"Disquisition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Spanish scholar to the discussion between Don Quixote and his squire on the dismissal of 'regoldar', from the language of good society, and the substitution of 'erutar' in its room (Don Quixote, 4. 7. 43). In a letter of Cicero to Paetus (Fam. ix. 22) there is a subtle and interesting disquisition on forbidden ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... his fellows, which was 'of the Bye.' He described this latter, and tried to point out that the former was closely cognate to it. In order to mask the difficulty, nay, the impossibility, of doing this successfully on the evidence which he possessed, he wandered off into a long and wordy disquisition on treasonable plots in general, ending abruptly with that of Edmund de la Pole. Then, for the first time, Coke faced the chief difficulty of the Government, namely, that there was but one witness against Raleigh. He did not allow, as indeed ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... at Rome, which contained eighty thousand spectators; gave them a learned disquisition into the nature of the persona, or mask, worn by the Roman actors, which, he said, was a machine that covered the whole head, furnished on the inside with a brazen concavity, that, by reverberating, the sound, as it issued from the mouth, raised the voice, so ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... show 'em what damage the new deals and competition and our combination would do to 'em if they kept on sleeping on their stock certificates. Funny how hard it is to pry some folks loose from their par-value notions." Mr. Fogg delivered this little disquisition on the intractability of stockholders with reproachful vigor, staring blandly into the unwinking gaze of Mr. Marston. "I don't want to praise my own humble efforts too much," he went on, "but I truly believe that ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... my little sketch may perhaps get you close to that side of Manx life whereon I wish to speak to-day. I want to tell the history of religion in Man, so far as we know it; and better, to my thinking, than a grave or solid disquisition on the ways and doings of Bishops or Spiritual Barons, are any peeps into the hearts and home lives of the Manx, which will show what is called the "innate religiosity" of the humblest of the people. To this ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... much store by Doubleday's moral disquisition on the duty of the parents of Twins, I felt mollified by the half apology implied in his reference to yesterday's entertainment, and to the manner of his behaviour towards me now. It was clear he felt rather ashamed of himself and his cronies for their behaviour. Who could tell whether, if ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... suggestions, he goes on to descant upon slavery in the [210] fashion which we have elsewhere noticed, but it may still be proper to add a word or two here regarding this particular disquisition of his. This we are happy in being able to do under the guidance of an anterior and more reliable exponent of ecclesiastical as well as secular obedience on the part of all free and enlightened men in the present epoch of the ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... a tack, the grantees might possibly then have much harder conditions given them; and I do not see how they could prevent it. Whether the resuming of royal grants be consistent with good policy or justice, would be too long a disquisition: besides, the profusion of kings is not like to be a grievance for the future, because there have been laws since made to provide against that evil, or, indeed, rather because the crown has nothing left to give away. But the objection made against the date of the intended enquiry was invidious ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... me, to see such beginings upon such Themes, it being demonstratively true, Mota facilius moveri, which causeth me to entertain strong hopes, that this Illustrious Virtuoso and Restless Inquirer into Nature's Secrets will not stop here, but go on and prosper in the Disquisition or the other principal Colours, Green, Red, and Yellow. The Reasoning faculty set once afloat, will be carried on, and that with ease, especially, when the productions thereof meet, as they do ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... Australia, of the not too highly educated order, as well as a difference in his tone of voice and enunciation, from that of a person belonging to a corresponding class in England, is one of those facts, however, which 'nobody can deny.' I am not going to enter in this connection upon a disquisition respecting the relative merits of what Mrs. James would have called 'hoefisch' English, and the English that has been coined out of entirely new conditions by pioneers and backwoodsmen. Suffice it to say there is ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... this rather desultory disquisition with what patience she could command, breaking in upon it impulsively at various points, and seen that it was drifting nowhere—at least, that it was not drifting toward the object of her wishes. Then she took up the burden of talk, and carried ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... Earle makes more of the reason of the thing, he[AC] is literally "swift and sententious"—he never takes the opportunity to draw us into an instructive disquisition, or to assume airs of profundity. And his passing hint as to the cause of what we see no more injures any picture he may draw than Coleridge's prose argument at the side of the page destroys the imaginative spectacle in the ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... Doctor was delivering an impromptu disquisition upon the peculiarities of the one-horned rhinoceros and the slight resemblance given by the folds of its monstrous hide to the shell of a turtle, that Ramball followed the two boys and made signs to them to come to the other end of the great van-walled ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... entertaining theory as to the authorship of such and such a psalm. It opened out no heart before its own vision. It neither created nor deepened nor satisfied a single desire. It might as well have been a disquisition on the fate of the lost ten tribes of Israel, or a treatise on the properties of the differential calculus, or a discussion of the politics of the planet Mars for any application it had to the need of any one person, young or old, in the congregation sitting there and providing that example ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... perceive that any person, either finds or acknowledges his wants upon this head, or in the least desires to have them supplied. Proper words in proper places, make the true definition of a style. But this would require too ample a disquisition to be now dwelt on: however, I shall venture to name one or two faults, which are easy to be remedied, with a very small portion ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... religion, the second for beauty and the third for strength. On this triad be formulates not only an intellectual cult but a practical rule of life. Another notable sermon is on "The Sovereignty of Law," an admirable disquisition on the supremacy of law in the intellectual life, the physical existence, the domain of morals and in every department of human activity. Dr. Peabody's style is forcible and virile, and his compactness of statement, enables him to put "infinite riches in ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... have done it, and this to avoid bringing on a too frequent discussion of matters which in a political view ought to be kept a little behind the curtain, and not to be made too much the subjects of disquisition. Time only can eradicate and overcome customs and prejudices of long standing—they must be got the better of by slow and ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... his 'Anfaenge des Koenigthums bei den Gothen' (Berlin, 1859), has condensed into a small compass a large amount of useful disquisition on Cassiodorus and his copyist Jordanes. The relation between these two writers was also elaborately discussed by von Sybel in his thesis 'De Fontibus Libri Jordanis' (Berlin, 1838), and by Schirren, ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... genealogical disquisition our eyes turned to a most attractive looking tea table which was set forth with superb silver, and thin slices of bread and butter and cake. With appetites sharpened by our long ride through the ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... Punch. Less prolific than either Jerrold or Gilbert a Beckett, he produced, nevertheless, an enormous amount of "copy" that was always readable, even when it was not his best. He wrote from Paris to his friend, Mrs. Brookfield (September 2nd, 1849): "I won't give you an historical disquisition in the Titmarsh manner upon this, but reserve it for Punch—for whom, on Thursday [I have written] an article that I think is quite unexampled for dulness, even in that Journal, and that beats the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... noscatur quid Thrasea non fecerit.' Seneca and the younger Pliny also allude to them. Dr. Johnson, in the preface to the tenth volume of the Gentleman's Magazine, published in 1740, enters into a disquisition upon these acta diurna, and gives an account of the discovery of some of them with the date of 585 A. U. C., and adds some specimens from them. He quotes them from the 'Annals of Rome,' by Stephen Pighius, who declares that he obtained them from James Susius, by whom they were ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... motive; the shadow of a man passed before me, and I built a visionary fabric round him. I have never tried to girdle the earth; my limits are narrow; the modern novel, as Andrew Lang lately calls it,—with its love-making, disquisition, description, history, theology, ethics,—I have no sprinkling of. My last novel, "Temple House," was personally conducted, so far that I went to Plymouth to find a suitable abode for my hero, Angus Gates, and to measure with my eye the distance between the bar in the ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... Mr Cupples found Trent little inclined to talk. He excused himself on the plea of a restless night. Mr Cupples, on the other hand, was in a state of bird-like alertness. The prospect of the inquest seemed to enliven him. He entertained Trent with a disquisition upon the history of that most ancient and once busy tribunal, the coroner's court, and remarked upon the enviable freedom of its procedure from the shackles of rule and precedent. From this he passed to the case that was to come before it ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... Woods,"—such are the titles he affects. He was probably reminded by his delicate critical perception that the true business of literature is with narrative; in reasoned narrative, and there alone, that art enjoys all its advantages, and suffers least from its defects. Dry precept and disembodied disquisition, as they can only be read with an effort of abstraction, can never convey a perfectly complete or a perfectly natural impression. Truth, even in literature, must be clothed with flesh and blood, or it cannot tell its whole story to the reader. Hence the effect of anecdote on simple minds; and hence ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Air." Burton never travelled, but the study of cosmography had been his constant delight; and over sea and land, north, east, west, south—in this enchanting chapter—he sends his vagrant fancy flying. In the disquisition on "Exercise rectified of body and mind" he dwells gleefully on the pleasures of country life, and on the content that scholars find in the pursuit of their favourite studies. Love-Melancholy is the subject of the first Three Sections of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... literally hacked to pieces. Naturally, with the evolution of war, these spontaneous outbursts of wrath and disgust give way to a more formal system of penalties. To trace out this development fully, however, would entail a lengthy disquisition on the growth of kingship in one of its most important aspects. If constant fighting turns the tribe into something like a standing army, the position of war-lord, as, for instance, amongst the Zulus, is bound to become both permanent and of ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... firm grasp of the hand, the ready talk on any topic of the time, the quick illustration which was so frequently borrowed from some characteristic or incident in the life of the person, or the person's ancestor, with whom he was conversing, the eloquent disquisition playful or profound, put the visitor at his ease, and hours flew like minutes in refreshing talk. It was a mistake to suppose that Mr. Tazewell arrogated all the talk to himself, and purposely kept others silent in his company. On the contrary, he delighted ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... though not held by Plato nor any of the ancients, is yet a very natural consequence of his principles. But the disquisition is too complex and extensive to ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... mind, been under the impression that he had attained perception, but when he was unawares and all of a sudden subjected to this question by Tai-yue, he soon found it beyond his power to give any ready answer. And when Pao-ch'ai furthermore came out with a religious disquisition, by way of illustration, and this on subjects, in all of which he had hitherto not seen them display any ability, he communed within himself: "If with their knowledge, which is indeed in advance of that of mine, they haven't, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... way of extract; anon we find him reviewing A Journal of Eight Days' Journey, by Jonas Hanway, of whom Johnson said that he made some reputation by travelling abroad, and lost it all by travelling at home. Then again we find him writing a disquisition on Some Enquiries concerning the First Inhabitants, Language, Religion, Learning, and Letters of Europe, by a Mr. Wise, who, along with his critic, appears to have got into hopeless confusion in believing Basque and Armorican to be the remains of the same ancient ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... purporteth to be, in some wise, a disquisition on Beaux, and, by our faith, we had well-nigh forgotten it. Retournons a nos moutons, as the ancient lawyers used to say (and many a tyro, in the interim, hath said the same) when they grew so entangled in the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... promising topic that they got out the encyclopaedia and found to their joy that there was quite a lengthy and learned disquisition on the subject. So they read it again and again, even learning the more abstruse sentences by heart. Next day they were observed to chuckle whenever they caught each other's eye, and at lunch they were unusually cheerful and more than ordinarily attentive ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... chanced to send a copy of an American edition of Plato's "Phaedo" to a German Professor. "Eine wirkliche Erscheinung," was his reply in acknowledgment, "to see an edition of a work of Plato from America." What would be his amazement at receiving a copy of a disquisition on the Will written by an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... The foregoing disquisition may seem uncalled for by such rigid moralists as have made up their minds not to regard detective, or riddle stories, as any part of respectable literature at all. With that sect, I announce at the outset that I am entirely out of sympathy. It is not needed to compare "The ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... "After the disquisition on myself above cited, you will be prepared to understand the changes through which this wonderful ego et me ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... to in it, the first foundation of its author's claim to public distinction and favour, was a treatise, aiming to ascertain what new institutions in political society might be found more conducive to general happiness than those which at present prevail. In the course of this disquisition it was enquired whether marriage, as it stands described and supported in the laws of England, might not with advantage admit of certain modifications. Can anything be more distinct than such a proposition on the one hand and a recommendation on the other that each man for himself ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... might have been expected from an author who professes so deep a regard for the dramatic order of development. There is, for instance, an episodical chapter of upwards of thirty pages, describing commercial England in a state of panic, which is very nearly as appropriate as a disquisition on the Primary Rocks, or an inquiry into the origin of the Cabala would be, but which is so palpably introduced for the purpose of displaying the author's financial erudition, that he feels himself called upon to apologize in a brief preface ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... considerably in mind of a certain professor of chemistry, whose lectures on light and heat I once was rash enough to attend, who, after a long dry disquisition which had nearly put us all to sleep, used to arouse our attention to the "beautiful effects" produced by certain combinations, which he would proceed to illustrate, as he said, by a "little experiment." But, somehow or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... master. In 1615 he was elected Lumleian lecturer at the College of Physicians, and three years later was appointed physician extraordinary to King James I. In 1628, twelve years after his first statement of it in his lectures, he published at Frankfurt, in Latin, "An Anatomical Disquisition on the Motion of the Heart and Blood," in which he maintained that there is a circulation of the blood. Moreover, he distinguished between the pulmonary circulation, from the right side of the heart to the left through the lungs, and the systemic ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... in all human affairs, and consequently in all church movements," the Major replied, and the impulse of a disquisition straightened him into a posture more dignified, for he was fond of talking and at times he strove to be logical and impressive; but at this moment Bill arrived with mint from the spring; and with lighter talk two juleps ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... were generally allowed by the learned to have seen the system of Moses, if I may so call it, who was in great reputation at that time in the heathen world, as we find by Diodonis, Justin, Longinus, and other authors; for the rest, the wisest among them laid aside all notions after a Deity, as a disquisition vain and fruitless, which indeed it was, upon unrevealed principles; and those who ventured to engage too far fell into incoherence ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... woman (cf. xxi. xlvi. xlvii.) Similarly, the sonnets in the second 'group' (cxxvii.-cliv.) have no uniform superscription. Six invoke no person at all. No. cxxviii. is an overstrained compliment on a lady playing on the virginals. No. cxxix. is a metaphysical disquisition on lust. No. cxlv. is a playful lyric in octosyllabics, like Lyly's song of 'Cupid and Campaspe,' and its tone has close affinity to that and other of Lyly's songs. No. cxlvi. invokes the soul of man. Nos. cliii. and cliv. soliloquise ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... must speak at greater length than either of the counsel between whom he was to hold the scales. The address from the bench was much the shortest of the three. Less exhaustive than the conventional review of a complicated case, it was a disquisition of conspicuous clearness and impartiality. Only the salient points were laid before the jury, for the last time, and in a nutshell, but with hardly a hint of the judge's own opinion upon any one of them. The expression of that opinion was reserved for a point of even ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... down in search of vacant tables or of tables occupied by friends. One of these rovers interested me because I was sure he wanted to catch Rothenstein's eye. He had twice passed our table, with a hesitating look; but Rothenstein, in the thick of a disquisition on Puvis de Chavannes, had not seen him. He was a stooping, shambling person, rather tall, very pale, with longish and brownish hair. He had a thin, vague beard, or, rather, he had a chin on which a large number of hairs weakly curled and clustered to cover its retreat. He was an odd-looking ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... the two men sat discussing their cigars and coffee, Lightmark listened with wonderful patience to a disquisition on the subject of—he couldn't afterwards remember whether it was Strikes or the Sugar Bounty. He was rather afraid of the necessary interview with Charles. It would require some tact, and he was prepared to find him unpleasantly exacting as ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... that sort of learning which was in fashion among the French critics; and, I suspect, was contented rather to borrow something from them, than put himself to the trouble of compiling more valuable materials. Such is the disquisition concerning the origin of the word Satire, which is chiefly extracted from Casaubon, Dacier, and Rigault. But the poet's own incidental remarks upon the comparative merits of Horace, Juvenal, and Persius, his declamation ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... sent the Scot into a rather learned disquisition as to the merits and probable prospects of a hill as compared with a low-lying region, during which Hans Marais turned to Gertie. Being so very tall, he had to stoop as well as to look down at her pretty face, though Gertie was by no means short for her age. Indeed, ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... all-powerful Necessity. Life is, indeed, too brief, and success too precarious, to trust, in any case where happiness is concerned, the extirpation of deep-rooted and darling opinions, to the slow-working influence of argument and disquisition. ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... to an old female reprobate's disquisition on religion?" passed through Antony Dart's mind. "Why am I listening? I am doing it because here is a creature who BELIEVES—knowing no doctrine, knowing no church. She BELIEVES—she thinks she KNOWS her Deity ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... theology, which would puzzle the rudest peasant. We have observed several pages which do not contain a single word of more than two syllables. Yet no writer has said more exactly what he meant to say. For magnificence, for pathos, for vehement exhortation, for subtle disquisition, for every purpose of the poet, the orator, and the divine, this homely dialect—the dialect of plain working men—was perfectly sufficient. There is no book in our literature on which we would so readily stake the fame of the old unpolluted ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... chapters 37 to 46, inclusive of the author's text is little more than a paraphrase of The History of the Late Rebellion in the States of the Great Mogol by Bernier, as the disquisition is called in Brock's translation. Mr. A. Constable's revised and annotated translation of Bernier's work (Constable and Co., 1891; reprinted with corrections. Oxford University Press, 1914) renders superfluous the reprinting of Sleeman's paraphrase, which would require much ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... strolling out to the groves of Academia to bother poor old Plato with his nonsensical ideas about what he called his "lucky number." But Plato devised a way of getting rid of him. When the seer one day proposed to inflict on him a lengthy disquisition on his favourite topic, the philosopher cut him short with the remark, "Look here, old chappie" (that is the nearest translation of the original Greek term of familiarity): "when you can bring me the solution of this little mystery of the three nines I shall be happy to listen to your treatise, ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... dropping-fire, I promised, starry Heaven being my helper. 'Let's go to bed after that,' I pleaded. 'I've soared in an airy disquisition and I've come to earth in ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... occupied with the Code, Napoleon entered upon a long disquisition in favour of the Roman law of adoption; urging with intrepid logic, that an heir so chosen ought to be even dearer than a son. The object of this harangue was not difficult of detection. Napoleon had no longer any hope of having children by Josephine; ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... attention too much from the luminous field of philosophic disquisition to the sterile regions of polemic divinity, and the still more thorny paths of ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... such a metrical disquisition it is not easy to separate the poetry, which in places is very good, from the intellectual content, which is not so good from a modern point of view. By the joint aid of several sciences laboriously piecing together bits of knowledge that have nothing to do with the goddess ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... be presented in yet another light. The only use of terms, whether in daily talk or in philosophical disquisition, is that of designating certain things or attributes to which by general custom we agree to affix them; so that if anyone applies a term to some thing or attribute which general custom does not warrant him in so ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... exists in any systematic form; that is, beginning with the Propyleum, On the Power and Use of Words, comprising Logic, as the Canons of Conclusion, as the criterion of Premises, and lastly as the discipline and evolution of Ideas (and then the Methodus et Epochee, or the Disquisition on God, Nature, and Man), the two first grand divisions of which, from the Ens super Ens to the Fall, or from God to Hades, and then from Chaos to the commencement of living organization, containing the whole of the Dynamic Philosophy, and the deduction of ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... sciences which deal with living things, whether they be animals or whether they be plants. Some little time ago—in the course of this year, I think—I was favoured by a learned classic, Dr. Field of Norwich, with a disquisition, in which he endeavourved to prove that, from a philological point of view, neither Treviranus nor Lamarck had any right to coin this new word "Biology" for their purpose; that, in fact, the Greek ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... question of physics to arguing with the licentiate as to the morality of his action. Brandolaccio, who did not find their scientific disquisition entertaining, interrupted it with the remark that the sun was just going ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... series of works which have separately attained to a great popularity: volumes that have been always delightful to the young and ardent inquirer after knowledge. They offer as a whole a diversified miscellany of literary, artistic, and political history, of critical disquisition and biographic anecdote, such as it is believed cannot be elsewhere found gathered together in a form so agreeable and so attainable. To this edition is appended a Life of the Author by his son, also original notes, which serve ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... off into a disquisition on whiskers, and Diana escaped from the task of describing her lover. She could not have described ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... was considered thick, his movements heavy. He generally wandered from the question at issue, rambled, as the wiseacres expressed it. On one occasion particularly, when he was pleading in a case for damages, he so forgot himself as to stray into a political disquisition, to such a point that the presiding judge interfered, whereupon he immediately sat down with a strange smile. His client was condemned to pay a considerable sum of money, a circumstance which did not, however, seem to cause Eugene the least regret for his ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... my hands. All my friends complain that they can get nothing from me but "journalistic correspondence"; and now when once I lay aside the hurry and constraint of the editorial desk to respond to what seemed a personal demand in a new acquaintance, I quite lose myself and launch out into a lyrical disquisition which really applies more to my own experience than to yours. Will you not overlook this fault of egotism? Indeed I cannot quite promise that, if you receive many letters from me in the course of your reviewing, you may not ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... same person; and that Thoth can only be Hermes; nor is there any discernable difference between Pelagius and Morgan; tout cela va sans se dire, but when we come to account for the names of places or of signs, then indeed are we lost in a vast field of metaphysical disquisition and conjectural criticism. The Spectator, your worthy predecessor, threw much light upon the science, but still he left it in its infancy. To be sure, he traced the Bull and Mouth to the Boulogne Mouth, but I don't remember that he made many other discoveries in this ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... few sermons in the New Testament shaped after the forms and fashion in which they had been accustomed to shape theirs. He was not aware of a sermon there, in which they had a little motto selected, upon which a disquisition upon a particular subject was hung. The sort of sermons which the people in his locality were desirous to hear were sermons delivered on a large portion of the Word of God, carrying through the ideas as the Spirit of God had done." And it is, in part at least, because of the prevailing disregard ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... witchcraft.' JOHNSON. 'No, sir; witchcraft had ceased; and therefore an Act of Parliament was passed to prevent persecution for what was not witchcraft. Why it ceased, we cannot tell, as we cannot tell the reason of many other things.' Dr Cullen, to keep up the gratification of mysterious disquisition, with the grave address for which he is remarkable in his companionable as in his professional hours, talked, in a very entertaining manner, of people walking and conversing in their sleep. I am very sorry ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... of Rome has left us, as an episode of his great work, a disquisition on the probable effects that would have followed, if Alexander the Great had invaded Italy. Posterity has generally regarded that disquisition as proving Livy's patriotism more strongly than his impartiality or acuteness. Yet, right or wrong, the speculations of the Roman writer were ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... for him by his descendants. Speaking of the boast a certain poet was accustomed to make, of the sternness with which he had driven back an ass laden with gold, that had sought to invade the citadel of his integrity, the Doctor remarked, "but the tale has too little evidence to deserve a disquisition; large offers and sturdy rejections are among the most common topics of falsehood." That portion of the quotation which I have italicised, fits the case of General Reed to a hair; but "the tale" of his patriotism, ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... reckless man" who realized that heresy, and was resolved to work it for his own ends. From the day when Mr. Chamberlain launched his scheme, or dream, of Tariff Reform, Mr. Balfour's authority steadily declined. Endless ingenuity in dialectic, nimble exchanges of posture, candid disquisition for the benefit of the well-informed, impressive phrase-making for the bewilderment of the ignorant—these and a dozen other arts were tried in vain. People began to laugh at the Tory leader, and likened him to Issachar crouching down between two burdens, or to that moralist ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... references to the Pentateuch are made the subject of a most thorough disquisition by ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... survey of the field, taking countries as the units, and had written upon Italy and Spain, and attempted France. But I found that when the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were reached my tract was becoming a disquisition upon palaeography, art, and learning, and, of course, was failing to do justice either to any one of them or to what it had promised in its title. I now think that a chronological survey will be more practicable, and that it will ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James
... have any kind of prison-discipline disquisition in "H. W." that does not start with the first great principle I have laid down, and that does not protest against Prisons being considered per se. Whatever chance is given to a man in a prison must be given to a man in a ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... Mrs. Robinson came in the evening: his conversation is admirable; such an affluence of ideas, so full of genius and master thoughts. He gave me an excellent disquisition on the effect which transcendental mathematics produces on the mind, and traced up the history of mathematics from Euclid, appealing to diagrams and resting on images, to that higher sort where they are put out of ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... prematurely. Still—I suppose it was only by coming into Parliament that I could see things as I do now in terms of personality and imaginative range...." I stopped. Her stiff, unhappy, unlistening silence broke up my disquisition. ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... "Allegories of the Laws" he takes the verse of the Bible not so much as a text to be amplified and interpreted, but as a pretext for a philosophical disquisition. The allegories indeed are only in form a commentary on the Bible; in one aspect they are a history of the human soul, which, if they had been completed, would have traced the upward progress from Adam to Moses. It is not to be expected, ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... Mohegan heard this disquisition quite patiently, and, when Richard concluded, he held out the basket which contained his specifics, indicating, by a gesture, that he might hold it. Mr. Jones was quite satisfied with this commission; and ever after, in speaking ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... obliged, as was his common case, to intrude his opinion where it was neither wished nor wanted; and felt as happy in the exchange as a boy when he gets his first new watch, which actually goes when wound up, and has real hands and a true dial-plate. But besides this subject for legal disquisition, Bartoline's brains were also overloaded with the affair of Porteous, his violent death, and all its probable consequences to the city and community. It was what the French call l'embarras des richesses, the ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... spent. In the course of them he published the Querist (1735-1737), an Essay on the Social State of Ireland (1744), and, in the same year, Siris, which contains the bishop's famous recipe for the use of tar water followed by much philosophical disquisition. The remedy, which was afterwards praised by the poet Dyer in The Fleece, became instantly popular. 'We are now mad about the water,' Horace Walpole wrote; 'the book contains every subject from tar water to the Trinity; however, all ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... the Evils of using Tobacco.—'A disquisition on the evils of using tobacco, and the necessity of an immediate and entire reform,' by Rev. Orin Fowler, of Fall River, Mass. This is a very valuable and instructive discourse. We have for two years or more been fully convinced that the use of tobacco, in its three common ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler
... Moses, if I may so call it, who was in great reputation at that time in the heathen world, as we find by Diodorus, Justin, Longinus, and other authors; for the rest, the wisest among them laid aside all notions after a deity as a disquisition vain and fruitless, which indeed it was upon unrevealed principles; and those who ventured to engage too far fell into ...
— Three Sermons, Three Prayer • Jonathan Swift
... play), and they discuss our modern social problems and theories with a Socratic-like incisiveness and composure such as our parliamentary howlers would do well to imitate. Their doctrine is.. but I will not bore you by a theological disquisition,—enough to say it is founded on Christianity, and that at present I don't quite know what to make of it! And now, my dear Villiers, farewell! An answer to this is unnecessary; besides I can give you no address, as it is uncertain where I shall be for the next two or three months. If I don't ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... might afford a subject for an interesting disquisition. However, I forbore to pursue the matter, and answered Rosalind's remark ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... made out their several expeditions then for the discovery of truth, to find out great and profitable knowledges; had their several instruments for the disquisition of arts. Now there are certain scioli or smatterers that are busy in the skirts and outsides of learning, and have scarce anything of solid literature to commend them. They may have some edging or trimming of a scholar, a welt or so; but it is ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... foremost of rivers, the Sarasvati, made her appearance at Pushkara for the sake of the Grandsire and for gratifying the Munis. (At another time), O king, many Munis, mustering together at Naimisha, took up their residence there. Delightful disquisition occurred among them, O king, about the Vedas. There where those Munis, conversant with diverse scriptures, took up their abode, there they thought of the Sarasvati. Thus thought of, O monarch, by those Rishis performing a sacrifice, the highly blessed and sacred Sarasvati, for rendering assistance, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... had transpired centuries before, and in many instances the entire absence of a written language, by which, either to perpetuate events, or enable the philosopher by analogy of language to ascertain their affinity with other nations. Conjectural then as must be every disquisition as to the manner in which this continent was first peopled, still however, as many men eminent for learning and piety have devoted much labor and time to the investigation of the subject, it may afford satisfaction ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... there are, wherein the Professor, or, as he here, speaking in the third person, calls himself, 'the Wanderer,' is not once named. Then again, amidst what seems to be a Metaphysico-theological Disquisition, 'Detached Thoughts on the Steam-engine,' or, 'The continued Possibility of Prophecy,' we shall meet with some quite private, not unimportant Biographical fact. On certain sheets stand Dreams, authentic or not, while the circumjacent waking Actions are omitted. Anecdotes, oftenest ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... of Imagination is the design of the following production. In the execution of it much may be objectionable. The verse (particularly in the introduction of the ode) may be accused of unwarrantable liberties, but they are liberties equally homogeneal with the exactness of Mathematical disquisition, and the boldness of Pindaric daring. I have three strong champions to defend me against the attacks of Criticism: the Novelty, the Difficulty, and the Utility of the work. I may justly plume myself that I first have drawn ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... gravely, and entered forthwith into subtleties of disquisition on the art of dressmaking which had the desired effect of utterly bewildering the proprietor of the Oriental Cashmere Robe ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... which was written by Albrecht von Scharffenberg (about 1280), the Holy Grail is to be removed from a sinful world and to be carried to the East to be given to Feirefiz, half brother to Parzifal.[34] The meeting of Feirefiz with the knights furnishes the poet an opportunity of bringing in a learned disquisition on Prester John and his dri India die witen, and finally this mythical monarch offers his crown to Parzifal, who henceforth is called Priester Johanni. In the poem of "Lohengrin", of unknown ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... of this Album, whom perhaps I have never seen—whom perhaps I never shall see, pardon me for wasting two pages of your elegant manual upon this semi-metaphysical disquisition. Let the subject plead my excuse. And believe that I am, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... of notion has prevailed that a comedy might subsist without humor. It is an idle disquisition, whether a story in private life, represented in dialogues, may not be carried on with some degree of merit without humor. It may unquestionably; but what shines chiefly in comedy, the painting the manners of life, must be in a great measure ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a tenth part of his intellectual powers, hardly ever address the House of Commons without producing a greater impression than was produced by his most splendid and elaborate orations. His luminous and philosophical disquisition on the Reform Bill was spoken to empty benches. Those, indeed, who had the wit to keep their seats, picked up hints which, skilfully used, made the fortune of more than one speech. But "it was caviare to the general." And even ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... discussion rose also a swarm of fugitive publications in French, English, and Spanish; for the question of American boundaries had become European. There was one among them worth notice from its amusing absurdity. It is an elaborate disquisition, under the title of Roman politique, by an author faithful to the traditions of European diplomacy, and inspired at the same time by the new philosophy of the school of Rousseau. He insists that the balance of power must be preserved ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... than of solid reasoning in it;—and yet, my dear Sir, if I may presume to know your character, I am morally assured, I should hazard little in stating a case to you, not as a party in the dispute,—but as a judge, and trusting my appeal upon it to your own good sense and candid disquisition in this matter;—you are a person free from as many narrow prejudices of education as most men;—and, if I may presume to penetrate farther into you,—of a liberality of genius above bearing down an opinion, merely because it wants friends. Your son,—your dear son,—from whose sweet and open temper ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... what luminous vapours are to the traveller: he follows it at all adventures; it is sure to lead him out of his way, and sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some malignant power over his mind, and its fascinations are irresistible. Whatever be the dignity or profundity of his disquisition, whether he be enlarging knowledge or exalting affection, whether he be amusing attention with incidents, or enchaining it in suspense, let but a quibble spring up before him, and he leaves his work unfinished. A quibble is the golden apple for which he will always turn aside from ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... and without any marks either of surprize or incredulity. He pursued, with visible pleasure, that kind of disquisition which was naturally suggested by them. His fancy was eminently vigorous and prolific, and if he did not persuade us, that human beings are, sometimes, admitted to a sensible intercourse with the author of nature, he, at least, won over our ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... inquire into the relationship between the Norman and the Cornish fortresses. The lapse of twenty years has materially weakened my recollection of the latter, nor would this be a seasonable opportunity for such a disquisition: but the subject deserves investigation, the result of which may tend to establish the common origin of both, and to dissipate the day-dreams of Borlase, who longed to dignify the castellated ruins of the Cornish peninsula, by ascribing them to ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... and looked interested. She did not feel so much afraid of the silence, now that Arthur seemed entering upon a disquisition. But he stopped ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... Row, the window of which looked over the Forth to Fife, and the walls of which were so temptingly covered with books, his real life work had begun. No treat was greater, no honour more esteemed, than a visit to that study and a learned disquisition there on its owner's favourite books or ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... and the more instructive and stimulating experience at Breed's Hill, the penned the British in Boston and determined to drive them from the land. Dr. Dwight said of Lexington: "The expedition became the preface to the history of a nation, the beginning of an empire, and a theme of disquisition and ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... cleared my throat for a disquisition which would have been intolerable to the unprincipled reader, when a very curious thing arrested the attention both of Moriarty and myself—the strangest coincidence, perhaps, within the personal experience of either of us—a conjuncture, in fact, which for a moment threw us both staggering ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... an author to be thoroughly read without a strong effort. His gems are of the purest ray, but they lie embedded in a hard crust of reasoning and disquisition; and on the first morning, Louis, barely strong enough yet for a battle with his own volatility, looked, and owned himself, dead beat by ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mechanic with collar attached to a flannel shirt, and just visible along the top of a black tie, and the shopman whose pride it is to adorn himself with the very ugliest neck-encloser put in vogue by aristocratic sanction For such attractive disquisition I have, unfortunately, no space; it must suffice that I indicate the two genera. And I was led to do so in thinking ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... salvation of society; whereas the enterprising compilers of the "Boston Blue Book" and the "New York List" only divide society up into streets, mapping it out into so many square feet and so much frontage of dukes, marquesses, generals, and "people we don't know." Miss Skeat listened to the disquisition on the rights of birth with rapt attention, and the yellow candle-light played pleasantly on her old corners, and her ancient heart fluttered sympathetically. Margaret, on the other side, made Claudius talk about his youth, and took infinite pleasure in listening to his tales ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... by a slight rarefaction of the hydrogen in the air, so that, though no spirit could be photographed as such, a code and language might be established by means of the effect produced on the air by the spirit's mind. I am so interested in the subject of my disquisition that I had almost forgotten that your spirits are still subject to the requirements of the body. Last time I dined with you; let me now play ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... of your many readers, erudite in etymologies, will kindly explain how "Jack" came to be used as the diminutive for John. Dr. Kennedy, in his recent interesting disquisition on pet-names (No. 16. p. 242.), supposes that Jaques was (by confusion) transmuted into "Jack;" a "metamorphosis," almost as violent as the celebrated one effected, some two centuries ago, by Sir John Harrington. "Poor ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... with old port, youth and fun, responded "Friends, fellow countrymen, brothers, (this last expression was challenged as he was an only son) I am indeed proud of my Dublin education, we have something, however better before us than a disquisition on the excellence of the various systems of continental courses, to be brief, I now challenge any here present to meet me on the classics, astronomy, the cubic root or glass to glass, you have your choice." "Glass to glass," they one ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... savage state, the origin of society, and the elements of the social compact, in sentences which would not have disgraced the mellifluous pen of Bentham. From these he naturally digressed into an agreeable disquisition on the Anglo-Saxons; and, after a little badinage on the Bill of Rights, flew off to an airy aper u of the French Revolution. When he had arrived at the Isle of Fantaisie he begged to inform his Majesty that man was born for something else ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... intently. From what she had heard of him as a highly intellectual man, from the faint indications of character which she had herself noticed in their conversation, Miss Rothesay expected that he would have dived deeply into theological disquisition. She had too much penetration to look to him for the Christianity of a St. John—it was evident that such was not his nature; but she thought he would surely employ his powerful mind in wrestling with those knotty points of theology which might furnish ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... This cynical disquisition was not very enlightening. However next week when Dan slipped over again for his second sixpenn'orth, Mr. Willett it chanced was there too, having called to report on the excessive thickness and other undesirable peculiarities of some ink lately supplied to him. ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... read an extremely interesting disquisition on the Oyster, which was divided into sections and literally devoured by the audience. He also exhibited some Specimens of Conchs, which were regular Sneezers ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... We have here omitted a long, uninteresting, and inconclusive disquisition on the supposed Terra Australis, as altogether founded on ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... every other pastime or occupation of life. If you grow too eager for your twopence, the acquisition or the loss of it may affect your peace of mind, and peace of mind is better than any amount of twopences. My friend, the old-clothes'-man, whose agonies over the hat have led to this rambling disquisition, has, I very much fear, by a too eager pursuit of small profits, disturbed the equanimity of a mind that ought to be easy and happy. "Had I stood out," he thinks, "I might have had the hat for threepence," ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... biographies of Jesus and the impassioned pleadings of Paul. He is a pure and lofty soul, but he writes as if in seclusion from the world. His favorite words are abstract and general. The parable and precept of the early gospels give place to polemic and metaphysic disquisition. The Christian communities for which he writes have left behind them the sharp antagonisms of the first generation, and have drawn together into a harmonious society, strong in their mutual affection, their inspiring faith, and their rule of life, and facing together ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... official personages were dimming the legend in my mind, taking the brilliance out of the indirect but extraordinarily personal impact of the man himself. They embalmed the Cid and set him up in the church with his sword in his hand, for all men to see. What sort of legend would a technical disquisition by the archbishop on his theory of the angle of machicolations have generated in men's minds? And what can a saint or a soldier or a founder of institutions leave behind him but a legend? Certainly it is not for the Franciscans that one ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... sometimes be indulged to those, who come to a subject of disquisition with minds full of ideas, and with fancies so vigorous, as easily to excite, select, and arrange them. To write is, indeed, no unpleasing employment, when one sentiment readily produces another, and both ideas and expressions present ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... like his cultivated opponent with the conventional "Ladies and Gentlemen," but with the ominously intimate, "My Fellow Citizens,"—Lincoln is saying, "I am not master of language; I have not a fine education; I am not capable of entering into a disquisition upon dialectics, as I believe you call it; but I do not believe the language I employed bears any such construction as Judge Douglas puts upon it. But I don't care about a quibble in regard to words. I know what I meant, and ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... entire indifference to the whole affair,—"and some time when you are in town drop in again. And now tell me about Ruth, as we must call her, I suppose. Your aunt just missed her at the Cosgroves' the other day." Then came a short disquisition on Garry and Corinne and their life at Elm Crest, followed by an embarrassing pause, during which the head of the house of Breen lowered the flow line on a black bottle which he took from a closet behind his desk,—"his digestion ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Boyle. A famous natural philosopher, and member of the Royal Society, who died in 1691. The citation is from A Disquisition about the Final ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... English, Saxon, Friesic, &c., by E. Thomson, Esq.; a learned and ingenious tract, written originally for insertion in "N. & Q.," but which fact ought not to prevent our speaking of it in the terms which it deserves.—A Few Words in Reply to the Animadversions of the Rev. Mr. Dyce on Mr. Hunter's "Disquisition on the Tempest," 1839, and his "New Illustrations of the Life, Studies, and Writings of Shakspeare," 1845, &c. A short but interesting contribution to Shakspearian criticism, by one who has already done good service in the same cause. If we cannot agree with Mr. Hunter in all that ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... In this world there is nothing that is immutable. Thou thinkest, O king, that this (viz., the affluence with which thou art invested is a fault). That it is not so is not true, in regard to our present topic of disquisition. Ye, however, are conversant with virtue, and have readiness. It is certain, therefore, that ye shall attain to the end of your sorrow, (viz., Emancipation) in time.[1343] Jiva equipped with body, O king, is not the author of his merits and demerits (or their fruits as ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... being like Persephone on a coin of Syracuse, but it was plain that he was prepossessed in her favour, and there was a touch of the affectionate in his courtesy. After congratulating himself on recovering a kinswoman of a long-separated branch of his family, and after a good deal of genealogical disquisition, he explained the nature of the lady's historical tasks, and engaged her to visit him in the country at an early date. Miss Willoughby then said farewell, having an engagement at the Record Office, where, as the Earl gallantly observed, she would 'make a sunshine ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... one o'clock struck, but I said cheerfully, "Oh, I daresay it will be ready by supper!" But it was not: not a bit of it. Of course we searched in those delusive cookery books, but they only told us what sauces to serve with a roasted pig, or how to garnish it, entering minutely into a disquisition upon whether a lemon or an orange had better be stuck into its mouth. We wanted to know how to cook it, and why it would not get itself baked. About an hour before supper-time I grew desperate at the anticipation of the "chaff" Alice ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... these names must now be added that of the author of the "History of Spain and Portugal," (Cabinet Cyclopaedia,) whose work, published since the preceding pages were written, contains much curious and learned disquisition on the early jurisprudence and municipal institutions of ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... important to remark that, according to this theory, the distinct personality of man is excluded, not less than the distinct personality of God. It is not easy, indeed, to explain this part of Spinoza's theory; for he has a subtle disquisition on the relation subsisting between the soul and the body, by means of which he attempts to explain the phenomena of self-consciousness, and to show that individual personality is not necessarily inconsistent with the doctrine which represents man as a mere "mode" of the Divine "substance." But one ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... a lad of twenty summers. "I cannot help considering," he says, "the sonnets of Shakspeare as a sort of homage to the Genius of Christian Europe, necessarily exacted, although voluntarily paid, before he was allowed to take in hand the sceptre of his endless dominion." And he ends his charming disquisition in these words;—"An English mind that has drunk deep at the sources of Southern inspiration, and especially that is imbued with the spirit of the mighty Florentine, will be conscious of a perpetual freshness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... of Sappho to Phaon is next considered; but Sappho and Ovid are more the subjects of this disquisition, than Pope. We shall, therefore, pass over it to a piece of more importance, the epistle of Eloisa to Abelard, which may justly be regarded, as one of the works on which the reputation of Pope will stand ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... disquisition, which was carrying us far off Kingstown, New Molloyville, Ireland—nay, into the wide world wherever Dulness inhabits—let it be stated that Mrs. Haggarty, from my brief acquaintance with her and her mother, was of the order of persons just mentioned. ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... taking from the poorer sort of people all their little subsistence, and conferring it on a set of stamp officers, distributors and their deputies.—But I must proceed no farther at present.—The sequel, whenever I shall find health and leisure to pursue it, will be a "disquisition of the policy of the stamp act."——In the mean time, however, let me add, These are not the vapours of a melancholy mind, nor the effusions of envy, disappointed ambition, nor of a spirit of opposition to government: but the emanations of an heart that burns for its country's welfare. ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... mildly preached about being steadfast to the old faith, avoiding investigation in anything new, while from the gentle, spiritually minded Prof. Mill was heard an eloquent disquisition on the promises and the all-abiding ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... papers to English readers. The great newspapers of this country are too rich in varied talent and worldwide resources of their own, to make it worth their while in ordinary times to pay much attention to information and disquisition from foreign politicians, on subjects of the day; but the infinite importance to England, and to the world, of the present warlike struggle, renders it a matter of corresponding weight to know how far the foreign press, in the great centres ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... open and the New Jerusalem to appear this moment before you," retorted Judith, with the relevant irrelevance of her sex, "you would begin an unconcerned disquisition on the ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... "his hints and first thoughts; "as he says, his "Cogitabilia rather than actual cogitata a me,"—not always to be understood as his fixed opinions, but often merely suggestions of the disquisition, and acts of obedience to the apostolic command of "Try all things, hold fast that which is good." Among them is the following characteristic of the man and his feelings, noted down for ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... Parties are ready, at one time, to take their names and the pretence of their oppositions, from mere caprice or accident; at another time, they suffer the most serious occasions to pass in silence. If a vein of literary genius be casually opened, or a new subject of disquisition be started, real or pretended discoveries suddenly multiply, and every conversation is inquisitive and animated. If a new source of wealth be found, or a prospect of conquest be offered, the imaginations of men are inflamed, and whole ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... hands. They talked in a friendly, bantering tone of the concerts they gave together, Christophe with his piano, the Commandant with his flute. Christophe tried to go, but the old man would not let him: and he plunged blindly into a disquisition on music. Suddenly he stopped short, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... in this biographical disquisition there appears a very strong symptom of Johnson's prejudice against players[485]; a prejudice which may be attributed to the following causes: first, the imperfection of his organs, which were so defective that he was not susceptible of the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... “sealed,” has here been opened and its contents indexed. We have in the strata of the Woodhall well sundry chapters in the earth’s past history unfolded, at least to the initiated. The writer is not going to attempt here a systematic disquisition on a subject so abstruse (for which, indeed, he is not qualified), beyond touching upon some of its more salient, or more interesting features. The geological records of the Woodhall well have already ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... Argonautic expedition, (he observes in the Preliminary Disquisition to the latter work), has been questioned; but if the primordial history of every nation but one is tinctured with the fabulous, and if from among the rest a choice is necessary to be made, it must be ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... society. He felt himself now in a manner debased by having had to listen with enforced patience to Bainton's rambling account of the gossip going on in the neighbourhood, and despite that worthy servitor's disquisition on the subject, he could not imagine how it had arisen, unless his quarrel with Putwood Leveson were the cause. It was all so sudden and unlooked for! Maryllia had gone away,—and that fact of itself was sufficient to make darkness out of sunshine. He ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... Confession, in which we said that the Church is the congregation of saints, they have condemned and have added a long disquisition, that the wicked are not to be separated from the Church, since John has compared the Church to a threshing-floor on which wheat and chaff are heaped together, Matt. 3, 12, and Christ has compared it to ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... continent, will be prodigious, and in all probability before the expiration of many years, give an entirely new impulse to the tide of population: and here it may not be altogether irrelevant, to enter into a short disquisition on the natural superiority possessed by those countries which are most abundantly intersected with navigable rivers. That such are most favourable for all the purposes of civilized man, the history of the world affords the most satisfactory proof There is not, in fact, a single ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... public his numbers of The Federalist. There is often to be found in one daily issue of the Post, the Courier and Enquirer, the Journal of Commerce, the Herald, the Tribune, or the Times of these days, more thought, nice disquisition, and real knowledge which awakens the contemplation of the statesman and politician, than the New-York Gazette contained during a twelvemonth; and yet it flourished. The traits of Lang's character were unwavering devotion to his pursuits; no one could excel ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... this great power exercised by one branch of the Federal Government over another. By holding that the mandamus must issue from the District and not the Supreme Court, the case might have been dismissed briefly. The Republicans thought the long disquisition on the powers of the court and its relation to the executive branch a kind of defiance and entirely unwarranted. It was the beginning of a long list of similar ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... life is first-rate poetry; it is an illuminating figure of poetic speech. But the simplicity with which the theme is presented, to the exclusion of many material issues, puts the statement out of the plane of metaphysical disquisition, which involves subtle conflict of argument and measured resolution of doubt, rather than imaginative certainty or unconditional assertion. Nor is Hamlet's famous soliloquy on the merits and demerits of ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... nearer approach the woman turned quickly for a moment, said something in a low voice, and then the two hurried abruptly down a side street, whose thicker shadows offered a screen from further observation. Leigh, listening but inattentively to his companion's disquisition and meditating still of Felicity, gave the couple only a fleeting glance, thinking, if he thought of them at all, that they were a maid from one of the ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... an ingenious disquisition to prove that humanity may be all very well for inferior races, but that Germanism cannot be hampered by ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... the subtlety of disquisition, the force of imagination, the perfect energy and elegance of expression, which characterize the great works of Athenian genius, we must pronounce them intrinsically most valuable; but what shall we say when we reflect that ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... start walking; if you are walking, set off running; if you are running, take wings and fly. You can scarcely believe how much I confide in your advice and wisdom, and above all in your affection and fidelity. The importance of the interests involved perhaps demands a long disquisition, but the close union of our hearts is contented with brevity. It is of very great importance to me that, if you can't be at Rome at the elections, you should at least be here after his election is declared.[272] Take care of ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... predecessor. It is written with profounder learning, and a more equitable spirit; and is indeed pre-eminently distinguished by the calmness, candour, and judge-like serenity that pervades it. In a style always lucid in disquisition, and always elegant in narrative, he appears to be solely anxious to communicate the fair result, whatever it may be, to which his extensive reading has conducted him. But, unfortunately, Dr Thirlwall ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... the most irritating of his creditors, George Henry indicted his masterpiece. He admitted his obligation, he expressed his satisfaction at paying an interest which made it a good investment for the creditor, and then he entered into a little disquisition as to the creditor's manner and scale of thought and existence, followed by certain mild suggestions as to improvements which might be made in the character under observation. He pledged himself to return at any time the favor extended him, and promised also never to mention it after ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... launched out into a disquisition on the history of the duello through the ages that was nearly as long as one of his own serials. In the middle of it, a member of the jury, anxious to be in the limelight, asked ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... feared the vengeance of the disappointed fiend, yet I was unable to overcome my repugnance to the task which was enjoined me. I found that I could not compose a female without again devoting several months to profound study and laborious disquisition. I had heard of some discoveries having been made by an English philosopher, the knowledge of which was material to my success, and I sometimes thought of obtaining my father's consent to visit England for this purpose; ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... reflecting upon his precarious means, and upon his chances of obtaining a future livelihood, a sudden idea struck him. Rigdon well knew his countrymen, and their avidity for the marvellous; he resolved to give to the world the "manuscript found," not as a mere work of imagination or disquisition, as its writer had intended it to be, but as a new code of religion, sent down to man, as of yore, on awful Sinai, the ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat |
