"Diffuse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was Norma's most intimate friend, and she often sacrificed an hour of her valuable time to the amusement of the girl, whom she felt convinced was bored to death down in that country desert. The letter in question was unusually diffuse, for Mrs. Vincent was keeping her room with a heavy cold, and had herself to amuse as well as Norma. Norma read scraps of it aloud for the edification of her mother, and the young men; the general, with his nose in his paper, let the tide of ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... justice, and by the most audacious cruelty, pervert the forms of law, that the blood of innocent persons might be shed, to gratify the appetite of a suspicious master? Besides, there is always a danger that the religion which the King professes, will imperceptibly diffuse itself over a nation, though no violence is used to promote it. The King, as he is the fountain of honour, so is he the fountain of fashion, and as many people, who surround a throne, are of no religion in consequence ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... plantation. As we near it, a beautifully undulating slope presents itself, bounded on its upper edge by a long line of sombre-looking pines. Again we emerge beneath clustering foliage overhanging the river; and from out this-sovereign of a southern clime-the wild azalia and fair magnolia diffuse their fragrance to perfume the air. From the pine ridge the slope recedes till it reaches a line of jungle, or hedge, that separates it from the marshy bottom, extending to the river, against which it is ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... having demonstrated that all thought is existence, Bishop Berkeley and Professor Huxley infer that all existence is thought. So says the Professor in so many words, and to precisely the same effect is the more diffuse language of the Bishop, where, speaking of 'all the choir of heaven and furniture of earth, of all the bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world,' he declares that their esse is percipi, that their 'being' consists in their being 'perceived or known,' and that unless they were ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... the other cells, as the glands of INTERNAL SECRETION. How different these two classes of glands are may be realized by imagining the existence of great factories manufacturing food products, which would diffuse through their walls into the atmosphere, to ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... Murillo bear to those of Rembrandt. The peculiarity of Wilhelm Meister as a novel is more difficult of apprehension, if one does not seek the novel where in truth it lies—in the story of Mignon and the Harper, and only sees in the remainder the certainly somewhat diffuse but deeply-thought and classically-delineated picture of the earnest striving after culture of a German in the end of the eighteenth century. It would argue, however, as it appears to me, much prejudice, ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... that he might take in due submission to parental authority. Two letters announced this determination to the Baronet and his nephew. The latter barely communicated the fact, and pointed out the necessary preparation for joining his regiment. To his brother, Richard was more diffuse and circuitous. He coincided with him in the most flattering manner, in the propriety of his son's seeing a little more of the world, and was even humble in expressions of gratitude for his proposed assistance; was, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... kept, and have only preserved such as would, in my opinion, please the lovers of history. Amidst such a mass of material I am obliged necessarily to omit something in order that my narrative may not be too diffuse. ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... in a more diffuse and licentious meaning, for future occurrences, or the part of life yet to come. If this sense be received, the passage ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... lack of subjects to descant upon; but voluble, and indeed absurd as he was, Howard could not help liking him; he was a good fellow, he could see, and managed to diffuse a geniality over the scene. "I am interested in most things," he said, at the end of a breathless harangue, "and there is something in the presence of a real live student, from the forefront of the intellectual ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... paced the icy platform Faxon began to see why it had seemed the most natural thing in the world to accede to his new acquaintance's suggestion. It was because Frank Rainer was one of the privileged beings who simplify human intercourse by the atmosphere of confidence and good humour they diffuse. He produced this effect, Faxon noted, by the exercise of no gift but his youth, and of no art but his sincerity; and these qualities were revealed in a smile of such sweetness that Faxon felt, as never before, what Nature ...
— The Triumph Of Night - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... one-party state. He dominated the country for 31 years, repressing Islamic fundamentalism and establishing rights for women unmatched by any other Arab nation. In recent years, Tunisia has taken a moderate, non-aligned stance in its foreign relations. Domestically, it has sought to diffuse rising pressure for a more ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... little nearer we heard them quite clearly, and just when I was observing a red glow diffuse itself in the cold night sky above the willow hedge on our left, Mr. Rowe said, "There must be a queer kind of echo somewhere, ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... publication in Holland and Zealand of the Perpetual Edict. They insisted on the immediate discontinuance of all hostile attempts to reduce Amsterdam to the jurisdiction of Orange; required the Prince to abandon his pretensions to Utrecht, and denounced the efforts making by him and his partisans to diffuse their heretical doctrines through the other provinces. They observed, in conclusion, that the general question of religion was not to be handled, because reserved for the consideration of the states-general, according ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... truth one of the most poignant features of the tragedy in which we are manfully and rightly bearing our part, that the community-sense in the world had never been so highly developed, or found so many channels in which to diffuse itself, as just at the moment when the blow fell. The socialist movements in all civilized countries have always had this as a leading motive; comrades and poor among themselves, these men have always been eager to stretch out a hand to those of like mind abroad. And in the last ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... Milk of the Mother of God, "not," as a Catholic writer says, "in a mystic or spiritual sense, but with their actual lips"; Saint Bernard "among a hundred, a thousand, others." Nor is this all, for in the year 1690, a painted image of the Madonna, not far from the city of Carinola, was observed to "diffuse abundant milk" for the edification of a great concourse of spectators—a miracle which was recognized as such by the bishop of that diocese, Monsignor Paolo Ayrola, who wrote a report on the subject. Some more of this authentic milk is kept in a bottle in the convent of ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... future years thro time descend, What wide creations on thy voice depend; And, like the Sun, whose all-delighting ray To those mild regions gives his purest day, Diffuse thy bounties, let me instant fly; In three short moons the generous task I'll try; Then swift returning, I'll conduct my fair Where realms ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... are honoured indeed. We should watch against envy and ambition, contempt of our brethren and contention. We ought to be satisfied in our places, doing 'nothing through strife or vain glory, or with murmurings and disputings'; but endeavour, in the meekness of wisdom, to diffuse a heavenly fragrance around us, and to adorn the doctrine of God ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... only mediator.'[467] The law may help to accumulate inequalities; but in a prosperous state there is a 'continual progress towards equality.' The law has to stand aside; not to maintain monopolies; not to restrain trade; not to permit entails; and then property will diffuse itself by a natural process, already exemplified in the growth of Europe. The 'pyramids' heaped up in feudal times have been lowered, and their 'debris spread abroad' among the industrious. Here again we see how Bentham virtually diverges ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... retarding their drift to leeward; but it was none the worse for this, since, with their drift scarcely retarded, they rode all the more easily; and presently, when the oil began to exude from the can and diffuse itself over the surface of the water, there was a narrow space just ahead of us where the seas ceased to break, with the result that in the course of ten minutes we were riding quite dry and comfortable, except for the scud-water that came driving along. This, however, we soon ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... affairs agreeably to your declarations of peace. Therefore the western Indians are bewildered. One says one thing to them, and another says another. Were these things adjusted, it would be easy to diffuse ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... child was born were we not in direst danger? Such danger that all his royal father could do in honor of the glad event was to break a musk-bag before his faithful followers as sign that the birth of an heir to empire would diffuse itself like perfume through the whole world? Even so now, and if I cannot devise some ceremony, then am I ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... profuse to give any certain account of what the mind at home, in the spacious circuits of her musing, hath liberty to propose to herself, though of highest hope and hardest attempting; whether that epic form, whereof the two poems of Homer, and those other two of Virgil and Tasso, are a diffuse, and the Book of Job' ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... the fault of being diffuse; Boker's style is prosaically plain. Were it not for over-elaboration, D'Annunzio's play might supplant all others because of its spirit. Could we take from Phillips his simplicity, from D'Annunzio his Italian intensity, and from Boker his proportion, and could ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... necessary; and for a very obvious reason; because a special revelation has already been made. And as this, though at first, really special, follows the general course of other things which are beneficial, and which commence with a few and diffuse themselves to many, it is a reason which precludes the necessity of a constant recurrence of miracles or any other special medium of revelation. You certainly will not deny, that, admitting there has been a revelation from God, it has been progressive like all things else, which involve ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... wounds, as tapping, hernia, &c. do not induce fatal peritonitis; and therefore the vulgar opinion that inflammation in a spot of the peritoneum will almost invariably diffuse itself over the greater part ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... as in all his lands and provinces, every doctrine opposed to this precious creed shall be persecuted, and all who confess, preach or diffuse any other doctrine shall be considered heretics and treated ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... allowable, as an improvement on them all. Although evidently designed in one sense for a denomination, they have also intended that it shall answer in some measure the demands of a liberal and progressive Christianity—a Christianity, under whatever name or pretension found, that would diffuse Christ's spirit and do his works of ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... as well as with profound disorder of personality in general, that showed the brunt of the destructive paretic process in the frontal region. The other not-so-autopsychic cases did not show this frontal brunt, but were less markedly diseased at death and had a more diffuse process. ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... the student, and a sound practical guide for the physician, and has exhibited a sound judgment in this selection to supply that want. The work of VELPEAU, hitherto unquestionably the most popular book with the medical profession, is diffuse and speculative. The present work is direct, concise, and complete. Dr. BEDFORD has enriched the original with copious notes, the result of his own extensive experience and observation. The publishers ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... an unmistakable animal, and full-sized Colpodoe may be fed as easily as one feeds chickens. It is only needful to diffuse very finely ground carmine through the water in which they live, and, in a very short time, the bodies of the Colpodoe are stuffed with the ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... of paganism, falling into neglect, mouldered away. If, then, before the art of multiplying the productions of the human mind existed, the doctrines of a philosopher in manuscript or by lecture could diffuse themselves throughout a literary nation, it will baffle the algebraist of metaphysics to calculate the unknown quantities of the propagation of human thought. There are problems in metaphysics, as well as in mathematics, which ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... resonance is ineffective,—devoid of carrying power,—is diffuse and unfocused; while a resonant tone, no matter how soft dynamically, has carrying power and ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... accidental spectator to witness a fearful and startling scene. About six hundred men were there assembled; every man having his face blackened, and all with shirts over their outward and usual garments. As soon as the moon, after having gained a greater elevation in the sky, began to diffuse a clearer lustre on the earth, we may justly say that it would be difficult to witness so strange and appalling a spectacle. The white appearance of their persons, caused by the shirts which they wore in the manner we have stated, for this peculiar occasion, when contrasted with their ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... power of perceiving that which is true. They become, too, incapable of all generous self-denial and self-sacrifice; feelings of bitterness towards every successful rival (and there are few who may not be our rivals on some one point or other) gradually diffuse themselves throughout the heart, and leave no place for that love of our neighbour which the Scriptures have stated to be the test of love ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... began and slowly completed a Commentary on the Psalms. This very diffuse performance (which occupies more than five hundred closely printed pages in Migne's edition) displays, in the opinion of those who have carefully studied it[84], a large amount of acquaintance with the writings of the Fathers, and was ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... of Lancaster Gate—having by that time arrived; and with this call on her attention, the further call of her musicians ushered by Eugenio, but personally and separately welcomed, and the supreme opportunity offered in the arrival of the great doctor, who came last of all, he felt her diffuse in wide warm waves the spell of a general, a beatific mildness. There was a deeper depth of it, doubtless, for some than for others; what he in particular knew of it was that he seemed to stand in it up to his neck. He moved ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... their cloudy pillow, and their dream was of the coming dawn. Twelve lakes, leaden pale or steel blue, dreamed also under canopies of cloud, and the solid land dreamed, and all her wilds and forests. And in the silence of the dream already the tinge of clairvoyance lit the gray east; a dim, diffuse aurora, while yet the long, low clouds hung lustreless above; nor could the eye prophesy where should open the door in heaven. At length, a flush, as of shame or joy, presaged the pathway. Tongues of many-colored light vibrated beneath the ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... used when Uncle Felix was in hiding. Only it had no result. Mother's mind was too diffuse to carry conviction. It was soaked in servants and things. In another sense it was too exact. The ingredients of her stories were like a cooking recipe. Besides, hers was the unpardonable fault of never forgetting the time. On the very stroke of ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... of it. The strokes of his pencil always tell. He dwells only on the essential, on that which would be interesting to the persons really concerned: yet as he never omits any material circumstance, he is prolix from the number of points on which he touches, without being diffuse on any one; and is sometimes tedious from the fidelity with which he adheres to his subject, as other writers are from the frequency of their digressions from it. The chain of his story is composed of a number of fine links, closely connected together, and ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... the sovereign of Wa.* Your envoy and his suite have arrived and have given us full information. We, by the grace of heaven, rule over the universe. It is Our desire to diffuse abroad our civilizing influence so as to cover all living things, and Our sentiment of loving nurture knows no distinction of distance. Now We learn that Your Majesty, dwelling separately beyond the sea, bestows the blessings of peace on Your subjects; ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... of translations, popular and vernacular, from (Professor Antoine) Galland's delightful abbreviation and adaptation (A.D. 1704), in no wise represent the eastern original. The best and latest, the Rev. Mr. Foster's, which is diffuse and verbose, and Mr. G. Moir Bussey's, which is a re- correction, abound in gallicisms of style and idiom; and one and all degrade a chef d'oeuvre of the highest anthropological and ethnographical interest and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... robbers should not come, It might be equal cause of grief That I had proved myself the thief.' The thief! Is to enjoy one's pelf To rob or steal it from one's self? My friend, could but my pity reach you, This lesson I would gladly teach you, That wealth is weal no longer than Diffuse and part with it you can: Without that power, it is a woe. Would you for age keep back its flow? Age buried 'neath its joyless snow? With pains of getting, care of got Consumes the value, every jot, Of gold that one can never spare. To take the load of such a care, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... have such blessing as those who not only say 'Our Father which art in Heaven,' but believing what they say, 'try to walk with Him in love, as dear children.' Such persons diffuse cheerfulness all around them; while on the contrary, those who are selfish and passionate, sow the seeds of trouble and discontent broadcast around them. And pride—oh, that hateful sin—what have children to do with pride? Helpless and dependent as they are on parents ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... one by one, each anxious to have the glory of being the first to know and relate everything, and Felicite, as she leaned out of the window, on being left alone, saw them dispersing in the Rue de la Banne, waving their arms in an excited manner, eager as they were to diffuse emotion to the four corners of ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... it alone. Now the aims of academic education and those of popular education are—it is obvious if you come to think of it—quite different. The end of the one is rather to increase knowledge: of the other to diffuse it, and to increase men's interest in what is already known. If, therefore, I am for making certain kinds of instruction as general as they can possibly be made in these local centres, I should give to the old seats of learning a ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 1: On Popular Culture • John Morley
... certainty of ultimate success can give to human exertion. And in what cause can the energies of Christian benevolence be more appropriately exercised? To prevent war is to avoid the effusion of human blood, and the commission of innumerable crimes and atrocities;—it is to diffuse peace, and comfort, and happiness, through the great family of man,—it is to foster the arts and sciences which minister to the wants of society,—it is to check the progress of vice,—to speed the advance of the gospel,—to rescue immortal souls from ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... narratives of what he saw with his own eyes, or gathered from the lips of men who had themselves been part of what they told. This fact, along with his mastery of a style which is always vivacious if sometimes diffuse, accounts for the vividness and picturesqueness of his work. The pageant of medieval life in court and camp dazzled and delighted him, and it is as a pageant that we see the Middle ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... book, though abrupt and unconnected in style, is one of the most elevated passages in Plato. The religious feeling which he seeks to diffuse over the commonest actions of life, the blessedness of living in the truth, the great mistake of a man living for himself, the pity as well as anger which should be felt at evil, the kindness due to the suppliant and the stranger, ...
— Laws • Plato
... suffer, sink with pain, With anguish I can ill sustain; Till not a hope has strength to spring, Till scarce a prayer can lift its wing; Yet in my inmost heart there lies A living fount that will arise, And, of itself, diffuse a balm, A healing and refreshing calm, A pure delight, a cooling glow, Which Hate ...
— Vignettes in Verse • Matilda Betham
... and beat the whole another quarter of an hour, for much of the goodness of this cake depends on its being long and well beaten. Then have ready a tin mold or earthen pan with a pipe in the centre (to diffuse the heat through the middle of the cake). The pan must be very well-buttered as Indian meal is apt to stick. Put in the mixture, cover it and set it in a warm place to rise. It should be light in about four hours. Then bake it two hours in a moderate oven. When done, turn it ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... volumes between 1775-78 under the title "Physiognomical Fragments for the Advancement of Human Knowledge and Human Life" ("Physiognomische Fragmente zur Befoerderung des Menschenkenntniss und Menschenliebe"). The book is diffuse and inconsequent, but it contains many shrewd observations with respect to physiognomy and has had no little influence on popular opinion in this matter. Lavater ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... accomplishments. He distrusted himself so much that he always turned to Hamilton, both during the Revolution and afterwards, as well as in the preparation of the farewell address, to aid him in clothing his thoughts in a proper dress, which he felt himself unable to give them. His tendency was to be too diffuse and too involved, but as a rule his style was sufficiently clear, and he could express himself with nervous force when the occasion demanded, and with a genuine and stately eloquence when he was deeply moved, as in the farewell to Congress at the close ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... an infant soul; her vow is to be faithful to it; her promise is to train it up for God; and her's will be the lasting glory or the lasting shame! These very engagements and trusts elevate the pious parents; diffuse a tenderness and sympathy over all the domestic relations, and make better husbands, better wives, better parents, and better children, by the deep insight which is given to their faith in those mysterious relations and mutual obligations which bind them together. As the consecrated water falls ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... than by simply being himself. The impression made upon his contemporaries by a man of strong and noble character is something which cannot be precisely estimated, but which we often feel to be invaluable. The best justification of biography in general is that it may strengthen and diffuse that impression. That, at any rate, is the spirit in which I have written this book. I have sought to show my brother as he was. Little as he cared for popularity (and, indeed, he often rather rejected than courted it), I hope that there will not be wanting ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... dismembered provinces, and distribute the hoarded treasures of Susa, Persepolis, and Ecbatana—to introduce Greek satraps instead of Persian—to favor the spread of the Greek language and institutions—to found new cities where Greeks might reign, from which they might diffuse their spirit and culture. Alexander spent only one year of his reign in Greece, all the rest of his life was spent in the various provinces of Persia. He was the conqueror of the Oriental world. He had ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... joyful of all holy effusions, yet addressed to a Being without passions, is confined to a few modes, and is to be felt rather than expressed. Repentance, trembling in the presence of the Judge, is not at leisure for cadences and epithets. Supplication to man may diffuse itself through many topics of persuasion; but supplication to God can only ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... man. Now most persons in this category supply themselves with information, as peddlers do with goods, for the benefit of others, and lay up stores in order to diffuse them abroad for the benefit of society in general. Not so my excellent uncle, Professor Hardwigg; he studied, he consumed the midnight oil, he pored over heavy tomes, and digested huge quartos and folios in order to keep the knowledge ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... rainy afternoon, the extraordinary grandeur of this circular church filled with diffuse white light. Architecturally one of the most beautiful Roman churches, certainly, with its circle of columns surrounding the great central well, where two colossal pillars carry the triumphal arch, carry a great blank windowed wall above it, immensely high up. Those columns, that wall, pearly white, ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... head we include the usual properties of the atmosphere which minister to health and vegetation, for it has been justly remarked that Syria has three climates. The summits of Libanus, for instance, covered with snow, diffuse a salubrious coolness in the interior; the flat situations, on the contrary, especially those which stretch along the line of the coast, are constantly subjected to heat, accompanied with great humidity; while the adjoining plains of the desert are scorched by the rays of a burning sun. The seasons ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... "It is too diffuse, and the sociologic background gets obstinately into the foreground. As I sat there last night I saw that the interest was too abstract, too impersonal for the ordinary play-goer. I can better that. The fourth act must ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... the laws and constitutions of any of the United States, and who, notwithstanding, are detained in bondage by fraud or violence. From a full conviction of the truth and obligation of these principles; from a desire to diffuse them wherever the miseries and vices of slavery exist, and in humble confidence of the favor and support of the Father of mankind, the subscribers have associated themselves, under the title of 'The Pennsylvania Society for promoting the Abolition of Slavery, ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... trying to look modest. Mrs. Hermann would glance at me quickly, emit slight "Ach's!" The girl never made a sound. Never. But she too would sometimes raise her pale eyes to look at me in her unseeing gentle way. Her glance was by no means stupid; it beamed out soft and diffuse as the moon beams upon a landscape—quite differently from the scrutinising inspection of the stars. You were drowned in it, and imagined yourself to appear blurred. And yet this same glance when turned upon ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... (1780), to state it tersely and explicitly. The want of money, he wrote to a friend, "is the source of all our public difficulties and misfortunes. One or two millions of guineas properly applied would diffuse vigor and satisfaction throughout the whole military department, and would expel the enemy from every ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... heart somewhere with a little self-satisfaction, stability, yet filled her with a certain sharp contempt and hate of him. She wanted him to herself, she hated the Salvator Mundi touch. It was something diffuse and generalised about him, which she could not stand. He would behave in the same way, say the same things, give himself as completely to anybody who came along, anybody and everybody who liked to appeal to him. It was despicable, a very insidious ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... a direction where God is not." He was attended on his wanderings by Mardana, a lute-player, who accompanied the hymns which he never failed to compose when a thought or adventure occurred to him. These compositions are similar to those of Kabir, but seem to me of inferior merit. They are diffuse and inordinately long; the Japji for instance, which every Sikh ought to recite as his daily prayer, fills not less than twenty octavo pages. Yet beautiful and incisive passages are not wanting. When at the temple ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... complaining that my monologue was uninteresting and diffuse, and was interfering with the railway time-table. But I finished it in the car: "And the railway! What has a person of fixed and independent habits to do with railways but to growl at them? Before I was tempted upon the railway by that impertinent engineer at Noisy, I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... all spirit of criticism. When he essays to demolish a theory, one is amazed to find in this great, clear writer such lack of precision of thought, and such weak argument. He wrote the least eloquent and the most diffuse study of Flaubert, of "that old, dead master who had won his heart in a manner he could not explain." And, later, he shows the same weakness in setting forth, as in proving his theory, in his essay on the "Evolution of the Novel," ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... class, although he enjoys a very wide reputation in his own country and wherever Spanish is read. His Episodes Nacionales, some fifty-six in number, attract by their close attention to detail, which gives an air of actuality to the most diffuse of his stories. They are careful and very accurate studies of different episodes of national life, in which the author introduces, among the fictitious characters round whom the story moves, the real actors on the stage of history of the time. Thus Mendizabal, Espartero, Serrano, Narvaez, ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... his disposal to examine with it the relighted spectrum on August 27.[1390] In its wealth of light C was dazzling; D3 and the green and blue hydrogen rays shone somewhat less vividly; D and the group b showed faintly dark; while three broad absorption-bands, sharply terminated towards the red, diffuse towards the violet, shaded the spectrum ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... long and weird catalogue of human miseries, I might have selected many individual instances more replete with essential suffering than any of these vast generalities of disaster. The true wretchedness, indeed—the ultimate woe——is particular, not diffuse. That the ghastly extremes of agony are endured by man the unit, and never by man the mass——for this let ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Lord, casts out the lusts of the love of evil and falsity. For these felicities are the happinesses of the affections of good and truth, the opposites of the lusts of the love of evil and falsity. Those happinesses begin from the Lord, thus from the inmost, diffuse themselves thence into things lower even to lowermost things, and thus fill the angel, making him a body of delight. Such happinesses are to be found in infinite variety in every affection of good and truth, and eminently ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... of Hindu Literature. The third book of the poem of Sriharsha, containing 135 slokas, is entirely occupied with the conversation between Damayanti and the swans (the geese), in which the birds to excite her love, dwell with diffuse eloquence on the ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... nothing. In settling among them he ran the risk of being ignored. But when it came to ignoring, Jimmy considered that success lay with the party who got in first. So before he settled he took care to diffuse a sort of impression that the Tasker Jevonses were never at home to anybody, that it was not to be expected that a great novelist and playwright would have time for calling and being called on, even if he had the absurd inclination. He had one solitary introduction ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... Dutch carried to their Eastern settlements two of their home propensities, which distinguish and embellish the towns of the Low Countries; they indulged in the excavation of canals, and they planted long lines of trees to diffuse shade over the sultry passages in their Indian fortresses. For the latter purpose they employed the Suriya (Hibiscus populneus), whose broad umbrageous leaves and delicate yellow flowers impart a delicious coolness, and give to the streets of Galle and Colombo the fresh and enlivening aspect ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... of course being that each form might become meagre and the sum of them chaotic. If the accent, however, could only be laid on the second phase of the transformation, reform might mean the creation of order where it did not sufficiently appear, so that diffuse life should be concentrated into a congenial form that should render it strong and self-conscious. In this sense, if we may trust Mr. Gilbert Murray, it was a great wave of reform that created Greece, or at least all that was characteristic and admirable in it—an effort to organise, train, ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... historian, an historian so diffuse, and so little selective, it would obviously be difficult to give any suitably brief specimen that should seem to present a considerable historic action in full. We go to Froissart's account of the celebrated ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... that I am fond of study. There is no one, after all, like the Germans. That is, for facts. For opinions I by no means always go with them. I form my opinions myself. I am sorry to say, however," Mrs. Church continued, "that I can hardly pretend to diffuse my acquisitions. I am afraid I am sadly selfish; I do little to irrigate the soil. I belong—I frankly confess it—to the ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... staircase. When I entered the dining-room, the first object that saluted my ravished eyes was the divine Narcissa, blushing like Aurora, adorned with all the graces that meekness, innocence, and beauty can diffuse! I was seized with a giddiness, my knees tottered and I scarce had strength enough to perform the ceremony of salutation, when her brother, slapping me on the shoulder, cried, "Measure Randan, that there ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... pass through the membrane until it has become charged, to a given point of dilution, with water. It is itself, in fact, so greedy for water, it will pick it up from watery textures, and deprive them of it until, by its saturation, its power of reception is exhausted, after which it will diffuse into ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... he translated a 'Life of St Alban' from Latin into English rhymes, and received for the whole work one hundred shillings. His principal poems, all founded on the works of other authors, are the 'Fall of Princes,' the 'Siege of Thebes,' and the 'Destruction of Troy.' They are written in a diffuse and verbose style, but are generally clear in sense, and often very luxuriant in description. 'The London Lyckpenny' is a fugitive poem, in which the author describes himself coming up to town in search of legal ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... that epoch of historical times. The atmosphere enveloped the disc with a fluid mantle. Vapour deposited itself in the form of clouds. This natural screen tempered the ardour of the solar lays, and retained the nocturnal radiation. Both light and heat could diffuse themselves in the air. Hence there was equilibrium between the influences which no longer exists now that the atmosphere has almost entirely disappeared. ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... amalgamation,—other nations and even races having so readily melted away under less than half the influence which have been at work upon them*; the other, and opposite paradox,—that a religion, propagated by ignorant, obscure, and penniless vagabonds, should diffuse itself amongst the most diverse nations in spite of all opposition,—it being the rarest of phenomena to find any religion which is capable of transcending the limits of race, clime, and the scene of its historic origin; a religion which, if transplanted, ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... view of the subject, a Committee of finance would be desirable, whose duty, in the first instance, would be to arrange and pursue the best and most active measures to diffuse a general knowledge of the objects and principles of the association; and to obtain donations and subscriptions, for the purpose ...
— An Appeal to the British Nation on the Humanity and Policy of Forming a National Institution for the Preservation of Lives and Property from Shipwreck (1825) • William Hillary
... should add France) by 1821 than any creed has had. The Political Economy Club is shown by Ashley to have been the assembly of the elders of the Church, of which the founder assumed that they possessed a complete code, representing just principles necessary to "diffuse." The Club was to watch for the propagation of any doctrine hostile to sound views. The sect grew rapidly from the small body of Utilitarian founders, and conquered all the statesmen who rejected the other opinions ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... that," she said. She paused again, with her eyes on Lily, and then continued, in a tone of diffuse narrative: "When we was at the Benedick I had charge of some of the gentlemen's rooms; leastways, I swep' 'em out on Saturdays. Some of the gentlemen got the greatest sight of letters: I never saw the like of it. Their waste-paper baskets 'd be fairly brimming, and papers falling over ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... He opened the hand of liberality, displayed his munificence, and bestowed innumerable gifts upon his troops and people. "The brain will not be perfumed by a censer of green aloes-wood; place it over the fire that it may diffuse fragrance like ambergris. If ambitious of a great name, make a practice of munificence, for the crop will not shoot till thou shalt ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... living "protoplasm" of plants, a considerable proportion of the substance of seeds, bulbs, and so on, are albuminous bodies, or proteids. These also are insoluble bodies, or when soluble, will not diffuse easily ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... of expression need not be discussed at length here as it is taken up fully in the next chapter. Suffice it to say now, however, that a diffuse style is never forceful. The reporter must condense his ideas into the smallest space possible. Often that space is designated by the city editor when the reporter, on his return to the office, asks for instructions, and nearly always it is only about half enough. But he must follow ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... grew paler and more diffuse, and the thunderclaps lost some of their terror amid the monotonous rattling of the downpour. Then the rain also abated, and the clouds began to disperse. In the region of the sun, a lightness appeared, ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... here referred to were, for the most part, republished by the Messrs. Appleton of New York,[2] under the auspices of a man who is untiring in his efforts to diffuse sound scientific knowledge among the people of the United States; whose energy, ability, and single-mindedness, in the prosecution of an arduous task, have won for him the sympathy and support of many of us in 'the old country.' I allude to Professor Youmans. Quite as rapidly as ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... conspicuous; the salt, working concealed; and the dew, visible like the former, but yet unobtrusive and operating silently like the latter. Some of us had rather be light than salt; prefer to be conspicuous rather than to diffuse a wholesome silent influence around us. But these three types must all be blended, both in regard to the manner of working, and in regard to the effects produced. We shall refresh and beautify the world only in proportion as we save it from its rottenness and corruption, and we shall do ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... out to the assembly the subjects that ought to attract its attention,— finance, civil law, commerce, trade, and the consolidation of the new government; he promised to employ his influence to restore order and discipline in the army, to put the kingdom in a state of defence, and to diffuse ideas respecting the French revolution, calculated to re-establish a good understanding in Europe. He added the following words, which were received with much applause: "Gentlemen, in order that your important labours, as well as your zeal, may ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... aether is proved incompetent to explain, we should have to give it up; but no such phenomenon has ever been pointed out. It is, therefore, at least as certain that space is filled with a medium, by means of which suns and stars diffuse their radiant power, as that it is traversed by that force which holds in its grasp, not only our planetary system, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... language as French is not its only peculiarity. There is in the style, apart from grammar or vocabulary, a rude angularity, a rough dramatism like that of oral narrative; there is a want of proportion in the style of different parts, now over curt, now diffuse and wordy, with at times even a hammering reiteration; a constant recurrence of pet colloquial phrases (in which, however, other literary works of the age partake); a frequent change in the spelling of ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... hitherto been balmy and beautiful, with a bright array of stars, and a golden harvest moon, which seemed to diffuse even warmth with its radiance; but now Turpin was approaching the region of fog and fen, and he began to feel the influence of that dank atmosphere. The intersecting dykes, yawners, gullies, or whatever they are called, began to send forth ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... big public school. I will not dwell upon this, but I will say that I gained a great interest in the science of education, and acquired profound misgivings as to the nature of the intellectual process known by the name of secondary education. More and more I began to perceive that it is conducted on diffuse, detailed, unbusiness-like lines. I tried my best, as far as it was consistent with loyalty to an established system, to correct the faulty bias. But it was with a profound relief that I found myself suddenly ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... day at the end of August, and through the crevices of the carefully closed shutters only a few scattered sunbeams entered, piercing the drowsy and warm obscurity of the vast apartment. The rest and peace of the Sunday seemed to enter and diffuse itself in the room with the last sounds of the distant vesper bell. Profound silence reigned in the empty house in which the mother and child were to remain alone until dinner time, the servant having asked permission to go see a cousin in ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... inharmonical they can never be. But the deformed is always inharmonical with the divine, and the beautiful harmonious. Beauty, then, is the destiny or goddess of parturition who presides a birth, and therefore, when approaching beauty the conceiving power is propitious, and diffuse, and benign, and begets and bears fruit; on the appearance of foulness she frowns and contracts in pain, and is averted and morose, and shrinks up, and not without a pang refrains from conception. And this is the reason why, when the hour of conception arrives, and the teeming ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... light seemed to diffuse itself over his countenance, and his eyes suddenly beamed with pleasure—"Eva! no! I believe so too. To see her dance is to see living harmony. Ah! it enlivens my mind if I only see her figure, her gait, her slightest movement; and then to know that all this ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... the first group approved of Philips' efforts to create a fresh and simple pastoral manner. As a poet, Purney moved sharply away from the classical pastoral by curiously blending an entirely original subject matter with a sentimentalized realism and a naive, diffuse expression; and as a critic he pointed in the direction of Shenstone and Allan Ramsay by emphasizing the tender, admitting the use of earthy realism in the manner of Gay, and recommending for pastoral such "inimitably pretty and delightful" tales as The Two Children in the Wood. ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... characteristic property is its great solubility, and consequent speedy diffusion in the soil, and the inability of the soil-particles to fix its nitrogen. In the latter respect it differs very considerably from other forms of nitrogen. Ammonia salts, though practically quite as soluble, do not diffuse in the soil so rapidly as nitrate of soda does; for the ammonia is more or less tenaciously fixed by the soil-particles, and retained till converted by the process of nitrification ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... presence of septic infection must be suspected and looked for. When this has occurred, the inflammatory swelling becomes larger and more diffuse, and the animal fevered. This is then followed by a slough of the injured part. A portion of the skin first becomes gray, or even black, in appearance, and around it oozes an inflammatory exudate, or even pus. The skin immediately adjoining the spot of necrosis is swollen and ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... cruel, was yet so unswervingly sure in its action, so distinct in its surety, that she was attracted to him. She watched his cool, hard, separate fire, fascinated by it. Would she rather have it than her husband's diffuse heat, than his blind, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... inserting the fingers through the interdental space in such a way as to cause the mouth to open. The mucous membrane should be clean and of a light-pink color, excepting on the back of the tongue, where the color is a yellowish gray. As abnormalities of this region, the chief are diffuse inflammation, characterized by redness and catarrhal discharge; local inflammation, as from eruptions, ulcers, or wounds; necrosis of the lower jawbone in front of the first back tooth; and swellings. Foreign bodies are sometimes found embedded in the mucous membrane lining of the mouth ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... of eminence in this department of science. Lately, indeed, the Abbe Le Turquier Deslongchamps, a very well-informed botanist, as well as a most excellent man, has published a Flore des Environs de Rouen, in two volumes; and there are many instances in which such works have been known to diffuse a taste, which public gardens and the lectures of professors had ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... the outline seems to suffer, in competition with a colored content, some loss of power to carry the attention and maintain its place in the ideation. "The colors tend to diffuse themselves, ignoring the boundary," says one. "The images fade from the periphery toward the center," says another. On the other hand, one of the subjects finds that when both images are present the color tends to fade out. This may perhaps be explained by the remark of another subject to the effect ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... its wondrous juice; We fought to taste it, and have won! Now o'er your hills new wealth diffuse And cherish well the warrior's boon. Plant, plant the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... great work, and one that nobody except a genius could have written, I do not think it is Dostoevski's most characteristic novel, nor his best. It is characteristic in its faults; it is abominably diffuse, filled with extraneous and superfluous matter, and totally lacking in the principles of good construction. There are scenes of positively breathless excitement, preceded and followed by dreary drivel; ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... Dr. Jenkins' patients lived, on those broad tree-lined boulevards, those deserted quays, the mist soared immaculate, in innumerable waves, as light and fleecy as down. It was compact, discreet, almost luxurious, because the sun, slothful in his rising, was beginning to diffuse soft, purplish tints, which gave to the mist that enveloped everything, even the roofs of the rows of mansions, the aspect of a sheet of white muslin spread over scarlet cloth. One would have said that it was a great ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... of pleasure, more than lovers of God." Well may the Apostle speak of such times as "dangerous times." When the moral atmosphere we breathe is so full of what the Scriptures call "the spirit of this world," we can only hope to escape its corrupting influences by doing all in our power to diffuse Christian principles among the rising generation, by means of truly ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... and spirit, faith and works, is in truth a false one; and wherever the significance of Judaism has been fully comprehended, the two aspects of the law have been inextricably intertwined. As Philo understood the Jewish mission, it was not merely to diffuse the Jewish God-idea, but quite as much to diffuse the Jewish attitude to God, the way of life. Abstract ideas, however lofty, can never be the bond of a religious community, nor can they be a safeguard for moral conduct. Sooner or later congregations must submit themselves to some law, ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... latter appears childish by the side of Alfieri's terse philosophy and pregnant remarks on the development of character. What suits the page of Plautus would look poor in 'Oedipus' or 'Agamemnon.' Goldoni's memoirs are diffuse and flippant in their light French dress. They seem written to please. Alfieri's Italian style marches with dignity and Latin terseness. He rarely condescends to smile. He writes to instruct the world and to satisfy himself. Grim humour sometimes flashes ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... boar. Venus mourns over his dead body, and causes a flower (the anemone or wind flower) to spring from his blood. Shakespeare's handling of the story shows both the virtues and the defects of a young writer. It is more diffuse, more wordy, than his later work, and written for the taste of another time than ours; but, on the other hand, it is full of vivid, picturesque language of melodious rhythm, and of charming little ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... pursue this argument any further than to establish an obvious inference, that as sound politics diffuse liberty, mankind, including woman, will ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... respectfully begs to offer to the notice of Lord Melbourne his Bachelor's Dispatch, or portable kitchen. It will roast, bake, boil, stew, steam, melt butter, toast bread, and diffuse a genial warmth at one and the same time, for the outlay of one halfpenny. It is peculiarly suited for lamb, in any form, which requires delicate dressing, and is admirably adapted for concocting mint-sauce, which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841 • Various
... things, such pursuits seem far more noble objects of ambition than any upon which the vulgar herd of busy men lavish prodigal their restless exertions. To diffuse useful information, to further intellectual refinement, sure forerunner of moral improvement,—to hasten the coming of the bright day when the dawn of general knowledge shall chase away the lazy, lingering class, even from the base of the great social pyramid;—this indeed is ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... increasing in magnitude. Do not suffer life to stagnate: it will grow muddy for want of motion; commit yourself again to the current of the world; Pekuah will vanish by degrees; you will meet in your way some other favourite, or learn to diffuse yourself ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... skittles, and all gymnastic exercises. Such games bring the muscles into proper action, and thus cause them to be fully developed. They expand and strengthen the chest; they cause a due circulation of the blood, making it to bound merrily through the blood-vessels, and thus to diffuse health and happiness in its course. Another excellent amusement for boys, is the brandishing of clubs. They ought to be made in the form of a constable's staff, but should be much larger and heavier. The manner ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... Iniquities in classifications and rates are constantly pointed out by the commission and corrected by the companies. Moreover, the annual reports of the commission, not to mention its very excellent statistical data, diffuse much useful information and dispel many delusions. Thus the fourth annual report of ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... was accorded to him in the old; but he cannot enjoy the same appreciation. Macaulay's ridicule has rescued from oblivion the criticism which pronounced the eloquence of Chatham to be more ornate than that of Demosthenes, and less diffuse than that of Cicero. Did the critic, asks Macaulay, ever hear any speaking that was less ornamented than that of Demosthenes, or more diffuse than that of Cicero? Yet the critic's remark was not so pointless as Macaulay thought it. Sincerity ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... estimate in the Essay of Dramatic Poesy. Johnson saw that Pope had expanded it, and his own experience made him say that the editors and admirers of Shakespeare, in all their emulation of reverence, had not done much more than diffuse and paraphrase this "epitome of excellence." But concurrently on to Johnson's time we can trace the influence of Thomas Rymer, who, in his Short View of Tragedy, had championed the classical drama, and had gone as far ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... DISEASE. (Chronic Parenchymatous Nephritis. Chronic Diffuse Desquamative or Tubal Nephritis. Chronic Diffuse Nephritis with Exudation). Causes.—Young adult life and most common in males. It may come from acute inflammation of the kidneys that was due to exposure, pregnancy, or scarlet fever, or follow excessive use of alcohol, etc. In children it usually ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... ever in the history of the country have two men of such ability and astuteness participated in a local canvass. The rivalry was all the more exciting because it was a rivalry of styles as well as of capacities. Burr was smooth, polished, concise, never diffuse or declamatory, always serious and impressive. If we may accept contemporary judgment, he was a good speaker whom everybody was curious to hear, and from whom no one turned away in disappointment. On the other hand, Hamilton was an acknowledged orator, diffuse, ornate, full of metaphor, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... the most fascinating of all. The "Trilogy" ("Walkuere," "Siegfried," "Goetterdaemmerung," with the "Rheingold" as introduction) is a very unequal work. It is full of Wagner's most inspired writing and most marvellous orchestration; but it is too long and too diffuse. The plot also is strangely confused and uninteresting, and fails alike as a story and as a vehicle of theories, morals, or religion. "Parsifal," with its sacred allegory, its lofty nobility of tone, and its pure mysticism, stands on a platform by itself, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... lights of Mizora were at a considerable elevation from the ground. They were in, or over, the center of the street, and of such diffuse brilliancy as to render the city almost as light as day. They were in the form of immense globes of soft, white fire, and during the six months that answered to the Mizora night, were kept constantly burning. It was during this period that the Aurora Borealis ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... and your royal and much-loved consort, pay your first visit to this portion of the kingdom; and we hail with the sincerest feelings of joy and exultation your august presence here, and ardently hope that your majesty will be graciously pleased to cheer and gladden us by frequent visits, and thus diffuse pleasure and happiness amongst us. We sincerely hope that your majesty's gracious visit will be like those of the angel of mercy, with healing on its wings, and that it is the harbinger of bright and better days for our country, which your ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... per se, or, in a professional sense, military as a body, (Heaven forbid that they should be so!) yet, as always furnishing a disproportionate number from their order to the martial service of the country, they diffuse a standard of high honour through our army and navy, which would languish in a degree not suspected whenever a democratic influence should thoroughly pervade either. It is less for what they do in this way, than for what ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... one consent, caught fire, and were blazing away to their dear heart's content. There was nothing very cheerful in the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of cheerfulness abroad that the dearest summer air and brightest summer sun might have endeavoured to diffuse in vain. ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... death will take place in a very short time. I say death is inevitable without surgical treatment. In this I appear to be more radical than the most radical, for the best authors have much to say about perforation, diffuse peritonitis, and of patients who live after perforation, as though it were a common occurrence; I say ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... clearly understood, my Lord; from all I have observed here, I am convinced, nothing would so much contribute to diffuse a spirit of order, and rational obedience, in the colonies, as the appointment, under proper restrictions, of bishops: I am equally convinced that nothing would so much strengthen the hands of government, or give such pleasure to the well-affected ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... I trust, when Christian churches in the United States shall return to follow the sublime examples of the founders of Christianity; shall practise and diffuse that spirit of love in which is all freedom, all toleration and co-operation; shall welcome science and philosophy, and become the centre of all cooperative efforts ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... as junior in a licensing club case, had to cross-examine the certifying Justice of the Peace who was very diffuse and rather evasive in his answers. "Speak a little more simply and to the point, please," said counsel mildly. "You are a little ambiguous, you know."—"I am not, sir," replied the witness indignantly; "I have been teetotal for ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... duties, that Godwin seldom heard anything except the voice of the cuckoo-clock, a pleasant sound to him. Her son, employed at a nurseryman's, was a great sinewy fellow with a face of such ruddiness that it seemed to diffuse warmth; on Sunday afternoon, whatever the state of the sky, he sat behind the house in his shirt-sleeves, and smoked a pipe as he contemplated the hart's-tongue which grew there upon ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... insist on creating the semblance of a world out of airy matter, when, at every moment, the impalpable beauty of my soap-bubble was broken by the rude contact of some actual circumstance. The wiser effort would have been, to diffuse thought and imagination through the opaque substance of to-day, and thus to make it a bright transparency; to spiritualize the burden that began to weigh so heavily; to seek, resolutely, the true and indestructible value that ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... among these baths is called Jeni Caplidche. A lofty circular hall contains a great swimming bath of marble, above which rises a splendid cupola. A number of refracting glasses (six hundred, they told me) diffuse a ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... goes into the stomach in a normal condition, there is danger; for if too much is eaten, or the digestive organs are not sufficiently strong and active, the process of putrefaction may commence in the stomach and diffuse a subtle poison through the ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... in the education of children, have yet a higher sense of pleasure in observing symptoms of their sensibility; they anticipate the future virtues which early sensibility seems certainly to promise; the future happiness which these virtues will diffuse. Nor are they unsupported by philosophy in these sanguine hopes. No theory was ever developed with more ingenious elegance, than that which deduces all our moral sentiments from sympathy. The direct influence of sympathy upon all social beings, is sufficiently obvious, and we immediately ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... In failing to diffuse and utilize this fundamental instinct of sex through the imagination, we not only inadvertently foster vice and enervation, but we throw away one of the most precious implements for ministering to life's highest needs. ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... to receive the crude Herbs in, upon which they are to be pour'd; and then with a Fork and a Spoon kept continually stirr'd, 'till all the Furniture be equally moisten'd: Some, who are husbands of their Oyl, pour at first the Oyl alone, as more apt to communicate and diffuse its Slipperiness, than when it is mingled and beaten with the Acids; which they pour on last of all; and 'tis incredible how small a quantity of Oyl (in this quality, like the gilding of Wyer) is sufficient, to imbue a very ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... came from Boston, she stood by the tired old woman's grave. Since then, for three days, she had been writing letters, narrating, describing to those who hadn't come; there were some, she thought, who might have managed to do so, instead of despatching her pages of diffuse reminiscence and asking her for all particulars in return. Selah Tarrant and his wife had come, obtrusively, as she thought, for they never had had very much intercourse with Miss Birdseye; and if it was for Verena's ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... said the editor. "Don't be too diffuse, but see that you miss nothing. What is that paper in front of you?" He took the paper from Desmond O'Connor's hands and held it at arm's length, while a sardonic smile held ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... jesters about him; given to the composition of wretched verses; sober, simple, frugal, yet a stickler for etiquette; a rough soldier and a crafty politician; skilled in theological disputation and very fond of it; a dull, diffuse, obscure orator, but clever in speaking the language of anybody whom he wished to influence; a hypocrite and a fanatic; a visionary swayed by phantoms of his childhood, believing in astrologers and banishing ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... skilful and anxious physician Munter, who when he left him had tears in his eyes; but over Henrik's countenance, on the contrary, when he returned to his family, although he was paler than usual, was a peculiarly mild and solemn repose, which seemed to diffuse itself through his whole being. From this moment his temper of mind was changed. He was now mild and calm, yet at the same time more joyous and amiable than ever. His eyes had an indescribable clearness and beauty; the shadow had passed away from ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... astute men of business who knew how to make a man talk were given diffuse and loud-voiced explanations of his methods and long-acknowledged merits and characteristics. His life, his morals, and his training, or rather lack ot it, were laid before them as examples of what a man might work himself up to if "he had it ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... it is that we can, by doing good to others, do so much good to ourselves! The wealthy classes, who "rise above society like clouds above the earth, to diffuse an abundant dew," should not forget this fact. The season has now about arrived, when the good people of all classes will be most busily engaged in these delightful duties. The experiment is certainly worth trying by all. If all those ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... it is quick to jump—but humor keeps the peace in an easy chair. Wit has a better voice in a solo, but humor comes into the chorus best. Wit is as sharp as a stroke of lightning, whereas humor is diffuse like sunlight. Wit keeps the season's fashions and is precise in the phrases and judgments of the day, but humor is concerned with homely eternal things. Wit wears silk, but humor in homespun endures the wind. Wit sets a snare, whereas ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... says we must paggle Monday up to here." Miss Arkwright indicates the exact high-water mark sanctioned, candidly. "Wiv no sooze, and no stottins!" She then becomes diffuse. "And my bid sister Totey's doll came out in my bed, and Dane dusted her out wiv a duster. And I can do thums. And they make free...." At this point Miss Arkwright's copy runs short, and she seizes the opportunity for a sort of seated dance of satisfaction at her own eloquence—a kind ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... wit and power of verse, That is at will diffuse and terse: Lest thou commence to lie—be dumb! I am content: the time ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... green curtain drops, the dramatis personae are duly disposed of, the nimble candle snuffers put out the lights, and the audience goeth pondering home. If the critic take the pains to ask why the author, who hath been so diffuse in describing the early and fabulous acts of Mrs. Catherine's existence, should so hurry off the catastrophe where a deal of the very finest writing might have been employed, Solomons replies that the "ordinary" narrative is ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... An Englishman undoubtedly believes that grammar is the art of speaking and writing the English language with propriety. All the grammatical research that preceded the establishment of his mother-tongue was but the collection of fuel to feed the flame of its glory; all that follows will be to diffuse the light of that flame to the ends of the earth. Greek, Latin, Sanscrit, were but stepping-stones to the English language. Philology per se is a myth. The English language in its completeness is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... and stars. In Mecca, in the year 571, Mahomet was born, and here, at the age of forty, he proclaimed himself the prophet of God, in dignity as superior to Christ as Christ had been to Moses. Having obtained by slow degrees a considerable number of disciples, he resorted to arms to diffuse his religion. The energy and zeal of his followers, aided by the weakness of the neighboring nations, enabled him and his successors to spread the sway of Arabia and the religion of Mahomet over the countries to the east as far as the ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... with that fresh, warm heart; you, with that pure enthusiasm for what is fresh and good; you, who can even admire a thing like Varney, because, through the tawdry man, you recognize art and skill, even though wasted in spoiling canvas; you, who have only to live as you feel, in order to diffuse blessings all around you,—fie, foolish boy! you will own your error when I tell you why I come from my rooms at Gray's Inn to see the walls in which Hampden, a plain country squire like you, shook with plain words the tyranny of eight ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the interstices, and the thirsty German flagon stood side by side with the aerial bubbles of Venetian glass that rest so lightly on their threadlike stems. An odour of luxury and sensuality floated through the apartment. The lamps that burned in every direction seemed to diffuse a subtle incense on the air, and in a large vase that stood on the floor I saw a mass of magnolias, tuberoses, and jasmines grouped together, stifling each other with ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... now "found himself" as a poet. It is true that his style remained diffuse and his ear faulty, but his countrymen, then as now uncritical of artistic form, overlooked the blemishes of his verse, and thought only of his vibrant emotion, his scorn of cowardice and evil, his prophetic exaltation. In 1847 came the first general ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... with Nord, he never made allusion to his past career—a subject upon which most high-bred castaways in a man-of-war are very diffuse; relating their adventures at the gaming-table; the recklessness with which they have run through the amplest fortunes in a single season; their alms-givings, and gratuities to porters and poor relations; and above all, their youthful indiscretions, and the broken-hearted ladies they have ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... taste.[196] Something must certainly be attributed to change of taste. If Tillotson were thoroughly in accord with our own age in thought and feeling, the mere difference of his style from that which pleases the modern ear would prevent his having many readers. He is reckoned diffuse and languid, greatly deficient in vigour and vivacity. How different was the tone of criticism in the last age! Dryden considered that he was indebted for his good style to the study of Tillotson's sermons.[197] ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Britain, France and Spain in Europe; and orders were sent to all the colonies to desist from acts of hostility. Governor Craven, deeply interested in the prosperity of Carolina, now turned his attention to improve the precious blessings of peace, and to diffuse a spirit of industry and agriculture throughout the settlement. The lands in Granville county were found upon trial rich and fertile, and the planters were encouraged to improve them. Accordingly a number of plantations were settled in the neighbourhood of Indian nations, with ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... they passed: The whole Face of Nature glowed with new Beauties. They were no sooner arrived at the Place where you lay, when they seated themselves on each Side of you. On their Approach, methought I saw a new Bloom arise in your Face, and new Charms diffuse themselves over your whole Person. You appeared more than Mortal; but, to my great Surprise, continued fast asleep, tho the two Deities made several ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele |
