"Tentative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is seldom anything shy and tentative, anything obscure and gradual about the approaches of the London Spring. Spring is always in a hurry there, for she knows that she has but a short time before her; she has to make an impression and make it at once; so she works careless of delicacies ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... display any aptitude for letters till late in life. His class—a fourth, which, at least as regards the greater names of literature, is perhaps the smallest of all—comprises those who may almost be said to drift into literary work and literary fame, whose first production is not merely tentative and unoriginal, but, so to speak, accidental, who do not discover their real faculty for literary work till after a pretty long course ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... This likeness does not reach its completeness by a leap. It is not struck, as the image of a king is, upon the blank metal disc, by one stroke, but it is wrought out by long, laborious, and, as I said, approximating and tentative touches. My text suggests that to us by its addition, 'So are we, in this world.' The 'world'—or, to use modern phraseology, 'the environment'—conditions the resemblance. As far as it is possible for a thing encompassed with dust and ashes to resemble the radiant ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... longer concealed, when we pass from the activity of understanding to that of contemplation, and behold that thought either developed before us, limpid, exact, well-shaped, without superfluous words, without lack of words, with appropriate rhythm and intonation; or confused, broken, embarrassed, tentative. Great thinkers are sometimes termed great writers, while other equally great thinkers remain more or less fragmentary writers, if indeed their fragments are scientifically to be compared with harmonious, coherent, and ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... say you're a very handsome pair," he said. "Don't go just yet, Archie. If we three are to talk things over in the future, we had better have a little tentative practice. Are we three the only ones who know ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... of justice, and the administration of law and equity, the merest haphazard. But for this, the common intercourse of life would be invaded by incessant doubt and suspicion, and its daily transactions, aimless and tentative. Against this condition of things man is defended by his own nature. It is more natural to tell the truth than to utter falsehood. The very persons who are the least scrupulous in this matter utter the truth when they have no motive to do otherwise. ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... OF PROGRAMME TO THE WORK.—Under Traditional Management the tentative calendar might cause speed, but could not direct speed. Under Transitory Management elimination of waste by prescribed methods and routing increases output. This increase becomes greater under Scientific Management. Standardized routing designs ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... to his former hero since the meeting by the model of Jerusalem. Having inadvertently witnessed Phillotson's tentative courtship of Sue in the lane there had grown up in the younger man's mind a curious dislike to think of the elder, to meet him, to communicate in any way with him; and since Phillotson's success ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... taken by philanthropy in the poor man as borrower is still in the tentative and experimental stage, but there is an encouraging analogy between its beginnings and the early history of the savings banks. "It is seldom remembered," says Mrs. Lowell, "that the great scheme of savings banks was originally conceived and put into operation as a means of helping the poor. ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... action was tentative. This was shown by the conferences and negotiations to arrive at a settlement on the Education Bill, which was the first Liberal measure in 1906. But these broke down, and defiance was found to be completely successful. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... decided to induce Colonel Roosevelt to embark upon an entirely new activity, and negotiations were begun (alas, too late! for it was in the autumn of 1918), which, owing to their tentative character, were never made public. Bok told Colonel Roosevelt that he wanted to invest twenty-five thousand dollars a year in American boyhood—the boyhood that he felt twenty years hence would be the manhood of America, and that ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... please over Suffrage measures that none brought forward was democratic enough, far-reaching and overwhelming enough to secure his adhesion. He was therefore forced to torpedo the Conciliation Bill, to snatch away the half-loaf that was better than no bread at all. He spoke and voted against these tentative measures of feminine enfranchisement, with tongue in cheek, no doubt, and hand linked in that of Lulu Grandcourt whose opposition to any vote being given to woman and whole attitude towards the sex was ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... again, but he did not turn to look at her. Nan reached out a tentative hand and touched his sleeve. "Please, Mr. Pete," she said. "I, I want to see you. I, I have heard something about your having been hurt in a fire. I am sure you must think yourself a more hateful sight ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... known and indubitable, if mysterious, cause, than to seek explanation in causes less known and more hypothetical. In the case of many instincts, it would seem that the craving for the object precedes the distinct cognition of it; that the object is only ascertained when, after various tentative gropings, it is stumbled upon, almost, it might seem, by chance. And this seems true, also, of some of our fundamental spiritual instincts; for example, that craving of the mind for an unified experience, which is at the root of all mental activity, and whose object ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... remembered how timid, tentative, and dear the postal and telephone services of even the most civilized countries still are, and how inexorably the needs of revenue, public profit, and convenience fight in these departments against the tradition of official leisure and dignity. There is no ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... masterpieces," etc. The reactionary has generally the best of the argument. It is difficult to name the pictures that have been refused; they are the unknown quantity. Moreover, the pictures that are usually refused are tentative efforts, and not mature work. But this year the opponents of the Academy are able to cite some very substantial facts in support of their position, a portrait by our most promising portrait-painter ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... next verse, make us feel as though we were reading "Sardanapalus" or "The Two Foscari"—a sensation not easily to be endured. In a poet so far superior as Tourneur to the author of those abortions we must seek for an explanation of this perverse error in a transient and tentative theory of realism rather than in an incurable infirmity or obliquity of talent: for no quality is more remarkable in the execution of his masterpiece than his mastery of those metrical properties ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... feeling of one man for another—fruit of the ineradicable sex antagonism which so often colours the judgments men pass on women and women on men. Then had come love, against which he had striven in vain, and gradually, out of love, had grown a new tentative belief which the pitiful culmination of the Raynham episode had suddenly ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... musical tone by corresponding use of colour is necessarily tentative. In the perfected stage- composition the two elements are increased by the third, and endless possibilities of combination and individual use are opened up. Further, the external can be combined with the internal harmony, as Schonberg has attempted in his quartettes. ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... been detected; but nevertheless their genuine success for a time has been enough to show that they rested on a reality, and that reality seems to have consisted in the strange power of mind over body. In this region all is at present unexamined; and all operations are tentative, and for that reason most are only successful for a time. Now our Lord's miracles are never tentative; that is not the character given to them either by friend or by foe. Nor is there any instance recorded either by friend or by foe of an attempted miracle not accomplished. Nowhere is there ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... he answered, feeling his chin in gentle, tentative fashion. "I'm jolted sufficient an' the ground's danged 'ard 'ereabouts! An' wot's more—why, burn my neck—it's Anna!" he broke off and pointed with stubby finger. Turning about, I beheld Diana on the other side of the hedge. And she was ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... all been so unnecessary, Rynason thought. The ancient Outsiders brain, computing from insufficient evidence probably gathered during a brief touchdown on Earth, had undoubtedly been able to give only a tentative appraisal of the situation. But the proto-Hirlaji language was not constructed to accommodate if's and maybe's, and the judgments of the brain were taken as ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... his managers and foremen. But not for a quarter of an hour after that did he get rid of his show manager, Mr. Pitts, with the tentative make-up of the catalogue for the first annual stock-sale on the ranch. By that time Mr. Bonbright was on hand with his sheaf of telegrams, and the lunch-hour was at hand ere they ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... drawing-room was becoming more and more animated. The guests had nearly all assembled and were thronging the parlor and great hall beneath the brilliant light of many candles. From the music-gallery overhead the sounds of flute and violin in tentative accord were beginning to be heard. The musicians were some of Mr. Jefferson's slaves who had shown marked ability and whom he himself had instructed in the art. They had proved themselves apt pupils and could play excellently airs for ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... has Great Britain marched since the Spring of last year—how much nearer is she to the end? One can but answer such questions in the most fragmentary and tentative way, relying for the most part on the opinions and information of those who know, those who are in the van of action, at home and abroad, but also on one's own personal impressions of an incomparable scene. And every day, almost, at this breathless moment, ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... delinquents was strongly advocated by the council. Miss Clark and Mr. C. H. Goode were particularly keen on the introduction of Children's Courts. In this reform South Australia led the world, and in the new Act of 1896, after six years of tentative work, it became compulsory to try offenders under 18 at the Children's Court in the city and suburbs, and in the Magistrate's room in the country. The methods of organization and control vary in the different States of the Commonwealth, ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... This second tentative effort at conversation having flickered and gone out she bent again to her work, while Blair remained, looking down at her, in his eyes mingled amusement and resentment. What had he done, he wondered, to account for such ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... at all. He was a dog old in the wisdom of experience. It had taken him just twenty minutes to learn all about canoes. After a single tentative trial he jumped lightly to the very centre of his place, with the lithe caution of a cat. Then if the water happened to be smooth, he would sit gravely on his haunches, or would rest his chin on the gunwale to contemplate the passing landscape. But in rough ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... own theory was based entirely on his knowledge of the geological structure of the earth, which will be presently given in his own language, and that he afterwards ascertained that Lord Berners, who had no special theory to vindicate, had, by the "tentative process," or in plain English, by trying experiments, hit upon substantially the same system, and found it to ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... patronage would bring settlers in a rush; and to this end they published proposals in England and Barbados offering lands on liberal terms and providing for a large degree of popular self-government. A group of Barbadians promptly made a tentative settlement at the mouth of the Cape Fear River; but finding the soil exceedingly barren, they almost as promptly scattered to the four winds. Meanwhile in the more southerly region nothing was done beyond exploring ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... 1889-1890)—there are amazingly individual pages: pages which even to-day sound ultra-modern. And when one recalls that at the time these songs were written the score of Parsifal had been off Wagner's desk for only seven years, that Richard Strauss was putting forth such tentative things as his Don Juan and Tod und Verklaerung, that the "revolutionary" Max Reger was a boy of sixteen, and that Debussy himself was not yet thirty, one is in a position forcibly to realize the early growth and the genuineness ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... this work, we are astonished at the bold freedom, and yet the tentative and amateur character of it. The builders felt their way as they went along, and well they might, for it was not only a new church but a new and finer style altogether. They built a wall. It was not strong enough, so they buttressed it over the mouldings. ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... sighed, drew a wisp of what had been a cornet of snuff from her pocket, opened it, dipped in a tentative finger and thumb and, finding it empty, gazed at it with disappointment, sighed again and, with the methodical hopelessness of age, folded it up into the neatest of little squares and thrust it back in her pocket. Then she went on with ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... she unbraided her long, mouse-coloured braids; twisted them into tentative loops over her ears; earnestly studied the effect. No; her hair was too straight and heavy. She tried to imagine undulating waves across her forehead-if only mother would let her use crimpers! Perhaps she would! And ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... has for long occupied my attention," he wrote, "and, in a tentative way, a good deal has been done. But we have reached a point where little more progress can be made without a decision on the main issues. The question is, whether British colonisation is to be undertaken ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... were so used as to make them a most effective adjunct of her conversation. Socially, she was absolutely devoid of weakness or of shame. She found society extremely interesting, and she always struck straight for the desirable things in it, making short work of all those delicate tentative processes of acquaintanceship by which men and women ordinarily sort themselves. Rose's brilliant vivacious beauty had caught her eye at dinner; she adored beauty as she adored anything effective, and she always took a queer pleasure ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... when the women are concerned in a public protest the men are—oh, so mere! And the men in khaki were no exception to the rule; they were cowed, with all their munitions of war. They had decided on no definite course of action; or said they had not—to save their face. Their plans were essentially tentative; and, besides, the railway train—an important factor—was not just yet able to carry far ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... brother, seeing that such a condition is possible, and that all the paths of evil, however tentative and timorous they may be at first, and however much the sin may be wrapped up with excuses and forms and masks, tend to that condition, let us take that old prayer upon our lips, which befits both those who distrust themselves because of slumbering sins, and those ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... his hands helplessly. "If we knew, you'd still be in L.A. Roughly six months and four days, plus or minus a month for the time differential. That's strictly tentative, according to the math boys. It's a parallel universe, one of several thousand already explored, according to the Grdznth scientists working with Charlie Karns. Most of the parallels are analogous, and we happen to be analogous to the Grdznth, a point we've omitted from our PR-blasts. They ...
— PRoblem • Alan Edward Nourse
... were likewise urged to try for the nine, but they followed Dave's example. Then a tentative nine was formed, with Gus Plum as pitcher, and also a "scrub" nine, with one of the newcomers to Oak Hall in the box. Practice was to start on Wednesday afternoon of the ...
— Dave Porter and the Runaways - Last Days at Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... your interest in his genius (as I see not how you can avoid, having understood it and cooperated with it so truly), you will be glad to know that he values his American readers very highly; that he does not defend this offensive style of his, but calls it questionable tentative; that he is trying other modes, and is about publishing a historical piece called "The Diamond Necklace," as a part of a great work which he meditates on the subject of the French Revolution. He says it is part of his ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... arguments. Anything could bring them on, instructions for Max that she chose to consider erroneous, a biting statement from him that she was deliberately making herself physically unattractive. More and more Rhoda took to going into the city while he killed time making crude, tentative adjustments on Max. What the devil, he occasionally wondered, could she ...
— Cerebrum • Albert Teichner
... nor that of those beings divine, But each and the whole—an essence of all the Nine; With tentative foot she neared to my halting-place, A pensive smile on ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... With a tentative list of what he needed, Mr. Alcando went to write a letter to his railroad officials, asking them to ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... evidence as to who he was can be derived from any source, nor does the chronicle itself supply many of those incidental indications from which it is often possible to learn much regarding the author of an anonymous book. The tentative suggestion of Bishop Stubbs that it may have been written by Richard Fitz Neal, the author of the Dialogus de Scaccario, is now generally regarded as inadmissible. The work begins in 1170, and from a date a year or two later is evidently contemporaneous to its close ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... his little Gothic dining-room full of Arundel prints, Mark soon apprehended that his host had evidently not had the slightest notion of offering an ad hoc hospitality. He paid no attention to Mark's tentative advances, and if he was willing to talk about Rome, it was only because he had just paid a visit there in connexion with a school of which he was a trustee and out of which he wanted to make one kind of school and the Roman Catholic Bishop ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... suddenly still like the rustling of a branch in silent woods at night. A gipsy in a red sash is playing, slouched into a cheap cane chair, behind him a faded crimson curtain. Off stage heels beaten on the floor catch up the rhythm with tentative interest, drowsily; then suddenly added, sharp click of fingers snapped in time; the rhythm slows, hovers like a bee over a clover flower. A little taut sound of air sucked in suddenly goes down the rows of seats. With faintest tapping of heels, faintest snapping of the fingers ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... imposing upon it, in effect, the onus of conferring the land qualification. Let its consummation be approached gradually, and with caution; and let a modified form of it, designed to meet the Indian's peculiar situation, be recognized and enforced. Let the enfranchisement be made a tentative thing; and let there be a provision for the divestiture of the Indian of the right, in case disaster to him should supervene upon ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... martial law? They demanded the dissolution of the illegal and, at best, long superannuated Chamber, and fresh elections. The call for freedom grew louder, more insistent, more imperious and dangerous, until M. Venizelos took a first tentative step towards a ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... animal ancestry is the true or speaking man (Homo), who was gradually evolved from the preceding stage by the advance of animal language into articulate human speech. As to the time and place of this real "creation of man" we can only express tentative opinions. It was probably during the Diluvial period in the hotter zone of the Old World, either on the mainland in tropical Africa or Asia or on an earlier continent (Lemuria—now sunk below the waves of ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... the appliances of war, as well as for adding to the comfort and securing the health of the soldier. Every imaginable instrument of usefulness in any of the operations of the camp, or the march, or the field of battle, has been the subject of tentative ingenuity, such as none but Yankees could display. The musket, the carbine, the pistol, have been constructed upon numberless plans, apparently with every possible modification. The cartridge has been covered with copper, impervious to water, instead of paper, and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... finished, and from Mr. and Mrs. Stonington had been exacted a tentative promise that Amy could go if the rest did, when ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp - Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats • Laura Lee Hope
... public fountain. At the back of his mind there was a flickering thought that he wanted to do something, a vague feeling that he had some sort of an appointment which he must keep; but he was unable to think what it was. Meanwhile, he conducted tentative experiments with his breath. It was so long since he had last breathed that he had lost the ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... the nave are very much lower in height than the nave, and the vaulting is simpler in character. There are, however, many fine bosses, and, like those in the nave, they have been treated in a tentative way with colour and gold. As a whole, the effect of decorated bosses standing out in such strong relief from the simple, unadorned stonework is rather spotty and distracting. The arms of the Despenser family are to be found on some of the bosses in the south aisle, and it is to the munificence of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse
... Julia had been bewildered and heartsick when she turned to The Alexander, but she had never in her life known such an aching loneliness as had been Miss Toland's fate for many years. To such a nature the solitary years in Paris, the solitary return to California, the tentative and unencouraged approaches to her nieces, all made a dark memory. Rich as she was, independent and popular as she was, Miss Toland's life had brought her nothing so sweet as this young thing, to teach, to dominate, to correct, and to watch and delight in, ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... this attitude was tentative. Everything depended on how well Thorpe lived up to his reputation at the outset,—how good a first impression of force and virility he would manage to convey,—for the first impression possessed the power of transmuting the present rather ill-defined enthusiasm ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... reached the end of this interrupted and tentative discourse Mrs. St. John Deloraine was blushing ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... without moving a muscle. The female, I took it, had answered his advertisement. She flitted about from limb to limb (the female may be known by the absence of the crimson spot on the back of the head), apparently full of business of her own, and now and then would drum in a shy, tentative manner. The male watched her a few moments and, convinced perhaps that she meant business, struck up his liveliest tune, then listened for her response. As it came back timidly but promptly, he left his perch and sought a nearer acquaintance with the prudent female. Whether or not a match ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... piano. Papa Wolf opened his 'cello case. Uncle Hugo put his silver flute to his lips and played a tentative sweet note. In a moment the strains of Schubert's Serenade, exquisitely rendered, filled the quiet house. Roger relighted his pipe and let it go out. Whenever over her shoulder, Elsa cast a quick glance at him, his gaze was fastened intently on ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... Flint-folk, says: "It is of no slight importance to perceive that the interval which has wrought such revolutions in the earth" [involving great geological changes and mutations of climate] "as are recorded in the mammaliferous drift, shows man the same reasoning, tentative, and inventive mechanician, as clearly distinguished then from the highest orders of contemporary life of the Elephantine or Cave periods, as he is now from the most intelligent of the brute creation.... ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... he had his apprehensions. In an hour they were justified. The raw, damp wind brought with it something that touched his face like the brush of a feather. It was the year's first flake of snow, premature and tentative, but it was followed soon by others, until they became a thin white veil, driven by the wind. The brown leaves rustled and fell before them, and the appearance of the forest, that had been glowing in color an hour or two before, suddenly became wintry and chill. The advance of twilight made ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to this tentative remark; but it was from no objection any longer in her mind to such a relation in the abstract. She had not yet at all consented with herself to abandon the faith of her father, but she did not see, and indeed it were hard for any one in her condition ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... received from any hand clasp, no matter where given or with whom exchanged, and a princess or a countess was as likely to bestow it upon you as any ordinary person whom you might chance to meet. The pressure itself was merely a tentative question which might be translated by the words: "Are you a nihilist?" and you might understand it and reply to it by a returning pressure of acquiescence, or ignore it utterly, as you pleased. The pressure itself was so slight, was carelessly given and might so readily be attributed to a careless ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... been in existence, such a programme would have been unnecessary, and, in any case, Ezekiel would hardly have ventured to contradict a code which enjoyed so venerable a sanction and bore the honoured name of Moses. It is easier to suppose that Ezekiel's programme is a tentative sketch, which was modified and improved upon by the authors of P. Again there was every inducement during and immediately after the exile to formulate definitely the ritual practice of pre-exilic times, and to modify ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... events during the early years of the twentieth century left England no time for developing the art of flight in her own tentative and permissive fashion. The coming of the new art coincided with the rapid gathering of the storm-cloud that was to burst in the Great War. In 1903 the Wrights first flew in a power-driven machine. In 1909 ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... 1822), the famous paper on Lord, then Mr., Tennyson's poems in 1832, and the generous palinode on Macaulay's "Lays" of 1842. No three papers could better show Wilson in his three literary stages, that of rather cautious tentative (for though he was not a very young man in 1818, the date of the earliest of the Wordsworth papers, he was a young writer), that of practised and unrestrained vigour (for 1832 represents about ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... of tentative measures or of incidents which taught both parties that they could not, either of them, hope to completely destroy their opponents, the two allied brothers received at Verdun, whither they had repaired to concert ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... to be considered as a critick; a name which the present generation is scarcely willing to allow him. His criticism is condemned as tentative or experimental, rather than scientifick; and he is considered as deciding by taste[202] rather ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... people had done heroic work under adverse conditions. A tentative theory of the mechanism involved had already been formulated, and the search had started for a means to duplicate the super-dielectricity in materials otherwise more suitable to man's needs. But as he grew ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson
... solid in life than fine whiskers and a title, and that, in accepting a second husband, she would regard these items as quite subordinate to a carriage and a settlement. Now, she had ascertained, by tentative residences, that the kind of bite she was angling for was difficult to be met with at watering-places, which were already preoccupied with abundance of angling beauties, and were chiefly stocked with men whose whiskers ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... the stile that led into the fields, and sat there for a moment. Lucia's tentative melodies were still faintly audible, but soon they stopped, and he guessed that she was looking out of the window. She was too great to take part in the morning spying that went on round about the Green, but she often saw a good ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... and record the materials which are the fruits of their readings; to organize and use, in short, their own experience. The whole organization of this volume may be taken as an illustration of a method, at once tentative and experimental, for the collection, classification, and interpretation of materials, and should be used by students from the very outset in all their ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... phrase of "the swinish multitude," applied to mobs, was then in every body's mouth; and, accordingly, after my brother had recovered from his first astonishment at this audacious mutiny, he made us several sweeping bows that looked very much like tentative rehearsals of a sweeping fusillade, and then addressed us in a very brief speech, of which we could distinguish the words pearls and swinish multitude, but uttered in a very low key, perhaps out of some lurking consideration for the two ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... required. They meant to have every blade of grass eaten by their own cattle, which would be counted as improving their claims. They meant to give a homelike air of permanency to their dwellings. They had already talked over a tentative plan of bringing water to their desert claims, and had ridden over the bench-land for two days, with the plat at hand for reference, that they might be sure of choosing their claims wisely. They had prepared for every contingency ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... year to be distracted with the tentative scepticism of essayists and reviewers. In a healthy condition of public opinion such a book as Bishop Colenso's would have passed unnoticed, or rather would never have been written, for the difficulties with which it deals would have been long ago met and disposed of. When questions rose in the ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... A somewhat tentative proclamation of independence for Outer Mongolia was issued in December, 1911, by the Hutukhtu and nobles of Urga, and the Chinese were driven out of the country with little difficulty. Beset with internal ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... This speculation is entirely opposed to the historical facts, but it will easily be realised that when the workers had, in their own interest, asserted afresh the doctrine of human brotherhood, the Churches had a new occasion to preach it. How timid and tentative that preaching was, and even is, we have not to consider here. On the whole the brotherhood of men was re-affirmed by the Churches both in ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... was running a slow bass scale on a sort of two-stringed horse-fiddle of a strange shape. Average Jones' still untouched glass, almost full of the precious port, trembled and sang a little tentative response. Up-up-up mounted the thrilling notes, ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the Hexahedron, demonstrated geometrically to all the Universities and all the Academies of Europe.[2] There are innumerable verses, French and Italian, in all stages, occasionally attaining the finality of these lines, which appear in half a dozen tentative forms: ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... all right." Dan was temperamentally straightforward and honest, and his assertions were uttered with a tentative inflection which fell far from carrying conviction to the aroused senses ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... embody in Political Justice. Some were common to all the group; others lie in germ at least in the writings of the Encyclopaedists. Even communism was anticipated by Mably, and was held in some tentative form by many of the leading men of the Revolution. (See Kropotkin: The Great French Revolution.) The puzzle is rather to account for the anarchist tendency which seems to be wholly original in Godwin. It was a revolt not merely against all coercive action by the State, but also against ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... the present stage of evolution possess no economic value. True, cross-country cruises by airship have been inaugurated, and, up to a point, have proved popularly, if not commercially, successful, while tentative efforts have been made to utilise the aeroplane as a mail-carrier. Still, from the view-point of the community at large aerial travel is as remote as it was ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... had followed for the family, a year of spending the new money lavishly for strange, long-dreamed-of luxuries—a year in which the money was joyously proved to be real. Then came a year of tentative residence in the East. That year was less satisfactory. The novelty of being sufficiently fed, clad, and sheltered was ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... outer hall, the woman beside him, and the pair of them, wrapped up in cloak and ulster, went out into the night. At the door, Vance turned and threw a quick, investigating glance in his direction. There seemed a hint of questioning in that glance; it might almost have been a tentative invitation. But, also, he wanted to see if their exit had been particularly noticed—and ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... were living in a period of inevitable degeneration and decay—inevitable because it was prescribed by the nature of the universe. We have only an imperfect knowledge of the influential speculations of Heraclitus, Pythagoras, and Empedocles, but we may take Plato's tentative philosophy of history to illustrate the trend and the prejudices of Greek thought on this subject. The world was created and set going by the Deity, and, as his work, it was perfect; but it was not immortal and had in it the seeds of decay. The period of its duration ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... he definitely conceived the idea of monarchy, and, looking beyond his own requirements, pictured to himself a successor at some future time inheriting the authority which he had established, no one can say. In such vast schemes there must have been much that was merely tentative. But had he lived and retained his influence we may be sure that the Empire would have been established a ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... of this development of the jury trial we may now examine the tentative changes which, since the Reform Act of 1867, have been introduced into the law of elections in the United Kingdom. Long before that date, it had been admitted that the State ought not to stretch the principle of individual liberty so far as to remain wholly indifferent as to the kind of motives ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... which was exquisitely done up in Eastern style, with an arched roof, screens of wonderfully carved wood brought from Upper Egypt, Persian hangings and embroideries, divans and prayer rugs, on which nobody ever prayed. Lord Reggie and Mr. Amarinth both played the piano in an easy, tentative sort of way, making excess of expression do duty for deficiencies of execution, and covering occasional mistakes with the soft rather than with the loud pedal. Lord Reggie played a hymn of his own, which he frankly acknowledged was very beautiful. He described it ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... 4. After tentative plans have been adopted representatives of both denominations visit the local field together, confer with the churches concerned, and arrive at some agreement as to adjustments ...
— Church Cooperation in Community Life • Paul L. Vogt
... the subject warranted an immediate issue of an English translation, which would place the chief features of the Code before a wider public than those who could read the original. The present translation is necessarily tentative in many places, but it is hoped marks an advance ...
— The Oldest Code of Laws in the World - The code of laws promulgated by Hammurabi, King of Babylon - B.C. 2285-2242 • Hammurabi, King of Babylon
... went back to his tentative romance. She had passed his window and disappeared into the fog, and there was a reasonable doubt of her ever returning from it. The Singer in the Fog; thus he would write it down in his book of memories and sensibly turn the page. Once down-town he would countermand his ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... tentative timidity about it that surprised his own technical assurance—almost moved ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... experiment; essay &c (attempt) 675; analysis &c (investigation) 461; screen; trial, tentative method, tatonnement. verification, probation, experimentum crucis [Lat.], proof, (demonstration) 478; criterion, diagnostic, test, probe, crucial test, acid test, litmus test. crucible, reagent, check, touchstone, pix^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of the Epodes. At the same time, it did not appear worth while to rewrite the two Odes already translated, merely for the sake of uniformity, as the principle of correspondence to the Latin, the alternation of longer and shorter lines, is really the same in all three cases. Nay, so tentative has been my treatment of the whole matter, that I have even translated one Ode, the third of Book I, into successive rather than into alternate rhymes, so that readers may judge of the comparative effect of the two varieties. After this confession of irregularity, I need scarcely mention that on ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... a most intimate presence to the Man. It grew in the very midst of his Garden of Eden. It had a magical virtue, which his tentative science could only explain by chance analogies and assimilations. Attractive and beloved and worshipped by reason of its many gifts to mankind—its grateful shelter, its abounding fruits, its timber, and other invaluable products—why should it not become the natural emblem ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... for human advancement and happiness which churchmen and theologians have not violently opposed. Not content with burning each other, they burnt the men who discovered the earth's motion, burnt the men who made the first tentative beginnings of physics and chemistry, burnt the men who laid the foundations of our medical knowledge.... Bad as has been the church's record in the past, it is not greatly improved in the present.... For two thousand years teachers and preachers ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... already made him a tentative offer to that effect, my boy, and, now that the first flush of his rage is over, he is a coyote lacking the courage to kill. He will agree to your proposal, and I shall take occasion to warn him that if he should ever break his word while I am living, I shall consider, in view ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... between North and South America has been brought to the attention of Congress by my predecessor and by Mr. Root before and after his noteworthy visit to that continent, and I sincerely hope that Congress may be induced to see the wisdom of a tentative effort to establish such lines by the use ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... praying only that somewhere she will come upon Love. She adapts herself to him as water adapts itself to the shape of the vessel in which it is placed. She dare not assert herself or be herself, lest, in some way, she should lose her tentative grasp upon the counterfeit which largely takes the place of love. If he prefers it, she will expatiate upon her fondness for vaudeville and musical comedy until she herself begins to believe that she likes it. With ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... hearing the girl's words. At her announcement of going to the island he began to make tentative plans to accompany her. There might be a lot he could do. And she sure needed help. He wondered if he could offer his assistance without again ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... explanation of the name Jehova, Exodus iii. 14, 'I am that I am,' is accidental or not, must depend on the age that can be assigned to the Ormuzd Yasht. The chronological arrangement, however, of the various portions of the Zend-Avesta is as yet merely tentative, and these questions must remain for future consideration. Dr. Haug points out other similarities between the doctrines of Zoroaster and the Old and New Testaments. 'The Zoroastrian religion,' he writes, 'exhibits ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... great uses and benefits, have numerous defects. There are faults in the details of their organization and management, whilst many of them are financially unsound. Like other institutions in their early stages, they have been tentative and in a great measure empirical,—more especially as regards their rates of contribution and allowances for sick relief. The rates have in many cases been fixed too low, in proportion to the benefits ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... Now for some tentative explanation of these rather unusual proceedings. It is generally known that a hypnotized person will imagine things and do things willed by the hypnotizer, that the sensibility of persons to hypnotism varies, and that persons frequently hypnotized become increasingly susceptible ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... important work of Professor, afterwards Archbishop, Trench, entitled "On the Authorised Version of the New Testament in connexion with some recent proposals for its revision." This appeared in 1858. After the close of our tentative revision in 1863, the active friends (as they may be termed) of the movement did but little except, from time to time, confer with one another on the now yearly improving prospects of authoritative revision. In 1869 ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott
... Thomas [125] Browne; as Jean Paul is a good instance of it in German literature, always in its developments so much later than the English; and as the best instance of it in French literature, in the century preceding Browne, is Montaigne, from whom indeed, in a great measure, all those tentative writers, or essayists, derive. ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater |
