtlest and deepest feelings. Poignant, concrete images rushed through her mind—a dying face to which her own had been lifted, as a tiny child; the hall of the New Brotherhood, where she sat sometimes beside her veiled mother; the sad nobility of that mother's life; a score of trifling, heartpiercing ... — The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is the age of concrete. Taking the hint, I am selecting one concrete example of which I have intimate and personal knowledge, well aware that there are numerous others that I might cite were my acquaintance with practical nut culture more extensive than it is. The one that I know about of my own personal ... — Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... on silently for some minutes. So did Mary. In the midst of the hush, Marcella saw the boy's eyes unclose. He looked with a sort of remote wonder at his mother and the figures beside her. Then suddenly the gaze became eager, concrete; he sought for something. Her eye followed his, and she perceived in the shadow beside him, on a broken chair placed behind the rough screen which had been made for him, the four tiny animals of pinched ... — Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hanged a year ago—without your aid we should never have been able to escape from the fortress of Lustadt or cross the border into Austria-Hungary. I am sorry that Maenck failed in his mission, for had he not we would have had concrete evidence to present to the king that we are indeed his loyal supporters. It would have dispelled at once such fears and doubts as he may still entertain of ... — The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... solidity. My opinion then is, that truth is not reasonably the main and ultimate object of philosophy; but that philosophy should seek truth merely as the means of acquiring and of propagating happiness. Truths are simple; wisdom, which is formed by their apposition and application, is concrete: out of this, in its vast varieties, open to our wants and wishes, comes happiness. But the knowledge of all the truths ever yet discovered does not lead immediately to it, nor indeed will ever reach it, unless you make the more important ... — Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... builder. His music seemed scaffolding only. Though a generation of musicians learned from him, came to listen to the proper voices of the instruments of the orchestra because of him, though music became increasingly pictural, ironic, concrete because he had labored, his own work still appeared ugly with unrealized intentions. If he obtained at all as an artist, it was because of his frenetic romanticism, his bizarreness, his Byronic postures, traits that were after all minor ... — Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... precipitate call of this awakening; and with the sudden storm which overcasts the brilliant day of passion. The enmity of the rival houses of Montague and Capulet, to which Romeo and Juliet belong, is but a concrete form of this danger that ever waits when nature prompts. Romeo's fancied love for another disappears like a drop of water on a stone in the sun, when his glance meets Juliet's at the Capulet's ball. Love takes equally sudden hold of ... — An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... Such concrete, actual historical developments Wagner regards not as a hindrance, but as the external support of his art-work. For a poetic composition requires some connection with a time or space to make perceptible to the senses its view of the advancing development ... — Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... Roman. Ideas had been borrowed, and these ideas certainly resulted in increased efficiency and therefore in increased wealth. But the gross material of Hellenism, whether as realised in intellectual ideas or (the prize that appealed more immediately to the practical Roman with his concrete mind) in tangible things, had not been seized as a whole as the reward of victory: and no great attempt had been made in former ages to assimilate the one or to enjoy the other. The nature of the material rewards which had been secured ... — A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... researches appearing likely to prove fruitful, I resolved to apply them to the study of concrete instances, and was thus led to deal with the Psychology of Revolutions—notably that of ... — The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... would have scorned the subterfuge; but to-day there was money in his purse; London awaited him with expectant arms, the very air was fraught with a magic whereby the impossible might become concrete fact, wherein dreams might become realities; was not she herself, as she stood before him lithe and vigorous in all the perfection of her warm young womanhood—was she not the very embodiment of those dreams ... — The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... beginning to affect me. She was quite unable to tell me what she had seen, but her whole manner expressed a dazed horror, not so much of some concrete fear as of the ghastly position in which ... — The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Elden had originally sold for two hundred dollars each had since changed hands at more than a thousand. The street railway ran far beyond it. Water mains, sewers, electric lights, graded streets and concrete sidewalks had sprawled for miles across the prairie. Conward, in that first wild prophecy of his, had spoken of a city of a quarter of a million people; already more lots had been sold than could be occupied by four ... — The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... is generally concrete. The artist may wish to give expression to a general truth, or philosophical principle, or ethereal fancy. These appear very abstract, but the artist embodies in material forms the idea he wishes to convey. The poet expresses ... — Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... had studied the campaigns of the great Corsican in order to discover the principles on which military success is based; that having studied and reflected on those principles, and the effect their application produced, in numerous concrete cases, they became so firmly imbedded in his mind as to be ever present, guiding him into the right path, or warning him against the wrong, whenever he had to deal with a strategic or ... — Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... him depended now clearly on the amount of forbearance his recent action, or rather his recent inaction, had engendered. The image of the "presence" whatever it was, waiting there for him to go—this image had not yet been so concrete for his nerves as when he stopped short of the point at which certainty would have come to him. For, with all his resolution, or more exactly with all his dread, he did stop short—he hung back from really seeing. The risk was ... — The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... safely build. He would not, could not, ever fail her. This had been sufficient to stay her longing for sight and speech of him, her longing for his bodily presence. But now, in face of the very concrete facts of the island, the inn, which bore his name and where his mother lived and ruled, of the property he owned, the place and people to which—by half at least of his nature and much more than half his memory—he belonged, the comfort of this ... — Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... "The most concrete impulse that now favors socialism in this country is the insane purpose to deprive labor organizations of the full and complete rights that ... — War of the Classes • Jack London
... none of his listeners showed any inclination to cheer. War in the abstract was a thing to cheer about, but war in the concrete—war with its possibilities—thus brought home to each individual mind ... — VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... a greater following, although he, of course, expresses only the aspirations of the Pan-Germans. But he presents concrete positions which ... — Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... evil eye. Jettatura. Another direct and immediate product of primitive demonism is the notion of the evil eye. This is a concrete dogma and a primary inference from demonism. It is often confounded with the jettatura of the Italians. The evil eye is an affliction which befalls the fortunate and prosperous in their prosperity. It ... — Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... moral motive. The stories are short and naturally slight; some, indeed, incline rather to the essay than to the story, but each has that enthralling interest which justifies its existence. Coppee possesses preeminently the gift of presenting concrete fact rather than abstraction. A sketch, for instance, is the first tale written by him, 'Une Idylle pendant le Seige' (1875). In a novel we require strong characterization, great grasp of character, and the novelist should show us the human heart ... — A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... really suited to the role. As a matter of fact, her thoughts were always fixed on the artistic, social, and dramatic aspects of life, with unfortunately a kind of nebulosity of conception which permitted no condensation into anything definite or concrete. She could only be wildly and feverishly interested. Just then the door clicked to Frank's key—it was nearing six—and in he came, smiling, confident, a perfect ... — The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... that of a basement floor laid twenty-one years ago, a portion of which was made by excavating one foot below the floor, six inches of coarse stone being filled in, then five inches of coal tar concrete made up with coarse gravel, and finally about one inch of fine gravel concrete. Before the concrete was laid, heavy stakes were driven through the floor about three feet apart, to which the floor timbers were nailed and leveled up. The concrete was then filled in upon the floor timbers, and ... — Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... steam, That, with a myriad hands, Labors unceasingly, and knits her lands In firmer union; joining plain and stream With steel; and binding shore to shore With bands of iron;—nerves and arteries, Along whose adamant forever pour Her concrete thoughts, her tireless energies. ... — Poems • Madison Cawein
... been engaged to is shown up as a sneak and your own dad as a crook—well, you can't blame a green hand for holdin' prejudice against the town that raised 'em. She'll get over it; but just now I cal'late some little flat, or, better still, a little home out where the back yards ain't made of concrete, would be a first-class port for us to make for. Don't know of such a place at ... — Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... been said of the spirit and purpose of this center of social and economic uplift in the famed Black Belt of the South, there is still a wide-spread demand for a more specific recital of what is being done here, by whom, under what conditions, and the concrete evidences of the benefits that are growing out of the thrift, industry, right thinking, and right living taught by ... — Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... with the limited or special interest of each group, may evolve in his own mind the plan which most naturally will lead the boys not only into a wider field of concrete facts, but also into the habit of seeing relationships, of drawing conclusions and of ... — Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... energetic, and more efficient in the pursuit of every high purpose in life. "When people once fall into the habit of admiring and encouraging ability as such, without reference to moral character—and religious and political opinions are the concrete form of moral character—they are on the highway to all sorts of degradation." {30} We must ourselves BE and DO, and not rest satisfied merely with reading and meditating over what other men have been ... — Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... desperation, his rage against his odds of life, that it seemed to him that a purely physical attack on the earth, to which he was fastened by some indissoluble laws of nature which he could not grasp, would be a welcome relief. He felt that with a heavy pick in his hand he could strike savagely at the concrete rock, the ribs of the earth, and almost enjoy himself. He felt that it would be like an attack, although a futile and antlike one, at creation itself. All this he thought idly, walking, even hurrying, along the slippery pavement through the pale, ... — The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... in the sixteenth century brought the possibility of a concrete evolution theory nearer, and in the early seventeenth century we find evidences of a new spirit—in the embryology of Harvey and the classifications of Ray. Besides sober naturalists there were speculative dreamers in the sixteenth and ... — Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... scarcely missed companions of her own age and kind; in the big servants' hall there was always something interesting to listen to—things were called by their right names, and a rough world grew up before her mind in which even the ghosts were of a concrete and tangible nature. In the servants' hall the atmosphere was fairly clean as regards jokes and silly stories. Like a child of the people, she soon knew all about love, but without any desire to experience it. There was nothing mysterious ... — The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... they say, is worth a pound of precept. So a single concrete case of a fierce vegetable campaign now actually in progress over all Northern Europe may help to make my meaning a trifle clearer. Till very lately the forests of the north were largely composed in places of the light and airy silver birches. But with the gradual amelioration of the climate ... — Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... great Egyptologist, the whole life of the Egyptian was spent in the contemplation of death; thus the tomb became the concrete thought. The belief of the ancient Egyptian was that so long as his body remained intact so was his immortality; whence arose the embalming of the great, and hence the immense structures of stone to secure the inviolability ... — The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... to his laboratory he pretended to read the news, but could not succeed in interesting himself in the wars and famines of the world, so much more vital and absorbing were his own passions and retreats, so filmy was the abstract, so concrete and vital the particular. A million children might be starving in India, a thousand virgins about to be sold to slavery in Turkestan; but such intelligence counted little to a man struggling with ... — The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... "Antiquities of Greece," says—"Salt was commonly set before strangers, before they tasted the victuals provided for them; whereby was intimated, that as salt does consist of aqueous and terrene particles, mixed and united together, or as it is a concrete of several aqueous parts, so the stranger and the person by whom he was entertained should, from the time of their tasting salt together, maintain a constant ... — The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... reason for Lucille Sloane's hiring Hastings: she was afraid somebody in the house, Webster, of course, would be arrested. Being in love with him, she never would have suspected him unless there had been concrete, undeniable evidence of his guilt. ... — No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... presented nearly the same scenery as before. After this the sand-ridges became higher, and their bases proportionally more extensive. The savannahs and ponds were larger; the summits of the ridges more gravelly; and here and there rocks, formed of a sort of concrete of sand and shells, were seen above ... — Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... been erected in the garden, and dignified by the name of laboratory. For, to the boys' great delight, a model furnace had been made, with bellows, and a supply of charcoal was always ready. There was a great cast-iron mortar fitted on a concrete stand, crucibles of various sizes, and the place looked ... — Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... kind, sort or description, save my promise, made openly to the American people, that so far as in my power lies I shall see to it that every man has a square deal, no less and no more." In his reply, Judge Parker reiterated the charge, but gave no concrete instances of money ... — History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... in itself. It is the concrete expression of ability, not only as an artist, but as a leader of artists, a director, an assembler, a blender. He called to the Gobelins, as addition to those already there, the apprentices from La Trinite, the weavers ... — The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... quite a city here, with stately business blocks, and wires a-running far and near, and handsome concrete walks. The trolley cars go whizzing by, and smoke from noisy mills is trailing slowly to the sky, and blotting out the hills. And thirty years ago I stood upon this same old mound, with not a house of brick or wood for twenty miles around! I'm mighty glad to be alive, ... — Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... no idle one. Not only had the year been a red-letter one but it was destined to prove even more conspicuously memorable. With the spring the plans for the new village went rapidly forward and soon pretty little concrete houses with roofs of scarlet and trimmings of green dotted the slopes on the opposite side of the river. The laying out and building of this community became Grandfather Fernald's recreation and delight. Morning, noon, and evening he could be seen either perusing curling sheets of blue prints, ... — Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... education it was intended to make raised maps in the plaza of the chief city of the eight principal islands of the Philippines, but on account of Father Sanchez's being called away, only one. Mindanao, was completed; it has been restored with a concrete sidewalk and balustrade about it, while the plaza is ... — Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... Napoleon constructed and that France has maintained; for all the credit is not to go to the man who conceived and the man who constructed. This is one thing where we have been short always. One thing that the people of the United States do not realize. It is not sufficient to pay $25,000 a mile for a concrete foundation, but you must put aside 10 cents out of every dollar for the maintenance of these roads or your money has gone to waste and your conception is idle. And you gentlemen know, if you continue, as I hope you will, after the war, you will have not merely a function ... — Address by Honorable Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior at Conference of Regional Chairmen of the Highway Transport Committee Council of National Defence • US Government
... through rank grass and rough boulders pierces the dense thickets, matted together with inextricable confusion, teak and tamarind, acacia and bread-fruit, palm and tree-fern losing their own characteristics and merging themselves into concrete form. The appalling stillness and solemnity of the dense jungle appears emphasised by a solitary brown figure, with pipe and betel-box, beneath a thatched shed at an angle of the narrow track, where he presides over a little stall of cocoanuts, bananas, and coloured syrups, for the refreshment ... — Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... him a clue—every page and line and letter. The thing's as concrete there as a bird in a cage, a bait on a hook, a piece of cheese in a mouse-trap. It's stuck into every volume as your foot is stuck into your shoe. It governs every line, it chooses every word, it dots every i, ... — Embarrassments • Henry James
... metallic but infinitely human clangor of dock-side life, from the unpleasant but homely odors which prevail where ships swallow in and belch out the concrete evidences of commercial prosperity, we had come into this incensed stillness, where one shaded lamp painted dim enlargements of its Chinese silk upon the nearer walls, and left the greater part of the room the ... — The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... must be some one down there," observed Kennedy, as we picked our way across the steel girders, piles of rails, and around huge machines for mixing concrete. ... — The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... Dorking, and the like—I learn from Mr. Peddie, the bibliographer, over one hundred pamphlets and books of that description. But from its very nature, and I am writing with the intimacy of one who has tried, fiction can never be satisfactory in this application. Fiction is necessarily concrete and definite; it permits of no open alternatives; its aim of illusion prevents a proper amplitude of demonstration, and modern prophecy should be, one submits, a branch of speculation, and should follow with all decorum the scientific ... — Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... concrete foundation a pedestal was built, in which were united the various smoke conduits, and upon this pedestal were erected four lattice girders, C, connected with each other by St. Andrew's crosses. The internal surface of these girders is ... — Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... with days of hard labor, and formed of deep ditches, of concrete and pure earth, offered no difficulties to the British tanks. Straight up to these emplacements they crawled, shoved their noses into the walls, and uprooted them; then crawled calmly over ... — The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... already been done to justify the dispatch of the expedition. A coast-line which hitherto had been seen only at a great distance, and reported so indefinitely that doubts were left with regard to its continuity, had been resolved into a concrete chain of mountains; and the positions and forms of individual heights, with the curious ice formations and the general line of the coast, had been observed. In short the map of the Antarctic had already received valuable additions, and whatever was ... — The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... a keen insight into abstract truth; but he was an Englishman to the backbone in his severe adherence to the real and the concrete. He had a most classical taste, and a genius for philosophy and art; and he was fond of historical inquiry, and the politics of religion. He had no turn for theology as such. He had no appreciation of the writings of the Fathers, of the detail or development of doctrine, of the definite ... — Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... music, the matter of phrasing is comparatively simple because here the composer has, in general, adapted the melody to the phrasing of the text; and since in language we have definite ideas and concrete imagery to assist us, all that we usually need to do in studying the phrasing of vocal music is to follow carefully the phrasing of the text. But even then a warning ought perhaps to be given the young conductor regarding carelessness or ignorance on the part of ... — Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... conjecture, clod, seems to Forman 'a doubtful emendation, as Shelley may have used clog in its [figurative] sense of weight, encumbrance.'—Hardly, as here, in a poetical figure: that would be to use a metaphor within a metaphor. Shelley compares his heart to a concrete object: if clog is right, the word must be taken in one or other of its two recognized LITERAL senses—'a wooden shoe,' or 'a block of wood tied round the neck or to the leg of a horse or a dog.' Again, it is of others' hearts, not ... — The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... been sliding the window up all the while, cursing softly and horribly at each damnatory creak. Yes—there it was—and people thought fire-escapes ugly. Personally, Oliver had seldom seen anything in his life which combined concrete utility with abstract beauty so ideally as that little flight of iron steps leading down the entry outside the ... — Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... project of Imperial Federation, without any arriere pensee, clearly and distinctly involves the condition, that the Colonies themselves are to take their adequate part, and share with the Mother Country in its future concrete constitution. In the brief, but expressive phrase, I have already publicly adopted, Imperial Federation means, "the Government of the Empire by the Empire." In Imperial Federation, therefore, South Africa ... — A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young
... Bodies, then mix'd Bodies of the Elements. For in Themistius's Analyz'd Wood, and in other Bodies dissipated and alter'd by the fire, it appears, and he confesses, that which he takes for Elementary Fire and Water, are made out of the Concrete; but it appears not that the Concrete was made up of Fire and Water. Nor has either He, or any Man, for ought I know, of his perswasion, yet prov'd that nothing can be obtained from a Body by the fire that was not ... — The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... Zodiac of a Saturn or a Mars cannot be like ours. Their years and seasons are peculiar to themselves and their material conditions; hence the twelve constellations have no existence as objective facts of concrete formation or cosmic potentiality. No! But as unalterable symbols of occult truth, the starry pictures of the shining constellations have an eternal verity. They pertain to the living realities of the human ... — The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... generalizations are well enough in their place, but to start with such things—as the French philosophers of the eighteenth century were fond of doing—is to get the cart before the horse. It is better to have our story first, and thus find out what government in its concrete reality has been, and is. Then we may finish up with the metaphysics, or do as I have done—leave ... — Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... as a truth, we may be led into an inexact conception of the so-called physical laws, unless we closely examine the sense in which we use the expression. The forces which act according to these laws, and the various forms of the so-called matter, or concrete forces, are often spoken of as if they were blind agencies and existences, acting by an inherent fate-like power of their own. But if everything outside of our consciousness resolves itself, in the last analysis, into force, or something ... — The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... same time the network of blood grew fainter. Presently the interior parts were entirely concealed by the crust—the creature stood opposite Maskull in its old formidable ugliness, hard, painted, and concrete. ... — A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... even his parents, brothers, and sisters, is merely to beg the question. What is variation? The internal secretion theory of the process offers, for the first time, an explanation that is coherent and comprehensive, based upon concrete and detailed observations. It provides an adequate interpretation of the numberless hereditary gradations and transitions, blendings and mixtures. It suggests a control ... — The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... in a moment from the Indies to the poles; fastens with equal facility on the substantial and the impalpable; gropes among the vague generalities of the abstract, and wriggles with ease through the thick obscurities of the concrete—eh, Queeker? Come, give us a song, like ... — The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... should prefer to say, of humanity. We are misled by the chatter of politicians and the bombast of Congress. In the course of ages, the time has at last arrived when man, all over this planet, is entering upon a new career of moral, intellectual, and political emancipation; and America is the concrete expression and theatre of that great fact, as all spiritual truths find their fitting and representative physical incarnation. But what would this huge western continent be, if America—the real America of the mind—had no existence? It would ... — Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... had picked up the end of a canyon somewhere, turned it over several times in transit and finally dropped it bottom side up on the desert, breaking it open when it fell and letting the fragments bump around like the pounded rock in a concrete mixer. ... — The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... incompletion, of broken destinies, of failures, of romances that begin but do not end, of ambitions and purposes frustrated, of love crossed, of unhappy issues, or a resultless play of influences. Well, but life is full, also, of endings, of the results in concrete action of character, of completed dramas. And we expect and give, in the stories we hear and tell in ordinary intercourse, some point, some outcome, an end of some sort. If you interest me in the preparations of two persons who are starting on a journey, and expend all your ingenuity ... — Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... quality is in the object, and the quality subsisting alone and out of the object, having no support but in the mind, for him who considers it, and but in the abstract noun for him who reads the expression of it. He has, in like manner, separated the verb from the quality in concrete verbs, and communicated to the deaf and dumb the knowledge of the true verb, which he has pointed out to them in the termination of all the French verbs, by reattaching to the subject, by a line agreed on, its verbal quality. This line he has translated by the verb ... — Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... been open. The final analysis had not been made. After all, the attitude of the surety companies was only a reflection of the general feeling of practical business and railroad men towards the whole venture. To the companies the proposition had come as a concrete business proffer and ... — The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... feet in breadth and length, with a height exactly proportioned to the space. It has had the advantage of separate creation—being "thought out" years after the early period of the house, and is, consequently, a concrete result of study, travel, and opportunities, such as few families are privileged to experience. Aside from the perfect proportions of the room, it is not difficult to analyse the art which makes it so distinguished an example of decoration of ... — Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... The complexion of that case had somehow forced upon him the general idea of the absurdity of things human, which in the abstract is sufficiently annoying to an unphilosophical temperament, and in concrete instances becomes exasperating beyond endurance. At the beginning of his career Chief Inspector Heat had been concerned with the more energetic forms of thieving. He had gained his spurs in that sphere, and naturally enough had kept for it, after his promotion ... — The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... is seen to be one of such enormous power, and its aim appears to us so lofty, that, whatever our views may be concerning the nature of the person assailed, we are forced to conclude that, to Nietzsche at least, he was but the incarnation and concrete example of the evil and danger then threatening to overtake his country, which it was the object of this essay ... — Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... though in 1913 the First Lord of the Admiralty made a public offer of a 'naval holiday,' a suspension of new construction by mutual consent. The Imperial Chancellor responded only by suggesting that the proposal was entirely unofficial, by asking for concrete proposals, and by saying that the idea constituted a great progress; and his naval estimates in 1913 were half a million higher ... — Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... classics of the past. In the following essay on the "Study of Poetry," one of the most famous of his utterances, there may be found exemplified his characteristically vivacious and memorable style, his delicate appreciations brilliantly and precisely expressed, his concrete and persuasive argument. Perhaps no single critical document of our time has contributed so many phrases to the current literary vocabulary, or has stimulated so many readers to the use of lofty and definite standards ... — Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... conditions. There are, undoubtedly, some principles of universal application; and the old critics often expounded them with admirable common-sense and force. But like general tenets of morality, they are apt to be commonplaces, whose specific application requires knowledge of concrete facts. When the critics assumed that the forms familiar to themselves were the only possible embodiments of those principles, and condemned all others as barbarous, they were led to pass judgments, such, for example, as Voltaire's view of Dante and Shakespeare, ... — English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... the doctrines which guide them in practice, but are not explicitly stated or deliberately reasoned out. Not the less the doctrines of a sect, political or religious, may be dependent upon theories which for the greater number remain latent or are recognised only in their concrete application. Contemporary members of any society, however widely they differ as to results, are employed upon the same problems and, to some extent, use the same methods and make the same assumptions in attempting solutions. There is a certain ... — The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... has become its motto. Money constitutes the reason of its being. The organic law of the land is Greek to it, as are those laws of God which obstruct it. It is too busy with its greed and gain to think, or to feel, on any abstract subject. That which does not appeal to it in the concrete is ... — Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... buttons. The concealed lighting that spilled from the huge bowl under the ceiling revealed a sleeping-porch, three sides of which were fine-meshed copper screen. The fourth side was the house wall, solid concrete, through which ... — The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... in tow by gunboats to Wad Hamid. Detachments of gunners accompanied the pieces and carriages, but the majority of the artillerymen were ferried to the west bank, whence they marched overland to the new camp. It was at Wad Habeshi that the army was first actually marshalled as a concrete force, and forthwith took the field. Not a moment was lost by day or night in moving men and supplies onward. The little paddle steamer captured from the dervishes during the 1896 Dongola Expedition, which had been repaired and ... — Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... counterpoise it strives to lose itself and release itself in continual rhetoric and emotional positions? Is not the German mind so alive to the material facts of life, to the necessity of getting hold of concrete advantages in life, and of not letting them go, that it deliberately slackens the bent bow, and plunges itself and relaxes itself in floods of abstractions, and idealisations, and dreams of sentimentality? ... — A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the riches of God's grace, they were high above us, when we looked upon 'the power that worketh in us,' we saw it working amidst many hindrances and hamperings, but here there is presented to us in a concrete example, close beside us, of what God can make of a man when the man is wholly pliable to His will, and the recipient of His influences. And so there stands before us the guarantee and the pattern of immortal life, the Christ whose Manhood died ... — Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... attempt to give concrete form to the principles of the Reformers seems to have been made in the Kingdom of Meath, about the year 1100. But the primary evidence for the fact is of much later date. There are extant some constitutions of Simon Rochfort, bishop ... — St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... for your lawn, set green, growing sod up edgewise against the wire netting, after the latter has been tacked to your frame, so arranging the sod that the green grass will face the outside. If you wish to plaster the inside of your house with cement or concrete, fill in behind with mud, plaster the mud against the sod and put gravel and stones against the mud so that it will be next to the wire netting on the inside of the house over which you plaster the concrete. If you ... — Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... the wit of the Londoner—the wit that Dickens knew and studied, the wit of the older cabmen and 'bus drivers, the wit of the street boy. It is racy, it is understood, and the illustrations are always concrete and massive, never vague or unsubstantial. Apt Shakespearian quotations, familiar and unfamiliar, embellish the speeches. Personality, vital personality, counts for so much in the orator of the market place. The speaker must be alive to his audience, he must convince by his ... — The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... communication, not as a trocha, or a line connected with wire fencing and other obstructions, as used by the British and by the Spaniards in the Cuban War. The British built theirs of bags filled with earth. The Spaniards erected neat structures of two stories, built of concrete, with wooden roofs and openings for two lines of fire, one above the other. These were erected not more than half a mile apart. In the Civil War our block-houses were usually erected of logs, one and two stories high. The face of the upper story had an angle of forty-five ... — The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... spiritual energies come events, phenomena that manifest themselves in political, social, ecclesiastical transactions and institutions; in wars, migrations and the reshaping of states; in codes of law, the organization of society, the development of art, literature and science. In their turn all these concrete products work on the minds and souls of men, modifying old spiritual impulses either by exaltation or degradation, bringing new ones into play; and again these react on the material fabric of human life, causing new ... — Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... derelict tank and could not be dislodged. Even though surrounded they did not surrender for some time. The men, however, pressed gallantly forward and eventually got as far as Gallipoli Farm. The Germans here were very stout hearted and refused to surrender. One had a machine gun on top of a concrete dugout and, for some reason or other, perhaps excitement, the men could not bring him down. Following the brilliant example of one of the company commanders, the men eventually closed in and after a fierce hand to hand encounter, in which bomb and bayonet ... — The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... But while the concrete nature of the ends to which our educational efforts are directed may vary in accordance with the needs of a changing and progressive civilisation, nevertheless the general nature of the ends sought to be attained by the education of the children of ... — The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... reach both their minds and hearts. Solid argument, clear method, and indisputable facts are necessary for the first purpose; vivid imagination, concrete illustration, and animated feeling are necessary for ... — Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... gown,—something black, many-legged, hairy, most hideous; something which ran swiftly but stealthily, with a motion which sent a thrill of horror through her veins. She started up with a little shriek, shaking off the unlucky spider as if it had been the Black Death in concrete. Then she looked round with flaming cheeks, to see if her scream had been heard by the hay-makers. No, they were far away, and too busy to take heed of her. But the charm was broken. Queen Hildegarde had plenty of courage of a certain sort, but she could not face ... — Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... however, we should not speak in generalities, but bring before the child's mind concrete examples of his own objectionable acts from recent experience. It is useless to tell John how important it is to be punctual and let it go at that; it is not enough even to tell him that he often fails to be on time. If you can remind ... — Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... to go abroad for private reasons and must dispose of the property at once. The house, being concrete, can be seen at any time, or an abstract can be had on application to the Caretaker who is within—or should be. If not within will be found at the "King's Arms" next door. For particulars apply to Phibbs and ... — Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... spurred by these mysterious outsiders, the village people began to act aloof, and the more ignorant of them sullen toward us ... but as yet it was only in the air, nothing concrete to lay ... — Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... presented to human experience, is relative; and the definition of it becomes unmeaning and useless in proportion to its abstractness. To define beauty, not in the most abstract, but in the most concrete terms possible, to find, not a universal formula for it, but the formula which expresses most adequately this or that special manifestation of it, is the aim of the true ... — The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... look down on the material pleasures with suspicion, to fly contact with the rude world and lose one's self in the unembodied splendors of the spiritual, to save souls rather than men and women, to preach abstract doctrines rather than grapple with hideous concrete problems—this has been the tendency of the religious spirit in all ages, a tendency of which positive asceticism, with its mortification of the body, and its ideal of virginity, and marriage regarded as more or less a concession to the flesh, is ... — The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... not an abstract question to the people who are under the machines. Men who are under things want to know what the things are for, and they want to know what they are under them for. It is a very live, concrete, practical question whether there is, or can be, poetry in machinery or not. The fate of society turns ... — The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... yellow grains will be harvested, which buy the smiles of beauty, blunt the sword of justice, and tempt the wavering conscience of young and old. It will bring the human herd to one grovelling level—human swine rooting after the concrete token of power. Here, in later years, the wicked arm of power will be given golden hammers to beat down all before it. Here will that generation arise wherein the golden helmet can dignify the idle and ... — The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... brought fully up-to-date, including such recent events as the British Parliament Act of 1911, the Italian-Turkish War, and the Balkan War, 1912-1913. Each topic is made definite and concrete, and such important subjects as the unification of Italy and the unification of Germany ... — Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... the seeds sown within him during the previous winter were sprouting. An irresistible impulse urged him to continue the work of Buckle. History and philosophy were the ultimate ends tempting his mind, but first of all he was impelled to express himself in terms of concrete life, and the way had been shown him by Goethe. Moved by Goethe's example, he felt himself obliged to break through the stifling forms of classical drama. "No verse, no eloquence, no unity of place," was the resolution he formulated straightway. [Note: ... — Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... nothing but Sylvia and himself had any real existence. He had clung to her, even as she to him, hoping that this individual love would prove itself capable of overriding all else that existed. But it had not needed that she should speak to show him how pathetically he had erred. Before she had made a concrete instance he knew how hopeless his wish had been: the silence, the loosening of hands had told him that. And when she spoke there was a brutality in what she said, and worse than the brutality there ... — Michael • E. F. Benson
... was not quite sure what an island might be like in the concrete, but it was something fresh, and Paddy's ... — The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... be, from the point of view of imperfect human knowledge, in the admittance of humanly proved fact, there is no reason why, from the emotional and imaginative side of his existence, he should not rigidly subscribe to dogma or personal conviction, whether the abstract idea of virtue, the concrete idea of love for some cherished human being, or the yearning for some supernatural state of sinlessness be concerned. A distinguished financier, for instance, may regale his imagination with socialistic dreams of ... — Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... Granting (what few will dispute) that their intelligence at least equals that of the men, will they be as likely as men to look beyond the immediate social welfare problem to the governmental principle at stake? Will an abstract proposition hold its own in their minds against a concrete appeal? ... — Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson
... stood on the edge of this large, middlewestern city. Off to the back of the school were the towers of the town, great monolithic skyscrapers of pre-stressed concrete and plastic. To the front of the school the plains stretched out to ... — There Will Be School Tomorrow • V. E. Thiessen
... desire for privacy.—Ah! It won't be long now. There's the Otpens!" Alexander pointed at a smudge on the horizon that quickly resolved into an irregular chain of tiny islets that slipped below them. Kennon got a glimpse of gray concrete on one of the larger islands, a smudge of green trees, and white beaches against which the yellow waters ... — The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... impressions merging what is common in them, interchanging what is peculiar, and cancelling in the end what is incompatible; so that any excitement reaching that centre revives one generic reaction which yields the idea. These concrete generalities are actual feelings, the first terms in mental discourse, the first distinguishable particulars in knowledge, and the first bearers of names. Intellectual dominion of the conscious stream begins with the act of recognising ... — The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... displayed in giving to these "airy nothings of the brain, a local habitation and a name," for his greatest idea might have remained an "airy nothing," had he not been also the mechanician able to produce it in the concrete. It is not, therefore, only Watt the inventor, Watt the discoverer, but also Watt, the manual worker, that stands forth. As we shall see later on, he created a new type of workmen capable of executing his plans, working with, and ... — James Watt • Andrew Carnegie |