"Solidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is in expression! No wonder Bernard has softened down. There is strength and solidity as well as sweetness in her face. ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... political service. Although they say, too, that Zeuxis once, having heard Agatharchus, the painter, boast of despatching his work with speed and ease, replied, "I take a long time." For ease and speed in doing a thing do not give the work lasting solidity or exactness of beauty; the expenditure of time allowed to a man's pains beforehand for the production of a thing is repaid by way of interest with a vital force for its preservation when once produced. For which reason Pericles's works ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... solidity about the followers of General Hedley, and the result of these charges was that, while some fell, the others were merely moved here and there, and as soon as their assailants had passed on they seemed to hang together again, driven outward always, but not scattered. In fact, for ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... could not pass abreast between them. Side by side contiguity one can understand, but not this other adjacence. Every ground floor window is barred like a gaol. Those bars tell us something of the perils of life in Florence in the great days of faction ambition; while the thickness of the walls and solidity of construction tell us something too of the integrity of the Florentine builders. These ancient palaces, one feels, whatever may happen to them, can never fall to ruin. Such stones as are placed one upon the other in the Pitti and the Strozzi and the Riccardi nothing can displace. ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... exclusiveness, the sleek and mysterious quietness of it. One might have found such a place catering to the elite of a big city. It spoke sumptuously of a large expenditure of money, yet there was nothing bizarre or irritating to the senses. Its heavily-carved tables were almost oppressive in their solidity. Linen and silver, like Shan Tung himself, were immaculate. Magnificently embroidered screens were so cleverly arranged that one saw not all of the place at once, but caught vistas of it. The few voices that Keith heard in this ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... founder of the Critical Philosophy, more than any other work, at once invigorated and disciplined my understanding. The originality, the depth, and the compression of the thoughts; the novelty and subtlety, yet solidity and importance of the distinctions; the adamantine chain of the logic; and I will venture to add—(paradox as it will appear to those who have taken their notion of Immanuel Kant from Reviewers and Frenchmen)—the clearness and evidence, of the Critique of the Pure ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the State building, although different in design. The place assigned this exhibit in the Palace of Agriculture covered a space 35 by 45 feet 6 inches, with aisles on three sides. The facade fronted on the three aisles and in its architectural lines presented a solidity characteristic of the State's exhibits. Cane stalk and corn in red colors were used to form the base of the facade, being put on in transverse sections, which gave at a distance as well as by close inspection a very pleasing ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... Field Place, by a footpath which takes us beside the Arun, here a narrow stream, and a deserted water mill, we come to the churchyard of Slinfold, a little quiet village with a church of almost suburban solidity and complete want of Sussex feeling. James Dallaway, the historian of Western Sussex, was rector here from 1803 to 1834. He lived, however, at Leatherhead, Slinfold being a sinecure. A Slinfold epitaph on an infant views bereavement with more philosophy than is usual: ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... accomplished by the suggestion of the converging lines to the fixation of the high point in the picture,—the small area occupied by the Madonna and Child,—and by the subordination of the free play of other elements. The contrast between the broad base and the apex gives a feeling of solidity, of repose; and it seems not unreasonable to suppose that the tendency to rest the eyes above the centre of the picture directly induces the associated mood of reverence or worship. Thus the pyramidal ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... that in the Mansfield tree tomato he has produced one of the greatest wonders of the age. All who have seen them, tasted or grown them, with even a small degree of good sense, are loud in their praise for their good qualities: wonderful growth of tree, beauty of fruit, smoothness, solidity, flavor, earliness, etc. ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... the matter. Shall I ascribe to an unknown cause, what I can so easily impute to the only second cause I am acquainted with? Here all the school philosophers interrupt me with their arguments, and declare that there is only extension and solidity in bodies, and that there they can have nothing but motion and figure. Now motion, figure, extension and solidity cannot form a thought, and consequently the soul cannot be matter. All this so often repeated mighty series ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... of "straight" anywhere in them—and, despite her unusual breadth, her lines were the finest and most beautiful that I had ever seen. She carried a full poop, the interior of which constituted the captain's quarters—roomy, light, and airy; and as I noted the length and solidity of her lower-masts the idea occurred to me that, if the remainder of her spars were to be in proportion, her sail-spread, combined with her perfect lines, ought to give her such exceptional speed as would enable her to do just as she pleased ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... corner was a massive escritoire of mahogany with carved feet, and there were tables and chairs of a like pattern. It was a room of more distinction than I had seen since I had been in Charlestown, and reflected the solidity of its owners. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... well bound book may be tersely enumerated. The binding should unite solidity and elegance. The book should open easily, and remain open at any page you please. It should never be necessary, in reading, to squeeze back the covers; and no book, however expensively bound, has ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... fortifications. The ramparts are built of brickwork and ash-tar cemented with lime; measure twenty feet in height, and twenty-five to thirty feet in thickness; but do not at all points preserve this solidity. In the province of Kansou, there is but one line of rampart. The total length of this great barrier, called Wan-ti-chang (or "myriad-mile wall") by the Chinese, is 1,250 miles. It was built about 220 B.C., ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... broad enough for four people to ascend them abreast. Light, air, space were throughout its distinguishing qualities, and its furnishings were not only very handsome, they had in a special manner that honest size, solidity, and breadth which make English household belongings so comfortable and satisfactory. The grounds were full of handsome forest trees and wonderful grassy glades and just around the house the soil had been enriched and planted ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... affirmed that it was quite impossible to get a view of the foundations of the north-west corner of the palace, which were said to be weak, without knocking a hole through a wall upon which depended such solidity as there was. It was useless, he said. The snuffy gentleman could ask the Baron, if he pleased, and the Baron could do what he liked since the property now belonged to him: but he, the mason, would not lay hand to pick or crowbar without the Baron's express authorization. The Baron ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... Every one remembers the wonderful exactness of his judgment;—the meanest of his thoughts had something in them that was shining, and his lowest expressions were always exact and nice, which made every one admire him; for never had any man so much wit and so much solidity. I have seen him, at a time when he was so much taken up with the affairs of his master, that nobody could expect any thing from him but what related to his ministry, and his profound capacity to manage the most knotty negotiations; yet all the weight of his employment ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... shell (fig. 6) are cast in sand moulds head downwards from steel of the required composition to give the proper tenacity. A large head, which is subsequently removed, is cast on the base to give solidity and soundness to the castings. The castings are annealed by placing them in a furnace or oven until red hot, then allowing them to cool gradually. The process of casting is very similar to that for the old cast-iron common shell, which, however, were cast base downwards. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the whole was small, I note that in all these Flemish bell-towers, the topmost portion invariably develops into something charmingly fantastic, into cupolas and short, little galleries and lanterns superimposed, the mixture of solidity and airiness being astonishing. It is appropriate and fitting that this grace should attend on what are the sweetest musical instruments conceivable. Mr. Haweis, who is the poet of Flemish bells, has let us into the secret. 'The fragment of aerial music,' ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... right as he follows the broad footpath will be the outer E. wall of the Roman city; on his left what appears a long gorge, overgrown by bushes and trees of many species, was once the fosse. Note the great thickness and solidity of the walls, and the tile-like bricks, similar to those in the Abbey tower, mingled with flints. Presently both wall and fosse turn sharply W. and may be followed in that direction for a considerable distance. The walls ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... one of the honorary managers. The children stood to attention like birds before a snake. One almost expected to hear them sing "God bless the squire and his relations...." The Gentleman was well-tailored, and apart from his habiliments there was, in every line of his figure, that which suggested solidity, responsibility, and the substantial virtues. I have seen him at Committee meetings of various charitable enterprises; himself, duplicated again and again. One charitable worker is always exactly like the other, allowing for differences of sex. They are of one type, with ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... of the King's favour, and the apparent solidity of his rivals in their place, half maddened the great noble, little accustomed to yield to any contradiction. He had been up to this time, save in so far as his private feuds and covetousness were concerned, on the side of lawful authority; the King's man so long as the King ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... first in danger, self came less to the front with her than usual? It was that now first she was face to face with reality. Until this moment her life had been an affair of unrealities. Her selfishness had thinned, as it were vaporized, every reality that approached her. Solidity is not enough to teach some natures reality; they must hurt themselves against the solid ere they realize its solidity. Small reality, small positivity of existence has water to a dreaming soul, half consciously gazing through half shut eyes at the soft ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... melting into dew, with inward excitement. That spirituality which only lurks about architecture as a volatile effect, in sculpture takes up the whole given material, and penetrates it with an imaginative motive; and at first sight sculpture, with its solidity of form, seems a thing more real and full than the faint, abstract world of poetry or painting. Still the fact is the reverse. Discourse and action show man as he is, more directly than the play of [212] the ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... former clothing), a pair of soldier's trousers which by Karataev's advice he tied with string round the ankles for warmth, and a peasant coat and cap. Physically he had changed much during this time. He no longer seemed stout, though he still had the appearance of solidity and strength hereditary in his family. A beard and mustache covered the lower part of his face, and a tangle of hair, infested with lice, curled round his head like a cap. The look of his eyes was resolute, calm, and animatedly alert, as never before. The former slackness which ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... described as not only "peaceful and moral," but also "industrious." They are highly commended for their good qualities by those who have had the best opportunities for judging. While not as bright in intellect as some of the prairie tribes whom we shall soon consider, they appear to possess more solidity of character. By their willingness and efficiency as workers they have made themselves necessary to the white farmers and have thus supplied themselves with good clothing and many of the comforts of life. They have ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... general with Caesar's description of the mode in which the Gauls constructed their walls of earth, stone, and logs,[684] and it resembles the ruins of Gallic fortifications which have been discovered in France, though it is said to surpass them in the strength and solidity of its structure. No similar walls appear to be known in Britain. A great part of this interesting prehistoric fortress was barbarously destroyed in the early part of the nineteenth century, much of it being tumbled into the sea and many ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... extent, degenerated. Impure seed, or the influence of some peculiar locality, may have furnished grounds for the statement; but if the variety is genuine or unmixed, it will, in almost any soil or exposure, commend itself by its hardiness, solidity, and great productiveness. ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... such a thing in Longfellow's poems, but hardly realise that it exists still in civilised countries. Here bridges are works of art as well as of utility, and rank next to the grand old cathedrals and parish churches for solidity and symmetry. Their stone arches are frequently turned with a grace as fine as any in St. Paul's, and their balustrades and butments often approach the domain ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... stands on the shelf or lies on the table, a curious rectangular block; and such it is in its origin, being derived from the Roman codex, which was a block of wood split into thin layers. When closed, therefore, the book must have the seeming solidity of a block; but open it and a totally new character appears. It is now a bundle of thin leaves, and its beauty no longer consists in its solidity and squareness, but in the opposite qualities of easy and complete opening, and flowing ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... young to philosophise upon his ideas; or else the series of pictures projected by the troops of sensations running through him were not of a solidity to support any structure of philosophy. He reverted, though rather in name than in spirit, to the abstractions, justice, consistency, right. They were too hard to think of, so he abandoned the puzzle ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and will be described and discussed a few lines further on. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, the four giant planets, all more distant than Mars, and each more distant than the other in the order named, are all regarded as uninhabitable because none of them appears to possess any degree of solidity. They may have solid or liquid nuclei, but exteriorly they seem to be mere balls of cloud. Of course, one can imagine what he pleases about the existence of creatures suited to the physical constitution of such planets ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... Guert stepped out on the ice, which he struck a hard blow with the heel of his boot, as if to make certain of its solidity. A second report was heard, and it evidently came from behind us. Guert gazed intently down the river; then he laid his head close to the surface of the ice, and looked again. At the same time, three or four more of these startling reports followed each other in quick succession. Guert instantly ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... large and stout, with the solidity which characterises the British young girls. She was large-boned and not very graceful, but she carried herself with a patrician air that told of past generations of good-breeding. Her complexion was of that pure pink and white seen only on English faces, but her pale, sandy ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... implies some weight and solidity; Romance means nothing, if it does not convey some notion of mystery and fantasy. A general distinction of this kind, whatever names may be used to render it, can be shown, in medieval literature, to hold good of the two large groups of narrative ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... by their garden walls, large stately houses of the Georgian era showed themselves. Mansions that had slumbered in the sun for a hundred years, great, solid houses whose yellow-wash seemed the incrustation left by golden and peaceful afternoons, houses of old English solidity yet with the Southern touch of deep verandas and the hint of palm trees in ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... Bartley made himself comfortable, admiring the generous proportions of the house, the choice Indian blankets, the wide fireplace, and the general solidity of everything, which reflected the personality ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... adequate object to be attained, it was not in the man to give out or fail. The heat that had formerly pervaded his nature, and which was not yet extinct, was never of the kind that flashes and flickers in a blaze; but, rather, a deep, red glow, as of iron in a furnace. Weight, solidity, firmness; this was the expression of his repose, even in such decay as had crept untimely over him, at the period of which I speak. But I could imagine, even then, that, under some excitement which should go deeply into his consciousness,—roused by ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was falling and had turned the streets of Ablain and all the roads to it into swamps. In these were islands of bricks and lakes of water of the solidity and color of melted chocolate. Whatever you touched clung to you. It was a land of mud, clay, liquid earth. A cold wind whipped the rain against your face and chilled you to the bone. All you saw depressed and ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... when symptoms of death set in. So much has been done, and no more. I have before me a stupendous labour, an immense social and political reconstruction. I have to set myself to building up, in this desolated country, on bases whose solidity is guaranteed by experience, a grand edifice, where every legitimate interest and every reasonable personality can ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... strict character of the subscription required from elders of the Scottish Church declined, as I have said, to accept the office. In a very express sense you could see that he bore the marks of his past in many ways—a quick, sensitive, in some ways even a fantastic- minded man, yet with a strange solidity and common-sense amid it all, just as though ferns with the veritable fairies' seed were to grow out of a common stone wall. He looked like a man who had not been without sleepless nights—without troubles, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... the surface of the costal pleura at each side of the sternum, and on the mediastinum. The lungs were removed with difficulty on account of the strongly adhesive bands attaching them to the ribs, and in handling them they conveyed the impression of partial solidity:—several projecting, irregular firm bodies, were felt immediately beneath the surface of the pleura, and there was also present emphysematous inflation of the margins of the upper lobes. In transecting the upper lobe of the left lung, it was found considerably ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar
... outside of this style, he admits of no other. Societies of a different type seem to him absurd. He misconceives their local propriety and the historical reasons for their existence. He takes no account of their solidity. He is going to dash himself against Spain and against Russia, and he has no comprehension whatever of England.[2341]—This is so true that, wherever he places his hand he applies his own social system; he imposes on annexed territories and on vassal[2342] countries the same uniform ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... of holiness is also brought before us in this prayer—"Stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness." The Apostle prays that they may be steadfast, not weak and vacillating. The great need was for solidity and steadfastness, as it is in the present day, for it is only when the heart is established by grace and in holiness that it can in any true sense serve God. This emphasis on a fixed or stablished heart is brought before us several times in Holy ...
— The Prayers of St. Paul • W. H. Griffith Thomas
... from constant exercise, should be nobly erect; that, as his lungs were expanded by habits of swiftness in the chase, his chest should be large and full; that his thighs, as the source of movement in his legs, should have the appearance of enlarged vigour and solidity; and that his legs, in a similar manner, should also possess uncommon strength to induce and propagate the action of the feet? The nostrils ought to be elevated, because the quick respirations of running and dancing would naturally produce that effect; and, for the same reason, the ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... gun into action, the square at the left rear corner was not able to bear the force of the charge, and was driven in by sheer weight of numbers, and several of the Arabs got inside. The Gardner gun had become jammed at the tenth round, and so became a source of weakness to the solidity of the square, a fact of which the enemy was quick to take advantage. At this point Colonel Burnaby, who had joined the expedition as a volunteer, was killed while gallantly facing the crowd. The Naval Brigade, as ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... Nonconformists. If this notion were adopted only by mediaeval monks and modern Romanists, I would reckon it unworthy of notice; but it is received and uttered again as genuine at this day by grave and learned Protestant theologians of Germany, and notwithstanding the solidity and good sense which characterize his "Notes" generally, is formally reproduced in its boldest ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... of Henry IV., settled on a small paternal inheritance at Andely, where he cultivated a taste for literature and the sciences, and instructed his son in the same. Young Poussin had already distinguished himself for the solidity of his judgment, and his progress in letters, when a natural fondness for drawing, developed by an acquaintance he had formed with Quintin Varin, an artist of some eminence, induced him to solict the permission of his father to adopt ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... the length of my experience and the solidity of my judgment—this would tempt me to think your mamma a very foolish person, and to advise you to disobey her; but I do not, ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... the sergeant's shot rang out. The bullet clattered against the solid stone floor of the cell. The acrid smoke of the powder rolled over us; and cleared in a moment to show us the apparition several feet below the floor level. It seemed to strike its solidity of ground. I saw it fall the last little distance with a rush; land, and pick itself up. And with a last sardonic grin upward at us, the dim white figure ran. Dwindling smaller, dimmer, until in a moment it ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... of grey bread into the haversack, then crept downstairs and out into the black street where the gas lamps still burnt and the night sentry still paced up and down in the spectral gloom. Over the river hung a woolly fog, imprisoning the water; but as she crossed the bridge she noticed where its solidity was incomplete and torn, and into the dark water which lay at the bottom of such crevasses a lamp upon the bridge struck its arrowed likeness. It was a good seven minutes' walk to the garage, and she tried to get warm by running, but the ice crackling in the gutters and between the cobble stones ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... was called Tetractys by the Pythagoreans, who accounted it the most powerful of numbers, because it was the foundation of them all, and as a square it signified solidity. They said it was at the source of Nature, four elements, four seasons, &c., to which later speculators added the four rivers of Paradise, four evangelists, and association of the number four with God, whose name was a mystical Tetra grammaton, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... in speaking of these difficulties, says: "The volubility and brilliancy, when acquired, gained a character of their own from the resisting peculiarities of her organ. There were a breadth, an expressiveness in her roulades, an evenness and solidity in her shake, which imparted to every passage a significance beyond the reach of more spontaneous singers." But, after all, the true secret of her greatness was in the intellect and imagination which lay behind the voice, and made every ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... turned on fully, and the juice boils until it reaches the solidity of twenty-five degrees, as measured by the saccharometer. This point attained, more pipes conduct it to a series of square iron tanks called filterers. Each is provided with a false bottom, covered with thick woolen blankets, and through these the juice slowly drips into an ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... Tower were part of the old building—the Lancaster is entirely new. These towers which have machiolated battlements, are about 100 feet high; the gateway between them is 24 feet high. In our former Engraving, the gateway was in the distance, but the present being a near view, shows the solidity, largeness of proportions, and the boldness of the building, to greater advantage. The appearance of the whole is extremely beautiful, although its newness and cleanness remind us of Mr. Bowles's eccentric observation, that "it looks as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... most satisfying poetic drama of its time. Less derivative and uncertain in quality than the plays of Stephen Phillips, less fantastic and externally brilliant than those of Rostand, it has a soundness of subject matter, a serene nobility of mood, a solidity of verse technique above the reach of either the French or the English poet. Hauptmann chose as his subject the legend known for nearly seven hundred years through the beautiful Middle High German poem ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... finally, he attracted her, because, being naturally and by inheritance expert in the valuation at the first glance of men and vessels, she knew perfectly well that what he lacked in polish Christophe made up in a solidity of character which none of her smart young Parisians could ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... yet referred to his main occupation, it is because I desire to speak specially of what I know specially. It was, however, without doubt, in his Fellowship at Merton that he found at this period the peculiar work of his life. A wonderful combination of fertility with solidity always struck me as one of his most marked mental characteristics. Only by that facility could he have accumulated and digested the learning which he acquired in relation to Church, and especially to College History and College Law. In mastering these systems how deeply he had drunk of the essential ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... strength, and unable to overcome each other, carried the mist perpendicularly from the summits of the ridge, and filling up the crevices and fissures in its uneven surface, formed a wall many thousand feet above it, of dark and (from the appearance of solidity which its massive and perpendicular character bestowed ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... Street, the Free Library and the Town Hall attract attention. The latter is nearly on the site of the old free schools, which were built by Sir John Vanbrugh with all the solidity characteristic of his style; and Leigh Hunt opined, if suffered to remain, they would probably outlast the whole of Kensington. However, no such misfortune occurred, and the only relics of them remaining are the figures of the charity children of Queen Anne's period, which ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... properly be called ice, since ice implies a degree of cold, at least equal to the freezing point. Yet as water, in combining with lime, gives out more heat than in freezing, it must be in a state of still greater solidity in the lime, than it is in the form of ice; and you may have observed that it does not moisten or liquefy the lime in ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... no such complete panorama of phases of social life in England as it does of those in Italy, perhaps, because there is a poise and solidity about the English character which does not lend itself to so great a variety of mood as one may find in the peculiarly artistic temperament of the Italians, especially those of the Renaissance period. Even ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... which they were paid was less valuable; it was not possible that the small part of society which may be called the sober and reasoning part, should not be so struck with the sudden fortunes and extravagant enthusiasm which prevailed, as not to doubt of the solidity of a system, unphilosophical in itself, and which, after all, had to depend on the profits of a commercial company, the good faith of the regent, and the skill of Law; it was impossible, on these and other accounts, but ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... narrative without taking the life out of his story in a manner to make us despair, and this does not, I take it, come from paucity of materials. A test which I began to make as a study in style has helped me in estimating the solidity of a writer. Washington Irving formed his style by reading attentively from time to time a page of Addison and then, closing the book, endeavored to write out the same ideas in his own words. In this way his style became assimilated to that of the great English essayist. I have tried ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... impossibility of getting hold of anything solid on which to rest the hands. The depth is so great that the outstretched arms cannot find bottom, and every successive struggle only sinks the unhappy victim deeper down. Should no assistance be near, he will soon beat the snow to a solidity that will enable him to rise, but not in a very enviable ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... increased by a national feeling, whereby one man is conscious that thirty millions of men go into the balance with him. The Roman in ancient, and the Englishman in modern times, have been most conscious of this representative solidity, and wherever one of them went there stood Rome or England in his shoes. We have made some advance in the right direction. Our civil war, by the breadth of its proportions and the implacability of its demands, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... Pentonhook already forming or formed, and when he had got round it he would have seen soaring above him down stream the great mass of Chertsey Abbey. If Reading had the solidity and the barbaric grandeur of Durham, Chertsey had in an ecclesiastical way the vastness of Windsor, and must have seemed like a town to anyone approaching it thus down the river. The enclosed area of the abbey buildings alone covered ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... by solidity or barricaded behind walls. There was not the reassurance of good, honest earth under their feet; they were precariously perched in space, so it seemed—standing on the stringers of the dam, peering into ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... solidity in an ancient idea that congregations of men into cities and nations are the most pleasing objects in the sight of superior intelligences, but this is very certain, that to a benevolent human mind there can be no spectacle presented by any nation more pleasing, more noble, ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... mind was overwhelmed with wonder. The atmosphere was completely cleared of all illusion of music, and the vision of the world around seemed to be changed from its freshness of tender green to the solidity of a high road levelled and made ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... create that really healthy condition of the drama which consists in the intimate union of poetry and the stage." Following in the footsteps of Schiller in his Intrigue and Love and of Hebbel in his Maria Magdalena, he has not attained, it is true, the massive solidity of the latter, nor has he breathed into his drama that lofty spirit of social challenge that wings the former. On close inspection, the construction of Ludwig's drama shows undeniable flaws of motivation. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... of Time, Weights and Measures both of Length, Superficies, and Solidity, they strictly adhere to what is legal; not running into precarious Customs, as they do in England. Thus their Quart is the true Winchester, their Hundred is 100, not 112, and they survey Land ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... to the enormous extent of the denudation which this region has undergone since the Miocene Epoch; but the old "necks" of such craters—in other words, the pipes filled with either solid basalt, or basalt and ashes—are still to be found at intervals over the whole area. Owing to the greater solidity of the lava which filled up these "necks" over the plateau-basaltic sheets which surround them, they appear as bosses or hills rising above the general level of the ground. One of these bosses of highly columnar basalt occurs between Portrush ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... which formed the centre of the civic life of the city, had encroached upon the street, as the four huge pillars which supported the front part were standing on the outside edge of the footpath. These four pillars had the appearance of great solidity and strength, as also had the building overhead which they supported, and which extended a considerable distance to the rear. The massive entrance door, dated 1593, thickly studded with large-headed ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... view their colonies were rather peculiar. Each village was built with one long, wide street, and the houses were remarkable for the solidity of their construction, for the flourishing gardens that surrounded them, and for their unusual height in this desolate land where, as a rule, nothing but low huts and hovels were to be seen. A house was shared, generally, by three or four believers, and—perhaps owing to their shattered ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... his own mind of the existence of any other premiss, he will readily understand, if it be denied that 'whatever exhibits marks of design must have had an intelligent author,' that the affirmative of that proposition is necessary to the solidity of the argument. An argument thus stated regularly and at full length, is called a syllogism; which, therefore, is evidently not a peculiar kind of argument, but only a peculiar form of expression, in which every argument may be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... controversy, that engages us at present. It was the fashion with his contemporaries to admire the ancients, while he, on the contrary, contended for the eloquence of his own time. Were I to mention the quality that placed him at the head of his rivals I should say it was the solidity of his judgement. It was he that first shewed a taste for polished and graceful oratory. He was happy in his choice of words, and he had the art of giving weight and harmony to his composition. We find in many passages a warm imagination, and luminous sentences. In his later speeches, he has lively ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... of General Douai entered by the gate of St. Cloud, which is at the Point du Jour, and occupied the salient between the ramparts and the viaduct. Here there was a second bastion of considerable solidity. The soldiers entered the half-ruined barracks and casemates, and made prisoners of a number of Insurgents ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... south they continued their daring journey over ice and waves. A walrus came up beside Nansen's canoe, and tried its solidity with his tusks, nearly taking kayak and oarsman down with him to the salt depths. When the animal went off, Nansen felt uncomfortably cold and wet about the legs. He rowed to the nearest ice, where the kayak sank in shallow water and all he ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... Professor Bumper up the altar steps to the very throne of the golden idol. The scientist touched it, tried to raise it and make sure of its solidity and material. ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... to feel ashamed of them, or ashamed of being German herself, even if, comparatively speaking, the name should imply some deficiency in polish. "The French themselves would esteem her more if they saw in her something of German solidity and frankness.[5]" ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... vanishing light, and saw that she had been ringing the bells for an hour. She automatically put up a hand and leaned against the white frame of one of the decorative small panes of glass. As she touched it, she vaguely realized that it was of such a solidity that it felt, not like wood but iron. She drew her hand away quickly, feeling a sweep of unexplainable fear—yes, it was FEAR. And why should she so suddenly feel it? She went back to the door and tried again ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sketched for us in his system, he would ideally have required all scientific knowledge, but only as Homer required the knowledge of seamanship, generalship, statecraft, augury, and charioteering, in order to turn the aspects of them into poetry, and not with that technical solidity which Plato unjustly blames him for not possessing. Just so M. Bergson's proper achievement begins where his science ends, and his philosophy lies entirely beyond the horizon of possible discoveries or empirical probabilities. In ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... things," saith the proverb. So with the productive arts. The steam engine consists of many parts, each part being itself composed of atoms too minute to be detected by our observation. The earth itself, in all its solidity and life, consists entirely of atoms too small to be perceived by the naked eye, each visible particle being an aggregation of thousands of constituent elements. The crop of wheat, which the farmer ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... muslin,—her fingers being capable of moulding a Colossus. She sippeth her wine out of her glass daintily,—her capacity being that of a tun of Heidelberg. She goeth mincingly with those feet of hers,—whose solidity need not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... Swedish Castle." In fact, a wealthy Swede settled in Jarvis about thirty years before this history begins, and did his best to ameliorate its condition. This little house, certainly not a castle, built with the intention of leading the inhabitants to build others like it, was noticeable for its solidity and for the wall that inclosed it, a rare thing in Norway where, notwithstanding the abundance of stone, wood alone is used for all fences, even those of fields. This Swedish house, thus protected against the climate, stood on rising ground in the centre of an immense ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... country, have even been known to nurture trees of considerable dimensions. The broad flat tail of the animal serves a most excellent purpose, in carrying the mud to the dams or huts, and in matting and smoothing it into a solidity. ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... middle age and genial with the gentle buffets life had dealt them. He passed amusedly over the black-eyed, frail-bodied Mrs. Grantly, and halted on the fourth person, a portly, massive-headed man, whose gray temples belied the youthful solidity of his face. ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... in such a way as to stop its operation. We may take up our position in one region of experience or in another, we may, in unconsciousness of the interests and assumptions that support us, criticise the truth or value of results obtained elsewhere. Our criticism will be solid in proportion to the solidity of the unnamed convictions that inspire it, that is, in proportion to the deep roots and fruitful ramifications which those convictions may have in human life. Ultimate truth and ultimate value will be reasonably ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Seyfarth, Beylage, i. 155-158); OEuvres de Frederic, iii. 105; Stille, pp. 120-124 (who misdates, "23d May" for 22d).] Colonel Winterfeld was made Major-General next day, for this action. Colonel Winterfeld is cutting out a high course for himself, by his conduct in these employments; solidity, brilliant effectuality, shining through all he does; his valor and value, his rapid just insight, fiery energy and nobleness of mind more and more disclosing themselves,—to one who is a judge of men, and greatly needs for his own use the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Amenophis III, who ruled over Egypt thirteen centuries before the Christian era, has never been surpassed. Stones of immense size were handled by their architects in some manner unknown at the present day, and walls and columns were erected of such solidity and strength that they have endured through these many ages. The First Pylon or gigantic portal to the Temple of Ammon, which was dedicated to Ammon-Re, the King of the Gods, is three hundred and seventy-two ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... appreciate the nobility of womanhood which made it possible. Gwen was not dominated by those characteristics usually epitomised in the epithet 'lady.' She was a woman, and she possessed, in a remarkable degree, that fineness of fibre, that solidity of character, and that largeness of soul which rise above the petty conventionalities of life into the broad realm of ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... practice from the middle period of the Tokugawa Bakufu was the adoption of children of ignoble birth into samurai families in consideration of monetary payments by their parents. This mercenary custom was strictly interdicted by the Matsudaira regent, who justly saw in it a danger to the solidity of the military class. But it does not appear that his veto received ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... then tread them again on gold wire, and put them into a glass, close it up, and set them in the sun to dry. After they are thoroughly dry, put them in a glass matrass into a stream of running water and leave them there twenty days; by that time they will contract the natural hardness and solidity of pearls. Then take them out of th matrass and hang them in mercurial water, where they will moisten, swell, and assume their Oriental beauty; after which shift them into a matrass hermitically closed to prevent any water coming to them, and let it down into a well, to continue there ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... was awarded to the Rennies, under whose superintendence it was built. The bridge is nine hundred and twenty-eight feet in length, and has five arches. In this structure although utility was the first consideration, there in an elegant solidity of design which makes it pleasing and impressive in the highest degree. The rapid stream is as little obstructed as the circumstances admitted, and there does not appear to be in the bridge an atom of superfluous material. London Bridge is, I suppose, the most crowded thoroughfare in the ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... diameter of the earth, we get the diameter of the circle, or orbit, in which the moon moves around the earth. In other words the diameter of this orbit is about 480,000 miles. Now could the sun be brought in contact with this orbit, and had the latter solidity to mark its circumference, it would be found that this circumference would include but a little more than half the surface of one side of the sun, the diameter of which orb is calculated to be 882,000 miles! The sun is ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... heavy, strong, blunt-bowed affair, awakening the ideas of primitive solidity, like the wooden plough of our forefathers. And there were, about her, other suggestions of a rustic and homely nature. The extraordinary timber projections which I have seen in no other vessel made her square stern resemble the tail end of a miller's waggon. But the four ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... on capital expenditure for many years, and the water tower and engine sheds were built to last longer than merely military necessities demanded. They were fashioned by European craftsmen, and the solidity of the structures offered strange contrast to the rough-and-ready native houses. The primary object of the Hun scheme was, doubtless, to make Beersheba a suitable base for an attack on the Suez Canal, and the manner of improving ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... an analysis of the holy books which you are taught to respect as the oracles of heaven. I now perceive for the first time that I have perhaps made too long a dissertation; and I doubt not you have already perceived that a system built on a basis possessing so little solidity as that of the God whom his devotees raise with one hand and destroy with the other, can have no stability attached to it, and can only be regarded as a long ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... then did the same with the other foot, flung his hat into a corner, and rocking on his thin legs walked into the room, looking back at the imprints he left on the floor. He approached the table, examined it as if to satisfy himself of its solidity, and finally sat down and, covering his mouth with his hand, yawned. His head was perfectly round and close-cropped, his face shaven except for a thin mustache, the ends of ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... that I owe to the Khedive of Egypt to explain these details. It would at first sight appear that the expedition to suppress the slave-trade was merely a theatrical announcement to court the sympathy of Europe, but which, in reality, had no solidity. I am perfectly convinced that the Khedive was thoroughly sincere in his declared purpose of suppressing the slave-trade, not only as a humanitarian, but as an enlightened man of the world, who knew, from the ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... existed between Miss Bently and Annie. He now wondered that he could have been interested in such a vain, shallow creature as Mrs. Grobb had proved herself, and he excused himself on the ground that he had idealized her into something that she was not. All that Annie said and did had the solidity of truth, and not the hollowness of affectation. And yet there was one thing that troubled him. While her effort to help him out of his morbid, unhappy state was so sincere, she showed no special personal interest in himself, such as he had in her. If he should now go away, she would ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... eye-sore, had become a park by that time, still only a potentially beautiful thing, with the trees that were to be its later glory only thin young shoots, and on the streets that faced it the wealthy of the city built their homes, brick houses of square solidity, flush with brick pavements, which were carefully reddened on Saturday mornings. Beyond the pavements were cobble-stoned streets. Anthony Cardew was the first man in the city to have a rubber-tired carriage. The story of Anthony Cardew's new home is the story of Elinor's tragedy. Nor did it stop ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... men do not believe in a permanent reality—a substance which is external to themselves, a substance which offers resistance to their muscular effort, and which produces in them the sensations of solidity, extension, resistance, etc.—they believe nothing and know nothing at ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... the work of men of science, and it was by multiplying his chemical researches that Wedgewood was enabled to produce at so cheap a rate those beautiful imitations which while they surpass the ancient vases in solidity and perfection of material, equal them in elegance, variety, and tasteful arrangement of their forms. In another department, the use of the electrical conductor was a pure scientific combination, ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... after breakfast the fog came on, and—well, one cannot leave a yacht alone in a fog,' I said, with professional solidity. ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... century, Goldoni appeared as the reformer of Italian Comedy, and his success was so great, that he remained almost exclusively in possession of the comic stage. He is certainly not deficient in theatrical skill; but, as the event has proved, he is wanting in that solidity, that depth of characterization, that novelty and richness of invention, which are necessary to ensure a lasting reputation. His pictures of manners are true, but not sufficiently elevated above the range of every-day life; he has exhausted the surface of life; and as there is little ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... pleasant and kindly, remarked to her husband that Aileen was "very eager for life," she thought. Mrs. Addison, astonished at the material flare of the Cowperwoods, quite transcending in glitter if not in size and solidity anything she and Addison had ever achieved, remarked to her husband that "he must ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... in the pharmacopeias it has no special medicinal virtues. Balsam of Tolu is produced from Myroxylon toluiferum. It is of a brown colour, thicker than Peru balsam, and attains a considerable degree of solidity on keeping. It also is a product of equatorial America, but is found over a much wider area than is the balsam of Peru. It is used in perfumery and as a constituent in cough syrups and lozenges. Liquid storax or styrax preparatus, is a balsam ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... all day with a home-returning satisfaction in her solidity and her ugliness and her low-toned fogs and her great throbbing unostentatious importance, which the more flippant capital seemed to have intensified in him. He ordered the most British luncheon he could think of, ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... of Mr. McAdam, not only the road in question, but nearly all the roads of Great Britain have been made, within the last five-and-twenty years, to resemble in appearance, but really to exceed in solidity and strength, the roads one formerly saw in the grounds of private gentlemen. These roads are almost flat, and when they have been properly constructed, the wheel rolls over them as if passing along a bed of iron. Apart from the levels, which, of course, ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... profound. And George saw in it no significance! She was disconcerted. She felt a tremor; it was as though the entire King's Road had quivered for a fraction of a second and then, feigning nonchalance, resumed its moveless solidity. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... too fervid sun and makes a positive martyr of him, even in the very exercise of his pious labor; insomuch that he purchases every atom of spiritual increment to his hearers by loss of his own corporeal solidity, and, should his discourse last long enough, must finally exhale before their eyes. If I smile at him, be it understood, it is not in scorn; he performs his sacred office more acceptably than many ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... without the slightest sense of material opposition, that she could not go through. Endeavouring afterward to describe what rather she was aware of than felt, she said the nearest she could come to it, but it was not right, was to say that she seemed to encounter the ghost of solidity. Certainly nothing seemed to touch her. She made no attempt to overcome the resistance, and the moment she turned, knew herself free to move in any other direction. But as the house was still her goal, she tried another space between two of the ricks. There again she found ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald |
