"Minimise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... problem as insoluble:—"La creation ou premiere formation des etres organises echappe, par sa nature et par son anciennete, a nos moyens d'observation" (Loc. cit. page 1106.), he steadily endeavoured to minimise its scope. At least half of his great work is devoted to the researches by which he extricated himself from a belief in species having had a multiple origin, the view which had been held by successive naturalists from Gmelin to Agassiz. To ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... of death by the gallows, the block or the stake. A city rector, Dr. Crome, of the church of St. Mary Aldermary, got into disgrace for speaking lightly of the benefits to be derived from private masses, and, although his argument tended to minimise the effect of the recent confiscation of so many chantries, he was called upon to make a public recantation at ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... Weissenburg, Woerth, and Sedan. In later years he became a major-general, a lieutenant-general, a K.C.B., and Colonel of the 2nd Dragoon Guards; and from 1878 until his retirement in 1884 he acted as Inspector General of military education. I have set out those facts because I have no desire to minimise Walker's services and abilities. But I cannot help smiling at a sentence which I found in the account of him given in the "Dictionary of National Biography." It refers to his duties during the Franco-German War, and runs as follows: "The irritation of the Germans against ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... Such precepts "have their root in the ethico-religious consciousness." {76b} It is not mere ritual purity that the Mysteries demand, either among naked Australians, or Yao, or in Greece. Lobeck did his best to minimise the testimony to the higher element in the Eleusinia, but without avail. The study of early, barbaric, savage, classical, Egyptian, or Indian religions should not be one-sided. Men have always been men, for good as well as for ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... Caucasian; the Caucasian is not natural with God. The mere concept takes him into regions in which he feels uneasy. He may call his uneasiness reserve or reverence, or by some other dignified name; but at bottom it is neither more nor less than uneasiness. To minimise this distress he relegates God to special days, to special hours, to services and ceremonials. He can thus wear and bear his uncomfortable cloak of gravity for special times, after which he can be himself again. ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... afterwards, but rather that new species usually arise from species which have a wide range, and in different areas need somewhat different characters and habits. Then distinctness arises both by adaptation and by development of recognition marks to minimise intercrossing. ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... whether anything but such a great exigency would ever have induced Rome to accept such an utterly foreign cult; and when the nightmare of the war was past, the Senate awoke to the realisation that a very serious act had been committed. To their credit be it said that they did what they could to minimise the evil. The goddess had brought her own priests with her, the cult was in their hands, and there the law decreed it must stay, and no Roman citizen could become a priest. That this law was really enforced is shown ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... vestibule should be noticed: the lower portions of the west wall are parts of the old Norman apsidal chapel, and are pierced by the opening for the door and by two perpendicular windows; and the west end of the chapel is contracted in breadth, as it is also in height, so as to minimise the loss of light to the great window of the choir. The shape of the chapel will be easily understood from the plan ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... In order to minimise the chance of anything going wrong with the plans for the concentration and attack on Beersheba, many officers were given the chance of making a reconnaissance as near as possible to the Turkish positions. This was done from Gamli, a place ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... history of India exists, is to be found in the outlandish names of the characters, and the other expressions with which the pages are sprinkled. In this account I have zealously tried to avoid the ugly jargon of a degraded language, and to minimise the use of native names. The term just employed has, however, been so freely used in the newspapers recently, that it is perhaps as well to explain its meaning. A Jirgah is a deputation of tribesmen. It does not necessarily represent the tribe. It may present—and very ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... of Algiers in 1563, on Oran and Marzaquivir (a small port in the immediate vicinity of Oran), in the end the Moslems were badly beaten. This undoubtedly was the case, and there is no desire to magnify the deeds of the Sea-wolves or to minimise the heroic defence of Marzaquivir by the Count of Alcaudete, or that of Oran by his brother, Don Martin de Cordoba, At the last moment of their wonderful defence they were relieved by a fleet sent by ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... and went to another part of the office, bought my section ticket from another clerk while the first was engaged, and then joined her. I began to realise that petty difficulties would line the path the whole way, and I must make some effort to minimise them. ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... footsore and weary, slept here with a prayer, "Thank God, at last I am above all my enemies." The peasantry pronounce the name "Carntwohill," which translated means, the left-handed or inverted sickle. The expansiveness of the Lower Lake appears at first to minimise its beauty, when compared with its smaller companions. But the more its loveliness is explored, the greater the revelation of the harmony and luxuriance of the landscape. No less than thirty-five islands, like beauty spots of a fairy "drop scene," bedeck the ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger |
