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Construct   Listen
verb
Construct  v. t.  (past & past part. constructed; pres. part. constructing)  
1.
To put together the constituent parts of (something) in their proper place and order; to build; to form; to make; as, to construct an edifice.
2.
To devise; to invent; to set in order; to arrange; as, to construct a theory of ethics.
Synonyms: To build; erect; form; compile; make; fabricate; originate; invent.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Construct" Quotes from Famous Books



... has been made to me by the Leavenworth, Pawnee and Western Railroad Company, a company authorized by the act of Congress above mentioned to construct a branch of said railroad, to fix ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... with building for the active participle, and being built for the corresponding passive participle, we possessed the former, with is prefixed, as the active present imperfect, it is in rigid accordance with the symmetry of our verb that, to construct the passive present-imperfect, we prefix is to the latter, producing the form is being built. Such, in its greatest simplicity, is the procedure which, as will be seen, has provoked a very levanter of ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)

... experiment. Hume gives the ultimate purpose, already implied in Locke's essay, when he describes his first treatise (on the title page) as an 'attempt to introduce the experimental mode of reasoning into moral subjects.' Now, as Reid thinks, the effect of this was to construct our whole knowledge out of the representative ideas. The empirical factor is so emphasised that we lose all grasp of the real world. Locke, indeed, though he insists upon the derivation of our whole knowledge from 'ideas,' leaves reality to the 'primary qualities' without clearly ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... these four centuries the empire knew that religion disturbed economy, for even the cost of heathen incense affected the exchanges; but no one could afford to buy or construct a costly and complicated machine when he could hire an occult force at trifling expense. Fetish-power was cheap and satisfactory, down to a certain point. Turgot and Auguste Comte long ago fixed this stage of ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... responsibility for the atomic bomb project. At that time, under the scientific assumptions which turned out to be correct, the summer of 1945 was named as the most likely date when sufficient production would have been achieved to make it possible actually to construct and utilize an atomic bomb. It was essential before this time to develop the technique of constructing and detonating the bomb and to make an almost infinite number of scientific and engineering developments and tests. Between the fall of 1942 and June 1945, ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States

... what this phase of Judaism brought forth has been considered by them to be the product of the schools rather than the product of practical, pulsating life. Poetic phantasmagoria, frequently the vaporings of morbid visionaries, is the material out of which these scholars construct the theologic system of the Rabbis, and fairy tales, the spontaneous creations of the people, which take the form of sacred legend in Jewish literature, are denominated the Scriptural exegesis of the Rabbis, and condemned ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... hast not done so, but hast utterly ruined Roumania; and we know full well that thou wilt do unto us as thou hast done unto others." And when Johannizza heard this, he laid siege to Demotica, and erected round it sixteen large petraries, and began to construct engines of every kind for the siege, and to ...
— Memoirs or Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople • Geoffrey de Villehardouin

... average load of 2.55 tons per ft. run. Also long ore wagons are used which weigh loaded two tons per ft. run. J.A.L. Waddell (De Pontibus, New York, 1898) proposes to arrange railways in seven classes, according to the live loads which may be expected from the character of their traffic, and to construct bridges in accordance with this classification. For the lightest class, he takes a locomotive and tender of 93.5 tons, 52 ft. between buffers (average load 1.8 tons per ft. run), and for the heaviest a locomotive and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... accuracy obtainable in observations, would probably have regarded such an agreement as remarkably good; but Kepler refused to admit the possibility of an error of eight minutes in any of Tycho's observations. He thereupon vowed to construct from these eight minutes a new planetary theory that should account for them all. His repeated failures had by this time convinced him that no uniformly described circle could possibly represent the motion of Mars. Either the orbit ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant

... get down his Acts of Parliament, his decisions of the King's Bench, his Coke, his black-letter dissertations on the common law, and out of these construct the best he could a legal system for himself. To this work Mr. Otis devoted himself from 1745 to 1747, after which he left the office of Judge Gridley and went to Plymouth, where he applied for admission to the bar, and was ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath

... failed to conceal their own. Caecina and Valens, counting on the fatal impatience of the enemy, remained quietly on their guard to see what they would do: for it is always wisdom to profit by another's folly. Feigning an intention of crossing the Po, they began to construct a bridge, partly as a demonstration against the gladiators[289] on the opposite bank, partly to find something for their idle troops to do. Boats were placed at equal intervals with their heads up stream and fastened together by strong wooden planks. ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... been merely a training school for the clergy of Paris, quite sufficient for its purpose, but strictly confined to the object prescribed by the law. The new superior chosen by the archbishop had far higher aims. He set to work to re-construct the whole fabric, from the buildings themselves, of which only the old walls were left standing, to the course of teaching, which he re-cast entirely. There were two essential points which he kept before him. In the first place he saw that a petty ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... which was ordered by the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts. He was sent by this Congress to Philadelphia, to obtain information respecting the manufacture of gunpowder, and on his return was able, simply from having seen the process, to construct a mill, which was soon in successful operation. Revere was an active patriot during the whole of the struggle for Independence. He was one of those who executed, as well as planned, the daring scheme of destroying the tea in Boston harbor, and ...
— Tea Leaves • Various

... body of Joseph West was put in a plain deal coffin, and conveyed to Store Island, where it was placed on the ground. They had no instruments that could penetrate the hard rock, so were obliged to construct a tomb of stones, after the manner of the Esquimaux, under which the coffin was laid and left ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... the case rises from the commonplace to the exceedingly remarkable, for it can only mean that Lady Brackenstall and her maid have deliberately lied to us, that not one word of their story is to be believed, that they have some very strong reason for covering the real criminal, and that we must construct our case for ourselves without any help from them. That is the mission which now lies before us, and here, Watson, is the ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,

... of the amount of the different forms of diet which is needed by people at rest, and by those who are active, is valuable only to enable us to construct dietaries with care for masses of men and where economy is an object. In dealing with cases such as I shall describe, it is needful usually to give and to have digested a surplus of food, so that we are more concerned now ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell

... in a great measure, even to gases. It is thus the fittest material we possess for closing our bottles, and retaining their contents. By its means, and with the aid of Caoutchouc, we connect our vessels and tubes of glass, and construct the most complicated apparatus. We form joints and links of connexion, adapt large apertures to small, and thus dispense altogether with the aid of the brassfounder and the mechanist. Thus the implements of the chemist are cheaply and easily procured, immediately ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig

... were so appalling, that when the marvellous work was once accomplished, no subsequent attempt was made to construct a second like it: all the remaining structures of Ramses III., whether at Memphis, in the neighbourhood of Abydos, or at Karnak, were in the conventional style of the Pharaohs. He determined, nevertheless, to give to the exterior of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... beautiful and pathetic story, full of shrewdly considered knowledge of men, and of a good art struggling to free itself from self-consciousness. But it does mean that Balzac, when he wrote it, was under the burden of the very traditions which he has helped fiction to throw off. He felt obliged to construct a mechanical plot, to surcharge his characters, to moralize openly and baldly; he permitted himself to "sympathize" with certain of his people, and to point out others for the abhorrence of his readers. This is not so bad in him as it would be in a novelist of our day. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... all water records are subject to it. The charter further empowers the company to improve, buy, sell, and deal in land. These, then, are purposes of the company, according to its charter, and for these purposes it may construct and maintain all necessary works. Could anything be clearer? We acquired every right that Prairie Southern possessed. The rights were in existence when you bought your land. Therefore I do not think you should complain when we exercise them, even though they may affect ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm

... manufactories cease to move, and damage or death may result. In maintaining a medium between the extremes of high and low water, the beaver's work is of profound importance. In helping beneficially to control a river, the beaver would render enormous service if allowed to construct his works at its source. During times of heavy rainfall, the water-flow carries with it, especially in unforested sections, great quantities of soil and sediment. Beaver-dams catch much of the material eroded from the hillsides above, and also prevent much erosion along the streams which ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... the animal, expends itself in movements, forms associations new to it, simulates defence, flight, attack; but the child soon passes beyond this lower stage, in order to construct by means of images (ideally). He begins by imitating: this is a physiological necessity, reasons for which we shall give later (see chapter iv. infra). He constructs houses, boats, gives himself up to ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... the mosquitoes are bad, the men construct with forked sticks driven into the ground rude bedsteads, on which they sleep, a fire being made underneath to keep off with its smoke the troublesome insects. No bedsteads, however, fall to the share of the women, whose business it is to keep the fires burning ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... themselves with schemes and combinations the objects and sole purposes of which are to weaken and perhaps destroy the splendid fabric of our national game, which it has taken years of effort, anxiety and large outlay of capital to construct. ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick

... and not one of them would eat pork or drink wine or liquors. If it were the beginning of their year, which is different from ours, you might witness a celebration of the day. It is called the Mohurrum, and takes place on the shore of the Back Bay. They construct a great number of temples of gilt paper, and after marching with them in procession through the city, they cast them into the sea. I do not quite understand what it means; but the first month is usually a time ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic

... was originally a matter of convention and mutual agreement, is the scarcity of words among the roots which express the wants of primitive man. As it is, a wisdom within or beyond the Aryan led him to construct in these roots with their abstract significance an ideal foundation from which a great language could be developed. However as the exponents of rival theories have demolished each other's arguments, without anyone having established a clear case for himself, it is not necessary here to do ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell

... a primitive observer, unhampered by prejudices, think that the soul of man on leaving its present body would find or construct another according to ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... hundred feet in the beam, one hundred feet in the keel, and one hundred feet from the bottom of the stern-post to the taffrail. Those illustrious adventurers who sailed in her landed on the Jersey flats, preferring a marshy ground, where they could drive piles and construct dykes. They made a settlement at the Indian village of Communipaw, the egg from which was hatched the mighty city of New York. In the author's time this place had ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... which has been always employed for metaphysical discussion in modern times was the Latin translations of Aristotle, in which, whether derived or not from Arabic versions, the plan of the translator was not to seek for analogous expressions in any part of Latin literature, but to construct anew from Latin roots a set of phrases equal to the expression of Greek philosophical ideas. Over such a process the terminology of Roman law can have exercised little influence; at most, a few Latin law ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... the means by which it can possess the necessary efficiency and extension. To this end our policy has been heretofore wisely directed to the constant employment of a force sufficient to guard our commerce, and to the rapid accumulation of the materials which are necessary to repair our vessels and construct with ease such new ones as may be required in ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson

... fisheries cooperation in the Gulf of Tonkin were ratified in June, and demarcation of the land boundary continues; China occupies some of the Paracel Islands also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan; in response to groups in Burma and Thailand expressing concern over China's plans to construct 13 hydroelectric dams on the Nu River in Yunnan Province (Salween River in Burma), Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao suspended the project to conduct an environmental impact assessment, a smaller scale version of only 4 dams is now scheduled ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... of making visible scenarios are listed in this work. Here is one that is mechanically simple. Let the man searching for tableau combinations, even if he is of the practical commercial type, prepare himself with eight hundred signs from Egypt. He can construct the outlines of his scenarios by placing these little pictures in rows. It may not be impractical to cut his hundreds of them from black cardboard and shuffle them on his table every morning. The list will contain all elementary and familiar things. Let ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay

... George in an instant. Tom could not keep his hands still, as he had also learned to play the instrument, and ventured to suggest that he would like to assist in building a bass viol, and not to be outdone Ralph offered to construct a flute. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay

... where we are going. I tell you we are being taken to some wonderful place. People who can construct such marvels of mechanical skill as this boat will not be behind in other things; then look at ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben

... whom 10,000,000 light-years are like a day to any ordinary mortal, and whose astronomical investigations have led him to the center of the cosmos, told the scientists present to descend to the bowels of the earth and construct therein "Plutonic Laboratories," where a man could learn many things unknown about beginnings and endings, and where, incidentally he may find a way of utilising the tremendous heat energy stored up ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... himself, was one of the best known in the county at that time. Of this fine manorial residence hardly a trace now remains; but a manuscript dated some years later than the events we are regarding describes it in terms from which the imagination may construct a singularly clear and vivid picture. This record presents it as consisting of 'a faire yellow freestone building, partly two and partly three storeys; a faire halle and parlour, both waynscotted; a ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... of an abstruseness ten thousand times greater. Circumstances, and a certain bias of mind, have led me to take interest in such riddles, and it may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma of the kind which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve. In fact, having once established connected and legible characters, I scarcely gave a thought to the mere difficulty ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... and the close of the second century B.C., offers the first recorded instance of an entire national literature being rendered into a foreign tongue. The extrinsic value of this work is obvious from the fact that it enables us to construct a text which is centuries older than that of which all our Hebrew manuscripts are servile copies, and is over a thousand years more ancient than the very oldest Hebrew codices now extant.[39] Not indeed ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon

... to the mountain to construct a temple to No-cha, and his image was set up in it. Miracles were not wanting, and the number of pilgrims who visited the shrine ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... "We propose to construct a vessel," said Gideon Spilett, "sufficiently large to convey us to the nearest land; but if we should succeed, sooner or later we shall return to Lincoln Island. We are attached to it by too many recollections ever ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)

... all his huge chimerical schemes, Guillaume, remembering the terrible explosive which he had discovered and hitherto failed to utilise, had suddenly thought of employing it as a motive force, in the place of petroleum, in the motor which his eldest son had so long been trying to construct for the Grandidier works. So he had set to work with Thomas, devising a new mechanism, encountering endless difficulties, and labouring for a whole year before reaching success. But now the father and son had accomplished their task; the marvel was created, and stood there riveted to ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... protection. When the plantation finally assumes its permanent characters, a few of the remaining poplars and willows, judiciously left, may afford very excellent effects; but no one who has an artist's feeling would be content to construct the framework of his place of these rapid-growing and ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... declared that he spoke "as the organ of a government which no longer existed." Lord Stanley had been invited by her majesty to form a government, but did not succeed, and she again called upon Lord John to construct a new cabinet. His lordship informed the house that he had undertaken the task, and requested an adjournment. On the 28th the house resumed its sitting. It then appeared that Lord Aberdeen had been summoned by her majesty to form a ministry, but his lordship, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... going in for a "constructive social policy," they do not lie. They really are going in for a constructive social policy. And we must go in for an equally destructive social policy; and destroy, while it is still half-constructed, the accursed thing which they construct. ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton

... desolate north before there was any chance of their being rescued. A dwelling which would be a protection from cold and snow and the biting blasts of a Canadian winter, must be erected. But how? And with what materials? Tools he had in plenty, but how to construct a dwelling out of the stunted and wind-twisted trees, which were all the timber the island afforded, was a conundrum he saw no ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis

... certain quantity, to his airy schemes. Already he was beginning to be swayed by letters from well-meaning persons in the provinces, who urged him to found another Bayreuth in the Welsh Hills or the Forest of Arden.... Give Charles a hint and he would construct an imaginary universe! If she could only stop him advertising, he would not be exposed to the distracting bombardment of hints and suggestions which was opened upon him with every post, especially after he announced with his ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan

... put to sleep in the Grey Room at her own wish. She was found dead next morning on the floor. She had not entered the bed. The exact facts have long disappeared from human knowledge, and it is only possible to re-construct them by inference and the support of those straightforward events that followed. I conceive, then, that though the old lady did not create the warmth that liberated the evil spirit of the bed and so destroyed her, that warmth was nevertheless artificially created. What must have happened, ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts

... who was well versed in his profession, and was a clever mechanic to boot, and who had made a special study of submarine craft, proposed to Ker Karraje that they should construct one of these boats in order to continue their criminal exploits with ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne

... late John D. Hooker, of Los Angeles, gave the Carnegie Institution of Washington a sum sufficient to construct a telescope mirror 100 inches in diameter, and thus large enough to collect 160,000 times the light received by the eye. (Fig. 10.) The casting and annealing of a suitable glass disk, 101 inches in diameter ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale

... a rich plantation. Several more huts were passed, but the inmates were nothing but women and children, and offered no resistance. Then at a distance could be seen a stone wall, as if the insurgents had endeavored to construct a rude fortification in a ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer

... was finished, he would put an end to the poor fellow's life, and particularly because he had lately found out that the King of Leinster had heard of his beautiful palace, and that he intended to send for the Gubbaun and construct one ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various

... compelling vessels of any size to anchor at a considerable distance out, thus making the operations of landing and embarking cargo both tedious and expensiue. It would not, however, be a matter of great expense to construct breakwaters and deepen the old harbours, especially that of Famagusta, which, at the end of the sixteenth century, was sufficiently deep and large to afford safe anchorage to the whole fleet of the Venetian Republic, and when in the outer harbour there is now shelter ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt

... they think it is." Accordingly, Mr. Wu set to work on the Tongshan Railway. He built first ten miles, then twenty more. Then as the road was working well, and its usefulness demonstrated, he and Li Hung Chang thought they might get permission from the Throne to construct a line from Tientsin to Peking. Successful in this effort, they went ahead with the survey and {140} imported from America the materials for building the line—and then came a new edict forbidding them to proceed! The matter had been taken up by the viceroys ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... gifted beyond the other animals in not being obliged to walk with faces to the ground, but upright and gazing upon the splendour of the starry firmament, and also in being able to do with ease whatever they chose with their hands and fingers, they began in that first assembly to construct shelters. Some made them of green boughs, others dug caves on mountain sides, and some, in imitation of the nests of swallows and the way they built, made places of refuge out of mud and twigs. ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... it be charlatanism for a paleontologist to construct a fish out of a single fossil scale, then there may be something of that ability in me. For truly, Clive, I am often at a loss where to draw the line between what I see and what I reason out—between my clairvoyance ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers

... finally a hen-coop with seven or eight drowned fowls in it. All these I at once took measures to secure, knowing that our only hope of ultimate escape—and a very frail and slender hope it then appeared—rested upon the possibility of our being able to construct a raft with them. In this attempt we were fortunately successful, and sunset found us established on a small but fairly substantial and well- constructed raft. We mustered seven hands all told, six seamen and myself—seven only out of our ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... had a bed put up for him in his own study. Mrs. Byron, who had remained a short time behind him at Newstead, on her arrival in town took a house upon Sloane Terrace; and, under the direction of Dr. Baillie, one of the Messrs. Sheldrake[22] was employed to construct an instrument for the purpose of straightening the limb of the child. Moderation in all athletic exercises was, of course, prescribed; but Dr. Glennie found it by no means easy to enforce compliance with this rule, as, though sufficiently quiet when along with him in his study, no ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... appealed to and were balm to his soul. The great blue hills which fringed it away in the far distance were for him the ends of the world, and if he could go there some day, he would surely look over and find—what? The thought staggered him, and his imagination would not, or could not, construct for him what was at the other side. All day, often, he had lain stretched full length upon the moor, watching the great white clouds sailing past, seeing himself sometimes sitting astride them, proudly surveying, like God, the whole world. At times it was so real that he bounded to his feet ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... no doubt that Jesus was right, and they did know. In many a discourse He had given sufficient materials for them to construct a true conception of the Father's house, and the way to it. These materials were lying in some dusty corner of their memory, unused, and Christ knew this. He said, therefore, in effect, "Go back to the teachings I have given ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... can strike us with the wit of the pure intellect, as when he condemns certain work for being "as trivial in thought and yet enigmatic in expression, as if Echo and the Sphinx had laid their heads together to construct it." But for the most part it is a kind of thinking aloud, and the form is wholly lost in the pursuit of ideas. With his love for the absolute, why is it that he does not seek after an absolute ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons

... so often been called, the Rea was sufficient to carry off the surface waters taken to its channel by the many little rills and brooks of the neighbourhood, but as the town increased, and house drainage defiled that limped stream, it became necessary to construct culverts, so as to take the most offensive portion of the sewage to a distance from inhabited houses. A great improvement was looked for after the introduction of the Waterworks, allowing the use of water-flushed closets in the better class of houses, instead of the ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... This told them that a plank had started and that their labours were useless; the men left their work, but Philip again encouraged them and pointed out that they could easily save themselves, and all that they had to do was to construct a raft which would hold provisions for them, and receive that portion of the crew who could not be ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat

... to construct the bed, he had carried the snakes into the Phongee; after first cutting off their heads which, as he knew, the ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty

... this work of Christianizing society is a practical question calling for great wisdom. It may not be needful that the church should undertake to organize the industrial or political or domestic or philanthropic machinery of society. Its business is not, ordinarily, to construct social machinery; its business is to furnish social motive power. It is the dynamic of society for which it is responsible. But the dynamic which it furnishes must be a dynamic which will create the machinery. Life makes its own forms. And the church must fill society with a kind of life which ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden

... nothing; it is, however, clear that his opinion was at one time considered among the best available on a problem which required knowledge of engineering. As a military engineer Donatello was a failure. He was sent in 1429 with other artists to construct a huge dam outside the besieged town of Lucca, in order to flood or isolate the city. The amateur and dilettante of the Renaissance found a rare opportunity in warfare; and this passion for war and its preparations occurs frequently among these early ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford

... could see the last of a problem, the solution of which would change the face of the globe. Ruin was the death of my hopes, the total loss of the fruits of my labors; for my experiments were costly, and it required money, much money, to purchase the products which were indispensable to me, and to construct the machines which ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau

... the circular form of but is the only style of architecture adopted among all the tribes of Central Africa, and also among the Arabs of Upper Egypt; and that, although these differ more or less in the form of the roof, no tribe has ever yet sufficiently advanced to construct a window. The town of Tarrangolle is arranged with several entrances, in the shape of low archways through the palisades; these are closed at night by large branches of the hooked thorn of the kittur bush (a species of mimosa). The main street is broad, but all others are studiously ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... words you will likely have no more trouble; they will be at hand, anxious for employment, and you may use them according to your need. But some of your words will still stubbornly withhold themselves from memory. Weed these out from your lists, make a special list of them, copy it frequently, construct short sentences into which the troublesome words fit. By dint of writing the words so often you will soon ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... the class himself, but he must even lead the children out, encouraging them to express in their own words or through their drawings and pictures, or through maps they make or through the things they construct with their hands, or in any other way possible, their own knowledge and thought. The timid child who shrinks from reciting or going to the blackboard to draw or write needs encouragement and teaching especially. The constant danger with all teachers is that of calling upon the unusually quick ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts

... directions; nevertheless, to seize the beautiful elements in nature was ever the object of his efforts, however, roundabout they may sometimes appear to us. "The sight of a fine human figure is above all things the most pleasing to us, wherefore I will first construct the right proportions of a man." (See p. 321.) His aesthetic curiosity had nothing in common with that which considers all objects and appearances as equally interesting. What he meant by Nature, when he bid the artist have continual recourse to her, was far from being the momentary and accidental ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... Wales (Kinigumiut) Eskimo construct complete figures of their totems. These are worked by means of concealed strings by the performers, a climax of art which is supposed to be particularly pleasing to the spirits addressed. Then the shaman (Tungalik)[9] has his own set of masks, hideous enough to strike ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes

... in reality an aeroplane, its extended wings serving to sustain, as well as propel, the body. At any rate the ornithoper has not been successful in aviation, and has been interesting mainly as an ingenious toy. Attempts to construct it on a scale that would permit of its use by man in actual aerial flights ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell

... you, it is impossible for me to be tranquil. When I see one party cutting down trees to construct vessels, and others sharpening their swords and darts, I should think myself guilty if I did not seize my pen, which is my only weapon, to counsel peace. I am aware with what circumspection we ought to speak to our superiors; ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... all times requisite to send on a man to ford and sound it before a carriage passes. This river fills a variety of separate beds, as it meanders very much, and it extends to such a breadth in its debordements, as to render it impossible to construct a bridge long enough to be ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... re-construct for thee The shimmering clouds; and while, from lea to lea, The great earth reddens with a maid's delight, Behold! I bring to thee, as yesternight, My subject song. Do thou protect apace My peerless one, my Peri with the face That is a marvel to the minds of men, And like ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay

... Bacon of the nineteenth century. It has been his object to construct a positive philosophy; that is to say, a doctrine capable of embracing all the sciences, and, with them, all the problems of social life. He holds that every branch of knowledge passes through three stages: the supernatural, or fictitious; the metaphysical or abstract; ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... they got it here, it took them nearly a year to construct the machines for raising it. They built the pedestal for it to stand upon, which you see is as high as a two-story house, and then appointed a day for the raising. All the world, almost, came to see. This whole square was full. There were ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott

... period of about two months to get out the pine boards and timbers in the forest. Each piece of timber for any permanent building is completed at the time it is cut from the tree, and is left to season in the mountains; sometimes it remains several years. (See Pl. XXXV.) When all is ready to construct the dwelling the owner announces his intention. Some 200 men of the pueblo gather to erect the building, and two or three dozen women come to prepare and cook the necessary food, for, whereas no wage is paid the laborers, all are feasted at the cost of much rice and several hogs and ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... usually employed in soldering tin and lead, while a mixture of muriate of zinc and sal-ammoniac is used with steel. 2. A complete outfit for printing an amateur paper such as that you describe will cost at least $200, and can be purchased from any dealer in printing materials. 3. Construct the camera according to the plans laid down in Vol. 9, No. 34. The cost of that issue will be 6 ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various

... this system, after all the improvements suggested by the experience of sixty years, still needs improvement, and that it was at first far more defective than it now is. But whoever seriously considers what it is to construct from the beginning the whole of a machine so vast and complex as a government will allow that what Hastings effected deserves high admiration. To compare the most celebrated European ministers to him seems to us as unjust as it would be to compare the best baker ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... beating to very different tunes, and informing the whole being with very different aspirations. There was a love—there was a dislike—and there was a certain amount of parental solicitude and determination—excellent materials from which to construct a serious disagreement and an eventual family row. Not Hecate, when she threw "eye of newt and tail of frog" into the infernal brew on the blasted heath, could have been more certain of the final nature of her compound, than may the presiding genius of any "well regulated ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... to say to any "Philosophy of Evolution." Attempts to construct such a philosophy may be as useful, nay, even as admirable, as was the attempt of Descartes to get at a theory of the universe by the same a priori road; but, in my judgment, they are as premature. Nor, for this purpose, have I to do with any theory of the "Origin of Species," ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... idea of the horrible noise occasioned by thousands of these birds in the dark part of the cavern, and which can only be compared to the croaking of our crows, which in the pine forests of the north live in society, and construct their nests upon trees the tops of which touch each other. The shrill and piercing cries of the Guacharos strike upon the vaults of the rocks, and are repeated by the echo in the depth of the cavern. The Indians ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... kind of value. His successful achievements, and also his failures, conspicuously prove the excellence of his system. He expounded the true principles of science, but failed to apply them merely for want of materials. His ambition could not brook restraint. He would rather attempt to construct the universe without the necessary means than not ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... grass alone, its enormous lip acting like a mowing machine, forming a path before it as it feeds. Over these paths the natives construct a trap, consisting of a heavy beam, five or six feet long, with a spear-head at one end, covered with poison. This weapon is hung to a forked pole by a rope which leads across the path, and is held by a catch, set free ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... the Spanish camp, the alleged reason being—and perhaps the true one—that he was on a sick-bed. He, however, sent large numbers of his subjects with supplies of food, and to assist the Spaniards in drawing the timber to construct their barges. The hostile Indians on the opposite bank frequently crossed in their canoes, and, attacking small bands of workmen, showered upon them volleys of arrows, and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... while in north latitude 9 48, and 114 14 east longitude. The boat was instantly let down, and a small anchor sent astern, but on heaving, the cable parted, and both were lost. The people next endeavored to construct a raft of the water casks, but the swell proved so great that they found it impossible to accomplish their purpose. At day-break they found that the vessel had forged four or five miles on the reef, which they now discovered extended nine or ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... from the neighbourhood, as well as from his personal appearance and the homeliness of his shop, was exclusively among the lower and poorer classes of the community. With him Mr. Cleave made an arrangement to construct several coffins of the plainest and cheapest kind, for purposes which were fully explained. The 'undertaker,' whose ultra-republican principles were in perfect unison with those of Mr. Cleave, not only heartily undertook the work, but did so on terms ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... the divinest of all the powers which men are able to put forth, because it is the creative power. It uses thought, but, in a way, it is greater than thought, because it builds out of thought that which thought alone is powerless to construct. It is, indeed, the essential element in great constructive thinking; for while we may have thoughts untouched by the imagination, one cannot think along high constructive lines without its constant aid. Isolated thoughts come unattended by it, but the ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... the precincts of the one, to enter on those of the other. All the animal families have, in like manner, their connecting links; and it is chiefly out of these that writers such as Lamarck and Maillet construct their system. They confound gradation with progress. Geoffrey Hudson was a very short man, and Goliath of Gath a very tall one; and the gradations of the human stature lie between. But gradation is not progress; and though we find full-grown ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner

... bodies today is their mediaeval insistence on what they are pleased to call the supernatural. Which is the more marvellous—that God can stop the earth and make the sun appear to stand still, or that he can construct a universe of untold millions of suns with planets and satellites, each moving in its orbit, according to law; a universe wherein every atom is true to a sovereign conception? And yet this marvel of marvels—that makes God in the twentieth ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... went into his painting; only now and then a drop escaped that voracious funnel and splashed on to life. It is by collecting and arranging these odd drops and splashes that M. Vollard has managed to construct his lively picture of this extraordinary character. It is because his task must have been so abominably exacting—the task of catching the artist outside his work—that we easily forgive him a few lapses from good sense when he is not talking about his ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell

... standing by an undertaking through its ups and downs, its dull seasons and its unpopular phases, they are incapable of. Their efforts have no relation to an intelligently conceived purpose. With them may be grouped those women who, by their canonization of the unimportant, construct heavily burdened but utterly fruitless lives. They laboriously pad out their days with trivial things, vanities, shams, and shadows, to which they give the serious undivided attention which should be bestowed only on ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell

... experts!" exclaimed the priest with a sneer. "Only a fool needs experts! One must be more of a brute than the Indians, who build their own houses, not to know how to construct four walls and put a roof on top of them. That's all a ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... some notion of writing a distinct story upon each class of events, but, upon more mature consideration, I thought it better to construct such a one as would enable me to work them both up into the same narrative; thus contriving that the incidents of the one house should be connected with those of the other, and the interest of both deepened, not only by their connection, but their ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... inches and the water at the ford was two hundred yards in width. A general meeting was called to discuss the situation. Many insisted that the company, being comfortably settled, should wait until the waters receded; but the majority agreeing with the Captain, voted to construct a raft suitable to carry everything except the live stock, which could be ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton

... desires to inform the slave-holders of Georgia that he has received authority from the Secretary of War to impress a number of negroes sufficient to construct such additional fortifications as are necessary ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... couple of hours; only afterwards he must have sufficient time to construct what may be called the hyphen between the two rooms. One night and a portion of the following day will do; we must not reckon upon less than two days, ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... and of the arts among the Caledonians, when Agricola invaded them, about A.D. 80 or 81, as backward as some authorities have imagined, seeing that they were already so skilled in, for example, the metallurgic arts, as to be able to construct, for the purposes of war,—chariots, and consequently chariot-wheels, long ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson

... such as to obviate time-lag. We must evaluate the factors already mentioned and many others, such as the reactivation of the spacecraft which was thought to have been destroyed so long ago. After having considered all these evaluations, I will construct a Minor Plan to destroy these Omans, whom we have permitted to exist on sufferance, and with them that ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith

... days and the approach of spring the life of the Rangers became less full of hardship, though not less full of adventure. Snowshoes and skates were laid aside, and the men started to construct boats and canoes in which they soon began to skim the surface of the lake; scouting here, there, and all over, and bringing back news of the enemy's movements and strength even when no capture of prisoners rewarded ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... which crowned the pilasters, conferred richness and grace upon every part of the building, while the domes which surmounted the whole added proportion and majesty. This mansion, built by a subject, bore a far greater resemblance to those royal residences which Wolsey fancied he was called upon to construct, in order to present them to his master from the ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... to teach him to pray so early that the custom reached beyond the confines of his memory. At first he had had to repeat the words after her; but soon she made him construct his own utterances, now and then giving him a suggestion in the form of a petition when he seemed likely to break down, or putting a phrase into what she considered more suitable language. But all such assistance she had ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... to construct New Heavens and a brand-new Earth, To cope with Cosmos and conduct The business of its second birth, He would have finished months and months ago; Why, the Creation only ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various

... off one and one-fourth inches, and construct a line parallel to the back edge. Measure one inch and draw a line parallel to this. Measure off two and one-sixteenth inches (shy) and draw a third parallel line. Measure one inch again and draw a fourth line parallel to the ...
— Construction Work for Rural and Elementary Schools • Virginia McGaw

... up, and well throve; learned to tame oxen, make a plough, houses build, and barns construct, make carts, ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson

... it, and if its power and originality are not very great, what can it do better than to apply itself to humble, every-day trifles and try to decorate them? This is certainly right, if the old principle of architecture is always remembered: "Decorate construction, do not construct decoration." A few illustrations of my ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}

... sisters Emily and Anne she lived a quiet and retired life. The harsh realities about them, the rough natures of the Yorkshire people, impelled the three sisters to construct in their home an ideal world of their own, and in this their pent-up natures found expression. Their home was lonely and gloomy. Mr. Clement K. Shorter, in his recent study of the novelist and her family, says that the house is much the same to-day, though its immediate ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... constitutional right to present his petition to the General Assembly for any purpose whatever." Again—the State of Ohio is deeply indebted to the citizens of other States, and also to the subjects of Great Britain for money borrowed to construct her canals. Should any of these creditors lose their certificates of debt, and ask for their renewal; or should their interest be withheld, or paid in depreciated currency, and were they to ask for justice ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... and baffled his designs, he dispelled their apprehensions by a solemn oath that his views were not hostile to the empire. He swore by his sword, the symbol of the god of war, that he did not, as the enemy of Rome, construct a bridge upon the Save. "If I violate my oath," pursued the intrepid Baian, "may I myself, and the last of my nation, perish by the sword! May the heavens, and fire, the deity of the heavens, fall upon our heads! May the forests and mountains bury us in their ruins! and the Save ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... by extensive works constructed by Beauregard when he held that position against Halleck's army. Rosecrans had too few troops to man these works but had taken the precaution to hastily construct an inner line of fortifications, which was traced about a mile west from the center ...
— A Battery at Close Quarters - A Paper Read before the Ohio Commandery of the Loyal Legion, - October 6, 1909 • Henry M. Neil

... young pairs in the streets she had found an added interest in them because of this background. She could imagine them dancing together in fairy ball rooms whose lights and colours her imagination was obliged to construct for her out of its own fabric; she knew what the girls would look like if they went to a Drawing Room and she often wondered if they would feel shy when the page spread out their lovely peacock tails for them and left them to their own devices. It was mere Nature that she should have pondered ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... exigencies; while the other, which also abounded in prints, treated of the noble science of fortification according to the system of Vauban. I poured over both works with much perseverance; and, regarding them as admirable toy-books, set myself to construct, on a very small scale, some of the toys with which they specially dealt. The sea-shore in the immediate neighbourhood of the town appeared to my inexperienced eye an excellent field for the carrying on of a campaign. The sea-sand I found ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... many days. He was never in a hurry, and always had leisure to give to his friends, to poetry, romance, and the publications of the day; he read indiscriminately almost every new book he could procure. He assisted his father in his business, and soon learned to construct with his own hands several of the articles required in the way of his parent's trade; and by means of a small forge, set up for his own use, he repaired and made various kinds of instruments, and converted, by the way, a large silver coin into a punch-ladle, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... to destroy, but difficult to construct," is an old adage of statesmen. The truth of this utterance was soon realized by the leaders ...
— The Constitutional Development of Japan 1863-1881 • Toyokichi Iyenaga

... experience of war, and to besiege a strong place needs machines of all kinds, and of these Glendower has none, nor is it likely that he can construct them. Besides, while marching out he would be exposed to an attack, by the garrisons of these castles sallying out in his rear. Therefore, I think not that he will be foolish enough to undertake any great enterprises; though he may ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty

... Miss Keller wrote her story shows, as nothing else can show, the difficulties she had to overcome. When we write, we can go back over our work, shuffle the pages, interline, rearrange, see how the paragraphs look in proof, and so construct the whole work before the eye, as an architect constructs his plans. When Miss Keller puts her work in typewritten form, she cannot refer to it again unless some one reads it to her by means ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... Pythagoras and an older contemporary of Empedocles was Alcmaeon of Croton (c. 500 B. C.), who began to construct a positive basis for medical science by the practice of dissection of animals, and discovered the optic nerves and the Eustachian tubes. He even extended his researches to Embryology, describing the head of the foetus as the first part to be developed—a ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... Stevenson, twenty-nine before Alan, died David Lillie, the Deacon of the Wrights; so that mother and son were orphaned in one month. Thus, from a few scraps of paper bearing little beyond dates, we construct the outlines of the tragedy that shadowed the cradle ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Toba possessed a myth according to which their ancestors came into the world from a sacred grotto. The Buddhists took advantage of this conception to construct, with money from the emperor, the vast and famous cave-temple of Yuen-kang, in northern Shansi. If we come from the bare plains into the green river valley, we may see to this day hundreds of caves cut out of the steep cliffs of the river bank. Here monks lived in their cells, ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... thoroughly acquainted with all the details of the military art. He did not expect, it is true, that he should ever be called upon to serve in any of his armies as an actual drummer, or to wheel earth and construct fortifications with his own hands, still less to make the wheelbarrows by which the work was to be done; but he was aware that he could superintend these things far more intelligently and successfully if he knew in detail precisely how every thing ought to be done, ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott

... heavy rain came on, and we stopped to construct a shelter of green branches, into which we crept. The downpour became so heavy that it dripped through our hastily-constructed arbor, and we were soon soaking wet. Owing to the dampness of the fuel, it was only after much patient work that we were able ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... instead, as if in defiance, and then stood over for Nero. By this bravado, we daily looked for their coming against us, according to their old injurious custom. We landed four pieces of ordnance on the 30th, besides two others formerly landed on the 25th, and set to work to construct fortifications for our defence. By the assistance of the Bandanese, we erected two forts, which were named the Swan and Defence, after our two ships, each mounted with three guns; the fort called the Swan being within caliver shot of the ships, and entirely ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... news and information came to us from all sides, that barricades were everywhere being raised, and that firing was beginning in the central streets. Michel de Bourges exclaimed, "Construct a square of four barricades, and we will go and ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... millionaire, who made his fortune out of the great public works of Paris, running up whole boulevards on his own account. He was a man of remarkable activity, with a great gift of administration, and an instinctive knowledge of the streets to construct and the buildings to buy. Moved by the success of Dubuche at the School of Art, and by the recommendations of his masters there, Margaillan took the young architect into partnership, and agreed to his marriage with his daughter Regine. Unfortunately, Dubuche showed deplorable ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson

... commoners. The regular obligations of the inferior classes were to meet at certain times to hand to the chiefs presents, food, clothing or useful instruments, and they sought to exceed one another in generosity. They met to build houses, to repair them, or to construct the rock foundations of houses, according to the importance of the chief, or Arii. They built the canoes, made the nets, and did the fishing. The sea was divided into properties, as was the land. The Arii had the reefs ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... was turning purple, not from atmospheric effect, but from the partly congealed state of his blood. Already he was thinking that his adventure had turned out rather well. It was but a simple task for a man of his imagination to construct a pretty romance, with a kingdom for a background. A maid of honor, perhaps; no matter, he would find means for future communication. A glamour had fallen ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath



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