"Superstructure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... will come to the front in due time. They cannot be selected in advance of the actual trial in war. Even West Point, though one of the best schools in the world, can at the most only lay the foundation of a military education. Each individual must build for himself upon that foundation the superstructure which is to mark his place in the world. If he does not build, his monument will hardly appear above the surface of the ground, and will soon be ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... citizens are absolute essentials to the continued life of a republic such as ours is to be. It is in this self-evident truth that is found a sure ground of confidence. Upon this bed-rock of America's boasted pride for interest in her humblest citizen may be built the superstructure of the future of ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... have a superstructure? Let it be a hot-house Forcing (say) some early peas—the only decent pot-house; Oh, if I could only see in walking down the street No unpatriotic waste ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... earlier essays, to become livelier as he went on. "The proper merit of a foundation is its massiveness and solidity. The conveniences and ornaments, the gilding and stucco-work, the sunshine and sunny prospects, will come with the superstructure." But the building, alas! was never destined to be completed, and the architect had his own misgivings about the attractions even of the completed edifice. "I dare not flatter myself that any endeavours ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... rather sadly. "The prosperity you are advocating," he added, after a moment, "is a mere fiction, it is gorging the few at the expense of the many. And what is being done in this country is to store up an explosive gas that some day will blow your superstructure to atoms if you ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the risen Christ is the only ground of such hope, and faith in Him is the only state of mind which is entitled to cherish it. Nothing proves immortality except that open grave. Every other foundation is too weak to bear the weight of such a superstructure. The current of present opinion shows, I think, that neither metaphysical nor ethical arguments for the future life will stand the force of the disintegrating criticism which is brought to bear upon that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... destruction was the work of the Danes, who plundered the whole of this part of Yorkshire. The church that exists today is of Transitional Norman date, and the beautiful little crypt, which has an apse, nave and aisles, is coeval with the superstructure. ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... throw, a mighty vessel, huge of beam and length, her superstructure towering proudly aloft, her massive armoured sides sweeping up in noble curves, a Super-Dreadnought complete from trucks to keelson. Yacht-like she sat the water all buoyant grace from lofty prow to tapering counter, and to me ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... few days, the foundation of a ship's company is laid; and under good management, with a little patience and cheerfulness, the superstructure will advance rapidly. A rendezvous should be opened at a public-house in some street frequented by the seamen; and a flag, with the ship's name on it, exposed before the door; while bills, containing the ship and captain's name, should be stuck up ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... (most common in August and September); cyclical El Nino/La Nina phenomenon occurs in the equatorial Pacific, influencing weather in the Western Hemisphere and the western Pacific; ships subject to superstructure icing in extreme north from October to May; persistent fog in the northern Pacific can be a maritime ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... grant these premises—do we grant Mrs. Eddy's fundamental pantheistic assumption of "the allness of God" [3]? We have shown again and again why we do not; and with the rejection of the basal tenet of Christian Science the superstructure follows. But now let us show how all Mrs. Eddy's juggling with words, all her assertions of the goodness of all and the allness of good, do not help her to get rid of evil. Granting for argument's sake that ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... Whatever superstructure of world organization he takes part in, behind it will be the reality, a private understanding with the biggest man in sight; for this reason the fall of Lloyd George and the succession of a Labor government in England will ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... was passing through an open square with a tray of casts upon his head; and before I could get up a whistle or call him off by name, he had darted like a javelin at the legs of the refugee, startling him so much out of the perpendicular that the superstructure of plastic art came to the ground with a crash, top-dressing the sterile soil of the Campus Martius with a coat of manufactured plaster of Paris. Marius, blubbering over the shattered chimney-stacks of Carthage, could not have displayed a more touching classical spectacle than did that modern ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... lost one of the prime links that connect the individual with the species, too early for the affections, though not too early for the understanding. At college he was a severe student; his mind was founded and elemented in words and generalities, and these two formed all the superstructure. That revelry and that debauchery, which are so often fatal to the powers of intellect, would probably have been serviceable to him; they would have given him a closer communion with realities, they would have induced a greater presentness to present ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... principles to the conditions of to-day, to develop their corollaries, to find practical applications of the old principles expanded to meet new situations. Thus are being evolved bases upon which can rest the superstructure of policies which must grow with the destined progress of this Nation. The successful conduct of our foreign relations demands a broad and a modern view. We can not meet new questions nor build for ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... aboard the Glasgow's bridge, carrying away nearly the entire superstructure. The captain and his first officer were killed, and many men were injured as huge splinters flew in all directions. Under the command of the second officer, ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... of a walled enclosure containing numerous pedestals and bases of votive statues and other monuments. Usually only the foundation-walls are of stone, as the same sun-dried brick was commonly used in ancient as in modern times for the superstructure. Such sites are often vary shallow, and when they occur in the open country are liable to be disturbed by ploughing, when the smaller statuettes and terra-cotta figures may be turned up in considerable numbers. As most of our knowledge of the sculpture, as well as of the religious observances, of ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... and there appeared nothing but the rolling swell of the ocean. Nevertheless, overlooking no precaution, McClure gave orders for all lights to be dimmed amidships. In the darkness the crew went to work to substitute the new "eyes" of the ship for the damaged tubes, climbing out on the superstructure and working energetically. ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... in them much to condemn; he may likewise possibly discover something to commend. Let him scan my faults with an indulgent eye, and in the work of that correction which I invite, let him remember he is holding the iron Mace of Criticism over the flimsy superstructure of a youth of seventeen; and, remembering that, may he forbear from crushing, by too much rigour, the painted butterfly whose transient colours may otherwise be capable of affording a ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... palladium, or placing the first corner stone of an edifice, the height and magnificence of whose superstructure ... can only become great in proportion to the excellence of its foundation.... If any doubt remain amongst you with respect to the force or efficiency of whatever laws you now, or hereafter make, be pleased to consider that ALL POWER IS ORIGINALLY IN THE PEOPLE; MAKE AND THEIR INTEREST, ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... motives. Above this level the construction of the clock tower is of white-painted wood, one story with Corinthian pilasters and another balustraded, rising in four-sided diminutions to the octagonal, open arched belfry and superstructure, above which is a tapering pinnacle and gilt weathervane. It is a tower of grace, dignity and repose, a tower suggestive of ecclesiastical work, perhaps, yet withal in complete harmony with its situation ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... Pope's Moral Epistles. It is only a short essay, just to try the strength of my muse's pinion in that way. I will send you a copy of it, when once I have heard from you. I have likewise been laying the foundation of some pretty large poetic works: how the superstructure will come on, I leave to that great maker and marrer of projects—TIME. Johnson's collection of Scots songs is going on in the third volume; and, of consequence, finds me a consumpt for a great deal of idle metre. One of the most tolerable things I have done in that ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... arises from facts that have little or no influence here. There, radical changes have been made, the very base of the social edifice having been altered, while much of the ancient architecture remains in the superstructure. Where this is the case, some errors may be pardoned in the artisans who are for reducing the whole to the simplicity of a single order. But, among ourselves, the man who can see no end to anything earthly, ever maintaining ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... 71 a). When these are built up of masonry, each course forms a species of arch, by virtue of its convexity. At the crown of the four arches on which they rest, these courses meet and form a complete circle, perfectly stable and capable of sustaining any superstructure that does not by excessive weight disrupt the whole fabric by overthrowing the four arches which support it. Upon these pendentives, then, anew dome may be started of any desired curvature, or even a ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... in 1777, fell into the hands of the British, would be only to repeat well-known historical episodes, enlivened by few or no incidents personal to himself. In them the navy played a part at once subordinate and indispensable, as is the office of a foundation to its superstructure. The cause of the Americans was hopeless as long as their waters remained in the undisputed control of the enemy's ships; and it was the attempt of Great Britain to cast aside this essential support, and to rely upon the army alone in a wild ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... her speedy improvement, was some small insight into the primer, which she had acquired at a day-school, during the life of her father, who was a day-labourer in the country. Upon this foundation did Peregrine build a most elegant superstructure; he culled out choice sentences from Shakespeare, Otway, and Pope, and taught her to repeat them with an emphasis and theatrical cadence. He then instructed her in the names and epithets of the most celebrated players, which he directed her to pronounce occasionally, with an air of careless ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... another, their superfluity of ornaments, instead of being entirely banished, seems only fallen from their heads upon their lower parts. What they have lost in height they make up in breadth, and, contrary to all rules of architecture, widen the foundations at the same time that they shorten the superstructure. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... winding up; finale, denouement, catastrophe, issue, upshot, result; final touch, last touch, crowning touch, finishing touch, finishing stroke; last finish, coup de grace; crowning of the edifice; coping-stone, keystone; missing link &c. 53; superstructure, ne plus ultra[Lat], work done, fait accompli[Fr]. elaboration; finality; completeness &c. 52. V. effect[transitive], effectuate; accomplish, achieve, compass, consummate, hammer out; bring to maturity, bring to perfection; perfect, complete; elaborate. do, execute, make; go through, get through; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... or flushed with sunset scarlet. The crown of all this terraced glory is the great cathedral. A square massive tower stands up out of the body of the church. A purist may find fault with the mixture of styles this tower incorporates. The bulk of its structure is Gothic; at the base of the superstructure appears a nondescript medley of styles (nondescript at least in the eyes of a dilettante) out of which arises a concern of domes and cupolas one above the other, supported at each corner by little pinnacles crowned with onion-shaped tops. The copper coating of these domes and cupolas gives ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... credit is the ornament of its front. This is a corner-stone; that the pilasters and carvings, by which the building is rendered pleasant; sometimes, when age has undermined the basement, it is the columns on which the superstructure rests, or even the roof by which the occupant is sheltered. It renders the rich man safe, the dealer of moderate means active and respectable, and it causes even the poor man to hold up his head in hope: though I admit that buyer and seller need both ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... or other water container, should be of 1-inch stuff; and the two lower shelves be not more than 5 inches wide and 3/4 inch thick. Space the shelves at least 11 inches apart, so that they may accommodate tall bottles. The superstructure will gain in rigidity if the intermediate shelves are screwed to the uprights, in addition to being supported on ledges as indicated; and if the back is boarded over for at least half its height, there will be no danger ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... islands; virtually icelocked from October to June; fragile ecosystem slow to change and slow to recover from disruptions or damage Note: major chokepoint is the southern Chukchi Sea (northern access to the Pacific Ocean via the Bering Strait); ships subject to superstructure icing from October to May; strategic location between North America and Russia; shortest marine link between the extremes of eastern and western Russia, floating research stations operated by the US ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... form what he calls chalcidica, by which must be meant open vestibules. The interior is divided into a central space and side aisles one-third the width of this. The ground plan of the basilica at Pompeii (fig. 1) illustrates this description, though the superstructure did not correspond to the Vitruvian scheme. The columns between nave and aisles, Vitruvius proceeds, are the same height as the width of the latter, and the aisle is covered with a flat roof forming a terrace (contignatio) on ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... forming a long gallery or aisle, are suspended from these arches by wrought-iron vertical rods, with horizontal tie-bars to resist the thrust. The suspension-bolts are enclosed within spandril pillars of cast iron, which give great stiffness to the superstructure. This system of longitudinal and vertical bracing has been much admired, for it not only accomplishes the primary object of securing rigidity in the roadway, but at the same time, by its graceful arrangement, heightens the beauty of the structure. ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... in reality neither have it, or have ever been so before-hand Taught, as to make it a reasonable Presumption that they should have it. Whence all the Endeavours of making them Vertuous in consequence of their Christianity, are but attempting to raise a real Superstructure upon an only imaginary Foundation; for Truths receiv'd upon any other Ground than their own Evidence, tho' they may, perhaps, find entertainment, yet will never gain to themselves a sure hold upon the Mind; and so soon as they become troublesome, are in great danger of being question'd; whereby ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... spiritual. Its location, itself, would indicate its importance. Another thought is that no better place could be selected to establish and locate a universal supply office for the laborers of all parts of the whole superstructure. Another question arises: When we examine a person paralyzed on one side, why do we find this bread of life in such great quantities on the table and not consumed? Has not one-half of the brain and the nerves of that whole side, limbs and all, lost their power of digestion? Is hemiplegia a dyspepsia ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... as it were, to the Order of Nature, of whose stability so much is heard in our day; whereas tactics, using as its instruments the weapons made by man, shares in the change and progress of the race from generation to generation. From time to time the superstructure of tactics has to be altered or wholly torn down; but the old foundations of strategy so far remain, as though laid upon a rock. There will next be examined the general history of Europe and America, with particular reference to the effect exercised upon that history, ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... broke from Dave's lips as he saw the burst of flame and smoke as a shell landed on the superstructure of ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... probably of their temporary or permanent absorption into the proselytizing system, or the refusal of the new converts to believe them to be so black as their teachers painted them. The gradual growth of the superstructure it would be well-nigh impossible and quite unprofitable to trace. It is due chiefly to the credulous ignorance and distorted imagination, monkish and otherwise, of several centuries. Carlyle's graphic picture ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... of pride, the natural superstructure of it is madness. If there was an occasion for the experiment, I would not question to make a proud man a lunatic in three weeks' time, provided I had it in my power to ripen his frenzy with proper applications. It is an admirable reflection in Terence, where it is said of a parasite, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... the right or left, adorned in the same curious fashion. Most of the arches and columns appeared to consist of a greyish marble, and were wild and curious in the extreme. Some of the pillars were perfect, sustaining apparently the massive superstructure; others were only half formed; and many were but just commenced by the dripping of water from above. Several of the apartments were cellular; others spacious and airy, having eyelet holes through the roof, which allowed the escape of noxious vapours, and assisted greatly to ventilate ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... inconstant of all human race. Mrs. Trent's passion was not however of that kind which leads to any very deep resentment of such fickleness. Her passion, indeed, was principally founded upon interest; so that foundation served to support another superstructure; and she was easily prevailed upon, as well as her husband, to be useful to my lord in a capacity which, though very often exerted in the polite world, hath not as yet, to my great surprize, acquired any polite name, or, indeed, any which is not too coarse to be admitted ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... ascended was merely a symbolical way of saying that about the time in question his work on earth was finished, and that he had, like Sir Peter Teazle, taken leave of his disciples with the words, "Gentlemen, I leave my character in your hands." On the basis of such an exegesis they managed to raise a superstructure of sentiment which had, until it was touched, some likeness to the old fabric, but which a breath of air would dissipate, and unmask the ruins within. Canon Farrar's Life of Christ was a work of this description. ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... secure it when he comes to mechanics in the higher: each section has its own sufficient work. He may be a good philosopher or a good historian, but a bad arithmetician he remains for life; for he cannot lay the foundation at the moment when he must be building the superstructure. The regiment which has not perfected itself in its manoeuvres on the parade ground, cannot learn them before the guns of the enemy. And just in the same way, the young person who has slept his youth away, and become idle, and selfish, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... of society. They are bad enough. They are a festering mass at the foundation of all the greatness of the nation; they are a mass which, if not corrected in their tendencies, may at any time be quickened into an activity that will utterly wreck the entire superstructure of all that as Christians and as Englishmen we hold dear. But higher up, where there is no profaneness or criminality, or gross and disgusting visible intemperance, what other evils are there? There is decency, but there is an absence of the recognition ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... said he lightly, when she had done speaking. "I do not know whether they are broad enough for such a superstructure as you would build on them." And then he turned to Mrs. Wishart again, and they left the subject and plunged into a variety of other subjects where ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... Shakspeare, for instance, postulates his witches, his Caliban, his Ariel: grant, he virtually says, such modes of spiritual existence or of spiritual relations as a possibility; do not expect me to demonstrate this, and upon that single concession I will rear a superstructure that shall be self-consistent; every thing shall be internally coherent and reconciled, whatever be its external relations as to our human experience. But this species of assumption, on the largest scale, is more within the limits of credibility and ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... amusing instances of the effect on Scotch middle-class Liberals of the recent enfranchisement of those below them; and my conviction is, that the more you widen the base, the more closely will you bind the superstructure together. ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... comprehending his brother's request; and, flying back, in and out of the hut as if he had been galvanised, he quickly placed the old door on top of the wheelbarrow as a sort of platform, with a mattress on top. He then lifted Fritz on the superstructure as if he were a child, the excitement having given him tenfold strength; and, wheeling the barrow down at a run, the two arrived on the beach almost sooner than a boat could have pulled ashore from the point where the catastrophe to the ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... removed from the nave in 1778 by his descendant, the Earl of Radnor, who converted it into a family pew. It has been re-decorated, and new emblazonments added. The arms of its founder and his two wives appear on the base. The superstructure is of iron, and a fine example of its class, which includes among the few still extant the chantry of Edward IV. (died 1483) at Windsor, and that of Henry VII. at Westminster Abbey (died 1509). The Audley and Hungerford chantries are the most important left ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... worth the attempt to take up the pictures of these and succeeding authors, and see whether the real truth of the matter cannot be elicited from their own statements. There was undoubtedly a basis of facts underneath them, because without such a basis the superstructure could ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... their Children, that there is no Book fitter for them to read, which does in so delightful and instructing a Manner utterly overthrow almost all the Popish Opinions and Superstitions, and erect in their Stead, a Superstructure of Opinions that ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... people of Augsburg. This ditch is called Gruessa. There are two walls, whose materials were furnished by the flesh-market; for they are made of bones, the larger serving for the foundations, the lesser for the superstructure, whilst the smallest fill up what is wanting in the middle; being all cemented with the whites of eggs, by a wonderful artifice. The houses are not very beautiful, nor built high after the manner of other cities; so that there is no need of an Augustus ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... Something had been said there about Madison College; and his connection with Fitch's office had been mentioned, and on the fears thus roused in Morton Bassett, he, Daniel Harwood, had reared a tottering superstructure of aims, hopes, ambitions, that threatened to overwhelm him! But now, as the first shock passed, he saw all things clearly. He would save Sylvia even though Bassett must be saved first. If Thatcher could be silenced in no other way, he might have the senatorship; ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... two million bushel grain elevator, Calumet K, had been let to MacBride & Company, of Minneapolis, in January, but the superstructure was not begun until late in May, and at the end of October it was still far from completion. Ill luck had attended Peterson, the constructor, especially since August. MacBride, the head of the firm, disliked unlucky men, ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... squares of porous tufa, as they underlie each other, seem to resolve themselves back into the colossal cohesion of unhewn rock. There are prodigious strangenesses in the union of this airy and comparatively fresh- faced superstructure and these deep-plunging, hoary foundations; and few things in Rome are more entertaining to the eye than to measure the long plumb-line which drops from the inhabited windows of the palace, with their little over-peeping balconies, their muslin curtains ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... still restless. What was astir in him was not so much pity or remorse as certain instincts of race which still survived under the strange superstructure of manners he had built upon them. It may be the part of a gentleman and a scholar to let the agent whom you have interposed between yourself and a boorish peasantry have a free hand; but, after all, the estate is yours, and to ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "slath," which is the foundation of the basket. Next other rods are taken and [v.03 p.0483] woven under and over the sticks all round the bottom until it be of sufficient size, and the woof be occupied by them. Thus the bottom or foundation on which the superstructure is to be raised is finished. This latter part is accomplished by sharpening the large ends of as many long and stout osiers as may be necessary to form the stakes or skeleton. These are forced between the bottom sticks from the edge towards the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... influence has surreptitiously percolated all modern thought, and his unintentional allies were the teachers of Natural religion, with Paley as its principal exponent. Having thus defined and explained the basis of ethical philosophy, the Utilitarian has to build up the superstructure of legal ordinance; and he is at once confronted by the difficult problem of distinguishing the sphere of ethics from the province of law. Upon this vital question Mr. Stephen, as an expert in ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... of Australasian Christianity. There is something grand in the bravery of the bullet-headed Yorkshireman, now contending with the brutality of the convicts and their masters, now sleeping among the cannibals of New Zealand. His foundations, too, have received a superstructure on which we cannot dwell; because, happily, the first Bishop of New Zealand is not yet a subject for biography, and the Melanesian Mission, which has sprung out of it, has not yet seen ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... confidence in the field so essential to success as a fighting unit, it would appear evident that the foundation previously laid by the attainment of the first and second requirements as a whole, and the third requirement in part, will remain a foundation only, and the superstructure thereon will not ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... impossible to imagine but that the foundations of all knowledge—secular or sacred—were laid when intelligence dawned, though the superstructure remained for long ages so slight and feeble as to be compatible with the existence of almost any general view respecting the mode of governance of the universe. No doubt, from the first, there were certain phenomena which, ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... inner consciousness; but when he leaves the Senate in 1850 I have nothing whatever to go by; and, being by nature both a timid, and, on occasions, by choice a truthful, man, I would prefer to have some foundation of fact, no matter how slender, on which to build the airy and arabesque superstructure of my fancy—especially as I am writing a history. Now I hesitate to give him a wholly fictitious date of death and to invent all of the work of his later years. Would it be too infernal a nuisance for you to hire some of your minions on the Advertiser (of course, ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... his superstructure into the room. He was outwardly all that was bland and unperturbed, but there was a wary look in the eye that cocked itself at Jimmy, and he did not move far from the door. His fingers rested easily ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... made his work an engine of anarchy. Not that he meant anarchy at all, but because the people who were caught by his banalities could not differentiate sufficiently to extract the core of truth from the great superstructure of extravagances with which he hid it. Mr. Brann meant only to lift the world up, and one of his queer conceptions was, that his own dragging down of things pure to the lowest levels of life and thought and feeling was ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... go, was not a large vessel. Cylindrical of body, forty feet maximum beam, and two hundred and seventy-five feet in length. The passenger superstructure—no more than a hundred feet long—was set amidships. A narrow deck, metallically enclosed, and with large bull's-eye windows, encircled the superstructure. Some of the cabins opened directly onto the deck. Others had doors to the interior corridors. There ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... or believing that he perceived, in the Cincinnati, the foundation of an hereditary order, whose base, from associating with the military the chiefs of the powerful families in each state, would acquire a degree of solidity and strength admitting of any superstructure, he portrayed, in the fervid and infectious language of passion, the dangers to result from the fabric which would be erected on it. The ministers of the United States too in Europe, and the political ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... It reveals a people who, without shedding a drop of blood, calmly and deliberately abolished one government, substituted another, and erected it upon foundations which have hitherto proved enduring. Even the superstructure slowly erected upon these foundations has suffered little change in the most changing period of the world's history, and until recently its additions, few in number, have varied little from the plans of the original architects. The ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... spot selected for the establishment of the viaduct the gauge is deep and steep. The line passes at 300 feet above the river, and the total length of the metallic superstructure had to be 822 feet. To support this there was built upon the right bank a pier 158 feet in height, and, upon the left, another one of 196 feet. The superstructure had been completed, and a portion ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... expedient, to prepare for the whole building some settled foundation, level and firm, out of sight. But this has not been done in some of the noblest buildings in existence. It cannot always be done perfectly, except at enormous expense; and, in reasoning upon the superstructure, we shall never suppose it to be done. The mind of the spectator does not conceive it; and he estimates the merits of the edifice on the supposition of its being built upon the ground. Even if there be ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... whole of the buildings rested upon the land from which the clay below was dug and burned into bricks. Then, below the clay lay a bed of New Red Sandstone rock, which yielded a solid foundation for any superstructure, however ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... The good woman's eyes twinkled, the kind old hand and voice shook, as, holding up a bright glass of Madeira, Miss Honeyman drank the Colonel's health. "I promise you, my dear Colonel," says she, nodding her head, adorned with a bristling superstructure of lace and ribbons, "I promise you, that I can drink your health in good wine!" The wine was of his own sending, and so were the China firescreens, and the sandal-wood work-box, and the ivory card case, and those magnificent ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... a precise knowledge of their true use; and thinking that they but contributed to the advancement of the mechanical arts, I was astonished that foundations, so strong and solid, should have had no loftier superstructure reared on them. On the other hand, I compared the disquisitions of the ancient moralists to very towering and magnificent palaces with no better foundation than sand and mud: they laud the virtues very highly, and exhibit them as estimable far above anything ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... acknowledge the justice of them and your inability to do it in the present moment. If they have not, employ the force of the government against them at once. If this is inadequate all will be convinced that the superstructure is bad or wants support. To be more exposed in the eyes of the world, and more contemptible than we already are, is hardly possible. To delay one or the other of these expedients is to exasperate ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... always disposed to kind interpretations and favourable opinions. He hath heard the trader's affairs reported with great variation, and, after a diligent comparison of the evidence, concludes it probable that the splendid superstructure of business being originally built upon a narrow basis, has lately been found to totter; but between dilatory payment and bankruptcy there is a great distance; many merchants have supported themselves by expedients ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... made history and made a nation, for the confederation, when it came, was the inevitable superstructure built upon the foundations of his laying, but he ruined a reputation. His contempt for the conventions of politics, the radicalism of his methods, his failure to make any obeisance to the governmental deities, official or ex-official, combined with his almost superhuman tactlessness, ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... looked for was a real, precise, thorough, and practical knowledge of fundamentals; whereas that which the best of the candidates, in a large proportion of cases, have had to give me was a large, extensive, and inaccurate knowledge of superstructure; and that is what I mean by saying that my demands went too low, and not too high. What I have had to complain of is, that a large proportion of the gentlemen who come up for physiology to the University of London do not know it as they know their anatomy, ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... oatmeal is preferable to pie as an American national food"? I suppose the best answer I can give to your question is to tell you what is my own practice. Oatmeal in the morning, as an architect lays a bed of concrete to form a base for his superstructure. Pie when I can get it; that is, of the genuine sort, for I am not patriotic enough to think very highly of the article named after the Father of his Country, who was first in war, first in peace,—not first in pies, ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... love spring up in a minute? There may be admiration of beauty, there may be appreciation of intellectual qualities, there may be a recognition of magnetic personal attraction, but none of these is love. Love, to be worthy the name, must be a superstructure built upon a firm foundation of acquaintance with each other's true qualities. Love is not a balloon, in which two young people may go sailing among the clouds, away from all regions of every-day life. Those who try it with ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... the value to himself of other people's ideas, and he under-estimated the strength of the illumination which his own mind threw upon those ideas, transforming them from guesses into probable hypotheses, confirming them by his vast and varied knowledge, and building a superstructure where they had laid but an uncertain foundation. The question was in the air; guessing replies of great interest were made by a few who doubted the received belief; but they were not satisfying answers and they did not effect a revolution. Goethe ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... will suffice for the main features. The first stage of the superstructure is the Stylobate, of 25 feet in height and some 140 to 145 feet in diameter. The next, the Peristyle or Colonnade which lights up the interior. It has thirty-two Composite columns of a height of 38 ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... warning and without preparation, the foundation upon which he had erected the superstructure of his faith crumbled and fell. He had been deceived! The communications were false! They had originated in his own soul, and were not ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... on ad libitum. This is the way that weird geometry proceeds: it sets before beginners certain strange assumptions, and insists on their granting the existence of inconceivable things, such as points having no parts, lines without breadth, and so on, builds on these rotten foundations a superstructure equally rotten, and pretends to go on to a demonstration which is true, though it starts from premisses ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... through some carelessness in your business arrangements, you have lost one of your own." There is wit as well as rebuke in that communication. On the whole we repeat that, though he had a task of unusual difficulty, French laid the foundation of the Force, and gave the superstructure a trend that affected for good the after history of the famous corps. It was this man who was now to lead his column on the longest march in history for a column carrying its own supplies. He was leading it "out into the ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... doctor insisted that he proposed to 'maintain in legislation the broad principle that the nation owns the soil, and that this ownership is paramount to all individual claims,' and from this fundamental proposition as a corner-stone the superstructure was to be built up. The present proprietors of the soil were not to be disturbed in their possession, and the government was not to interfere in the details of agriculture, renting and leasing estates, determining possession, etc. But the owners were to be considered as the tenants ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... threw over the part an air of Spanish loftiness. He looked, spake, and moved like an old Castilian. He was starch, spruce, opinionated, but his superstructure of pride seemed bottomed upon a sense of worth. There was something in it beyond the coxcomb. It was big and swelling, but you could not be sure that it was hollow. You might wish to see it taken down, but you felt that it was upon an elevation. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... the India Company's expenditure, circulates through the country in an equal stream, returning chiefly, like the water exhaled in vapours from the sea, to its original source. The custom of giving jujurs had most probably its foundation in polygamy; and the superstructure subsists, though its basis is partly mouldered away; but, being scarcely tenantable, the inhabitants are inclined to quit, and suffer it to fall to the ground. Moderation in point of women destroying their principle, the jujurs appear to be devoid ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... as to advocate the burning of Toland himself. It is difficult now to understand the extreme excitement caused by Toland's book, seeing that it was evidently written in the interests of Christianity, and would now be read without emotion by the most orthodox. It was only the superstructure, not the foundation, that Toland attacked; his whole contention being that Christianity, rightly understood, contained nothing mysterious or inconsistent with reason, but that all ideas of this sort, and most of its rites, had been aftergrowths, borrowed ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... made by this person, who, at the time of his earliest announcements, was a farmer's boy in the first half of his teens. If his claims to ordination under the hands of divinely commissioned messengers be fallacious, forming as they form the foundation of the Church organization, the superstructure cannot stand; if, on the other hand, such declarations be true, there is little cause to wonder at the phenomenally rapid rise and the surprising stability of the edifice ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... part, and to build upon that? And if this was impossible, if Christ's Church must go back to the Divine foundation in His new-discovered Word, was that Word sufficient, not for foundation merely, but for all superstructure—for doctrine, discipline, and worship alike? Or would the Church be entitled to impose its own wise and reasonable additions to the recovered statute-book of Scripture? Lastly, if such a new Church shone already in ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... taken as a representation of the general characteristics of the English intellect. Its groundwork was solid, practical, and conversant with the details of business; but upon this, and secured by this, arose a superstructure of imagination and moral sentiment. He saw little, because it was painful to him to see anything beyond the limits of the national character. In all things, while he deeply reverenced principles, he chose to ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... interchange of ideas and opinions, no regular social foundation of men of intellectual or literary calibre ensuring a perennial flow of conversation, and which, if it existed, would derive strength and assistance from the light superstructure of occasional visitors, with the much or the little they might individually contribute. The reason of this is that the woman herself, who must give the tone to her own society, and influence its character, is ignorant, vulgar, and commonplace.[20] ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... timber of a ship, running fore and aft its whole length, and supporting the frame like the backbone in quadrupeds; it is usually first laid on the blocks in building, being the base of the superstructure. Accordingly, the stem and stern-posts are, in some measure, a continuation of the keel, and serve to connect the extremities of the sides by transoms, as the keel forms and unites the bottom by timbers. The keel is generally composed of several thick pieces placed lengthways, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... a sore conscience, has worked himself into such a state of mind as this must be permitted to talk himself out before he can be made to see the true state of affairs. In the minds of both man and woman there is likely to be found a superstructure of suspicion, jealousy, misinterpretation and distrust, built upon the basic fact of their incompatibility, which has to be pulled down before the true causes can be probed. To arrest a man in this state of ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... was to collect and hoard bullion for future coinage and circulation. They prepared the path along which a whole nation was hereafter to travel. They were modest but meritorious labourers, who built a massive and powerful foundation, that another age might be left at ease to erect the brilliant superstructure. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... genius of popular vanity. Among the nations who have adopted the Mosaic history of the world, the ark of Noah has been of the same use, as was formerly to the Greeks and Romans the siege of Troy. On a narrow basis of acknowledged truth, an immense but rude superstructure of fable has been erected; and the wild Irishman, [13] as well as the wild Tartar, [14] could point out the individual son of Japhet, from whose loins his ancestors were lineally descended. The last century abounded with antiquarians of profound learning ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... that we must have in some shape or other, and, if fairly treated, it would become as decidedly American as business is. It is susceptible of great variety, but care must be taken that it harmonizes with the superstructure. How often we see massive structures of marble, five stories or more, supported on basements of plate glass, apparently; while the real supports are carefully concealed! The best method, so far tried, seems to be that in which the columns are made sufficiently prominent to show their ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... himself has just achieved. For about five minutes these officers are coming and going, bringing in thrilling intelligence from all quarters of the frigate; most stoically received, however, by the First Lieutenant. With his legs apart, so as to give a broad foundation for the superstructure of his dignity, this gentleman stands stiff as a pike-staff on the quarter-deck. One hand holds his sabre—an appurtenance altogether unnecessary at the time; and which he accordingly tucks, point backward, under his arm, like an umbrella on a sun-shiny ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... the stomach. Then as the support beneath is really gone, there is what is often called "a feeling of goneness." This is sometimes relieved by food, which, so long as it remains in a solid form, helps to hold up the falling superstructure. This displacement of the stomach, liver, and spleen interrupts their healthful functions, and dyspepsia and biliary difficulties not unfrequently are ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... once more at the anvil as at Waltheim, and his workshop was even blacker and gloomier than the one in the woods. It had a single blind window, but a huge door. The house was built of great blocks of granite, with the workshop in the lower part, and the superstructure projected far out over the workshop door, and was supported on wooden pillars, so that a sort of large, covered portico resulted. The sun never made its way into the dark room, but that did not trouble Stephen Fausch. He would have been ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... questions," where the Originall, periistaso, (set them by) is equivalent to the former word Reject. There is no other place that can so much as colourably be drawn, to countenance the Casting out of the Church faithfull men, such as beleeved the foundation, onely for a singular superstructure of their own, proceeding perhaps from a good & pious conscience. But on the contrary, all such places as command avoiding such disputes, are written for a Lesson to Pastors, (such as Timothy and Titus were) not to make new Articles of Faith, ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... captured it, twisted the arm in the terrible hammer-lock, and broke it; then, while the Greek lay writhing in agony, Mr. O'Leary leaped to his feet and commenced to play with his awful boots a devil's tattoo on that portion of his enemy's superstructure so frequently alluded to in pugilistic circles as "the slats." After five or six kicks, however, he paused, due to a difficulty in breathing; so he struck a match and surveyed the ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... more than had all the forces of matter and mind together in the whole previous history of the world. Newcomen laid down a foundation beneath our whole economic system, out of sight, almost, but the essential base, nevertheless, on which Watt and his successors have carried up the great superstructure which seems to us to-day so imposing; which is so tremendous in magnitude, importance, and result. If to any one man could be assigned the credit, it is Newcomen who is to be considered the inventor ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... the Tarim Valley— that it may be useful to suggest the true proportions, and the modest possible bearing of this "Japanese" migration—assuming the slender record of it to be true; and the basis of truth is by no means a broad one; still less is it capable of sustaining a heavy superstructure. ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... nation expresses its very self. Our language is the loosest, the most analytic, of all European languages. And we, then, what are we? what is England? I will not answer, A vast obscure Cymric basis with a vast visible Teutonic superstructure; but I will say that that answer sometimes suggests itself, at any rate,— sometimes knocks at our mind's door for admission; and we begin to cast about and see whether it ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... black smoke from two funnels, lifting white superstructure of cabins high above her main deck, standing bold and clear in the mellow sunshine, steamed out of the fairway between Squitty and Vancouver Island. But she gained scant heed from Gower. His eyes kept turning to where those distant specks showed briefly between periods ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... this christianly scientific work? By intrenching ourselves in the knowledge that our true temple is no human fabrication, but the superstructure of Truth, reared on the foundation of Love, and pinnacled in Life. Such being its nature, how can our godly temple possibly be demolished, or even disturbed? Can eternity end? Can Life die? Can Truth be uncertain? Can Love be less than boundless? Referring to this temple our Master ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... approved Dalzell. "When you meet Henley on the field just close in and pound off the whole of his superstructure! ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... clearing and improving. Farewell, I fear, to these aspirations; our abode, however, though spacious, cool, and comfortable, can only be considered a temporary residence, for the best of all reasons—that in the course of a year it will tumble down, from the weight of the superstructure being placed on weak posts. The original plan was to have had a lower story, but about this I am now indifferent. The time here passes monotonously, but not unpleasantly. Had we but the animation of hope, and the stimulus of improvement, time would pass rapidly, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... them armed and supplied, and by spontaneous co-operation expelled the Turk from Peloponnesos. But if the co-operation was to be permanent it must have a central organization, and with the erection of this superstructure the troubles began. As early as June 1821 a 'Peloponnesian Senate' was constituted and at once monopolized by the 'Primates', the propertied class that had been responsible for the communal taxes under the ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... May the Superstructure be raised even to the top Stone without any untoward accident, and remain permanent as the everlasting mountains.—May the principles of our excellent Constitution, founded in nature and in the Rights of Man ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... pillars are supported by lions, which, instead of being introduced heraldically into the design, as would be the case some two hundred years later, are bearing the whole weight of the pillars and an enormous superstructure on the hollow of their backs in a most impossible manner. The spandril of each arch is filled with a saint in a grotesque position amongst Gothic foliage, and there is in many respects a marked contrast to the casts of examples ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... administrator, and a man of agreeable presence. The country was new, society in a formative state, and the material limited. Under these embarrassments, it required no little skill to lay the foundations wisely and successfully rear the superstructure. ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... applying a part of the sum appropriated to the repairing the old bridge; the other showing the considerations which, in the opinion of the same engineer and that of General Gratiot, should determine the choice between a superstructure of wood and of iron on the same ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... drizzling down when Peter ordered four rickshaws of the proud Sikh who stood guard over the porte cochere of the Astor House. Long bright knives of light slithered across the wet pavement from the sharp arc lights on the Soochow bridge. The ghostly superstructure of a large and silent junk was thrown in silhouette against the yellow glow of a watchman's shanty across the dark canal, as it moved slowly in the ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... the portico presented no more difficulties than the wall had done. By stepping on to the window-sill and steadying himself against one of the pillars, he could reach an iron stanchion, which had evidently been placed to support the framework of the superstructure. From here to the parapet of the conservatory itself was but a swing. This glass-house had casement windows, one of which was open, and he leaned on his elbows and ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... for the report of them, to impute that report to fraud. He cannot help himself. I repeat it; the whole mass of accusations which Protestants bring against us under this head, Catholic credulity, imposture, pious frauds, hypocrisy, priestcraft, this vast and varied superstructure of imputation, you see, all rests on an assumption, on an opinion of theirs, for which they offer no kind of proof. What then, in fact, do they say more than this, If Protestantism be true, you Catholics are a most awful set of ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... nerves. In its psychological action it "especially contributes to the development of sympathies which connect man not only with his coevals, but with his fellows of all preceding and succeeding generations as well. Upon it is erected this vast superstructure of intellect, of social and moral sentiment, of voluntary effort and endeavor."[64-1] Of all the properties of organized matter, that of transmitting form and life is the most wonderful; and if we examine critically the physical basis of the labors and hopes of mankind, if ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... this fact: When the last of the Metopes was taken from the Parthenon, and, in moving it, a great part of the superstructure with one of the triglyphs, was thrown down by the work men whom Lord Elgin employed, the Disdar, who beheld the mischief done to the building, took his pipe out of his mouth, dropped a tear, and, in a supplicating ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... history of the time would of course have to deal with the great men who were laying the foundations of the modern physical sciences; such as Black, and Priestley, and Cavendish, and Hunter. It would indeed, have to point out how small was the total amount of such knowledge in comparison with the vast superstructure which has been erected in the last century. The foundation of the Royal Institution at the end of the eighteenth century marks, perhaps, the point at which the importance of physical science began to impress the popular imagination. But great thinkers ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... I act or speak in such circumstances? His comic characters are also peculiar. A drunken constable was not uncommon; but he makes folly a vehicle for wit, as in Dogberry: everything is a sub-stratum on which his genius can erect the mightiest superstructure. ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... bulk of mankind were actuated by a sordid thirst of lucre; he had sagacity enough to convert the degeneracy of the times to his own advantage; and on this, and this alone, he founded the whole superstructure of his subsequent administration. In the late reign he had by dint of speaking decisively to every question, by boldly impeaching the conduct of the tory ministers, by his activity in elections, and engaging ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... fair moon, with the sweet stars, Gleamed amid the radiant spheres Like "a pearl of great price" shining Just as it had shone for years, On the young land that had risen, In her beauty and her might, Like some gorgeous superstructure Woven ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... read a story which is true, and yet not true? The one I am going to tell you is a superstructure of imagination on a basis of facts. I trust you are not curious to ascertain the exact proportion of each. It is sufficient for any reasonable reader to be assured that many of the leading incidents interwoven in the following ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... hangings of silk, the design—of a Louis Quinze type—of beautiful simplicity and faultless taste. The fireplace was a marvel. It reached from floor to ceiling; the lower parts, black marble, carved into crouching Atlases, with great muscles that upbore the superstructure. The design of this latter, of a kind of purple marble, shot through with white veinings, was in the same style as the design of the silk hangings. In its midst was a bronze escutcheon, bearing an undecipherable monogram and a Latin motto. Andirons of brass, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... were uniformity, what was catastrophe? To him the two or three labored guesses that Sir Charles suggested or borrowed to explain glaciation were proof of nothing, and were quite unsolid as support for so immense a superstructure as geological uniformity. If one were at liberty to be as lax in science as in theology, and to assume unity from the start, one might better say so, as the Church did, and not invite attack by appearing ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... the heating apparatus and the superstructure of our miniature greenhouse, the building of it is a very simple matter. If the ground is frozen, spread the manure in a low, flat heap—nine or ten feet side, a foot and a half deep, and as long as the ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... does not rest upon a political basis. Only the most superficial portions of its superstructure are political in character. Imperialism in the United States, as in every other modern country, is built not ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... millions of subjects in India, in tropical Africa, in the West Indies, and in the Pacific, the Conference will have helped to foster the intellectual conditions which must underlie any attempt at an imperial superstructure. ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... Divine Christ, the Redeemer and Saviour, and in the presence in the hearts of men of a Divine spirit, leading humanity tenderly forward. I can neither affirm nor deny the literal accuracy of Scripture records; I am not in a position to deny the superstructure of definite dogma raised by the tradition of the Church about the central truths of its teaching, but neither can I deny the possibility of an admixture of human error in the fabric. I claim my right to receive the ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... passing vessels had not discovered her. The tall stacks had been beaten down, probably snapped off at the collision, but the superstructure was high, and not far below the ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... greater man, and probably a greater artist, but a lesser craftsman. He lost control of his book. He loaded his whaling story with casks of natural history, deck loaded it with essays on the moral nature of man, lashed to its sides dramatic dialogues on the soul, built up a superstructure of symbolism and allegory, until the tale foundered and went down, like the Pequod. And then it emerged again a dream ship searching for a dream whale, manned by fantastic and terrible dreams; and every now and then, as dreams will, it takes on an appearance ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... suddenly, with a burst of tears, Captain Eulate kissed his hand and bade fond farewell to the burning hulk and said with impassioned voice, 'Adios Viscaya.' As he did this the very same instant there came a tremendous roar and the Vizcaya's magazine blew her superstructure hundreds of feet into the air. Had the incident occurred that way on the stage anybody would have said ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... should also be dirty, disorganised, corrupt, incompetent, even if it were true—and it is far from being true in any unqualified sense—would be irrelevant to this issue. On a foundation of inadequate material prosperity they reared, centuries ago, the superstructure of a great culture. The West, in rebuilding its foundations, has gone far to destroy the superstructure. Western civilisation, wherever it penetrates, brings with it water-taps, sewers, and police; but ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... history out of fable; he could not relinquish that habit of "learned conjecture," so dear to the scholar, so fatal to the historian. In the earlier portion of his work, he constructs his narrative under the singular disadvantage of one who sees perpetually the weakness of his own superstructure, yet continues to build on; and thus, with much show of scaffolding, and after much putting up and pulling down, he leaves at last but little standing on the soil. He had not laid down for himself a previous rule for determining what should be admitted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... a temple or a shrine, Nor hero-fane to demigods divine; Nor to the clouds a superstructure rear For man's ambition or for servile fear. Not to the Dust, but to the Deeds alone A grateful people raise th' historic stone; For where a patriot lived, or hero fell, The daisied turf would mark ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... be worse, to the partial or narrow views of the first settlers. The plan of a whole state might be arranged there like that of an edifice before the foundation is laid, and a solid one seems necessary where a large superstructure is likely to be built. The accompanying sketch of the limits which I would propose for the colony of New South Wales is intended to show also how the deficiencies of such a region might be compensated and the advantages combined for the convenience ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... Christian into the higher "mysteries" of his creed. The Logos doctrine, according to which Christ is the universal Reason,[116] the Light that lighteth every man, here asserts its full rights. Reasoned belief is the superstructure of which faith[117] ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... the monster, mouse-colored war-ships, basking in the sun, solemn and motionless in a great crescent, with its one horn resting off the harbor-mouth. They made great blots on the sparkling, glancing surface of the water. Above each superstructure, their fighting-tops, giant davits, funnels, and gibbet-like yards twisted into the air, fantastic and incomprehensible, but the bulk below seemed to rest solidly on the bottom of the ocean, like an island of ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... growing portion of the human race in its widely separated homes there was at last a central government worthy the name. The old Articles of Confederation had been no fundamental law, not a foundation but a homely botch-work of superstructure, resembling more a treaty between several States than a ground-law for one. In the new Constitution a genuine foundation was laid, the Government now holding direct and immediate relations with each subject of every State, and citizens of States being at the same time citizens of the United ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... when a person is asked to believe that this morality derives its obligation from some general principle round which custom has not thrown the same halo, the assertion is to him a paradox; the supposed corollaries seem to have a more binding force than the original theorem; the superstructure seems to stand better without, than with, what is represented as its foundation. He says to himself, I feel that I am bound not to rob or murder, betray or deceive; but why am I bound to promote the general happiness? If my own happiness ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... river was completely shut in, and the people with increased energy worked at the superstructure of the dam, which now rose like a causeway for about one hundred and ten yards from shore ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... held himself accountable to God's tribunal. His whole conversation, conduct, and spirit, showed the ennobling effect which that sublime test of character had upon him. In fine, he perceived that the basis of his own character had been false and therefore frail. The superstructure he had raised upon it, had been fair and imposing to the world, but, when its strength came to be tried, it had given way and fallen. He felt that he had neglected his true interests, and had been wholly indifferent to the just claims of the only Being, who could have sustained ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... in acknowledgment of the fact that the car behind, with almost no tonneau and minus the heavy covered superstructure, offered less resistance to the wind. With everything else made equal, and accident barred, the fellow at the wheel behind ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... The unswerving rock of loyalty is the hut and the heart of the swineherd; upon it as the foundation the shattered institutional world of Ithaca is to be rebuilt. The lowest class of society is, after all, the basis of the edifice; if it remain sound, then the superstructure can be erected again after the fiery purification. But if it be utterly rotten, what then? Such, however, is not the case in Ithaca, as long as there exists a man like the swineherd. From his rock, then, and, still more, from ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... nursery tale,—let it once take root, and it will grow so rapidly, that in the course of a few hours the giant Imagination builds a castle on the top, and by and by comes Disappointment with the "curtal axe," and hews down both the plant and the superstructure. Jeanie's fancy, though not the most powerful of her faculties, was lively enough to transport her to a wild farm in Northumberland, well stocked with milk-cows, yeald beasts, and sheep; a meeting-house, hard by, frequented by serious Presbyterians, who had united in a harmonious call ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... naval seaman who had volunteered for dangerous service under Captain John L. Worden. She was not a good sea boat; and she nearly foundered on her way down from New York to Fortress Monroe. Her underwater hull was shipshape enough; but her superstructure—a round iron tower resting on a very low deck—was not. Contemptuous eyewitnesses described her very well as looking like a tin can on a shingle or a cheesebox on a raft. She carried only two guns, eleven-inchers, both mounted inside her turret, which revolved by machinery; but their 180-pound ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood |
