"Negative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... morning that Hapgood's story was a mixture of truth and lies," Mr. Emerson said, "but we haven't anything to replace it. Our evidence is all negative." ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... for writing a play. It is easy, indeed, to lay down negative recommendations—to instruct the beginner how not to do it. But most of these "don'ts" are rather obvious; and those which are not obvious are apt to be questionable. It is certain, for instance, that if you want your play to ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... that positive reasons, and not negative reasons, ought to be given in support of a measure which regulates the hours of adult labour—that you ought to show, not that it will do no harm, but that good will come from it. There are, of course, such reasons in support of this Bill, but they are ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... highly literate population, an export-oriented agricultural sector, and a diversified industrial base. Over the past decade, however, the country has suffered recurring economic problems of inflation, external debt, capital flight, and budget deficits. Growth in 2000 was a negative 0.8%, as both domestic and foreign investors remained skeptical of the government's ability to pay debts and maintain the peso's fixed exchange rate with the US dollar. The economic situation worsened in 2001 with the widening of spreads on Argentine bonds, massive ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... jocularity? "And Mr. Penny had spoken to you of his—his relations with Mrs. Scofield, the woman in whose house Culser was killed. Did he refer to her on this particular evening, standing by the river's brink?" Susan replied in the negative. "Did he seem ill at ease, worried about anything? Was he hurried ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... had culminated on the evening before the party in question. Col. Baker, despite the persistent and patient efforts on Flossy's part to show him the folly of his course, had insisted on obliging her to speak a decided negative to his earnestly pressed question. The result was, an unusually unpleasant domestic scene, and a general ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... came under the observation of the persons affected is not certain. So long as they remained confined to the columns of an American publication of that day, the probabilities would favor the negative. But they were not so confined. Again, without the knowledge or consent of the author, an individual, unknown to him, but fully aware of the facts in the case nevertheless took the collection from the Portfolio to London, and there had them printed for his own ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... absence of restraint is, however, a merely negative thing; it is a "being let alone." Some great writers, John Stuart Mill for example, treat it as though it had only this negative character, and as though to be let alone were necessarily and in itself a good thing. ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... say just how many, the half-effaced negative came back to form under the chemical of some new perception of the significance of ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... rigidly separate. What we may reasonably hope is that, by gradually ascertaining and sifting definite facts and data touching ancient Chinese history, we shall at least avoid coming to wrong positive conclusions, even if the right negative ones are pretty clearly indicated. It is better to leave unexplained matters in suspense than to base conclusions upon speculative substructures which will not carry ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... reference, scantling, type; archetype, antitype[obs3]; protoplast, module, exemplar, example, ensample[obs3], paradigm; lay-figure. text, copy, design; fugleman[obs3], keynote; die, mold; matrix, last, plasm[obs3]; proplasm[obs3], protoplasm; mint; seal, punch, intaglio, negative; stamp. V. be an example, be a role model, set an example; set a copy. Phr. a precedent embalms a ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... have led him into countless follies and discreditable scrapes. It was the lead and the stone that he carried about him that preserved his equilibrium, no matter which way the breeze blew. But all his qualities, positive or negative, would have availed him nothing without that position which enabled him to take his ease in that inn, the world—which presented, to every detection of his want of intrinsic nobleness, the irreproachable respectability ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... just escapes the adornment of ass's ears! Dear, dear, what a temper! But, jesting aside, you must not suppose I abhor the cant of humanitarianism from any thin-blooded selfishness or outworn apathy. Have I not made this clear to you? It is the negative side of humanitarianism (the word itself is an offence!), and not its portion of human love that ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... cartoon suggest? I am asked and I ask myself. At first very little, almost nothing, only uninteresting, ugly death, gloomy, ghastly, dismal, but dull and largely featureless, blank and negative. Has the artist's power failed him? No, it is strongly drawn. Has his inspiration? What does it mean? Is it indeed meant? As I gaze and pore on it longer, I seem to see that it is just in this blank negation that its strength ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... truth is gradually elicited from a mass of partial and often irreconcilable testimony; and literal truth, when presented, needs to be accompanied by a discriminating analysis and estimate of the influence exerted upon the general result by individual occurrences, positive or negative. I say positive or negative, for we are too apt to overlook the vast importance of negative factors, of inaction as compared to action, of things not done in comparison with those that were done, of mistakes of omission as contrasted ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... of them is to be elected. Ballot, from the French, means a little ball, and is used in voting. Ballots are of different colors; those of one color signifying an affirmative vote, or yes; those of another color a negative vote, or no. From this has come the application of the word ballot to the written or printed ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... up in the way bits of metal, suddenly charged positive and negative, would fly apart. I leaned back again and snapped on the white lights. We all sat there a few seconds, blinking in what ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton
... Carolinia," promised emigrants from New England a governor and council to be elected from among a number whom the emigrants themselves should nominate; a representative assembly, independent legislation, subject only to the negative of the proprietaries, land at a rent of half a penny per acre and such freedom from customs ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... are so good, when you do not see me or hear of me, to be desirous of having some information of my state of health and existence. Now I must let you know that I have at this moment every distress, negative and positive, that I can have, et les voici. My negative one is, being for the moment in an impossibility of going to town to see you, Caroline, and the bambino, and that is enough, for it would be a great pleasure to me, as you must imagine. Then, I am, in a manner, here with one single servant. ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... picture was said by a connoisseur to be 'very well painted for a gentleman!' a species of {324} negative praise which gave but little satisfaction to the artist. Should the amateur printer, however, meet with as much, he will be very well contented. All he can himself say for his work is 'that it is legible;' and his type being of a pretty tolerable rotundity, he does not think ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various
... get divine direction. Bring your own wits to bear on your action, and then do not obstinately stick to what seems right to you, but ask God to negative it if it is wrong, and to confirm you in it if it is right. If we humbly ask Him, 'Am I to go, or not to go?' we shall not be left unanswered. We note the contrast between David's submission to God's guidance and Saul's self-willed ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to enlarge the sphere of its action than either of the other two branches of the Government, and especially in the exercise of the veto power conferred upon it by the Constitution. It should be remembered, however, that this power is wholly negative and conservative in its character, and was intended to operate as a check upon unconstitutional, hasty, and improvident legislation and as a means of protection against invasions of the just powers of the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... gazed a long minute at the boy's face, across which flitted the flush of fear and embarrassment, at the big doll's eyes, then shook a raised forefinger slowly back and forth before his nose—the negative of Spanish-speaking peoples. Then he groaned, spat in a tin-can beside him, and called for paper and pencil. In the note-book I handed him he ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... The answer NO is expressed by non, minime, minime vero, or by repeating the verb with a negative; as,— ...
— New Latin Grammar • Charles E. Bennett
... especially good for all matters relating to gold-mining.... The Sun negative rules the emerald, the musical note D sharp, and the number four. The lunar hours are a good time to deal in public commodities, and to hire ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... maintained in the world, whether they can be maintained spiritually—that is, thoroughly and egotistically, or not. If my enemy who lives under the hill will continue to not-murder me, I desire him to continue whether he enjoys not-murdering me or not. But it is no credit to him. Except in some baldly negative fashion as this, however, it is literally true that a man's virtues are of little account to others except as they are of account to him, and except he enjoys them as much as his vices. The first really important shock that comes to a young man's religious sentiment ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... bodily frame is yet stronger—a conjunction of forces often detrimental to a literary career in an age of intellectual predominance. His temper was good and bad; his pride was humility; his humility was pride; his vanity, in being negative, was of the most positive kind. He was reticent and candid, measured in speech, with an emphasis that makes trifles significant. Borrow was essentially hypochondriacal. Society he loved and hated alike; he loved it that he might be pointed out and talked of; he hated it because he was not the ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... glean no satisfactory news, only the negative probability that he was not detained in any of the larger prisons of Paris, as no register which he, Ffoulkes, so laboriously consulted bore record of the name of ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... is a fine field for glory, inspired him with the wish to proceed to Constantinople, and to enter the service of the Grand Seignior. What romantic plans, what stupendous projects he conceived! He asked me whether I would go with him? I replied in the negative. I looked upon him as a half-crazy young fellow, who was driven to extravagant enterprises and desperate resolutions by his restless activity of mind, joined to the irritating treatment he had experienced, and, perhaps, it ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... journey was enough to negative any idea of going out anywhere, and indeed there was nothing in the way of theatre or concert that was at all tempting. But it was not enough to cause collapse, and whist became plausible within half an hour after dinner. There was something delightful in the place, too, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... again warn the reader that the negative, which to us appears unnecessary, is emphatic ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... recommendation for Nucingen, the result of which was quite different from what the unfortunate merchant had anticipated. Indeed, it was agreed between the two business men, if the i's in the letter in question were not dotted, to give a negative answer; by this intentional omission, Du Tillet ruined the unfortunate Birotteau. He had his bank on the rue Joubert when Rodolphe Castanier, the dishonest cashier, robbed Nucingen. [Melmoth Reconciled.] ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... when developed, is a "negative." From it a "positive" strip of film is made, and this is the one that is run through the projection machine throwing the pictures on the white screen in the darkened theatre. The pictures taken are very small, and are ...
— The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays - Or, The Sham Battles at Oak Farm • Laura Lee Hope
... States of America stunted and practically uneducated because of unregulated industrialism. These children, ill-fed, ill-trained mentally benighted, since they are alive and active, since they are an active and positive and not a negative evil, are even more ominous in the American outlook than those five and sixty million of good race and sound upbringing who will now ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... were to be asked whether the graces of the Quakers were frequent, I should reply in the negative. I never heard any delivered, but when a minister was present. The ordinary grace therefore of private families consists in a solemn, silent, pause, between the time of sitting down to the table and the note of carving the victuals, during which an opportunity is given for the excitement ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... counterpart and the example of those glimpses which every man has enjoyed, especially in youth, and which no man even in the dust of middle age can quite forget. In these were found a complete harmony and satisfaction which were not negative nor dependent upon the absence of discord—such completion as criticism may conceive—but as positive as colour or as music, and clothed as it were in a living ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... Tullahoma and Dechard. On the morning of the 30th, one column of Forrest's command, under Buford, appeared before Huntsville, and summoned the surrender of the garrison. Receiving an answer in the negative, he remained in the vicinity of the place until next morning, when he again summoned its surrender, and received the same reply as on the night before. He withdrew in the direction of Athens which place had been regarrisoned, and attacked it on the afternoon ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... distinguished-looking young man who had called to ask for Miss Brent. Mrs. Amherst, innocently inquisitive in small matters, had followed her son into the hall to ask the parlour-maid if the gentleman had left his name; and the parlour-maid had answered in the negative. The young man was evidently not indigenous: all the social units of Hanaford were intimately known to each other. He was a stranger, therefore, presumably drawn there by the hope of seeing Miss Brent. But if he knew that she was coming he must be intimately acquainted with her movements.... The ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... the British parliament, they are entitled to a free and exclusive power of legislation in their several provincial legislatures, where their right of representation can alone be preserved, in all cases of taxation and internal polity subject only to the negative of their sovereign, in such manner as has been heretofore used and accustomed: but from the necessity of the case, and a regard to the mutual interest of both countries, we cheerfully consent to the operation ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... committed, and demanding "that all the British, French, and Russian vessels now at anchor near the citadel or the batteries of Odessa be forthwith delivered up to the combined squadron; and that if at sunset no answer or a negative be received, they will be compelled by force to avenge the insult offered, though, for humanity's sake, they adopt the alternative with regret, and cast the responsibility of the act upon ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... were we shall appreciate better as we proceed with our history. Of the negative contributions, the most dangerous has been the idea of the rule of one imperial government, which has inspired the autocratic governments of modern Europe to try to imitate the world-wide rule of ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... himself (quite impossible on Broadway!); and then finds himself interesting—more interesting than Broadway—another impossibility within the city limits. Only in the country can he do that, in a wide and negative environment of quiet, room, and isolation—necessary conditions for the enjoyment of one's own mind. Thought is a country product and comes in to the city for distribution, as books are gathered and distributed by libraries, but not written in libraries. It is against the wide, ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... am a natural reader, and only a writer in the absence of natural writers. In a true time I should never have written." We must set this statement down to one of those fits of dissatisfaction with himself, those negative moods that often came upon him. What he meant by a true time is very obscure. In an earlier age he would doubtless have remained a preacher, like his father and grandfather, but coming under the influence of Goethe, Carlyle, ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... were to follow, each contributing his mite toward the task of defining the new continent. Perhaps you have seen a photographic negative slowly take shape in the acid bath—the sharp out-lines first, then, bit by bit, the detail. Just so did America grow beneath the gaze of Europe, though two centuries and more were to elapse before it stood out upon the map clean-cut and definite ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... it was a curious thing to see this stately woman handling a gun with all the skill and quickness of a practised shot. Besides, as the loader idea involved a whole afternoon of Ida's society he certainly was not inclined to negative it. But Edward Cossey did not smile; on the contrary he positively scowled with jealousy, and was about to make some remark when Ida held up ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... took them up, regarded them for a few moments, changed colour, but shook his head with a negative gesture, as he laid them once more ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... made the discovery that the temperature of the positive electrode of an electric arc is much greater than that of the negative electrode. This is explained in electronic theory by the bombardment of the positive electrode by negative electrons or corpuscles of electricity. This temperature-difference was later taken into account in designing direct-current arc-lamps, for inasmuch as most of the light from an ordinary arc ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... determined from the drift of his argument, which side he had espoused, or in fact whether he himself understood the proposition—unless, indeed, as was sometimes the case, he commenced his speech by saying, "Mr. President, I are in favor of the negative of that are question." In the ordinary tasks of his class he contrived from day to day, by the promptings of others, to work his way along; and previous to the quarterly examinations, it was his practice to obtain the assistance ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... been visited by Portuguese, but its position not well ascertained, my inquiries referred to the identity of Naliele with Lui. On asking the head man of the Mambari party, named Porto, whether he had ever heard of Naliele being visited previously, he replied in the negative, and stated that he "had himself attempted to come from Bihe three times, but had always been prevented by the tribe called Ganguellas." He nearly succeeded in 1852, but was driven back. He now (in 1853) attempted to go eastward from Naliele, but came back to the Barotse on ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... yield the Empire many years of peace, And leave me scope to heal those still green sores Which linger from our late unhappy moils. Therefore, my daughter not being disinclined, I know no basis for a negative. Send, then, a courier prompt to Paris: say The offer made for the Archduchess' hand I do accept—with this defined reserve, That no condition, treaty, bond, attach To such alliance save the tie itself. There are some ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... a negative expression. The rude native, the contrabandist who mocked at laws seemed stupefied by ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... resistance due to internal friction in the vehicle. f{p} resistance due to impact of the road surface. f{a} resistance due to air. f{g} resistance due to grade, which is positive when ascending and negative when descending. ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg
... to the negative virtues, you haven't been so disagreeable yourself to-day as you might have been. I'm under obligations to you. It was rather nice to meet ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... remember the various declarations, draw both positive and negative inferences therefrom, and whenever it is not advisable to open his partner's suit or his own, should follow the old principle which, since the days of Pole, has been applicable to all games of the Whist family, and realize "'Tis seldom wrong to lead ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... she sat idly rocking on the veranda, she felt that negative happiness which consists in the disappearance of a positively disagreeable thing. Then she began to study how she should spend the forenoon most agreeably. Isabel was upstairs; she would have been perfectly satisfied to talk with her; but for several mornings Isabel had shown unmistakable preference ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... positive. It depends on the extent of that which the negative excludes. If I say of hydrogen that it is not oxygen, nothing is gained. If I say it is not a fluid nor a solid, more is gained. So in the determinations of Spirit, God, etc., although we use negatives, the results ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... observations lately upon the structure of the vessel. Although well armed, she is not, I think, a ship of war. Her rigging, build, and general equipment, all negative a supposition of this kind. What she is not, I can easily perceive—what she is I fear it is impossible to say. I know not how it is, but in scrutinizing her strange model and singular cast of spars, her huge size and overgrown suits of canvas, her severely simple bow and antiquated stern, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the difficulty of disproving a negative, and aware as I must be of the weighty grounds there are for opposing my belief, it still seems to me that the Homeric question is one that is reserved for a higher criticism than it has often obtained. We are not by nature intended to know all things; still ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... on the table, some parts of which are preferred to others, according to the taste of the individuals, all should have the opportunity of choice. The host will simply ask each one if he has any preference for a particular part; if he replies in the negative, you are not to repeat the question, nor insist that he must have ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... grew tired of this negative criticism and asked his evangelists to give him more substantial food, they put him on some exoteric doctrine calculated to appeal to a young imagination by its poetic or philosophical colouring. The catechumen ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... refrain, but the general tone was negative. It was not so much a question of upholding anything as of throwing down that which was ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... thought the princess. There was that pitchy darkness through which she could hardly see her horse's head—a thing of itself that seemed to have infinite powers for mischief, and which no amount of argument ever induced any normally constituted woman to believe was the mere negative absence of light, and not a terrible entity potent for all sorts of mischief. Then that wailing howl that rose and fell betimes; no wind ever made such a noise she felt sure. There were those shining white gleams which came from ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... geese, pullets, as fat as aldermen—cream as rich as Croesus—and three gallons of poteen, one sparkle of which, as Father Philemy said in the course of the evening, would lay the hairs on St. Francis himself in his most self-negative mood, if he saw it. So far so good: everything excellent and abundant in its way. Still the higher and more refined items—the deliciae epidarum—must be added. White bread, and tea, and sugar, were yet to be got; and lump-sugar for the punch; and a tea-pot and ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... schoolboy at Brighthelmstone, in Sussex, a great fragment of the chalk cliff fell down one stormy winter on the beach, and that many people found swallows among the rubbish; but on my questioning him whether he saw any of those birds himself, to my no small disappointment, he answered me in the negative; but that ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... diversity in Smiths. But still a name so generic often affects a definitive precursor. Jasper signed himself "J. COURTENAY SMITH." He called, and left epistle the first with his own kid-gloved hand, inquiring first if Mrs. Haughton were at home, and, responded to in the negative this time, he asked for her son. "Her son was gone abroad with Colonel Morley." Jasper, though sorry to lose present hold over the boy, was consoled at learning that the Colonel was off the ground. Afore sanguine of success, he glanced up at the window, and, sure that Mrs. Haughton was there, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... answer your question in the direct negative," was the firm reply. "I will assure you that no ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... came to where the road passed by an old mill in front of the Abbey. The people of the mill were at the door. He paused and inquired whether any visitor had been at the Abbey, but was answered in the negative. ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... her call, whether the stiff guarded precision of this was a mark of hostility to the whole Wollaston clan or whether it was nothing but undiluted New England reserve. She ventured a tentative, "I suppose he didn't say especially why he was going," and on getting a bare negative in reply, went on, a little breathlessly:—"I didn't mean that impertinently;—only all of us were very much interested in him and we liked him too well, especially father and I, to be content to lose track of him. I hope he wasn't ill;—didn't ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... if I could have shaken this negative gentleman vigorously, the relief would have been immense. The prejudices of society forbidding this mode of redress, I merely glowered at him; and, before my wrath found vent in words, my General appeared, having seen ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... one whoever (more general than quis), and its corresponding adjective ullus, any, occur mostly in negative and conditional sentences, in interrogative sentences implying a negative, and in clauses ...
— New Latin Grammar • Charles E. Bennett
... measure as far as England was concerned, and rumor spread it abroad that a similar relief was soon to be extended to the Catholics of Scotland. Straightway a Bill which had passed both Houses without a single negative aroused the fiercest opposition beyond the Border. The announcement of the recall of the Stuarts could not have spread a greater panic through the ranks of the Scottish Protestants. A violent agitation was set on foot, an agitation which could not have been more violent ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... daughter as she loved her husband, she derived a certain negative happiness from the fact that their exclusive ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... it the other day—the central heating of the soul. But never mind that point now. Consider the essential question, the question of breaking with the church. Ask yourself, whither would you go? To become an oddity! A Dissenter. A Negative. Self emasculated. The spirit that denies. You would just go out. You would just cease to serve Religion. That would be all. You wouldn't do anything. The Church would go on; everything else would go on. Only you would be lost in the ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... For such figurative expressions used to complement the negative, cf. Gustav Dreyling, "Die Ausdruckweise der ubertriebenen Verkleinerung im altfranzosischen Karlsepos", in Stengel's "Ausgaben und Abhandlungen", No. 82 (Marsburg, 1888); W.W. Comfort in "Modern Language ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... a Latin particle, and has the force of a negative or privative; as, disagree, not to agree, ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... his panegyric long enough to enumerate some of the practical results of the Peaucellier linkage. He said that Mr. Penrose, the eminent architect and surveyor to St. Paul's Cathedral, had "put up a house-pump worked by a negative Peaucellier cell, to the great wonderment of the plumber employed, who could hardly believe his senses when he saw the sling attached to the piston-rod moving in a true vertical line, instead of wobbling as usual from side ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... any concerted action to defend the income they draw from society against any resolute attack. Such crude and obvious denials of the essential principles of their existence as the various Socialistic bodies have proclaimed have, no doubt, encountered a vast, unorganized, negative opposition from them, but the subtle and varied attack of natural forces they have neither the collective intelligence to recognize, nor the natural organization to resist. The shareholding body is altogether too chaotic and diffused for positive defence. ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... and (I hope) that I was a modest young gentleman, Mrs. Waterbrook softened towards me considerably, and inquired, firstly, if I went much into the parks, and secondly, if I went much into society. On my replying to both these questions in the negative, it occurred to me that I fell again in her good opinion; but she concealed the fact gracefully, and invited me to dinner next day. I accepted the invitation, and took my leave, making a call on Uriah in the office as I went out, and leaving a card ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... of a double negative is frequent in Chaucer; as in the "Miller's Tale": "That of no wife toke he non offering For curtesie, he sayd, he ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... bitter enmity in either party; some leave it with anger, others cling to it with increased devotedness, and although persuasions differ, irreligion is unknown. Such, however, is not the case when a religious belief is secretly undermined by doctrines which may be termed negative, since they deny the truth of one religion without affirming that of any other. Progidious revolutions then take place in the human mind, without the apparent co-operation of the passions of man, and almost without ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... are you, Master Wag?" said he, when they met. "Did you observe that green chariot that stands down in the yard there, and came in more than an hour ago?" Jeremiah answered in the negative. "Well," continued mine host, "it belongs to one of the oddest, rummest, little old gentlemen I ever clapped my eyes on. He's been asking me all sorts of questions, and seems mightily tickled with your name above all things. I think he's cracked. ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... had been of a negative rather than of a positive sort, at least outwardly. She never spoke much of these matters, and Sadie positively did not know whether she ever prayed or not. How was she to decide whether the gentle, patient ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... any gratitude. The balance of favors was on the other side. He had done more for Jack than Jack for him. He asked himself if he wanted to go with Jack Morgan on this journey, and he answered his own question in the negative. It was better that he should leave him now forever. With him he could only look forward to a future ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... they say?' I asked Quonga. To his negative reply, I answered, 'They say they will eat from the country if ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... man or by the string, was considered insoluble. Also, whether he who bought the whole cloak bought the cowl. Decidedly incongruous was the speech in which these words, "congruous" and "incongruous argument" and "reason" did not make a great noise, with multifold negative particles and transitions through "esse" and "non-esse." ... A wordy clamor was enough to secure the victory, and he who introduced anything from any source reached the goal of his proposition.... Therefore they suddenly became expert philosophers, for he who had come ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... cooeperative and mutually helpful living. The virtues of a school, as Dewey points out, are learning by doing; the use of muscles, sight and feeling, as well as hearing; and the employment of energy, originality, and initiative. The virtues of the school in the past were the colorless, negative virtues of obedience, docility, and submission. Mere obedience and the careful performance of imposed tasks he holds to be not only a poor preparation for social and industrial efficiency, but a poor preparation for democratic ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... statement in the last paragraph of the above citation with nothing but a direct negative. If I know anything at all about the results attained by the natural science of our time, it is "a demonstrated conclusion and established fact" that the "fourfold order" given by Mr. Gladstone is not that in which the evidence at ...
— The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature - Essay #4 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... broadening of the accent on the second syllable according to the social standard of the speaker. Her tastes were comprehended and sympathised with by her gardener, and by the clerk at Mudie's who refilled her box. The view taken of her by her husband and family was mainly a negative one, and was tinged throughout by the facts that she was afraid to drive anything more ambitious than the donkey, and had been known to mistake the kennel terrier for a hound puppy. She had succeeded in transmitting to her daughters ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... heaven. The Angels are therefore not Angels as such ('Angelic Wisdom,' 57), they are transformed through their close conjunction with God; which conjunction God never refuses, because the essence of God is not negative, but essentially active. The spiritual angels pass through three natures of love, because man is only regenerated through successive stages ('True Religion'). First, the love of self: the supreme expression of this love is human genius, whose works are worshipped. Next, love of life: this ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... not to be and to do and to see. And I think I've taken them to admiration. Only, my dear, if you'll let me say so, I didn't understand that one of my negative duties was NOT to warn you when you carried your imprudence ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... reality of the inspiration or of the miracle can only be established by reason." Before Hume, assaults on the miracles recorded in Scripture were numerous and varied. Spinoza and the Pantheistic School had started the question, "Are miracles possible?" and had taken the negative. Hume's question is, "Are miracles credible?" And as they are contrary to human experience, his answer is essentially that it must be always more probable that a miracle is false than that it is true; since it is not contrary to experience that witnesses are false or deceived. With him it is, therefore, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... revictualing of Hungary. "Get out, all of you. You are not wanted here," he cried in a commanding voice. And they all moved away meekly, led by M. Pichon, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Their services proved to be unnecessary, for the result reached by the Conference was negative. ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... to its lack of intelligence, as compared with the original, but careful investigation has shown that the difference is very slight; yet, admitting even this to be a positive fault, it is amply counterbalanced by negative merits. Your correspondent who writes about "The Real Estate of Woman," will be relieved to find that the threatened dearth in husbands ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... If I say, Wirt's style excels Irving's, the proposition is affirmative, and the verb excels expresses the affirmation. But when I say, Wirt's style excels not Irving's, the assertion is changed to a negative. What is it that thus modifies or changes the meaning of the verb excels? You perceive that it is the little word not. This word has power to reverse the meaning of the sentence. Not, then, is a modifier, qualifier, ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... best become a good man by being a good boy—not a goody- goody boy, but just a plain good boy. I do not mean that he must love only the negative virtues; I mean he must love the positive virtues also. "Good," in the largest sense, should include whatever is fine, straightforward, clean, brave, and manly. The best boys I know—the best men I know—are good at their studies or their business, fearless and stalwart, ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... a winding sheet, he inquired if Burrell had lately encountered a man they must both remember,—Hugh Dalton,—a bold, but reckless fellow, who had played cavalier, buccaneer, and a thousand other characters in turn—all characters, in fact, save that of a coward. Burrell replied in the negative; but confessed he knew the man had been upon the coast; cunningly adding, that since his affections had been so entirely fixed upon Constantia, he had given up every connection, every idea, that might hereafter draw him from a home where ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... lesson, the influence of a negative in determining the rising inflection, is noticeable. See Rule ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... a body of men instructed and practised in this branch of the military art, and capable of imparting to an army the necessary efficiency for this service? Unfortunately this question must be answered in the negative; and it is greatly to be feared that the future historian will have to say of us, as Napier has said of the English:—"The best officers and soldiers were obliged to sacrifice themselves in a lamentable ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... negative as jealousy soon burned itself out in an actively positive brain like Durkin's. And it left, as so often had happened with him, manifold gray ash-heaps of regret for past misdeeds. It also brought with it the customary revulsion of feeling, and a prowling hunger for some amendatory ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... such difficulty, that only one of those minds, the rare product of ages for the redemption of mankind, could be equal to its solution. The question that inevitably rose on seeing him was, "Is he such a one?" The answer was immediately negative. But at the same time, he had such an aspect of true benevolence and piety, that a hope arose that Heaven would act through him, and impel him to measures wise beyond ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... illusory. This was felt to be a very unsatisfactory method of procedure, as far as the public was concerned, because it amounted to no more than attacking the credibility of a witness who pretended to describe only what he himself had seen—and there is nothing so hard as to prove a negative. ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... to hear from you, after so long a silence, and it gave me sincere pleasure to look into the matter of which you spoke. But I fear that my answers must be in the negative. It is certain that no such individual as M. Felix Marchand lives in or near the Pare Monceaux, where I have numerous acquaintances; nor do I find the name in the directory of Paris. Moreover, he is unknown to the dealer, Cambon, on the Quai Voltaire, of whom I made inquiries. So the matter ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... judge's knowledge of all the conditions that affect, negatively, correct observations and reproductions; (2) on his making clear to himself whether and which conditions are operative in the case in question; and (3) on his aiming to eliminate this negative influence from the witness. The last is in many cases difficult, but not impossible. That mistakes have been made is generally soon noted, but then, "being called and being chosen'' are two things; and similarly, the discovery of *what is correct and ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... really learned was this: that it was she, and not Miss Weeks who was playing a part, and that whatever her inquiries, she need have no fear of rousing suspicion against Oliver in a mind already dominated by a belief in John Scoville's guilt. The negative with which she followed up this sigh was consequently one of sorrowful acceptance. She made haste, however, to qualify ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... them and remote foreign nations. The Biscayans, for example, could even import and export commodities to and from remote countries by sea, free of duty, while their merchandize to and from Castile was crushed by imposts. As this ingenious perversity of positive arrangements came to increase the negative inconveniences caused by the almost total absence of tolerable roads, canals, bridges, and other means of intercommunication, it may be imagined that internal traffic—the very life-blood of every prosperous nation—was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... uncertainty, with the memory of her pressed against him always compelling him to put out his arms and draw her again to himself, was intolerable. He would speak, and settle it once for all, nor would he take any compromising negative as a reply. That tone she had used could indicate but one thing, she loved him, and whether she knew it or not, whether she wanted to know it or not, should not matter. He would argue it out with her, ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... meant to be a guide for home study and practice. The principles are applicable to everyone. It requires at first, patience, perseverance, and resolution at that moment in the day when we are most liable to be indifferent and negative, if not irresolute and discouraged. Whoever resolutely undertakes to obey the suggestions will never regret doing so. In fact, it is not too much to claim that he will not only lengthen his life but ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... sitting book in hand, this philosopher who understood neither the art of war nor any other art whatever, this cloud-walker in the realm of abstract morals. Yet he attained to moral and thereby even to political importance. In an utterly wretched and cowardly age his courage and his negative virtues told powerfully on the multitude; he even formed a school, and there were individuals—it is true they were but few—who in their turn copied and caricatured afresh the living pattern of a philosopher. On the same cause depended also his ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... several duties that lie upon them in point of conscience to discharge in their general and particular callings, in spiritual and secular matters, on the Lord's days and on their own days. For, if the ecclesiastical power be in all the people, then all the people are judges, and at least have a negative voice in all church matters. They cannot judge in any cause prudently and conscientiously, till they have complete knowledge and information of both the substantials and circumstantials of all those cases that are brought before them; they must ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... attraction, which works like a magnet, is the positive side of jingoism. The negative side is hatred of foreign countries. War is the biological culture-medium. War hurls upon the world sufferings mountain high; it crushes the world by material and spiritual privations. If people are to endure it, there must ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... unconscious yet profound need of the French spirit. I would even venture to say that the historical importance of Debussy's work is greater than its artistic value. His personality is not without faults, and the gravest are perhaps negative faults—the absence of certain qualities, and even of the strong and extravagant faults which made the heroes of the art world, like Beethoven and Wagner. His voluptuous nature is at once changeable and precise; and his dreams ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... the aggregation of individuals, and on the one principle of Self-Control every individual is related to the negative or the positive side of ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... to refer the last message to the Committee on Privileges and Elections was, after debate, determined in the negative; and the question recurring, Shall the bill pass, the objections of the President of the United States to the contrary notwithstanding? it was determined in ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... disguise, any more than their inclination to shy at anything they possibly could. As far as Ges the way is easy to follow, but it is wise to inquire frequently afterwards, as so many equally important (this importance is decidedly on the negative side) looking paths branch off in every direction. The good people we saw in Ges, a village of thatched cottages looking the worse for rain, said we should find the "road vile," but this did not daunt us, and with a "bon jour" we passed on. We had not gone very far, however, when to our ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... whom at that moment he valued above all else was so sad to him that he ventured one last attempt, and after the meal he sent little Luc to see if his mother would receive him. The child returned with a reply in the negative. "Mamma is resting.... She does not wish to be disturbed." So the matter was irremissible. She would not see her husband until the morrow—if he lived. For vainly did Boleslas convince himself that afternoon that he had lost none of his skill in practising ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... promptly replied in the negative, qualifying it a moment afterward by a perplexed "Well, I shouldn't say ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he rang the bell. "Any patients in the waiting-room?" he inquired. "You see I have time to spare," he resumed, when the man had replied in the negative. "I take an interest in this poor ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... built on the chromatic scale, was much the same as that of China. Actors and musicians command hardly more respect in the island than on the Continent. Women play a negative part in both countries, if we except the Geishas, who entertain in the tea-houses. But Japan has made such rapid strides in civilization recently that it may not be impossible for woman to develop the activity that she has already ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... his comrades, saying, that he had no occasion for money; and requested that if what he had done merited any recompense, he might be made an officer. Then addressing himself to the count, he asked if he recognised him? and on Boutteville replying in the negative, "Well," said he, "I am the soldier whom you struck on our march fifteen days ago. Was I not right when I said that you would repent of it?" The Count de Boutteville, filled with admiration, and affected almost to tears, embraced the soldier, created him an officer on ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... had Shakspere intended that such an agency should be understood to have been the first motive and mainspring of that deed, which, with all its accompanying struggles of conscience, he has so minutely pictured to us as having been, during that period, enacted? But besides this negative argument, we have a positive one for his non-reliance upon their promises in the fact that he attempts to outwit them by the murder of Fleance even after the fulfilment of the ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... and interrogated him, and at last, by means of pantomime, discovered that his master was very ill. Signs were made to inquire if bleeding was required, or if it was a case for amputation, but he still shook his head in negative. 'Is he dying?' asked one, making a gesture to indicate lying down. Peter assented. 'Oh, then it is the unzione estrema he wants!' 'That's it,' cried Peter, joyfully—'unzione it is.' Two priests were speedily found and despatched; and I awoke out of a sound sleep under a tree to see three ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... desagreables." In another place, it is added, "Il paroit manquer de jugement et de resolution:" an opinion, unhappily, too correct.[58] On the question being put by Bolingbroke to the Duke of Berwick, whether the Prince was a bigot, the answer was in the negative. "Then," said Bolingbroke, "we shall have no objection to place him on the throne." This anecdote, which was told by the Chevalier himself to Brigadier Nugent, probably gave countenance to the rumour spread in England, that James was likely to ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... native English, and had no knowledge whatever of scientific subjects; this I know to be a fact. James was above the medium height, very thin and spare, blonde complexion, light hair and blue eyes—a natural negative organization. When I first made his acquaintance he was employed in the yards of one of the railroad companies in Chicago, making up trains, or some employment of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... and in a moment afterwards her cheek, which had been before pale, almost to European whiteness, was deeply suffused. I respectfully approached her, and inquired if she was one of my cousins. She answered in the negative; said she was on a visit to the family, to whom she was related: added that she had not expected to see any one in the garden; but this was said as if she meant rather to apologise for her undress, than to reproach me for my intrusion. These remarks were uttered with a propriety ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... aspects of the same principle, as has been seen, developed hand in hand in his early career; but it was the active challenge to ill-based authority which, by its courage, not to say audacity, first attracted public notice and public abuse. The other, the apparently negative aspect, came into general notice only after 1869. Its very reserves, however, resting on a statement of reasons for finding the testimony to certain doctrines insufficient, had long provoked assaults from the upholders of these doctrines, which made no less call upon his courage and endurance. ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... taken them on board merely to fulfil some selfish purpose of his own. To the theorist who has sampled them only from a distance, these off-scourings of Middle Europe are downtrodden people with souls; to those who happen to know them personally, all their qualities seem to be conspicuously negative. ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... liberalization, offshore oil and gas discoveries, and generous external financing and debt rescheduling by multilateral lenders and France. Moreover, government adherence to donor-mandated reforms led to a jump in growth to 5% annually in 1996-99. Growth was negative in 2000 because of the difficulty of meeting the conditions of international donors, continued low prices of key exports, and post-coup instability. In 2001-02, a moderate rebound in the cocoa market could boost growth back above 3%; however, political instability ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... churches, and is therefore a still better illustration of the after-teaching. The latter half of the letter is dealing wholly with this question of the day-by-day life after the distinct act of surrender and infilling. Here are found two companion exhortations. One is negative: the other positive. The two together suggest the rounded truth which we are now seeking. On one side is this:—"Grieve not the Spirit of God," and on the other side is this:—"be ye filled with the Spirit." Bishop H. C. G. Moule calls ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... consciousness. And of what service would his privilege be to him, if this man could harass every hour of his life? The man was to be with him again in a day or two, and when the appointment had been proposed, he, Phineas, had not dared to negative it. And how was he to escape? As for paying the bill, that with him was altogether impossible. The man had told him,—and he had believed the man,—that payment by Fitzgibbon was out of the question. ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... sonnets. But in England, where is our poetess before Joanna Baillie—poetess in the true sense? Lady Winchilsea had an eye, as Wordsworth found out; but the Duchess of Newcastle had more poetry in her—the comparative praise proving the negative position—than Lady Winchilsea. And when you say of the French, that they have only epistolary women and wits, while we have our Lady Mary, why what would Lady Mary be to us but for her letters and her wit? Not ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... hair with a sallow complexion and a long drooping nose—the nose of Semitic ancestors. A small mouth, and the chin running almost to a point. A face full of interest, devoid of distinct vice—heartless. Here was a man with a future before him—a man whose vices were all negative, whose virtues depended entirely upon expediency. Here was a man who could be almost anything he liked; as some men can. If expediency prompted he could be a very depot of virtues; for his body, with all the warmer ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... inextricably entangled. Indeed, on the first arrival of the news, that men of high rank had been arrested in Brussels, the Cardinal eagerly inquired if the Taciturn had been taken, for by that term he always characterized the Prince. Receiving a negative reply, he expressed extreme disappointment, adding, that if Orange had escaped, they had taken nobody; and that his capture would have been more valuable than that of every man ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... fell upon the school, and presently Janet Wild threw her arms out on the desk before her, let her face fall on them, and sobbed heart-brokenly. The master saw his mistake too late; he gave his head a little half-affirmative, half-negative movement, in that pathetic old way of his; rested his head on one hand, gazed sadly at the name, ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... negative proves nothing. What signifies, craving your pardon, that you have not seen anything, be it earthly or be it of the other world, to detract from the evidence of a score of people who have?—And besides, there is the Demon Nocturnum— ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... E, forming in both words of multifarious relations to their primitives. I E kuan, kwan, kwanka dog; Lith szun (pronounced shun); Dak shunka dog; Old Slav suka a bitch; Min shuka a dog. Ka is used both in I E and Dak as a negative suffix. In Sanskrit and several other I E languages it is used as a diminutive suffix, and forms one syllable of ...
— The Dakotan Languages, and Their Relations to Other Languages • Andrew Woods Williamson
... commanded the trade and navigation of the north: the confederates of the Rhine secured the peace and intercourse of the inland country; the influence of the cities has been adequate to their wealth and policy, and their negative still invalidates the acts of the two superior colleges of electors ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon |
