"Potential" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in motion again, skirting the room in column of fours, preparatory to the march-past: but now the Lieutenant-Governor surveyed it from a new, and a dual point-of-view,—as a thousand individuals, that is, each a potential factor for immeasurable good in the coming rehabilitation of the state; and, then, as a vast fighting-machine perfect in every detail, resistless and awe-inspiring in its very integrity. He noted the faces as they passed—stern, ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... a long way to meet the second claim of the State; so far as scientific and industrial capacities are concerned. In a few years there will be no reason why any potential Whitworth or Faraday, in the three kingdoms, should not readily obtain the best education that is to be had, scientific or technical. The same will hold good for Art. So the question that arises seems to me to be whether the State ought or ought not to do something of the same kind ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... us for millions of years and that we cannot possibly originate any entirely new feeling. True from a certain viewpoint. We cannot originate intellect either. The germ of intellect with all its potential possibilities was present in our most primitive tree-climbing ancestors. But as much difference as there is between the intellect of an Australian bushman and the intellect of a Spinoza, a Shakespeare, a Darwin, ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... our parts, (we, the collective mail, I mean,) did our utmost to exalt the idea of our privileges by the insolence with which we wielded them. Whether this insolence rested upon law that gave it a sanction, or upon conscious power, haughtily dispensing with that sanction, equally it spoke from a potential station; and the agent in each particular insolence of the moment, was viewed reverentially, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... all Lord Mark that was going out, on that occasion, as he came in—he had felt it, in the hall, at the time; and he was accordingly the less at a loss to recognise in a few seconds, as renewed meeting brought it to the surface, the same potential quantity. ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... "Wouff—Hs—sss!" shrieks another shell, as it throws a large H.E. splinter past our tail. Again I put my head in the office. I write down an approximate estimate of the number of trucks, and no longer attempt to sort them out, so many to a potential train. A hunt over the railway system reveals no fewer than twelve trains. These I pencil-point on my map, as far as I ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... The Potential implies possibility, liberty, power, will; as, Tahgemewan kahnahbuge, it may rain; Kegahwesenemin kiya kahmenequamin, we shall ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield
... officials? Kao Tsu and his supporters, as farmers from eastern China, looked down upon the trading population to which farmers always regard themselves as superior. The merchants were ignored as potential officials although they had often enough held official appointments under the former dynasty. The second group from which officials had been drawn under the Ch'in was that of the army officers, but their military functions had now, of course, fallen ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... endeavoured to entrap him treacherously; his detention in England had been technically justified by a distinctly dishonourable trick. He did not mean to be tricked again, and if there was duplicity in his conduct the English had set the example. He entered into correspondence with the Queen's potential enemies on all hands, and proceeded to suppress every one in the North whose ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... illustrations and diagrams that he had been poring over only the day before at the library building, and he was sure that this monster could be nothing else than an electric dynamo, and one of the very largest size, delivering as high as fifteen thousand horse-power of potential energy. But how to account for the chance that had preserved this mightiest of the Old-World forces? What miracle had been wrought to keep this soulless giant in life through so many years of darkness and of silence? Constans felt his head spinning; the ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... agents, vassal tenants and slaves, they lived in princely and licentious style, knowing no law in most matters except their unrestrained will. They beheld themselves as ingenious and memorable founders of a potential landed aristocracy whose possessions were more extended than that of Europe. Wilderness much of it still was, but obviously the time was coming when the population would be fairly abundant. The laws of entail and primogeniture, then in full force, would ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... percentage under age 15) need to invest more in schools, while countries with older populations (high percentage ages 65 and over) need to invest more in the health sector. The age structure can also be used to help predict potential political issues. For example, the rapid growth of a young adult population unable to find ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... seeding. The latter danger may easily warrant public alarm manifested by restrictive laws. Universal ground burning of green timber will distinctly reduce the prospect of unassisted natural reforestation on the great area of potential timber land in which, as a resource, regardless of ownership, the public is vitally interested. Under present conditions at least, a large proportion of this is likely to be logged without any view to a future crop. It is questionable whether any state should, or will, legally ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... from primary internal haemorrhage. In some of these, injury to the largest trunks in the thorax or abdomen led to an immediately fatal issue; in others wounds of the large visceral arteries, as of the lungs, liver, or mesentery, were scarcely less rapid in their results. In such cases the potential space offered by the peritoneal or pleural cavities favours the ready escape of blood from the wounded vessel, while the tendency of the blood effused into serous cavities to rapid coagulation is notably slight. ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... Captain had little strength for words as yet. It was taking all his energy and courage to face the truth and to accept it. Only an hour before, his crippled career had seemed to him unbearable. Now, as he lay with his eyes fixed on the girl beside him, he realized how much of potential sweetness that dreary alternative had held. And yet, Fate had drawn him into the battle, and it was something that he had met Fate bravely and in the foremost rank. So far, he had never funked a fight; if it took his last bit of strength, ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... during the opening months of the war as well as a moving account of his time spent with the British Field Hospital in Furnes. After being arrested in 1915 on general principle by the British authorities as a nuisance and potential loose-lipped journalist, he was afterwards appointed one of the few officially accredited journalists attached to the British forces on the Western front. Thereafter Gibbs continued filing dispatches till the end of hostilities. ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... through his arm and carried me off to a lonely place in the conservatory. For a second it seemed a beautiful relief to be out of the noise and the glare—and alone with Gordon. But instantly my realization of the potential moment rushed over me like a flood, and I began to tremble violently. All the nervous strain of the ...
— Different Girls • Various
... flame-mouthed dragons. Distances have vanished before the patience of the humble workers of the world, which is reduced to pettiness by the genius of man. The longest journeys have become well-trodden promenades; the most gigantic tasks are accomplished under the potential and tireless hand of this unseen force; a telegraphic despatch flies, in the twinkling of an eye, from one continent to the other; without leaving our armchairs, we converse with the inhabitants of London and Saint Petersburg; yet these miracles pass unnoticed. We do not dream ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... who knew what he was talking about when poetry was the subject, has said it, and with a profundity of truth Whitman seems in a peculiar degree marked out for "legislation" of the kind referred to. His voice will one day be potential or magisterial wherever the English language is spoken—that is to say, in the four corners of the earth; and in his own American hemisphere, the uttermost avatars of democracy will confess him not more ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... Energy and the inter-convertibility of forces—light, heat, electricity,—taking place constantly everywhere, often on a stupendous scale, require bewildering calculations by an ever-present God. No energy, not even potential energy, can be lost in converting one force into another. ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... word 'ready' you will begin to assemble all your mental force and power. During my countdown of five seconds you will build up to the greatest possible potential. At my word 'break' you will break the sticks, this discharging the accumulated force instantly and simultaneously. Ready! Five! Four! Three! ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... importance of having this collected and standardized knowledge conveyed best to the worker cannot be overestimated. Through this knowledge, the worker is able to increase his output, and thus insure the lowered costs, that provide the funds with which to pay his higher wages,—to increase his potential as well as actual efficiency, and best to cooeperate with other workers ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... an infinite number to suppose the endless series of them to have actually counted themselves out piecemeal. Zeno made this manifest; so the infinity which our intellect requires of the sense-datum is thus a future and potential rather than a past and actual infinity of structure. The datum after it has made itself must be decomposable ad infinitum by our conception, but of the steps by which that structure actually got composed we know nothing. Our intellect casts, in short, no ray ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... as yet near the goal it prefigures can never be a reason why we might not continue indefinitely to approach it; and to all sceptical arguments, drawn from our reason's actual finiteness, gnosticism can still oppose its indomitable faith in the infinite character of its potential destiny. ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... also. There, too, after a long search, we discovered fragments of stone—duplicates of Sir Samuel's specimens. But these were fragments only. Nothing could be found that was larger than a large pebble. The potential quarries of which Sir Samuel had spoken were children of his own imagination, and the only good they did us was to illustrate how easily practical men may deceive themselves—even when, like Sir Samuel, they are ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... authorities. Progress toward regulation and the establishment of a minimum standard in all schools in the state has been made. Only through some such provision can this country insure equal opportunity to its potential citizens. ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... which they have here grown to, or experienced, or accomplished, the sharply exact reader should seem to detect the requirement of a longer interval than the almanacs could actually give, I meant to have asked that it should be remembered, that we story-tellers write chiefly in the Potential Mood, and that tenses do not very essentially signify. It will all have had opportunity to be true in eighteen-seventy-five, if it have not had in eighteen-seventy-three. Well enough, indeed, if the prophecies be justified as ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... stood before the high impregnable walls in the broad daylight of despair. Even their nightmares during the night, of unearthly necromancers looking down at them from the battlements and with signs and spells paralysing all their potential toils, may well have been a sort of pessimistic consolation, anticipating and accounting for failure. The Holy City had become for them a fortress full of fiends, when Godfrey de Bouillon again set himself sword in hand upon the wooden tower and gave the order once more ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... raise in the positive direction a vast bulk of water with which that column, through the mechanism of the press, is connected. This is because both columns, the little and the big, enclose one body of fluid. The attainment of higher states of consciousness is potential in every one, for the reason that the consciousness of a greater being ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... peoples, some of them, would be nothing. It is the vision of empire, however forlorn and hopeless, that keeps many nations alive, perhaps all. Nations seek to express in visible form the evidence of their inner and potential greatness. The historic and time-honored art of empire-building is the only art they know. Whether this is the tragedy of history, the world's fate and the condemnation of it to perpetual warfare—or is but a term in the logic by which nations rise to other and higher forms; or finally is a crime ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... "Varieties of Religious Experience," declares that "our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness; whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... In her potential Kings I clearly trace Ground for this hope; no bickering there, no jostling; If HEALY cares to hint that DEVLIN'S race Subsisted by hereditary ostling, That's just the family fun Brothers can well afford whose ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... infractions, or they've been put out through guilt by association, or because they were born into a family already in that condition. Nothing like that happened to me. From early childhood I was trained by parents and teachers to discipline the projective potential of my mind into the System. Like every other paraNormal, I received my education by tapping Central for contact with information centers and other minds. But I was a fluke." His dark blue eyes twinkled. ...
— Cerebrum • Albert Teichner
... stability and power of his monarchy. The two things in fact are closely identified, and, from the Emperor's standpoint, on both together depend the security, and to a large extent the prosperity, of the Empire. He knows or believes that Germany is surrounded by hordes of potential enemies, as a lighthouse is often surrounded by an ocean that, while treacherously calm, may at any time rage about the edifice; that round the lighthouse are gathered his folk, who look to it for safety; and that the monarchy is the lighthouse itself, ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... diseased conditions may become hypertrophied. The synovia owes its lubricating property to mucin, derived from the solution of the endothelial cells on the free surface of the synovial layer. The opposing surfaces of a joint being always in accurate contact, the so-called cavity is only a potential one. If fluid is poured out into the joint, the synovial layer and the capsule are put upon the stretch, causing discomfort or actual pain, which is partly relieved by slightly flexing the joint. If the distension persists, ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... to a lower one possesses no energy. It has neither motion nor power of motion. But the same body suspended at a height above the earth has a power of motion, though it may not have exercised it. Energy is possible to such a body, and we agree to call this potential energy. It consists of our old tensions. We, moreover, speak of the conservation of energy, instead of the conservation of force; and say that the sum of the potential and dynamic energies of the material universe is ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... California and the West are yielding millions of volts annually of electrical energy, for the lighting and heating of cities, the turning of mill-wheels, and the running of electric cars; but the Colorado, though possessed of a potential energy greater than any ten or twenty of these rivers combined, so far has refused to yield up a single volt. Again and again engineers have estimated and suggested, but the great facts remain that ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... records of the electric potential gradient in the atmosphere were taken, a form of quadrant electrometer with a boom and ink recorder, made by the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company, being employed. Here again, the somewhat peculiar conditions made work difficult, as the instrument was very susceptible to small changes ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... of green—evidently a bit of lawn; a square of gray—the cobble-paved barnyard—and pays it no further attention. How can he know that what he takes to be a farmstead is but a piece of painted canvas concealing a small mountain of potential death? ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... and evil, is to set it an obviously impracticable task. One might as well supply a farmer with the seeds of wild grasses and poisonous weeds, and ask him to grow a crop of wheat. Growth can and does transform potential into actual good, but no process of growth can transform what is innately evil into what is finally good. A poisonous seed will ripen of inner necessity into a poisonous plant; and the more carefully it is fed and tended, the larger and stronger ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... upward through the solid earth With its dim sounds, potential rage and mirth, I faced the dim Forefather of ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... computed a potential maximum stress-safety at the hub of something over two-tenths of a gee, and the two finally settled on one-tenth as well ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... And it is often needful, out of love and brotherhood, to abstain from things harmless to oneself because they are inconveniently alluring to others linked to us. The moderate drinker who sits at table sipping his wine in the sight of one he knows to be a potential dipsomaniac is at best ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... Broadview and Lancaster best under his conditions. Mr. Becker's choice is McDermid but he thinks Crath No. 1 a potential commercial variety. Mr. Oakes likes Crath No. 1 and Ill. No. 3. Mr. Etter lists Burtner and Alleman as his best varieties. Mr. Fateley especially favors one tree because of nut and bearing qualities. Other growers have not as yet ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... been surmised from my record of the effect of hampers) are all of them potential guests. It is only as they grow up that some of them harden into hosts. It is likely enough that if I, when I grew up, had been rich, my natural bent to guestship would have been diverted, and I too have become a (sort of) host. And ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... series of acts which would seem deliberate if we had not known that they were merely blind. With a folly that still seems incredible, they took the risk of adding the greatest power in the world—in numbers of men and in potential energy—to their list of enemies at a time when their own man-power was on the wane. With deliberate arrogance they flouted the United States and forced her to declare war. Their temptation, of course, was great. The British naval ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... lying at her feet. Mme. de Lauriston was justly alarmed and demanded cancellation of the sale. Not only was this done, but the police, in order to prevent another such accident, required that a notice be fixed to Lisette's loose-box informing any potential buyer of her ferocity, and that any sale would be null and void unless the buyer declared in writing that he was aware of ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... empty of joy, that when I clasped their frosty finger tips, it seemed as if I were shaking hands with a northeast storm. Others there are whose hands have sunbeams in them, so that their grasp warms my heart. It may be only the clinging touch of a child's hand; but there is as much potential sunshine in it for me as there is in a loving glance for others. A hearty handshake or a friendly ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... own chances of inaugurating the new state as its chief figure were not good. And by leaving the coalition abruptly before union was accomplished he had put himself entirely out of the running. In a group of able men which included several potential prime ministers Macdonald had advanced to the first place by reason of gifts precisely suited to the demands of the hour. Lord Monck's choice was therefore justified. Nor was the resolve to abolish ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... orders to push in the boundary diligently everywhere, when none of the besieged troops are near, and to do nothing when any of them are seen approaching, and until after they have turned again inward. The result will be that, with exactly the same sum of kinetic and potential energies of the same inclosed multitude of particles, the throng has been caused to be denser. Now Joule's and my own old experiments on the efflux of air prove that if the crowd be common air, or oxygen, or nitrogen, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... far quest After the divine! Striving ever for some goal Past the blunder-god's control! Dreaming of potential years When no day shall dawn in fears! That's the Marna of my soul, Wander-bride ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... his horn, and gives forth blasts potential as Astolpho's, as the natives and Arabs throng around us. And that bright flag, whose stars have waved over the waters of the great lake in Central Africa, which promised relief to the harassed Livingstone when in distress at Ujiji, returns to the sea once again—torn, it ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... of time value. To-morrow is as good as to-day, next week as this week. A foreman without a sense of time value is no good. And he does not value material. Waste to him is nothing. Another fatal defect. The man to whom minutes are not potential gold and material potential product can never hope to be a manufacturer. If only I had not been away from home! But the thing is, what is to ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... of Channing's creed, the soul of the new movement in religion, was the potential nobility of human nature—a nobility to be made real by utmost effort of the individual, and by all wisest appliances of society. It was from this standpoint that he judged slavery, and in this spirit that while still in Santa Cruz he ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... bits of gruesome tenderness. The thread of his own life intertwined with the thread of the story. All genuine art is autobiography. It is not, however, necessarily a revelation of the artist's actual self, but of a myriad of potential selves. Ah, our own potential selves! They are sometimes beautiful, often horrible, and always fascinating. They loom to heavens none too high for our reach; they stray to yawning hells beneath ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... that the men of vision keep their thought on us. They never forget that we are 100 million strong and that we dare do new things; and they dearly love to ask questions about—Rockefeller! Our power, our adaptability, our potential wealth they never forget. They'll hold fast to our favour for reasons of prudence as well as for reasons of kinship. And, whenever we choose to assume the leadership of the world, they'll grant it—gradually—and follow loyally. They cannot become ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... implied into self-conscious knowledge brings about an enormous difference; it is the infinite difference which, for example, separates man from the animal. Man is an animal, but, even in his animal functions, does not rest satisfied with the potential and the unconscious as the animal does, but becomes conscious of them, reflects upon them, and raises them—as, for instance, the process of digestion—into self-conscious science. And it is thus ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... the naked eye, and even the Dutch Intelligence Service in the Indies, efficient as it is, has no means of knowing what is going on in the forbidden quarters of the kratons. In Java, as in other Moslem lands, more than one bloody uprising has been planned in the safety and secrecy of the harem. Potential disloyalty is neutralized, therefore, by a discreet display of force. Throughout the performance in the palace a Dutch trooper in field gray, bandoliers stuffed with cartridges festooned across his chest and a carbine tucked under his arm, paced slowly up and down—an ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... moods of verbs, the Indicative, the Subjunctive, the Imperative, the Potential, and ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... between him and Peggy Simms, and described the general symptoms of the skipper's strange malady. It was nine o'clock, an hour to the meeting. He went down to his own room and sat on the bunk, smoking, trying to piece up the puzzle. If Carlsen was a potential murderer, if he intended to let Simms die, why should he want to marry the girl? He thought he ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... There is nothing beyond a vague, floating reputation or public opinion to enable a new Minister to know his subordinates. The Germans have tabulated the experiences and deficiencies of our leaders, active and potential, in peace and war—we have not! Every British General of any note is analysed, characterised and turned inside out in the bureau records of the great German General Staff in Berlin. We only attempt anything of that sort with ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... colonized by the Gens of Dalis, already in potential revolt against the Earth. Mars was next, and by forcing the Earth into close proximity to Mars the people of the Moon had played into the hands of Earth-people—if the people of Earth were capable of carrying out the program of expansion ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... titles, one just beyond the margin of the other. He turned from the door and went into the dining-room, where the stove was ostentatiously roaring over its small logs and its lozenges of peat, But even here the fire had been so recently lighted that the warmth was potential rather than actual. By stooping down before the stove, and pressing his shoulder against its brass doors, Colville managed to lull his enemy, while he studied the figures of the woman-headed, woman-breasted hounds developing into vines and foliage ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... as spawn Left on the sands to fertilise, She is the means through which the race goes on! Not so the first intent. Birth, as the Supreme Mind conceived it, meant The clear imperious call of mate to mate And the clear answer. Only thus and then Are fine, well-ordered, and potential lives Brought into being. Not by Church or State Can birth be made legitimate, Unless Love in its fulness bless. Creation so ordains its lofty laws That man, while greater in all other things, Is lesser in the generative cause. The father may be merely man, the male; Yet more than ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... surroundings, both physical and mental and even moral; he enters a larger and larger world. The religious expressions of his nature in the local provincial and even national stages of his life cannot satisfy his larger potential life. Only the religion of humanity can do this. And this is the religion of Jesus. The white light of religion, no less than that of scientific truth, has no local or national coloring. Perfect truth is universal, eternal, unchangeable. Occidental ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... hawk, ran faster, moving in circles until it disappeared from view five minutes later. When last observed the cottontail was 1,700 feet from its home range and was headed in the opposite direction. It had passed several potential shelters but had not attempted to use them, presumably because it was not familiar with the area. Although for several months afterward traps were operated in the cottontail's home range area and in the area where it escaped, ...
— Home Range and Movements of the Eastern Cottontail in Kansas • Donald W. Janes
... and safeguard its use in all others,—these were only some among the questions which study and investigation and discussion had brought to a stage at which the Association could look upon them as fit matter for potential international conventions in August 1914. Now that its activities are, for the most part, in suspense, it is well to remember that its greatest achievement was the proof, again and again renewed, that it is possible for persons of twenty different nationalities, holding ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... him. In the shop, as he hurried out, his eyes saw many things never seen before. He coveted them all, especially such as shone in steel or brass or bright new wood. He hardly knew their names; but what beautiful playthings they would make. All movable objects are potential playthings to him. He makes them also, like the Creator, out of nothing; if he wants a horse he has it on the instant by straddling a stick or tying a string to a companion. He has epic uses for his father's ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... dark heart of his for love?... the heart of a thief and a potential assassin, the ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... the natives lies a source of great future power for Liberia. When immigration from the United States shall assume such proportions that numbers of interior settlements can be made which shall be radiating centres of civilization, the enormous potential energy of native intelligence and labor will be brought to bear on the development of the country with ...
— History of Liberia - Johns Hopkins University Studies In Historical And Political Science • J.H.T. McPherson
... the advocate of alliances, territorial equilibrium, and the old order of things it offered a facile means of acquiring new helpmates in the East by emancipating its various peoples in the name of right and justice. It held out to the capitalists who deplored the loss of their milliards a potential source whence part of that loss might be made good.[128] To the zealots of the League of Nations it offered an unresisting body on which all the requisite operations from amputation to trepanning might be performed without ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... when Major Barbara says that there are no scoundrels, she is right: there are no absolute scoundrels, though there are impracticable people of whom I shall treat presently. Every practicable man (and woman) is a potential scoundrel and a potential good citizen. What a man is depends on his character; but what he does, and what we think of what he does, depends on his circumstances. The characteristics that ruin a man in one class make him ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... obstructed, or crippled, or baffled, or violently set at naught; then, the security of civilized society is gone, and our property, our liberty, our rights, privileges and life, just lie at the mercy of every unjust man, and any violent and excited band of the wicked!—So important to us is the potential dominion ...
— The Religious Duty of Obedience to Law • Ichabod S. Spencer
... conservative, and just, and which, while supplying sufficient revenue for public purposes, will still be signally beneficial and helpful to every section and every enterprise of the people. To this policy we are all, of whatever party, firmly bound by the voice of the people—a power vastly more potential than the expression of any political platform. The paramount duty of Congress is to stop deficiencies by the restoration of that protective legislation which has always been the firmest prop of the Treasury. The passage of such a law or laws would ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... least until after I have accumulated a number of potential judgments against Henry Nelson. He has had his share of cats and dogs, of course, and some day I hope to lead them back to his doorstep. If they return at the right moment, they may prove an embarrassment. ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... largely associated, in mind and person, with all the acts and progress, professional and political, of my life. I feel his loss intensely; and I feel it with more regret, because I know that on this occasion his voice would have been potential in our counsels, and would have been united with all of us who labor most earnestly for ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... Randolph, ready to demonstrate for equal treatment and opportunity. Although some black papers objected to the movement's militancy, the major civil rights organization showed no such hesitancy. Roy Wilkins, a leader of the NAACP, later claimed that Randolph could supply only about 9,000 potential demonstrators and that the NAACP had provided the bulk of the ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... is "Supernatural," and therefore Transcendent and Unknowable; all things in the universe are "natural," though very often they are beyond our normal experience, and as such are legitimate objects for man's research. Surely the potential energy in the human intellect will not allow it to remain at its present stage, but will continually urge it onwards and upwards. What limits God in His Providence has seen fit to put upon us we cannot tell, for every moment the horizon is receding, and our outlook becoming larger, though ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... That a President of the United States should assert or even insinuate these things during the great War for Humanity -and by Humanity I mean every trait, every advance which has lifted men above the level of the beast, where they originated, to the level of the human with its potential ascent to heights undreamed of—is amazing now: what will ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... to be called the Bureau of Exemption. It is turning out a vast number of exempts. The Southern Express Company bring sugar, partridges, turkeys, etc. to the potential functionaries, and their employees are exempted during the time they may remain in the employment of the company. ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... advantage of weakness or ignorance because he can, or if he secures an advantage through credulity or trickery, he must settle for the crime before a judge who is absolutely just! If he has this education, which is a constitutional ingrafting from the mother's blood, fructified by a like potential father, he will be almost immune from all diseases. This is an education that can not be secured unless the individual has the prenatal and environing influences to differentiate these static attributes ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... naturally pleased to observe that he looked older and more careworn. The softer, sensuous climate had perhaps imparted a heaviness to his figure and a deliberation to his manner that was quite unlike his own potential energy. ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... courage, and its first exhibition was promptly suppressed. If the revocation was made in deference to protests from Kentucky, it seems, that, while the loyal citizens of Missouri appeared to approve the decisive measure, they were overruled by the more potential voice of other communities who professed to understand their affairs better than they did themselves. But if, as is admitted, the commanding officer, in the plenitude of military power, was authorized to make the order within ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... Improved the Roman plan By spotting a potential crook In every fellow-man. And by the Thousand off they went To jail, ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... billets is sure to be infected with lice, and it is very difficult to sterilize the men's blankets. Consequently a persistent continuous fight against this variety of vermin must be kept up, for lice are not only a potential source of danger in transmitting typhus fever and relapsing fever, but they are a great source of irritation to the men and responsible for much ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... spelling and quotations are not necessarily accurate. Some obvious printing errors were corrected (gu'une->qu'une p96; natio->nation p223) Consistent archaic spellings of names of people and times were retained as is. Accenting was not 'corrected'. Some potential printer's errors left as is include: Gaugain may be Gauguin p237 (Paul Gauguin from context) Who the Holliday refered to in chapter V p244 ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... an animal (and vast numbers of the human race rise little above the animal state), it is hardest of all things to restrain those appetites that go with the maintenance and propagation of flesh and blood. These then are the proper matter of Temperance: other virtues, potential parts of Temperance, restrain other cravings which are less animal. Of these virtues the most noticeable are humility, meekness, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... that while man, from one side of his nature, is linked to the animal creation, he is yet supra-natural—a being of a higher order and more splendid nature; he is in the image and likeness of God. Man has developed not from the ape, but away from it. He never was anything but potential man. "No single instance has yet been adduced of the transformation of one animal species into another, either by natural or artificial selection; much less has it been demonstrated that the body ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... always a difficulty when it is brought face to face with something that is beyond the scope not only of its own practical, but, even of its theoretical or potential ability. ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... roll, on their silent but potential course," said the Earl, looking around him, "without a voice which speaks to our ear, but not without influences which affect, at every change, the indwellers of this vile, earthly planet. This, if astrologers fable not, is the very crisis of my fate! The hour approaches of which I was ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... answering imagination of our own. Each of us, in going to the theatre, carries with him, in his own mind, the real stage on which the two hours' traffic is to be enacted; and what passes behind the footlights is efficient only in so far as it calls into activity that immanent potential clash of feelings and ideas within our brain. It is the proof of a bad play that it permits us to regard it with no awakening of mind; we sit and stare over the footlights with a brain that remains blank and unpopulated; we do not create ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... henceforth, open, or but thinly masked, against Germany. It will be but the elementary common sense of the situation for all the Allies to plan tariffs, exclusions, special laws against German shipping and shareholders and immigrants for so long a period as every German remains a potential servant of that system. ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... northern Dobrudja. It was in this latter section that the Teutons now centered their activities. The Russo-Rumanians still remained in Dobrudja, on the south side of the Danube. So long as they had a footing here they remained a potential threat to the Teutons, which might awaken into active danger at the first favorable opportunity. To be ousted from this northern tip of Dobrudja would be even more serious to the Russo-Rumanians than the loss of Wallachia. From this point they might, at some future day, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... drew near which I had set for my call on the first of the potential mothers assigned me by the Eugenic Staff, I re-read the rules ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... cargoes. The isthmian short cut to Oceanica and Asia, comprising the coastal section of China's vast empire, enterprising Japan, the East Indies, Australia, New Zealand, and our own Philippine archipelago, is the world's most potential area. The awakened Orient can use American products to practically limitless extent. One third of the trade of these lands would make America great as a world-provider, and could be secured if we embarked seriously in an effort to obtain it. Students of economics have never admitted ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... reason, despite even the evidence of her own eyes, Cornelia kept a reserve. And in that pitiful last meeting, there had been a flash from Hyde's eyes, that said to her—she knew not what of unconquerable love and wrong and sorrow—a flash swifter than lightning and equally potential. It had stirred into tumult and revolt all the platitudes with which she had tried to quiet her restless heart; made her doubtful, pitiful and uncertain of all things, even while her lover's reckless gaiety seemed to confirm her ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... afterward did to the English Virginia Company for British protection), that this Company had lost its own charter by expiration, and hence had absolutely nothing to offer the Leyden people beyond the personal and associate influence of its members, and the prestige of a name that had once been potential. In fact, the New Netherland Company was using the Leyden congregation as a leverage to pry for itself from the States General new advantages, larger than it ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... maintained by statute or conventional usage; to throw open all the employments of society with equal freedom to men and women; to allow no difference whatsoever, in the eye of the law, in their duties or their rights, this, we submit, is a reform, surpassing, in pregnancy of purpose and potential results, any other now upon the platform, if it do not outweigh Magna Charta and our ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and the Sex Problem, p. 8. Crawley had previously argued (The Mystic Rose, pp. 134, 180) that this same necessity for solitude during the performance of nutritive, sexual, and excretory functions, is a factor in investing such functions with a potential sacredness, so that the concealment of them ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... his position didn't appall him. Somehow, it had just the opposite effect. Perhaps it was because his strength had come back, and had brought with it the buoyancy that is natural to health. He could sense the vitality that surrounded him, poised, potential, waiting only the proper attitude on his part to become an active force. Something tremendous had happened to him, to make him feel like that. He was ready ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... however, do not exhaust the case. One of them tends in a measure to the blurring of the light of genius, and the other to the rejection of social restraint to a degree which makes the potential genius over into a crank. The average man is the mean. Put the greatest reach of human attainment, and with it the greatest influence ever exercised by man, is yet more than either of these. It is not enough, the hero worshipper ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... isolated, even in such a strait of fear and danger as this in which they all were, and Adelaide was racked with torment at leaving Leam unwatched and unhindered in the same place as Edgar; yet, being more afraid of the fever than even of a potential rival, she agreed with her father that in justice to themselves they ought to go now at once; and Pace, who was to remain to take care of the rector, packed up their best dresses, and sent them off with Adelaide's maid shared between them. She prophesied, however, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... a superior order, sylph, fairy, magician, or other person skilled in the occult sciences, as many in Naples, as well as elsewhere, positively profess themselves to be, a small association of talismanic characters, fraught with such magical and potential influence, in favour of the possessor, that the slightest glance of this mystic charm no sooner saluted the eye of a Sicilian or Neapolitan governor, than he was incapable of regarding any other object except what the bearer presented ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... English, was still closely girt in with rival neighbours, the great dukes on every frontier. All round the east and north lay the lands of Philip of Burgundy; to the west was the Duke of Brittany, cherishing a jealous independence; the royal Dukes, Berri, Bourbon, Anjou, are all so many potential sources of danger and difficulty to the Crown. The conditions of the nobility are altogether changed; the old barons have sunk into insignificance; the struggle of the future will lie between the King's ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Boundless Power—the Parabrahman (That Which transcends Brahma), Mula-Prakriti (Root-Nature), and Supreme Ishvara, or the Unmanifested Eternal Logos, of the Vedantic Philosophers. The next stage is the potential unmanifested type of the Trinity, the Three in One and One in Three, the Potentialities of Vishnu, Brahma, and Shiva, the Preservative, Emanative, and Regenerative Powers—the Supreme Logos, Universal Ideation and Potential Wisdom, called by Simon the ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead
... liability, or asset,—many a good Republican wishes he knew which,—he remains an enigma. There is not one of the array of elders of either political persuasion who, while laughing at his satirical sword-play, does not watch him covertly out of the corner of the eye, trembling at the potential ruin they ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... figure of the melo-comedy is Cherubino, the genius of love, no less insatiable, but undetermined to virtue or to vice. This is the point of Cherubino, that the ethical capacities in him are still potential. His passion still hovers on the borderland of good and bad. And this undetermined passion is beautiful because of extreme freshness; of infinite, immeasurable expansibility. Cherubino is the epitome of all that belongs to the amorous temperament in a state of still ascendant adolescence. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... standards; therewith, a growth of materialism which favours every anarchic tendency. Is it to be feared that self-righteousness may be degenerating into the darker vice of true hypocrisy? For the English to lose belief in themselves—not merely in their potential goodness, but in their pre-eminence as examples and agents of good—would mean as hopeless a national corruption as any recorded in history. To doubt their genuine worship, in the past, of a very high (though not, of course, the highest) ethical ideal, is impossible for any one born and bred ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... colonel something about having a plan that would enable us to establish secret bases anywhere we wished, even in the territory of potential enemies. I know it ...
— Project Mastodon • Clifford Donald Simak
... our supposing potential or elementary volition and consciousness to exist in atoms, on the score that their action would be less regular or uniform if they had free will than if they had not. By giving them free will we do no more than those who ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... good. But after she had closed the door, she turned in the outer room, stood still a moment and looked back, allowing her face for a moment to betray what she felt. The expression was a strange one; for it showed doubt, fear, conditional hatred, and potential vengeance—a complicated state of mind, which the cleverest judge of human faces could hardly have understood from Matilde's features. Then, with bent head, and closed hands hanging by her sides, she went on ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... things which are made of them, are informed by a created power.[2] The matter of which they consist was created; the informing power in these stars which go round about them was created. The ray and the motion of the holy lights draw out from its potential elements[3] the soul of every brute and of the plants; but the Supreme Benignity inspires your life without intermediary, and enamors it of Itself so that ever after it desires It. And hence[4] thou canst argue further your resurrection, if thou refleetest bow the human ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... the very thought of it she began to shine all over again! "Funny little fluff o' green," she laughed, "no fatter than a fern!" Her voice went suddenly all wabbly like a preacher's. "But, oh, the glory of it!" she said. "The potential majesty! Great sweeping branches—! Nests for birds, shade for lovers, masts for ships to plow the great world's waters—timbers perhaps for cathedrals! O—h," shivered my mother. "It certainly gave one a very queer feeling! No woman surely ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... such an exhaustive acquaintance with the thing, an acquaintance with every other thing, actual and potential, near and remote, is needed; so that it is quite fair to say that omniscience alone can completely know any one thing as it stands. Standing in a world of relations, that world must be known before the thing is fully known. This doctrine ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... invented and founded, in the dim obscurity of past ages, a system of religious belief that still enthralls the minds and clouds the intellects of the leading representatives of modern theology,—that still clings to the thoughts, and tinges with its potential influence the literature and faith of the civilized and cultured nations of Europe and America, is indeed a strange illustration of the mad caprice of destiny, of the insignificant and apparently trivial causes that oft produce the ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... made all do his bidding. For countless centuries man had mastered the atom, divided it, harnessed its electrons. Following the discoveries of the great French scientist, Becquerel, man had learned that the potential energy of all atoms—especially that of radium—is almost limitless. And as the disintegration of the atom carries an electrical discharge, man had learned to control this energy. Omega's machines, utilizing atoms from everywhere, ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... largely, very largely, from China. It could scarcely have been otherwise. For whereas the Japanese language in its original form—a form which differs almost as much from its modern offspring as does Italian from Latin—has little capacity for expansion, Chinese has the most potential of all known tongues in that respect. Chinese may be said to consist of a vast number of monosyllables, each expressed by a different ideograph, each having a distinct significance, and each capable of combination and permutation with one or more of the others, by which combinations ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... had never profited by the warning. He dressed in excellent taste, almost conspicuously, and the gay and expensive details of his toilet suggested a man given over to liveliness. As a matter of fact, this liveliness was potential rather than actual. Mr. Crossley was always intending to resume the giddy ways of the years before he became a great man, but was always so far behind in the important things to be done and done at once that he was forced to put off. However, his neckties and his shirts ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... the excitement nor the potential danger of the situation was sufficient to prevent Jerry and Slim from taking a full eight hours of much-needed sleep, while Lieutenant Mackinson, Joe and three other officers whom the captain had taken into his confidence in the matter, followed ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... the flowing river, as it fell over a little cascade, was acting as a potential lullaby to the wayfarer at the foot of the tree. His figure was grotesque, but at the distance the girls were viewing him from it was not possible to discern more than a figure—it might be that of almost any sort of a man, for all they ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... completion of the works, the leakage into any section exceeds 1/2 cubic foot per minute per mile of sewer, that length shall be taken up and relaid. Even if the greatest vigilance is exercised to obtain water-tight sewers, the numerous house connections are each potential sources of leakage, and when the scheme is complete there may be a large quantity of infiltration water to be dealt with. Where there are existing systems of old sewers the quantity of infiltration water can be ascertained ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... universe is an eternal society of eternal force individuals, all of which are capable of constant changes in groupings, aggregations, developments, relations, but absolutely incapable of annihilation. Every atom possesses potential reason, and comes to self apprehension whenever the appropriate conditions meet. All differences originate from conditions and ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... profound significance, which I believe has hardly been touched upon at all, why woman has been thus constantly relegated to the inferior position. Her problems are, as I said above, far more difficult of settlement. Because of her double function as a member of her own generation and as the potential mother of the next generation, it is impossible to regard her life as something simple and single, and think out plans for its arrangement, as we do with man's. So in large measure we have only been following ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... "Nobody could blame you, if you disqualified yourself from this decision. I think we could get the newscasts to see it as impeccable public behavior. We'll paint you as the administrator so devoted to pure justice that even potential resentment will be a barrier to your personal decision. How's that sound ...
— Tinker's Dam • Joseph Tinker
... Coolie question. Then, see what effect a clear and candid discussion of the topic would have on the public morality, security, and peace! How often it appears that, in spite of the normal equanimity observable in circumstantial evidence, hereditary disciplinarisms are totally devoid of potential abstemiousness. This may be owing to the fact that at ebb and neap tides the obliquity of vision (duism) remarked by most invalid veterans in their occasional adversaria, is unconscious of their parental dignity, and by no means to be confounded ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... on the guests of the house was caused by the fact that Mrs. Mel had lain in wait for him descending, to warn him that he must treat them with no supercilious civility, and to tell him partly the reason why. On hearing the potential relations in which they stood toward the estate of his father, Evan hastily and with the assurance of a son of fortune, said they should ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith |
