"Instructive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... strenuous exertions had been made to rise from particular Facts to the discovery of the Laws by which those Facts are governed, Historians continued to pursue the stereotyped course of merely relating events, interspersed with such reflections as seemed interesting or instructive. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... not mind it—they are only proud of it. When you let them go, they pop up to the surface as dry as a patent office report, and walk off as unconcernedly as if they had been educated especially with a view to affording instructive entertainment to man in that particular way. Providence leaves nothing to go by chance. All things have their uses and their part and proper place in Nature's economy: the ducks eat the flies—the flies eat the worms—the Indians eat all three—the wild cats eat the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... probable that those messengers who come back to us are all, more or less, in one state of development and represent the same wave of life as it recedes from our shores. Communications usually come from those who have not long passed over, and tend to grow fainter, as one would expect. It is instructive in this respect to notice that Christ's reappearances to his disciples or to Paul, are said to have been within a very few years of his death, and that there is no claim among the early Christians to have seen him later. The cases of spirits who give good proof ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to spend their evenings at home in the perusal of instructive books, and the pursuit of useful knowledge. Then, when half-past seven arrived, they were to rise spontaneously and promptly, and bid their parents an affectionate good-night, and retire to their rooms, where, having said ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... exercise book. [unnecessary teaching] preach to the wise, teach one's grandmother to suck eggs, teach granny to suck eggs; preach to the converted. Adj. teaching &c.v; taught &c.v.; educational; scholastic, academic, doctrinal; disciplinal[obs3]; instructive, instructional, didactic; propaedeutic[obs3], propaedeutical[obs3]. Phr. the schoolmaster abroad; a bovi majori disscit arare minor[Lat]; adeo in teneris consuecere multum est [Lat][Vergil]; docendo discimus[Lat]; quaenocent docent[Lat]; qui docet discit[Latin]; "sermons in stones and good ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... living specimen of which may be easily procured, may be made a very instructive gallery lesson; it may prevent the fears and foolish prejudices against ugly yet harmless insects, which often remain through life. Part of a bush may be procured with a real web and spider upon it, ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... or depressions exist in every part of the world, all believed to be due to the gradual shrinking of the heated interior to which the solid crust has to accommodate itself, and they are especially interesting and instructive for our present purpose as showing the tendency of such fractures of solid rock-material to extend to great lengths in straight lines, notwithstanding the extreme irregularity both in the surface contour as well as in the internal structures of the varied deposits ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Cervera's four, a proportion not dissimilar; but those seven were all the armored ships, save monitors, worthless for such purpose, that the United States owned, or would own for some months yet to come. It should be instructive and convincing to the American people to note that when two powerful armored ships of the enemy were thus on their way to attack at one end of the world an admiral and a division that had deserved so well of ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... the myth is a distorted historical tradition, as well as the theories not long since in vogue, that it was a system of natural philosophy, a device of shrewd rulers, or as Bacon thought, a series of "instructive fables." The primitive form of the myth is now recognized to be made up from the notions which man gains of the manifestations of force in external nature, in their supposed relations to himself. In technical ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... Barker's cow, he may have blown away. I reckon they'll find him, her, and the paymaster's outfit snowed under somewhere down toward Nebraska, safe, but possibly starving. Schuchardt has gone with the command, so has Ennis, and I'm all alone with nothing to read. If you have anything moral, instructive, and guaranteed to soften the unrepentant sinner's heart—something I could read with profit as well as pleasure—don't send it, but tell me how you all stood the storm and how you are. It is so hard to get anything ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... behaviour offered, for one who knew her, a sure token that suspicion of some kind was busy in her brain. From some aperture or summit of observation, through parted bough or open window, she had doubtless caught a glimpse, remote or near, deceptive or instructive, of that night's transactions. Finely accomplished as she was in the art of surveillance, it was next to impossible that a casket could be thrown into her garden, or an interloper could cross her walks to seek it, without that she, in shaken branch, passing shade, unwonted footfall, or stilly ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... series of these stories see E. Sidney Hartland's "Legend of Perseus". But even more instructive, as revealing the intimate connexion of such ideas with the beliefs regarding the preservation of the body, see J. J. M. de Groot, "The Religious System of China," Vol. ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... gets into clubs and knots of friends, it descends into particulars, and grows more free and communicative; but the most open, instructive, and unreserved discourse, is that which passes between two persons who are familiar ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... would be the general tone of her letters. But now she devoted herself exclusively to descriptions of scenery and relating episodes regarding the constant losing and regaining of their baggage on their journeys, which though in its way instructive, struck ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... paragraphs are divided, by the difficulty of making Old English enactments fit into modern rubrics, and by the necessity of counting several times certain paragraphs bearing on different subjects—a brief statistical analysis of the contents of royal codes and laws may be found instructive. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... any reader who is unacquainted with M. Maeterlinck's "Life of the Bee," let him or her study that instructive book. Let him ask why the queen is the End of the hive, why all is for her. Let him ask whether the natural law upon which this depends—the law that all individuals are mortal—does not apply to all races, even our own, and perhaps he will come to agree that ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... sailing the other in the drinking-water bucket at all times when older eyes weren't watching. The Colonel wrote up his journal, and read the midsummer magazines and Byron, in the face of Mac's "I do not like Byron's thought; I do not consider him healthy or instructive." In one of his more energetic moods the Colonel made a four-footed cricket for Kaviak, who preferred it to the high stool, and always sat on ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... in this letter as needing farther explanation is the following: "The last six cases of mimicry are especially instructive, because they seem to indicate one of the processes by which dimorphic forms have been produced. When, as in these cases, one sex differs much from the other, and varies greatly itself, it may be that individual variations will occasionally occur, having a ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... the literatures of England and Russia furnish instructive comparisons. Russia has no autobiographies of note. Men there were too busy with their art to have much time left to think of themselves. Turgenef writes Reminiscences, but only of others, and not of himself; and when he speaks of his own past, it is only incidentally, and ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... himself by degrees, unfolding himself little by little, presenting himself to society in moderation, and that he was unembarrassed, majestic, gay, and agreeable in it. A style of conversation, easy but instructive, and happily and aptly directed, charmed the sensible courtier and made the rest wonder. There was all at once an opening of eyes, and ears, and hearts. There was a taste of the consolation, which was so necessary ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... to drive me from place to place, and indicate to me the important buildings of his majestic city. He was a patriotic showman, and I am bound to say he showed us a great deal; but the most memorable moment of that instructive day was when he stopped before, what seemed to us, a respectable mansion in a respectable street, and announced to us that "you" was "the Free Kirk Univairsity." It was the first time in my life that I had heard four stone walls with a roof over them called a University. ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... Wheat.— Most Valuable and Instructive Tables now first made accessible to the American Farmer.— The growth of Wheat Year after Year on the same Land, unmanured, with Farm-yard Manure, and with various Organic and Inorganic ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... intelligence shown in grasping the essentials of the problem. All of the remaining six drawings have points of excellence to commend them, and if we had space to reproduce them would prove instructive in showing the diversity of treatment possible while fully ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol 1, No. 11, November, 1895 - The Country Houses of Normandy • Various
... half enough clothes on. We read in the Wallacetown Bugle that there was goin' to be a picture called 'The Serpent of the Nile' an' Joe an' I thought we could risk that, it sounded kinder geographical an' instructive. Of course we went mostly to see the new buildin' an' who else would be there, anyway. But land! the serpent was a girl dressed in the main in beads an' a pleasant smile. She loafed around on hard-lookin' sofas that was set right out in the open ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... novels were comparatively unknown. He made romance instructive, rather than merely amusing, and added the charm of life to the dry annals of the past. Cervantes does not portray a single great character known in Spanish history in his "Don Quixote," but he paints life as he has seen it. So does Goldsmith. So does George Eliot in "Silas Marner." She presents ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... Everything was settled at the first interview near the college. Since then, Mlle. Gerbois and her new friend have been abroad, have visited Belgium and Holland in the most agreeable and instructive manner for a young girl. However, she will tell you ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... of the Press Bureau Dr. Dernburg, who continued with inexhaustible energy to write articles for the periodicals and instructive letters for the daily Press, was responsible for keeping in touch with the directors of the American Press. He also availed himself of invitations to speak in American and German circles, and sometimes in other places than ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... Dr. Orr's book, The Resurrection of Jesus, will throw some light on the matter of differences in testimony, while maintaining the credibility of the fact itself. "An instructive example is furnished in a recent issue of the Bibliotheca Sacra. A class in history was studying the French Revolution, and the pupils were asked to look the matter up, and report next day by what vote Louis XVI was condemned. Nearly half the class reported that the vote was unanimous. ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... not. He will pursue you till you have gained the prize. "He who to the end endures," is the saved man. It is very instructive to note how many backsliders there are among professors of mature age. The most grievous cases of falling away are not from the ranks of young disciples, but from those who ought to have been safe examples for them! If you have lived to be grey-headed, remember your silver ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... wariness, and by his promptitude in attacking Brittany, gained advantages, so that a truce was concluded with the Burgundian duke in 1472. Philip de Commines, at that time a companion and counselor of Charles, left his service for that of Louis. To his Memoirs we owe most instructive and interesting details respecting these princes, and the manners and ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Minor Terata.—The ancients viewed with great interest the minor structural anomalies of man, and held them to be divine signs or warnings in much the same manner as they considered more pronounced monstrosities. In a most interesting and instructive article, Ballantyne quotes Ragozin in saying that the Chaldeo-Babylonians, in addition to their other numerous subdivisions of divination, drew presages and omens for good or evil from the appearance of the liver, bowels, and viscera of animals offered for sacrifice and opened ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... I may be here reminded of the necessity of rendering instruction agreeable to youth, and of Tasso's infusion of honey into the medicine prepared for a child; but an age in which children are taught the driest doctrines by the insinuating method of instructive games, has little reason to dread the consequences of study being rendered too serious or severe. The history of England is now reduced to a game at cards,—the problems of mathematics to puzzles and riddles,—and the doctrines of arithmetic may, we are assured, be ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... failed both in [the] laying of the Plots, and managing of them, swerving from the Rules of their own Art, by misrepresenting Nature to us, in which they have ill satisfied one intention of a Play, which was Delight: so in the Instructive part [pp. 513, 582-4], they have erred worse. Instead of punishing vice, and rewarding virtue; they have often shown a prosperous wickedness, and an unhappy piety. They have set before us a bloody Image of Revenge, in ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... fluffy, capricious, untidy, adorable, little curlets, which broke out along the edges of the gathered strands of her chestnut hair. And so, after the fashion of men, his thoughts flew away from Mr. Pepys and the seventeenth century, and all that is lofty and instructive, and could fix upon nothing except those dear little wandering tendrils, and the white column on which they twined. Alas, that so small a thing can bring the human mind from its empyrean flights! Alas, that vague emotions can drag down the sovereign ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... establishment of what have been called Mechanics' Institutes through the United Kingdom; and a new species of literature has been brought into existence, with a view, among its objects, of furnishing the members of these institutions with interesting and instructive reading. I never will deny to that literature its due praise. It has been the production of men of the highest ability and the most distinguished station, who have not grudged, moreover, the trouble, and, I may say in a certain sense, the condescension, of ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... of the growth of paternalism in the Roman Empire is still to be written. It would be a fascinating and instructive record. In it the changes in the character of the Romans and in their social and economic conditions would come out clearly. It would disclose a strange mixture of worthy and unworthy motives in their statesmen and ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... that to a dweller in the District of Columbia there are no great men. Washington people are valets to these heroes. They get to know them with their rouge and corsets off. The sight is not pretty, but it is instructive. Sometimes it fills a man with despair of the future of this country. It convinces him that the greatest republic of history cannot hold together for another century. It makes him think that statesmanship is dead, never to resurge, and that its place is ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... classes whose opinion in other countries supports the action of the Courts are in Ireland, even when not law-breakers, in full sympathy with law-breakers. This fact, a Home Ruler may add, is for this purpose all the more instructive, if it be granted that the errors of British policy do not arise from injustice or ill-will to Irishmen. The inference, he insists, to be drawn from the lesson of history is, that it is impossible for the Parliament of the United Kingdom to understand or to provide for Irish needs. The ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... with her needle. I fancied that I was dead, and that she was an angel watching over me. Although I discovered that the first part of the notion was a hallucination, I was every day more convinced of the truth of the second. When I got rather better, she used to read to me interesting and instructive works; and every morning she read some portion of the Bible, and explained it to me in a manner which made me comprehend it better than I ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... aspirations, and suborn them for your own purposes, then there is hardly any limit to the mischief you may do. Swear at a child, throw your boots at it, send it flying from the room with a cuff or a kick; and the experience will be as instructive to the child as a difficulty with a short-tempered dog or a bull. Francis Place tells us that his father always struck his children when he found one within his reach. The effect on the young Places seems to have been simply to make them keep out of their father's way, which was ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... their responsibility—could not be assured, and whose action, therefore, was defective in real weight and value. The juries were badly constituted: they had too much to do of an illusory and useless description, and they had too little to do that was solid and instructive. Special mentions, diplomas, half a dozen grades of medals and other honors, formed a programme too large and complicated to be discriminatingly carried out. So it happened that to exhibit and to get a distinction of some kind came, at Vienna, to be ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... should be presented to Mr. PERCY FITZGERALD for his entertaining, instructive, and most readable book on the immortal Pickwick, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various
... were of a purely ornamental character down to the time of Constantine. Then, when the protection of a Christian emperor enabled the Christians to express themselves without fear, the doctrines of the church and the stories of the life of Christ and the histories of the saints, as well as many other instructive religious subjects, were made in mosaics, and placed in prominent places in churches and basilicas. Mosaics are very durable, and many belonging to the early Christian ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... outlook in the service of this conception. There was much therein about the Rapid Multiplication of the Unfit, a phrase never properly explained, and I must confess that the transitory presence of this instructive little magazine in my house, month after month (it is now, unhappily, dead), did much to direct my attention to the gaps and difficulties that intervene between the general proposition and its practical application by sober and honest men. One took it up and asked time after time, "Why should ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... once more the object of the common attention. He had not yet spoken, and something consolatory and instructive was expected from so renowned a chief on an occasion of such interest. Conscious of the wishes of the people, the stern and self-restrained warrior raised his face, which had latterly been buried in his robe, and looked about ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... mankind is about to become conscious of its aim. The lesson you give to humanity will not be lost. The respect for State-rights in the Federal Government of America, and in its several States, will become an instructive example for universal toleration, forbearance, and justice to the future States, and Republics of Europe. Upon this basis those mischievous questions of language-nationalities will be got rid of, which cunning despotism has raised in Europe to murder liberty. ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... and instructive when he talks about himself, and Swinburne, in his dedicatory epistle to his 'best and dearest friend,' Mr. Watts-Dunton, who has been the finest, the surest, and the subtlest critic of poetry now living, talks ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... us to enquire into the antecedents of those who, by the greatness of their virtues have added value to the records of human history. Whether such inquiry increases our estimation of such value or not, it must always be instructive, and therefore inspiring. Under this impression I have sought on every hand to learn all that could be gathered of the history of one of Canada's purest patriots. As Dr. Ryerson aptly says in his U. E. Loyalists and their Times, ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... nearest, perhaps, to the characteristic Greek type. Of that type, it is true, it was an exaggeration, and was recognised as such by the best thinkers of Greece; but just for that reason it is the more interesting and instructive as an exhibition of a distinctive aspect of ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... the Battery came under the direct orders of the C.R.A. and was attached to no group in particular. Various tasks were alloted to us, and these were, as a rule, most interesting and instructive. To further increase our knowledge the B.C. gave the majority of these shoots to the Junior Officers, briefly explaining the orders and then leaving us to our own devices by departing for the rest ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... deliberate, for, by this time, the young fellow, over heated with the present objects, and too high metled to be longer curbed in by that modesty and awe which had hitherto restrained him, ventured, under the stronger impulse, and instructive promptership of nature alone, to slip his hands, trembling with eager impetuous desires, under my petticoats; and seeing, I suppose, nothing extremely severe in my looks, to stop or dash him, he feels out, and seizes, gently, the center spot of his ardours. Oh then! the fiery ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... photoplay. It leaves out of account the fact that the moving pictures appeal not merely to the imagination, but that they bring their message also to the intellect. They aim toward instruction and information. Just as between the two covers of a magazine artistic stories stand side by side with instructive essays, scientific articles, or discussions of the events of the day, the photoplay is accompanied by a kinematoscopic rendering of reality in all its aspects. Whatever in nature or in social life interests the human understanding or human ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... medium. Moreover, it is technically impossible to reproduce with the pen the low values which may be obtained with the brush; and it is unwise to attempt it. The way, for example, in which Mr. Joseph Pennell handles his pen as compared with that in which he handles his brush is most instructive as illustrating what I have been maintaining. His pen drawings are pitched in a high key,—brilliant blacks and large light areas, with often just enough half-tone to soften the effect. His wash-drawings, on the contrary, are so utterly different in manner as to have nothing in common with ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... speculative minds. Yet there are few philosophical writers who have made a larger number of gratuitous assumptions, or who have abounded more in contradictory statements. The "Antinomies" of Spinoza might make the subject of an amusing, and even instructive, dissertation. Thus, by way of ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... down and between the ranks strode the trio, the General making instructive and interesting comments from time to time, ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... Her, we'd have done a deal better. Those poor blamed sea-gulls, or whatever they are, would have been squatting around on elegant beds of moulted feathers, laid out on steam-heat radiators, feeding on oyster cocktails and things, and handing out the instructive dope of a highbrow politician working up a press reputation, and learning their kids the decent habits of folk who're yearning to keep out of penitentiary as long as the police'll let 'em. No. It's no use. Nature got busy. Look at the result. ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... blunders and has many strange experiences, but his intentions are always the best, remember. Slyly tucked away in this story of Jolly Robin and of his adventures, is much bird lore and philosophy,—both instructive and entertaining. ...
— The Tale of Tommy Fox • Arthur Scott Bailey
... the other works of Audubon and Wilson, you will also find much instructive and entertaining information in regard to all of our common birds. Most of our sea-birds are very wild, as they are much hunted by man, and on this account they build their nests and rear their young on inaccessible ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... then delivered a lecture of great ability and interest. Dr. Cooke said he had listened to a remarkable oration. He was glad he had heard it. He thanked Professor Allen, in the name of the meeting, for his truly valuable and instructive lecture." ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... remarked that the previous tours had suffered from the absence of the personal details which interest the common reader. The insertion of these makes Young's account of his French tours one of the most charming as well as most instructive books of the kind. It gives the vivid impression made upon a keen and kindly observer in all their freshness. He sensibly retained the expressions of opinion made at the time. 'I may remark at present,' he says,[37] 'that although I was totally mistaken in my prediction, yet, on a revision, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... good as another to listen to good advice. Besides, I am only talking of one of my friends. 'Tis but a short story, Fabien, and instructive. I will give it you in very few words. My friend was very young and enthusiastic. He was on his way through the galleries of Italy, brush in hand, his heart full of the ceaseless song of youth in holiday. The world never had played him false, nor balked him. He made the ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... a dubious sort of word to use, and I don't like it. Let us be quite clear about what we mean. In one sense I am interested; in another sense I am entirely disinterested—which is the exact opposite. You catch my point, don't you? It is a very instructive thing to reflect on the curious ambiguity of words. But I am sure you can tell me more about that than I can possibly tell you. With your legal experience you must have come across scores of instances of the extraordinarily deceptive ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... from the especial alarming significance we wish to give to the act. A murderous attempt on a restaurant or a theatre would suffer in the same way from the suggestion of non-political passion: the exasperation of a hungry man, an act of social revenge. All this is used up; it is no longer instructive as an object lesson in revolutionary anarchism. Every newspaper has ready-made phrases to explain such manifestations away. I am about to give you the philosophy of bomb throwing from my point of view; from the point of view ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... of them to write and account. In England, the establishment of charity schools has had an effect of the same kind, though not so universally, because the establishment is not so universal. If, in those little schools, the books by which the children are taught to read, were a little more instructive than they commonly are; and if, instead of a little smattering in Latin, which the children of the common people are sometimes taught there, and which can scarce ever be of any use to them, they were instructed in the elementary parts of geometry and mechanics; the literary education of this rank ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... supplied me throughout with comments of his own on difficult sections of the text. Pandit Svmin Rma Misra Sstrin has rendered me frequent assistance in the earlier portion of my task. And to Mr. A. Venis, the learned Principal of the Benares Sanskrit College, I am indebted for most instructive notes on some passages of a peculiarly technical and abstruse character. Nor can I conclude without expressing my sense of obligation to Colonel G. A. Jacob, whose invaluable 'Concordance to the Principal Upanishads' lightens to an incalculable degree the task of any scholar ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... a lot, mother. I'd like to put a few leading questions to you. And—u'm—alone. Olivetta," he remarked pleasantly, "do you know that Sherlock Holmes found it an instructive and valuable occupation to count the stair-steps in a house? Suppose you run out for five minutes and count 'em. I'll bet you ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... closer together, until life shall have become better adjusted. Never forget those who are departed, for anything and everything in the life of a 'servant of God' may prove instructive and of ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... of a vegetarian and omnivorous diet, it is instructive to learn that it is proverbial in the Western States of America that a Chinaman can live and support his family in health and comfort on an allowance which to a meat-eating white man would be starvation. It is not to be denied that a vegetarian desirous of living ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... His Pal. Startling, amusing, and instructive exhibition of ventriloquism by that amazing expert, Professor T. J. O'Reilley. Hear the Bad Boy and his friend talk and joke as if they were really alive. During this act Professor O'Reilley uses one of his marvelous ventriloquial whistles and will explain its operation ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... delicate nor polished, though each was flattering and caressing; but both had a fund inexhaustible of good humour, and of sportive gaiety, that made their intercourse with those they wished to please attractive, instructive, and delightful and though not either of them had the smallest real malevolence in their compositions, neither of them could ever withstand the pleasure of uttering a repartee, let it wound whom it might, even though each would serve the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... emblem, it offers an instructive object of inquiry to the judicious gleaners of the old world's fascinating nursery traditions. Sicilian Diodorus tells us that the earth's lover, Attis (or Adonis), after his resuscitation, acquired the divine title of PAPAN.[2] To hazard the inoffensive ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.26 • Various
... resourceful. Impelled by the mighty forces of the Reformation and the Revival of Learning which the England of Elizabeth alone felt at one and the same time, the Elizabethans craved and obtained variety of experience, which kept the fountainhead of ingenuity filled. It is instructive to follow the lives of Elizabethans as different as Sir Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare, Sir Walter Raleigh, Captain John Smith, and John Winthrop, and to note the varied experiences of each. Yankee ingenuity had an Elizabethan ancestry. The hard conditions of the New World merely gave an opportunity ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... and at the same time the most beautifully instructive, lesson ever taught by the whole annals of journalism! The Press turned round like a weathercock with the wind, and exhausted every epithet of abuse they could find in the dictionaries. 'Nourhalma' was a 'poor, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... out of ten, it is not so much that the young people do not know, as that they do not choose. There is something irreverent in the speculation, but perhaps the want of power has more to do with the wise resolutions of age than we are always willing to admit. It would be an instructive experiment to make an old man young again and leave him all his savoir. I scarcely think he would put his money in the Savings Bank after all; I doubt if he would be such an admirable son as we are led to expect; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... several colleges in this country in which poor boys are afforded an opportunity of putting into practice legitimate plans for raising sufficient money to pay for tuition and other expenses. This subject was treated of in a very interesting and instructive article entitled "Working One's Way Through College," in No. 15 of the volume just ended. In it will be found many such plans, which will prove of great benefit to those intending to thus gain a collegiate training. 2. The Constitution does not require candidates for government positions to ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... as factors in one general problem. Here also Ruskin has a pregnant word of advice—as indeed where has he not?—"A great painter's business is to do what the public ask of him, in the way that shall be helpful and instructive to them."[8] You cannot always do what people ask, but you can do it more often than a headstrong man would at ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... shortly. "It shan't occur again. I have told the Ducharme woman to call at my rooms for treatment, and I will give Miss Clark her ten dollars. She was an exceptionally interesting and instructive case." ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... goes, thrown out sharply against the clear background of the sea. And yet his isolation is not to be compared with the isolation of Robinson Crusoe, for example; indeed, no two books could be more instructive to set side by side than LES TRAVAILLEURS and this other of the old days before art had learnt to occupy itself with what lies outside of human will. Crusoe was one sole centre of interest in the midst of a nature utterly dead and utterly unrealised by the artist; but this is not how ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... now in my head to my history," said Cortlandt, "that where it goes they may go also. They can scarcely fail to be instructive as the conclusions of a man who has seen beyond his grave." Whereupon he wrote a stanza in his note-book, and closed it without showing his companions what ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... by what hints and premonitions, the consciousness of the man's art dawns first upon the child, it should be not only interesting but instructive to inquire. A matter of curiosity to-day, it will become the ground of science to-morrow. From the mind of childhood there is more history and more philosophy to be fished up than from all the printed volumes in ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a man whose life should be written. Fortunately the task has been undertaken by Lord CHARLES himself, and the world is richer by a book which, instructive in many ways, valuable as throwing side-lights on the slow advance of the Navy to the proud position which it holds to-day on the North Sea, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... to learn to recognize the good among the bad. So many pictures are only experiments. Only by having the opportunity for comparison can we learn to discriminate. The predominant characteristic of our art exhibition is its instructive value in teaching the development of painting by successive periods, sometimes represented and some times only indicated. The person who never had the opportunity to visit the larger historical collections of paintings abroad, could here obtain an idea of ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... conception, the reader will comprehend the following sketch of a case of double consciousness, communicated by Dr George Barlow. To one reading them without preparation, the details, which are very graphic and instructive, would ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... of the infant Christ. In the Vosges Mountains, too, as indeed in many other places, cattle acquired the gift of speech on Christmas Eve and conversed with each other in the language of Christians. Their conversation was, indeed, most instructive; for the future, it seems, had no secret worth mentioning for them. Yet few people cared to be caught eavesdropping at the byre; wise folk contented themselves with setting a good store of fodder in the manger, ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... their individual springs as fine as needles, and sometimes two at once with the springs shoving different ways—it took me till two. Then Lloyd and I rode forth on our errands; first to Motootua, where we had a really instructive conversation on weeds and grasses. Thence down to Apia, where we bought a fresh bottle of chlorodyne and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... one Day, when Mrs. Two-Shoes was diverting the Children after Dinner, as she usually did with some innocent Games, or entertaining and instructive Stories, that a Man arrived with the melancholy News of Sally Jones's Father being thrown from his Horse, and thought past all Recovery; nay, the Messenger said, that he was seemingly dying, when he came away. Poor Sally ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... an English reader. H. Winckler's History of Babylonia and Assyria (translated from the German by J. A. Craig, 1907) is more brilliant and suggestive, but needs to be used with more caution. A. T. Olmstead's Western Asia in the Days of Sargon of Assyria (1908) is an instructive study of the Assyrian ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... buildings were constructed of stone, cemented with oil and lime. The dam for water-power was made of the same materials, and 27 feet high. This had been broken through by a flood, and solid blocks, many yards in length, were carried down the stream, affording an instructive example of the transporting power of water. There was nothing in the appearance of the place to indicate unhealthiness; but eight Spanish and Swedish workmen, being brought hither for the purpose of instructing the natives in the art of smelting iron, soon fell victims to disease and "irregularities". ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... addresses his praise to the lady herself; while Adam, who had never been young, confides it in private to Raphael, after dinner, and studies a more instructive and authoritative strain in his conversations with Eve. And now comes a point worthy of remark. The Angel, to whom, it cannot be doubted, Milton committed the exposition of his own views, after hearing this confession, frowns, and administers ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... headquarters was exceedingly agreeable, and my personal intercourse with officers on duty there was not only pleasant and instructive, but offered opportunities for improvement and advancement for which hardly any other post could have afforded like chances. My special duties did not occupy all my time, and whenever possible I used to go over to General Sherman's division, which held ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... threescore years? to this may be added, that he has so contrived to blend the utile dulci, by embellishing his precepts with all the delicacy of polite expression, as to render them at the same time not less entertaining than instructive. ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... from week to week in this paper, any boy of average intelligence will have no difficulty in mastering them in a comparatively short time. A very interesting article on this subject was presented under the title of "An Instructive Pastime," in No. 22 of ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... AT MY CLUB."—In its most useful and instructive theatrical column last Sunday's Observer (the only Observer of a Sunday ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... cuts them to the finest point: but he says they will only serve to work with on vellum, or on fine skin. He is an eccentric genius, deeply read in Scripture history, which he expounds in the most methodistical tone; but it is very delightful and instructive to listen to his observations on the beauties and merits of these masterpieces of Raphael. A Madame Bouiller, an interesting French emigrant is also occupied on the same subjects. She is patronized by West, who has given her permission to study here; and says that he never saw such masterly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... the Richmond duty, which was levied for many years, for the benefit of one family, but was abolished some time ago. Its origin, and the especial circumstance which, gossip saith, more immediately led to its infliction, are not a little curious, perhaps instructive. The first Duke of Richmond of the present line was a son of Charles II. by Louise Rene de Pennevant de Querouaille, a French lady, better known to us as the Duchess of Portsmouth, to whom Otway dedicated his 'Venice Preserved' in such adulatory ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... for a longer time, it is less. Hence fresh solutions stain far more intensely and more variously than older ones, and are therefore used in special cases (see page 46). If the stain is successful the appearances are very instructive. Nuclei are blue, haemoglobin red, neutrophil granulation violet, acidophil pure red, mast cell granulation deep blue, forming one of the most ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... common in diplomacy to disturb the habits of the diplomat. Most secretaries detested their chiefs, and wished to be anything but useful. At the St. James's Club, to which the Minister's son could go only as an invited guest, the most instructive conversation he ever heard among the young men of his own age who hung about the tables, more helpless than himself, was: "Quel chien de pays!" or, "Que tu es beau aujourd'hui, mon cher!" No one wanted to discuss affairs; ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... will always make his works attractive, but the classic and conventional system of inventing long speeches for historical characters has fortunately gone out of fashion. It is very interesting to know what an important personage really did say or write upon remarkable occasions; but it is less instructive to be told what the historian thinks might have been a good speech or epistle for ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and do not give the full time necessary to hear the entire Mass. Others spend the whole day in reading newspapers, magazines, or useless—I will not say sinful—books. It is not a sin to read newspapers, etc., on Sunday; but to give the whole time to them, and never read anything good and instructive, is a willful waste of time—and waste of time is sinful. There should be in every family, according to its means, one or more good Catholic newspapers or magazines. Not all papers that bear the name of Catholic ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... The instructive lesson derivable from the extraordinary career and signal disgrace of this remarkable political woman is emphatically given by the Duchess herself, on her retirement, as the results of her own ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... John Yeardley attended for the first time the Yearly Meeting in London. He describes the business as very various and instructive, but bewails his own condition as that of "one starving in the midst of ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... volume, wherein Mrs. Alec Tweedie gives a spirited account of a spirited jaunt.... Mrs. Tweedie has persuaded her father, Dr. George Harley, F.R.S., to add a chapter on Geysers, which forms an instructive and valuable appendix ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... a double-seater of fairly safe construction—that is, it was not freakish nor speedy, and was what was usually used in this instructive work. ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... years ago, the idea of collecting the various traditions and popular Indian stories, with a view to their publication at a convenient day. Believing that a collection of their traditions, illustrated by elaborate notices of their peculiar customs and manners, would be both instructive and amusing, I set myself down to the reading of the books which should add to the fund of legendary lore I had acquired by my residence among them. In all my travels, and these have been through every state but one in the American Union, and the "territories," ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... official histories of the deadly struggles of armies show that they are not so wasteful of life as is generally supposed. Mr. William Barwick Hodge examined the records and despatches in the War-Office in London, and from these and other sources prepared an exceedingly valuable and instructive paper on "The Mortality arising from Military Operations," which was read before the London Statistical Society, and printed in the nineteenth volume of the Society's journal. Some of the tables ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... herself such a duty; for, as we have seen, Mildred knew everything, and she must therefore be right She knew about the statues in the Museum, about the excavations at Pompeii, about the antique splendor of Magna Graecia. She always had some instructive volume on the table beside her sofa, and she had strength enough to hold the book for half an hour at a time. That was about the only strength she had now. The Neapolitan winters had been remarkably soft, but after the first ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... been instructive as well as benevolent," he remarked smilingly. "Two of Amarilly's errors of speech ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... more amusing than instructive, perhaps. The three last lines of this passage refer to the various stories of real or pretended cure of disease by the use of particular pieces of music. One of the best known of these diseases is 'Tarantism,' ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... writing, my dear mother, from this simple cause;—I had nothing to say. One day was but the echo, as it were, of the one that preceded it; so that a page copied from the mate's log would have proved as amusing, and to the full as instructive, as my journal provided I had kept one during ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... the numbers were a Beethoven sonata, entire; Chopin's Ballade in A flat major; Cesar Franck, Prelude, Fugue and Variations; a Mozart Fantaisie; Grieg Concerto, first movement; Weber's Concertstueck, and Chopin's Scherzo in E. The recital was most instructive from an educational point of view. All the players had repose and concentration, and there were no noticeable slips, though every piece was played from memory. Hands were well arched at the knuckles, fingers curved—with adequate action at the knuckle joint; wrists ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... was not interesting—if I may be pardoned the bull—that I found her so. For Jack, all his life, had been surrounded by interesting women: they had fostered his art, it had been reared in the hot-house of their adulation. And it was therefore instructive to note what effect the "deadening atmosphere of mediocrity" (I quote Miss Croft) ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... successive elongated figure or ellipse standing nearer to the light than the previous one. In the case of Cassia (Fig. 177) the comparison of the movement of the hypocotyl, when exposed to a dim lateral light and to darkness, is very instructive; as is that between the ordinary circumnutating movement of a seedling Brassica (Figs. 172, 173), or that of Phalaris (Figs. 49, 174), and their heliotropic movement towards a window protected by blinds. In both these cases, [page 436] and in many others, it was ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... been high; the result purchased was marvellous. It should be borne in mind, too, that Britain's military arm, while unquestionably long and strong (almost unmanageably so, perhaps), was chiefly composed of what, despite the excellent instructive routine of The Citizens, must, from the technical standpoint, be called raw levies. Yet that great citizen army, by reason of its fine patriotism, was able in less than one hundred hours from the time of the declaration, ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... "it will cost you a patient hearing; for my experiences are connected with two episodes in my early life, which, although not very amusing, are certainly instructive." ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... these motley stories; here and there instructive, but mostly absurd. I shall now endeavour to sift out the rubbish from this patristic and legendary heap, and perhaps we shall find more of value than at ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead
... the teachings of history in this matter. A strong and wise people will study its own failures no less than its triumphs, for there is wisdom to be learned from the study of both, of the mistake as well as of the success. For this purpose nothing could be more instructive than a rational study of the war of 1812, as it is told, for instance, by Captain Mahan. There was only one way in which that war could have been avoided. If during the preceding twelve years a navy relatively as strong as that which this country now has had been built up, and an ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... instructive exhibition of reproductions of the portraits of Shakespeare, or supposedly of him, was shown at the rooms of the Grolier Club, April 6-29, 1916. The catalogue[28] embraces 436 numbers, illustrating all the principal types. The exhibition ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz
... sense. It was one of Fitzjames's favourite topics that the law was capable of being thus exhibited; and that fifty years hence it would be a commonplace that it would be treated in a corresponding spirit, and made a beautiful and instructive ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... to know how easy it is, and how pleasant and instructive, to travel in the States. But, though many people do know this, the plague of English travellers which annually overspreads Europe, from July to December, and disturbs even the quiet of the Nile, has hardly touched America. ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... this will be generally considered one of the strong points of the new Dictionary. The introductory treatise on the "Principles of Pronunciation" is a comprehensive, instructive, and eminently practical, though not very philosophically constructed, exposition of the subject of English orthoepy. It contains an analysis and description of the elementary sounds of the language, a discussion of certain ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various |
