Diccionario ingles.comDiccionario ingles.com
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Multiplicity   /mˌəltəplˈɪsɪti/   Listen
Multiplicity

noun
1.
The property of being multiple.
2.
A large number.  Synonyms: numerosity, numerousness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Multiplicity" Quotes from Famous Books



... altogether easy to appreciate the multiplicity of difficulties with which the first editor of Mrs. Behn has to cope. Not only is her life strangely mysterious and obscure, but the rubbish of half-a-dozen romancing biographers must needs be cleared away before we ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... and a whole chronology of various patchwork in their walls; their low-browed doorways open upon a sunken floor; their projecting stories peep, as it were, over one another's shoulders, and rise into a multiplicity of peaked gables; they have curious windows, breaking out irregularly all over the house, some even in the roof, set in their own little peaks, opening lattice-wise, and furnished with twenty small panes of lozenge-shaped ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... which is not primarily an object of sight; the sight, on the other hand, comprehends colour, which can hardly be made perceptible to the touch: the touch again has the advantage in a new idea of pleasure resulting from a moderate degree of warmth; but the eye triumphs in the infinite extent and multiplicity of its objects. But there is such a similitude in the pleasures of these senses, that I am apt to fancy, if it were possible that one might discern colour by feeling (as it is said some blind men have done), that the same colours, and ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... Ogdoad. The latter had scarcely more than a theoretical existence, and was generally absorbed into the person of the former. Thus the theologians of Hermopolis gradually disengaged the unity of their feudal god from the multiplicity ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... the lessons are taught and growth follows in response to cultivation. But the schools are handicapped by lack of time for much personal care, by lack of facilities for the best of instruction and by the multiplicity of things that must be done. Under the best conditions a teacher has but a small part of a child's time and then instruction must be given usually to classes and not to individuals. Outside of school for a considerable time each day the child falls under the influence of playmates who may or ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... factors of public enterprise, has never been investigated extensively and thoroughly. There is much possibility in planning for greater efficiency and in determining what can be accomplished under economical administration. Every one is aware of the multiplicity of men in municipal service. Some of these are entirely incompetent, others partly so; the recent appointees may be more efficient, but the majority of them gradually deteriorate under the subtle influence of the prevailing atmosphere, ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXXII, June, 1911 • E. D. Hardy

... communicated to him several curious particulars. With these will be interwoven the most authentick accounts that can be obtained from those who knew him best; many sketches of his conversation on a multiplicity of subjects, with various persons, some of them the most eminent of the age; a great number of letters from him at different periods, and several original pieces dictated by him to Mr. Boswell, distinguished by that peculiar energy, which marked ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... by a spirit of restlessness to which delay and tranquillity are loathsome. The advertisements on the walls are examined, the map of some new Eden is studied some Eden in which an irregular pond and a church are surrounded by a multiplicity of regular villas and shrubs till the student feels that no consideration of health or economy would induce him to live there. Then the porters come in and out, till each porter has made himself odious to the sight. Everything is hideous, dirty, ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope

... the proof from prescription belong the arguments derived from the novelty and contradictory multiplicity of the Gnostic doctrines as well as the proofs that Greek philosophy is the original source of heresy. See Iren. II. 14. 1-6; Tertull. de praescr. 7; Apolog. 47 and other places; the Philosophoumena of Hippolytus. On Irenaeus' criticism of Gnostic theology see Kunze, Gotteslehre des Irenaeus, Leipzig, ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... who had taken part in the conference at Viner's house, unknown even to Carless, who in the multiplicity of his engagements, had forgotten the instructions which he had given on the previous afternoon to Portlethwaite, a strict watch was being kept on the man around whom all the events of that morning had centred. Portlethwaite, after Methley and his client ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher

... commerce and culture. But the performance of these may be slowly building up in him a consistent personality. It is in character that the unity of the moral life is most clearly expressed. There must be therefore a unity of character underlying the multiplicity of characteristics, one single and commanding principle at work in the formation of life of which every possible virtue ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... agnomen very similar in allusiveness to our praenomen of Sulinis, for Minerva is noticed expressly by Ruius and Victor in their short notes concerning the structures of Rome, as then standing in the Esquiline quarter. The form of a Pantheon is made out by the multiplicity of niches,... and such, we believe, was our own Temple of Minerva at Bath." It would occupy too much space were I to attempt to add to this paper my views of this discovery, but I may briefly say, that I am satisfied that they were not the remains ...
— The Excavations of Roman Baths at Bath • Charles E. Davis

... weird grivoiserie Affected by VERLAINE, And charmed by the chinoiserie Of MARINETTI'S strain, In all its multiplicity He worshipped eccentricity, And found his chief ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various

... furniture, without impedimenta, with the least possible amount of neat clothing, shows more than the advantage held by the Japanese race in the struggle of life; it shows also the real character of some of the weaknesses in our own civilization. It forces reflection upon the useless multiplicity of our daily wants. We must have meat and bread and butter; glass windows and fire; hats, white shirts, and woolen underwear; boots and shoes; trunks, bags, and boxes; bedsteads, mattresses, sheets, and blankets; all of which a Japanese can do without, ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... to be achieved but by postponement, deference, and modesty. Nor can the prodigality of the meadows in May be quoted in dispute. For Nature has something even more severe than modertion: she has an innumerable singleness. Her buttercup meadows are not prodigal; they show multitude, but not multiplicity, and multiplicity is exactly the disgrace of decoration. Who has ever multiplied or repeated his delights? or who has ever gained the granting of the most foolish of his wishes—the prayer for reiteration? It is a curious slight to generous ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... source of inspiration—the poems of the Misses TAYLOR. The dramatist is serenely confident that the new London County Council Censor of Plays, whenever that much-desired official is appointed, will highly approve of this little piece on account of the multiplicity of its morals. It is intended to teach, amongst other useful lessons, that—as the poem on which it is founded puts it—"Fruit in lanes is seldom good"; also, that it is not always prudent to take a hint; again, that constructive murder ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various

... experience has shown to be adequate and necessary, and to leave to those abler than myself the erection of the superstructure. If my methods and conclusions are correct (and I have no doubts on this point, since each one has been reached in various ways and tested by a multiplicity of criteria) there is a great future to these researches. It is not to be forgotten that here we have no Rosetta stone to act at once as key and criterion, and that instead of the accurate descriptions ...
— Studies in Central American Picture-Writing • Edward S. Holden

... Grand Rapids, with its multiplicity of perfectly round pot-hole boulders, was passed in four days, and then, again in company with the boats, we entered the ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton

... first opening an account with the bank, pays a fee of ten guilders; and for every new account, three guilder's three stivers; for every transfer, two stivers; and if the transfer is for less than 300 guilders, six stivers, in order to discourage the multiplicity of small transactions. The person who neglects to balance his account twice in the year, forfeits twenty-five guilders. The person who orders a transfer for more than is upon his account, is obliged to pay three per cent. for the sum overdrawn, and his order is set aside into the bargain. ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... been rather the opposite, namely, that in the multiplicity of phenomena, we should never miss their underlying unity. After generations of this quest, the idea of unity comes to us almost spontaneously, and we apprehend no ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose

... A multiplicity of reports, bills, and decrees, often more or less contradictory but still embodying ideas advanced by Condorcet and Talleyrand, now appeared. Whereas the preceding legislative bodies had considered the subject carefully, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... in two fields. The first is the extension of the homeland frontiers, broadening the geographical area of the nucleus around which the civilization is being built. The second aspect of growth involves an increase in multiplicity, variety and complexity and perhaps also a higher level of quality. Increase in quality is an optional feature of growth and expansion. Toward the end of a cycle of ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing

... From his multiplicity of remedies and advisers, however, Wesley rescued him once more, put him in the saddle, and led him through Oxfordshire, Northampton, and Norfolk, bringing him home greatly benefited ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen

... was a brilliant and gay one, if not happy, the Larch hotel—it could hardly be called a home—became the scene of many festive occasions. A number of entertainments were given, remarkable for the brilliant and effective dresses of the women, the multiplicity and richness of the food, and the variety ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele

... is apt to be distracted by a multiplicity of pursuits; and that scale of perfection, which I wish always to be preserved, is in the greatest danger of being totally disordered, ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds

... that when the professor of any art has one name and many kinds of knowledge, there must be something wrong? The multiplicity of names which is applied to him shows that the common principle to which all these branches of knowledge are tending, is ...
— Sophist • Plato

... received additional wages (either in the form of a carpet, or the money paid him by X for the lumber). If A and B are regarded as typifying all the laborers, and X all the above capitalists, in the multiplicity of actual exchanges, it will be seen that A and B are creating new articles to satisfy their own demand, instead of meeting the demands of X. If their primary wants are already supplied, then they take their additional wages in the form of comforts and decencies. When Class X ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... impression made by the compelled oath was comparatively slight: for it was the worst vice of the Saxon laws, to entangle all charges, from the smallest to the greatest, in a reckless multiplicity of oaths [215], to the grievous loosening of the bonds of truth: and oaths then had become almost as much mere matter of legal form, as certain oaths—bad relic of those times!—still existing in our parliamentary and collegiate proceedings, are deemed by men, not otherwise dishonourable, ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... outline of student dramatic efforts in recent years reveals a multiplicity of interested organizations as well as a wide variety of offerings. Necessarily this has given rise to rivalries and sometimes inadequate preparation, though it has stimulated a vital and intelligent interest in the drama as an actual form ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... the preceding usually by a single point, and the teaching effort should be confined to that point. Only a false standard of accuracy demands that every error be corrected every time it appears. Such a course loses sight of the main point in a multiplicity of details, renders instruction ineffective by scattering effort, produces hopeless confusion in the mind of the pupil, and robs composition of that inspiration without which it cannot succeed. ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... ourselves. Anxiety and Ennui are the Scylla and Charybdis on which the bark of human happiness is most commonly wrecked. If a life of luxurious idleness and selfish ease in some measure saves men from the first danger, it seldom fails to bring with it the second. No change of scene, no multiplicity of selfish pleasures will in the long run enable them to escape it. As Carlyle says, 'The restless, gnawing ennui which, like a dark, dim, ocean flood, communicating with the Phlegethons and Stygian deeps, begirdles every human life so guided—is it not the painful cry ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... knowing his works for the first time; no one perhaps does that, such is the multiplicity of the copies of them; and I vividly remembered them from my acquaintance with the originals four decades before, as I had remembered the Michelangelos; but in their presence and in the presence of so many other masterpieces in the different rooms, with their horrible miracles ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... differentiated as to sex, when there is compatibility of souls. I mean to say that the new being born under those conditions will be a conglomerate of male and female; a new creature to whom both will have yielded their personality, a unity in multiplicity, to use a well-known term, an 'hommefemme.' The man will cease to be man, the woman ...
— Married • August Strindberg

... consideration the greatness of the anxieties under which this art must be practised, the multitude of circumstances to be known and regarded in it, and the subtleties both of apprehension and stratagem constantly demanded by it, as well as the multiplicity of disturbing accidents and doubtful contingencies against which it must make provision on the instant, it must indeed rank as far the first of the arts of the second order; and next to this great art of killing, medicine being much like war in its stratagems ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... of the ψυχικοί [psuchikoi] is disruption into multiplicity, manifoldness; which, however, is subordinate to a higher unity, by which it allows itself to be guided; ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... this multiplicity; hundred-handed, Argus-eyed, able and happy to cope with this rolling miscellany of facts and sciences, and, by his own versatility, to dispose of them with ease; a manly mind, unembarrassed by the variety of coats of convention with ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... clumsy and disproportioned. The drapery of statues, whether in brass or stone, when thrown into large masses, appears hard and unpleasant to the eye and for that reason the antients always imitated wet linen, which exhibiting the shape of the limbs underneath, and hanging in a multiplicity of wet folds, gives an air of lightness, softness, and ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... a single small family of slaves in its service. From available data it may be confidently surmised, furthermore, that at least one household in every ten among the eighty-three thousand white inhabitants of the colony held one or more slaves. These two features—the multiplicity of slaveholdings and the virtually uniform pettiness of their scale—constituted a regime never paralleled in equal volume elsewhere. The economic interest in slave property, nowhere great, was widely diffused. The petty masters, however, maintained so little system in the management ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... must not think that the 'Orlando Furioso' has one definite plot. At first reading we are confused by the multiplicity of incident, by the constant change of scene, and by the breaking off of one story to make place for another. In a single canto the scene changes from France to Africa, and by means of winged horses tremendous distances are traveled over in a day. On closer ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... of a modern work. The model is not there to be copied merely, but that the study of it may lead us insensibly to the same processes of thought by which its purity of outline and harmony of parts were attained, and enable us to feel that strength is consistent with repose, that multiplicity is not abundance, that grace is but a more refined form of power, and that a thought is none the less profound that the limpidity of its expression allows us to measure it at a glance. To be possessed with this conviction ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... fortune. Nothing can be more ruinous to real comfort than the too common custom of setting out a table, with a parade and a profusion, unsuited not only to the circumstances of the hosts, but to the number of the guests; or more fatal to true hospitality, than the multiplicity of dishes which luxury has made fashionable at the tables of the great, the wealthy, and the ostentatious, who are, ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... tastes, and receiving constantly, from association with him, that manly influence which a woman's mind needs to develop its completeness. Living the whole year in the country, the Fergusons developed within themselves a multiplicity of resources. They read and studied, and discussed subjects with their father; for, as we all know, the discussion of moral and social questions has been from the first, and always will be, a prime source of amusement ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... to the shabby household at Downport. Her letters were never careless or behind time, and no one was ever neglected in the multiplicity of messages. She would be the most truthful and faithful of loving women a few years hence, this handsome Theodora. There was some reserve in her manner toward Denis this evening. She attended to Miss Elizabeth's octagon-stitch, and left him to amuse Priscilla. ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett

... That it is the opinion of this Congress that it is desirable to adopt a single prime meridian for all nations in place of the multiplicity of initial ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various

... 1, 4, 1, 3 for the first figure. All the other editions, except Riemann's, recommend the fifth finger on F, the fourth on C. Von Billow believes that small hands beginning with his system will achieve quicker results than by the Chopin fingering. This is true. Riemann phrases the study with a multiplicity of legato bows and dynamic accents. Kullak prefers the Tellefsen metronome 80, rather than the traditional 96. Most of the others use 88 to the quarter, except Riemann, who espouses the more rapid gait of 96. Klindworth, with his ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... can be furnished from among the Greek Polytheists of one who taught the existence of a multiplicity of independenty uncreated, self-existent deities; they almost universally believed in the existence of ONE SUPREME, UNCREATED, ETERNAL GOD, "The Maker of all things"—"the Father of gods and men,"—"the sole Monarch and Ruler of ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... be dressed in a multiplicity of ways, but are seldom more relished in any form than in a well-made and expeditiously served omelette. This may be plain, or seasoned with minced herbs and a very little shalot, when the last is liked, and is then called ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... POWELL, with particular reference to the disadvantages of the multiplied inflections in Indian languages, alike with the Greek and Latin, when the speaker is compelled, in the choice of a word to express his idea, to think of a great multiplicity of things, gives ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery

... the multiplicity of the agents which act in the same manner. This harmony is founded upon the convergence or opposition of the movements. Thus the perfect accord is the consonance of the three agents,—head, torso and limbs. Dissonance ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... lives only remain, which are all of Greeks, except two Carthaginians, Hamilcar and Hannibal; and two Romans, M. Porcius Cato and T. Pomponius Atticus. Of his own life,—of him who had written the lives of so many, no account is transmitted; but from the multiplicity of his productions, we may conclude that it was ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... of the severe liquor law now in force in Pennsylvania, it may be of interest to recall an early enactment regulating the traffic. It was provided in 1709, that "For preventing of disorders and the mischiefs that may happen by multiplicity of public houses of entertainment, Be it enacted, That no person or persons whatsoever, within this province, shall hereafter have or keep any public inn, tavern, ale-house, tippling-house or dram shop, victualling or public house of entertainment in any county of this ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... we talk of divers spaces, we mean only parts of one and the same space. Moreover, these parts cannot antecede this one all-embracing space, as the component parts from which the aggregate can be made up, but can be cogitated only as existing in it. Space is essentially one, and multiplicity in it, consequently the general notion of spaces, of this or that space, depends solely upon limitations. Hence it follows that an a priori intuition (which is not empirical) lies at the root of all our conceptions of space. ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... inconsistencies, and extravagancies of the Hindoo sacred writings, on no subject, perhaps, is the multiplicity of varying accounts and discrepancies more astonishing than on the present. Volumes could not suffice to retail them all. Brahma's first attempts at the production of the forms of animated beings were as eminently unsuccessful as they were various. At one time he ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... in his hands. Who ever heard of a man 'postponing' an arrangement in such circumstances? Let them do what they might with Polyeuka, he was safe! He telegraphed back to say that there could be no postponement As far as he was concerned the whole thing was settled. Then there came a multiplicity of telegrams, very costly to the Crinkett interest;—costly also and troublesome to himself; for he, though the matter was so pleasantly settled as far as he was concerned, could not altogether ignore the plaints that were made to him. Then there ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... formed from the multiplicity and diversity of his attainments, rather than from any single performance; for it would not be safe to claim for him the highest rank in any single denomination of literary dignity; yet perhaps there was nothing in which he would not have excelled, if he had not divided ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts

... The Bill he handled with a severity that inflicted the keenest smarts on the self-love of its designers. A few days later, the Capucin Chabot, one of those weak and excitable natures that in ordinary times divert men by the intensity, multiplicity, and brevity of their enthusiasms, but to whom the fiercer air of such an event as the Revolution is a real poison, rose and in the name of the Committee of General Security called the attention of the Chamber to what he styled ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley

... of the time, but I do not think that it extends very high. Where it would be the highest and most perceptible would be on the arid plans of Africa and Asia, when the simoom is passing, or in the track of a tornado. But from the multiplicity of these storm centers and the varied winds they would produce even this dust could not travel ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various

... concepts, individual or united, constitute the one or the other. Army, Church, and State, each is an organic whole, complex beyond all possible addition of units, and not a concept at all, but rather an animal that thinks, creates, devours, and destroys. The attempt to bridge the chasm between multiplicity and unity is the oldest problem of philosophy, religion, and science, but the flimsiest bridge of all is the human concept, unless somewhere, within or beyond it, an energy not individual is hidden; and in that ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... little embarrassed by this flood of language and its multiplicity of direction, but the interval gave him time to collect himself and get into the ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens

... different in a variety of instances; yet nothing can be more ruinous of real comfort than the too common custom of making a profusion and a parade, unsuited not only to the circumstances of the host, but to the number of the guests; or more fatal to true hospitality than the multiplicity of dishes which luxury has made fashionable at the tables of the great, the wealthy, and the ostentatious, who are often neither great, nor wealthy, nor wise. Such excessive preparation, instead of being a compliment to the party invited, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... find yourself unequal to dealing satisfactorily with the increasing intricacy of our financial operations, become confused by the multiplicity of detail, suffer from pains in the head?" Sir Abel had commented, with a certain largeness of manner. "I own, my good friend, I was not wholly unprepared for ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... nurses, etc., would eagerly listen to his informal expositions in the wards, as he invariably showed a grasp of the subject that was equally minute and comprehensive. "He would start from some particular point and work his way point by point down to the minutest detail, not bewildering by a multiplicity of facts, but keeping them all in order with perfect handling, until the framing of the whole thing stood out luminously clear to the dullest comprehension. An old pupil says his well-known authoritative manner ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes

... being: since good and being are convertible, as was stated in the First Part (Q. 5, AA. 1, 3). But God alone has the whole plenitude of His Being in a certain unity: whereas every other thing has its proper fulness of being in a certain multiplicity. Wherefore it happens with some things, that they have being in some respect, and yet they are lacking in the fulness of being due to them. Thus the fulness of human being requires a compound of soul and body, having all the powers and instruments of knowledge and movement: ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... of Plotinus, who, without propounding a doctrine of emanation, arranged the universe as a hierarchy of existence, beginning with the Good, and descending through correlated Being and Intelligence, to Soul or Life, which produces Nature with all its multiplicity, and so stands on "the horizon" between undivided and divided being. In the famous encyclopaedia of the "Brothers of Purity," written in the East about A.D. 1000, and representing Muslim thought at its best, the hierarchy takes this form: God, Intelligence, Soul, Primal Matter, Secondary ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... difficult to pronounce any fixed and uniform opinion on him." He is, in fact, an obscure compound of an infinity of ideas and sentiments, which change and modify themselves reciprocally, and of which it is as difficult to disentangle the sources as to foresee the results. An uncertain produce of a multiplicity of circumstances, sometimes impenetrable, always complicated, often unknown to the person influenced by them, and not even suspected by those who surround him, man scarcely learns how to know himself, ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... police arrangements against spies of every kind, and it looked to be a most unpromising task to elicit what I wanted to know, because one was sure of being watched at every turn. As I afterwards discovered, it was through this multiplicity of police arrangements that one was able to get about with comparative ease, because if one went boldly enough it immediately argued to the watchful policeman that someone else was sure to be ...
— My Adventures as a Spy • Robert Baden-Powell

... seeing he could not prevail, he invited us to dine with him the next day, which we promised to do, against which time he provided, very sumptuously (according to his estate) for us, and now was he attended after a more Royal manner than ever we saw him before, both for number of Servants, and multiplicity of Meat, on which we fed very heartily; but he having no other Beverage for us to drink, then water, we fetched from our Ship a Case of Brandy, presenting some of it to him to drink, but when he had tasted of it, he would by no means be perswaded to touch thereof again, preferring (as he ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville

... a multiplicity of notes and thus to save space, the nomenclature has been to a certain extent modernised: a new general table of strata has been inserted in the first chapter, in place of the one originally there printed, which was cumbrous and included many minor subdivisions ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... lightning of lust scarce blackens the pillar while it shatters the vase. The moral effect of an act is determined by the prevailing standard of ethics. Were polyandry the general practice, a woman could have a multiplicity of husbands and be considered pure; where polygamy is the rule, a man may have a multitude of wives and be regarded as moral. Ethical codes ever adapt themselves to conditions. Solomon was one of the most honorable men of his age, but were he alive to-day he would be branded ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... "In consequence of the multiplicity of orders, it would be better if the ambassador had the power to sign for the king ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... Beings. In all those apparently, individual forms of existence the one indivisible Brahman is present, but, owing to the particular adjuncts into which Maya has specialised itself, it appears to be broken up—it is broken up, as it were—into a multiplicity, of intellectual or sentient principles, the so-called jivas (individual or personal souls). What is real in each jiva is only the universal Brahman itself; the whole aggregate of individualising bodily organs and mental functions, which in ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut

... combinations of these different factors, with the predominance of one or the other, explain the multiplicity of the imaginative conceptions of the world, in contrast to the unity and simplicity ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... left unbarred, and, as the window might have been easily opened with a push, the cold which I experienced, as an accompaniment of the nocturnal visit, was easily accounted for. There was a mark of blood upon the window-stool, and a scrape upon the knee of the body corresponded with it. A multiplicity of other slight circumstances, and the positive assertion of the chamber-maid that the window had been opened, and was but imperfectly closed again, came in support of the conclusion, which was to my mind satisfactorily settled by the concurrent evidence of the medical men, to the effect ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... ne- "farious & dangerous plan, & doctrines "of the Illuminati, but never saw the "Book until you were pleased to send "it to me. The same causes which "have prevented my acknowledging the "receipt of your letter, have prevented "my reading the Book, hitherto, name- "ly, the multiplicity of matters which me "pressed upon before, & the debilitated "state in which I was left after a se "vere fever had been removed, and "which allows me to add little more now, "than thanks for your kind wishes and "favourable sentiments, except to cor- "rect an error you ...
— Washington's Masonic Correspondence - As Found among the Washington Papers in the Library of Congress • Julius F. Sachse

... shore which he sees spread with wrecks, is natural to the sailor. I had before my eye so many critical adventures ended in miscarriage, that caution was forced upon me. I encountered in every page wit struggling with its own sophistry, and learning confused by the multiplicity of its views. I was forced to censure those whom I admired, and could not but reflect, while I was dispossessing their emendations, how soon the same fate might happen to my own, and how many of the readings which I have corrected may be by ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... advice. Sir, if you should require it I will transmit this last letter of the Earl of Orford's, which my brother has sent to me, but beg leave to observe that no blame can be attached to his Lordship in this case, he having from a multiplicity of important business doubtless forgotten these minor matters. I hope now, Sir, that you will have no further objection to issue an order for the payment of that portion of my brother's arrears specified in the two affidavits in the possession of the Paymaster General. By the ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... involves their construction awakens the curiosity of the most unobservant spectator. Pillars which belong to no known order of architecture, inscriptions in an alphabet which continues an enigma, fabulous animals which stand as guards at the entrance, the multiplicity of allegorical figures which decorate the walls,—all conspire to carry us back to ages of the most remote antiquity, over which the traditions of the East shed a doubtful and ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... the points of concrete experience which it vivifies and transfigures to his eyes. It is as if a painter trained in the school of Raphael or Lionardo had discovered that he could use the minute and fearless brush of the Flemings in the service of their ideals. He pursues soul in all its rich multiplicity, in the tortuosities and dark abysses of character; he forces crowds of sordid, grotesque, or commonplace facts to become its expressive speech; he watches its thought and passion projected into the tide of ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... last two Acts of Othello with the last two Acts of King Lear would show how unfavourable to dramatic clearness is a multiplicity of figures. But that this multiplicity is not in itself a fatal obstacle is evident from the last two Acts of Hamlet, and especially from the final scene. This is in all respects one of Shakespeare's triumphs, ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... is the result of nature's first great dealings with the superficies of the Earth; but the general tendency of her subsequent operations is towards the production of beauty, by a multiplicity of symmetrical parts uniting in a consistent whole. This is everywhere exemplified along the margins of these lakes. Masses of rock, that have been precipitated from the heights into the area of waters, ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers

... a military journal. The following is a brief statement of the situation of the army at that time. "I begin at this epoch, a concise journal of military transactions, &c. I lament not having attempted it from the commencement of the war in aid of my memory: and wish the multiplicity of matter which continually surrounds me, and the embarrassed state of our affairs, which is momentarily calling the attention to perplexities of one kind or another, may not defeat altogether, or so interrupt ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall

... encloses fifteen courts. At the time of the revolution, the hospital was called the Temple of Humanity, under Napoleon the Temple of Mars, and now the Hotel des Invalides. It is under the control of the minister of war, has a governor and a multiplicity of inferior officers. It is divided into fourteen sections, over each of which an officer is appointed. All soldiers who are disabled, or who have served thirty years in the army, are entitled to the privileges of the institution, ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett

... enriched by their decay, has returned to its original barrenness—in that ancient burial-ground I noticed much variety of monumental sculpture. The elder stones, dated a century back or more, have borders elaborately carved with flowers and are adorned with a multiplicity of death's-heads, crossbones, scythes, hour-glasses, and other lugubrious emblems of mortality, with here and there a winged cherub to direct the mourner's spirit upward. These productions of Gothic taste must have been quite beyond the ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... troubled his very frends much, who were more confident of the contrary, then praepared to answer the allegations. The truth is, he had unhappily contracted some praejudice to the Arch-Bishopp, and havinge only knowne him enough, to observe his passyon, when it may be multiplicity of businesse or other indisposition had possessed him, did wish him lesse intangled and ingaged in the businesse of the Courte or State, though, I speake it knowingly, he had a singular estimation and reverence of his greate learninge and confessed integrity, ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various

... remaining {Fables} for me to write, but I purposely abstain; first, that I may not seem troublesome to you, whom a multiplicity of matters distract; and next, that, if perchance any other person is desirous to make a like attempt, he may still have something left to do; although there is so abundant a stock of matter that an artist ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus

... part of the 25th Division on the front from Bazuel to a short way north of Mazinghien, with a view to the attack planned for the 23rd October. There now occurred a sudden change in the type of country. Instead of open rolling downs, there was a multiplicity of small fields, divided by high thick-set hedges trained on wire which proved formidable obstacles. The enemy had good positions for his artillery in the Bois l'Eveque, and on the east bank of the Canal de la Sambre, protected from the danger of being rushed by that obstacle, ...
— A Short History of the 6th Division - Aug. 1914-March 1919 • Thomas Owen Marden

... drawing, boldly dashed off in the neutral tint of the artist. The portions of the prospect generically distinct are, notwithstanding its great extent and variety, but few; and the partial veil of haze, by glazing down its distracting multiplicity of minor points, served to bring them out all the more distinctly. There is, first stretching far in a southern and eastern direction along the landscape, the rectilinear ridge of the Black Isle,—not quite the sort of line a painter would introduce into a composition, but true to geologic ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... hath so happened, through the multiplicity of business, that I have been much hindered and kept back from my wonted travels into those parts whence he went, and so could not, till now, obtain an opportunity to make further inquiry after whom he left behind, that I might give you an account of them.[7] But having had some concerns that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... particles which fly off along the line, perpendicular to the radius of the circle. The world travels very fast now; the increased velocity of the transit of earthly bodies, the rate at which they live, the multiplicity of engagements, etc., have made the social world revolve so fast that the speed would have startled the torpid life of the last century. And what is the result? Men's thoughts fly off at a tangent; they are unable ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson

... to convince Collins of something which he was only too eager to believe. And the knowledge instantly repaired his shattered nerves. Before the intrusion of the lawyer, Collins, made dizzy by the multiplicity of incriminating circumstances so adroitly unfolded by the detective, overcome by the rapidity of Britz's blows, was an abject creature ready to surrender his soul. All the enchantment had suddenly passed out of his life, for, to one of his disposition, ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin

... Moreover, a great part of our possessions is appropriated to the sacred rites of hospitality, 239 which you Christians know not how to practise; for you worship the idol of ostentation; you invite your friends to dinner; you incur an intolerable and injudicious expense, and provide a multiplicity of dishes to pamper their appetites, sufficient for a regiment of muselmen; when nature and national beings, which men were born to be, require only one dish. Moreover, your sumptuous entertainments are given to those only ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... magistrate, like the other provinces. The executive power was therefore wholly confided to the municipal authorities and the territorial proprietors. But these, though generally patriotic in their views, were divided into a multiplicity of different opinions. Rivalry and resentment produced a total want of union, ended in anarchy, and prepared the way for civil war. William of Nassau penetrated the cause, and proposed the remedy in moving for the appointment of a provincial governor. This proposition terrified Granvelle, ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... realize the multiplicity of the cares which pressed upon Pitt. Rose feared that he would soon succumb to the burden; for, apart from the defence of a weak Government against a strong Opposition, Pitt transacted very much of the business of the War Office and Foreign Office, besides assisting the Admiralty ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... popular instruction in France, is the multiplicity of patois, and the tenacity of the peasantry for them. The same objection exists to the use of so many Indian dialects by such numbers of petty tribes. Pity these were not all abolished. They can never prosper without coming on to general grounds ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... statuary. He also strove to secure originality and to stimulate astonishment by bizarre modulations of accepted classic forms, by breaking the lines of architraves, combining angularities with curves, adopting a violently accented rhythm and a tortured multiplicity of parts, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... we come to the root of the whole matter, to the field where reform is most needed, that is, in the moral condition of our society. While there are few nations in which there is such a diversity of religious views and multiplicity of religious sects, there are few peoples which are so proverbially irreligious as our own. Yet our condition in this respect is rather a neutral one than otherwise, for while we are without any positive immorality ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... One cannot really have enough of elephants; and one would have liked a whole herd of giraffes, and a whole troop of gnus would not have glutted one's pleasure in their goat-faces, cow-heads, horse-tails, and pig-feet. But why so many snakes of a kind? Why such a multiplicity of crocodiles? Why even more than one of that special pattern of Mexican iguana which looked as if cut out of zinc and painted a dull Paris green? Why, above ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... I have received both of your letters, the last the 17th, and thank you for them as well as for your care of my room and clothes. The former I understand is used for a multiplicity of purposes, and the cats and kittens have the full run of my establishment. Guard me against 'MISS SELDEN' [Mildred's kitten], I pray you. I am sorry that you are not with me, as it possibly may have benefitted your neuralgia. But if MISS BELLE is with you, I am sure she will be of greater ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son

... mental and moral improvement at the present day, are periodical publications. The multiplicity and cheapness of these sources of knowledge renders them accessible to all classes of the community. And though their influence were to be as evil as the frogs of Egypt ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott

... Mr. Phunky had been a rich man he would have instantly sent for his clerk to remind him; if he had been a wise one he would have applied his forefinger to his forehead, and endeavoured to recollect whether, in the multiplicity of his engagements, he had undertaken this one or not; but as he was neither rich nor wise (in this sense, at all events) ...
— The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick - A Lecture • Frank Lockwood

... to use a farmer's expression, are these sweeps of corn and ploughed land, belonging to different owners, yet apparently without division. Only boundary stones at intervals mark the limits. Here we find no infinitesimal subdivision and no multiplicity of crops. Wheat, clover, oats form the triennial course, other crops being rye, potatoes, Swede turnips, sainfoin and the oeillette or oil poppy. The cider apple is also an ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... regard the minimal amount of substance which is contained within the nucleus of the germ-cells, in the form of rods, bands, or granules, as the germ-substance or germ-plasm, and I call the individual granules ids. There is always a multiplicity of such ids present in the nucleus, either occurring individually, or united in the form of rods or bands (chromosomes). Each id contains the primary constituents of a whole individual, so that several ids are concerned in the development of a ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel

... off with a suitable diamond pattern belt and the tip finished with an equally appropriate series of carvings in the shape of a mascle studded foolscap, or a capsule supported by elongated cowries. The back appears to be cut to a uniform depth, and in spite of the multiplicity of figures there is neither ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... any truth in this molecular-force-theory of life, it is about time for us to discard some of the old categories respecting matter, motion, and life, and substitute new ones in their place. In the multiplicity of new scientific terms constantly springing up for recognition in these days, there ought to be no difficulty in expressing the true categories, and assigning to them their proper definitional value. To include physical force, chemical force, molecular force, and vital force all under one ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... plants which have a multiplicity of floral elements, as the many petals and stamens of the rose; and finally, the higher plants, the orchids among the monocotyledons and the composite among the dicotyledonous plants, come under the third division ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various

... for the interests it insures, and with equally defective institutions; not built or manned methodically, having an utterly inadequate reserve of men, all classes of which would be absorbed at the very outset, without a vestige of preparation for the enrolment of volunteers; distracted by the multiplicity of its functions in guarding our colossal empire and commerce, and conspicuously lacking a brain, not merely for the smooth control of its own unwieldy mechanism, but for the study of rival aims and systems. We have no North Sea naval base, no North Sea ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... Baron some minutes to pursue his inquiry, during which he reflected that the people of the shop were not such fools after all. They had admitted moreover that they had accidentally neglected this relic of gentility—it had been overlooked in the multiplicity of their treasures. He now recalled that the man had wanted to polish it up before sending it home, and that, satisfied for his own part with its honourable appearance and averse in general to shiny furniture, he had in his impatience declined to ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James

... sensation, endless diversity of language, conception and faith is the result. Another result, of course, is the endless diversity of deities. Every race, every nation, every tribe, every household, every heart, has had its own God. And yet, with all this multiplicity in religious literature and dogma, subject and object, a unity co-exists which the student of the science notes with profound interest. All nations of men are of one blood; and all forms of God embody the one Eternal Spirit. To this unity mythology tends. As one writer says: "We must ever ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... the queens were not properly developed, and died in their cells. Perhaps they did not receive sufficient warmth, or were not treated in some other important respects, as they would have been if left under the care of the bees. In the multiplicity of my experiments, I did not repeat this one under a sufficient variety of circumstances, to ascertain the precise cause of failure; nor have I as yet, tried whether it will answer perfectly, by admitting the bees to ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... stage phrase, "bring their bodies on"; yet it would go hard with some of our most delightful comedians were it the whole truth about acting. As a matter of fact, of course, a great actor includes a multiplicity of selves, so that he may play many parts, yet always be playing himself. Beyond himself no artist, whatever his art, has ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... style, his keen sense of the picturesque and imaginative aspects of outward Nature, his comic power, and his original conception of character. At the same time we could not but feel that a certain tendency to multiplicity of detail, and a neglect of form or insensibility to it, hindered the book of that direct and vigorous effect which its power and variety of resource would otherwise have produced. Something of the same impression is made by the present volume. There are glimpses in it of real genius, but it shows ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... in the case of the City Hall Station three separate plants are required, all of considerable size, and intended for constant use for a multiplicity of movements. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to state that all the mechanism of these important interlocking plants is of the most substantial character and provided with all the necessary safety appliances and means for rapidly setting ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous

... all future existence will be arranged in circles of dead equality on stagnant levels of everlasting hopelessness of change. The law of spiritual attraction is no such force as that, produces no such results. It is broken up by contrasts, changes, multiplicity of other interacting forces. We are not only drawn by affinity to those like ourselves, but often still more powerfully, with rebuking and redeeming effect, to those above us that we may become like them, to those beneath us that we may pity and help them. The law of affinity is ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... Dignity and Art; in short, which so little revolts the Judgment and Belief of the Spectators. Nor have I ever met in all my Reading, with a Scene in any Tragedy, which creates so much Awe, and serious Attention as this does, and which raises such a Multiplicity of the most exalted Sentiments. It is certain, our Author excell'd in this kind of Writing, as has been more than once observed by several Writers, and none ever before or since his Time, could ever bring Inhabitants ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous

... are on the faculties of institutions which formally dissociate themselves from any religious influence. I maintain that this is both unjust and against public policy. Under our present system of religious individualism and ecclesiastical multiplicity, approximations only are possible, but I believe the wise and just plan would be for the state to fix certain standards which all schools receiving financial support from the public funds must maintain, and then, this condition being carried out, distribute the funds ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... common. They must all, in some sense, partake of a common nature, which will be found in whatever is just and in nothing else. This common nature, in virtue of which they are all just, will be justice itself, the pure essence the admixture of which with facts of ordinary life produces the multiplicity of just acts. Similarly with any other word which may be applicable to common facts, such as 'whiteness' for example. The word will be applicable to a number of particular things because they all participate in a common nature or ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell

... aspects of one thing; this is not clear to ordinary minds, but made concrete in the tree—unity in the trunk, infinity in the foliage—any one is able to understand it. We perceive that all things grow as a tree grows, from unity to multiplicity, from simplicity and strength to beauty and fineness. The generation of the line from the point, the plane from the line, and from the plane, the solid, is a matter, again, which chiefly interests the geometrician, but the inevitable ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... ringing incessantly; the roads are thronged with beggars; the beautiful-faced but ragged children attract us by their bright eyes and dark complexions, just touched with a soft rose-tint. We are surprised at the multiplicity of donkeys, their bodies hidden by big loads of merchandise; we observe with interest those handsome milk-white oxen, with wide-spreading horns; we inhale the fragrance of the orange groves, and remember that we ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou

... the Don is always beautiful when one leaves it to go south. Nothing can efface from my mind the picture of it as I saw it when first going to the Caucasus. The sunset illumined it with the hues of romance. All the multiplicity of its dingy buildings shone as if lit up from within, and their dank and mouldy greens and blues and yellows became burning living colours. The town lay spread out upon the high banks of the Don and every segment of it was crowned with a church. The gilt domes blazed in the sunlight ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... deficiencies or his moral obliquities. Punctilious propriety is always pretentious, and pretentiousness is always an attempt at fraud. A shallow mind is very apt to clothe itself with propriety as with a garment. A brain that cannot handle large things very often undertakes to manage a multiplicity of little things, and runs naturally into those minute proprieties of life which are showy, and which appear to the ignorant to indicate great powers and acquisitions in reserve. Most proper men are nothing but a shell, although many of them pass with the world for ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb

... our Survey of Stars and Planets, as of Stones, Vegetables, and other sublunary Parts of the Creation. In a Word, Providence has shewn the Richness of its Goodness and Wisdom, not only in the Production of many Original Species, but in the Multiplicity of Descants which it has made on every Original ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... married of how they behaved to—the sainted women their wives; never to lend ear to the devil, nor to believe, as he had done, that there is no such thing as a devil, for he had been the victim of him, and he knew. The devil, he loudly proclaimed, has a multiplicity of lures, and none more deadly than when he baits with a petticoat. He had been hooked, and had found the devil in person. He begged them urgently to keep his example in memory. By following this and that wildfire ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... pleased to hear that each juror received an allowance of eighteen livres for every sitting and that the multiplicity of crimes against the security of the State obliged the court ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... a moment, strip from our simple purpose the confusion that results from a multiplicity of detail and from millions of written ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... my chicken-yard. Like the King of Prussia,[79] who was said to be so jealous of power, that he wanted to regulate all the mousetraps in his dominions, I soon engrossed the management of a perplexing multiplicity of minute insignificant details. Alas! I discovered to my cost, that trouble is the inseparable attendant upon power: and many times, in the course of the first ten days of my reign, I was ready to give up my dignity ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... correct a tendency toward increasing confusion arising from the too great multiplicity of names and nut varieties, the Resolutions Committee offers the following motion: We move that the President be authorized to appoint a self-perpetuating Northern Nut Growers Association Committee on Variety Nomenclature, and we recommend to our members that they refer to this committee ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various

... quarters with more than one dog at a time, and had never seen more than about a dozen dogs outside their own breed altogether. The noise of barking, the pungency and variety of smells, and the crowded multiplicity of doggy personalities were at first overpowering, and Finn and his sister walked with lowered tails, quick-shifting eyes, raised hackles, and twitching skin. But pride of race, and the self-confidence which goes with ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... multiplicity of excuses. Gillinger was not well, and ought to have that day's rest. Snead's eyes would profit by a lay-off. Deerfoot Browning was leading the league in base running, and as his legs were all bruised and scraped by ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey

... changing her Mate very often, few or none of them being constant to one, till a greater Number of Years has made her capable of managing domestick Affairs, and she hath try'd the Vigour of most of the Nation she belongs to; Multiplicity of Gallants never being a Stain to a Female's Reputation, or the least Hindrance of her Advancement, but the more Whorish, the more Honourable, and they of all most coveted, by those of the first Rank, to make a Wife of. The 'Flos Virginis', so much coveted by the Europeans, ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson

... singular characteristics quite in keeping with the extraordinary topography. Here flourishes the cactus, that rose of the desert, its lovely blossoms red, yellow, and white, illuminating in spring the arid wastes. The soft green of its stems and the multiplicity of its forms and species, are a constant delight. It writhes and struggles across the hot earth, or spreads out silver-spined branches into a tree-like bush, or, in the great pitahaya, rises in fierce dignity like a monitor against the ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... LXXIX. To avoid multiplicity of laws, which by degrees always change the right foundations of the original government, all acts of parliament whatsoever, in whatsoever form passed or enacted, shall, at the end of an hundred years after their enacting, respectively cease and determine of ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt

... and sword in hand. And, what is more, you will have to bid adieu to repose, pleasure, pastime, love, mistress, play, hunting, hawking, and building; for you will not get out of such matters but by multiplicity of town-takings, quantity of fights, signal victories, and great bloodshed. By the other road, which is to accommodate yourself, as regards religion, to the wish of the greatest number of your subjects, you will not encounter so many ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... of staff, and to the assistant chiefs of staff, who, as heads of sections, aided them, great credit is due for the results obtained not only in perfecting the General Staff organization but in applying correct principles to the multiplicity of ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... and the multiplicity of parties was as nothing in comparison to that of private interests, which so crossed each other and in so many different ways, which turned with such mobility, that, in the ignorance which prevailed of the secret motives of the principal actors in that drama so vivid, motley, and ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... mind adds force to the kindred theological quality in its influence upon the Raskol, for the inhabitant of Greater Russia is distinguished for his logical consecutiveness and his acceptance of the extremest consequences of a position. This is partly the cause of the multiplicity and growth of the strange doctrines prevalent among them; and while this disposition frequently lands the schism in the most grotesque of absurdities, it gives a remarkable unity and regularity to even its apparent divergencies and variations. Irregularity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... of winter with a sharp breeze blowing, just after the birth of the New Year, that Howard and Maud left Windlow for Cambridge. The weeks previous had been much clouded for Howard by doubts and anxieties and a multiplicity of small business. Furnishing even an official house for a life of graceful simplicity involved intolerable lists, bills, letters, catalogues of things which it seemed inconceivable that anyone should need. The very number and variety of brushes required seemed to Howard an ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson

... in educational practices it continues to hold sway. College teaching too frequently proceeds on the assumption that the mind is an aching void anxiously awaiting the generous contributions of knowledge to be made by the teacher. College examinations usually test for multiplicity of facts acquired, rather than for power developed. College teaching usually does not perceive that the mind is a reacting machine containing a vast amount of pent-up potential energy which is ready to react upon any presentation; that development ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... written repeatedly to Congress, and to Mr Morris, and enclosed my accounts; as I have not been honored with any answer, I fear either that my letters may have been intercepted, or that the multiplicity of ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various

... new world of ours it is still mainly from one to another one, and oftener still from one to one's self. We have death, too, in America, and a great deal of disagreeable and painful disease, which the multiplicity of our patent medicines does not seem to cure; but this is tragedy that comes in the very nature of things, and is not peculiarly American, as the large, cheerful average of health and success and happy life is. It will not do to boast, but it is well to be true to the facts, and to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... and traffic of ten provinces, makes Cho Chou one of the most important cities in the Empire. The magistrate of this district is the only one, so far as we know, in the Empire who is relieved of the duty of welcoming and escorting transient officers. It was the multiplicity of such duties, so harassing, that persuaded Fang Kuan-ch'eng to write the couplet on one of the city gateways: Jih pien ch'ung yao, wu shuang ti: T'ien hsia fan nan, ti yi Chou. 'In all the world, there is no place so public as this: for ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... expectations; for this prejudice does not only extend to blood, but even to the very names of the breeders, and the country where the Horses are bred, though it is beyond all doubt, that the North claims the preference of all other places in this kingdom; but that preference is allowed only from the multiplicity of Mares and Stallions in those parts, and from the number ...
— A Dissertation on Horses • William Osmer

... that they should have formed so strong an intimacy for each other, lived in the same house, had every opportunity for love, yet never loved. And it was exactly because she was an actress, and a light good-for-nothing creature that it so happened; the very multiplicity of lovers prevented her falling in love; the very carelessness of her life, poor girl, rendered a friend so charming to her. It would have spoiled the friend to have made him an adorer; it would have turned the rarity into the every-day character. ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... and almost abnormally active; and she more than once overtaxed it by too continuous study, or by a disregard of its laws of health, or by a stupendous multiplicity of cares, some of which it would have been wiser to leave to others. She took everybody's burdens to carry herself. She was absorbed in the affairs of those she loved,—of her home circle, of her sisters' families, and of many a ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews

... In the multiplicity of deities the ordinary people were prepared to accept as many more as you chose to offer them, especially if the worship attaching to them contained mystic or orgiastic ceremonies. By this date the populace had ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... exceptions, are composed of fewer elements than the men. A variety of types is presented, but each personality is somewhat constrained and controlled by its idea; the free movement, the iridescence, the variety in oneness, the incalculable multiplicity in unity, of real character are not always present. They admit of definition to a degree which places them at a distance from the inexplicable open secrets of Shakespeare's creation; they lack the simple ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... singularly unfortunate for Spanish dominion in America, that the earliest discoveries of the Spaniards were those of the West India Islands. A multiplicity of governors introduced confusion, feebleness, and want of system, into colonial government. The numbers, comparatively few, of the original inhabitants in each island, were rapidly removed from ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps

... Iliad is not so essentially one piece as the Odyssey, every man agrees. It includes a much greater multiplicity of events, and what is yet more important, a greater multiplicity of prominent personages: the very indefinite title which it bears, as contrasted with the speciality of the name Odyssey, marks the difference at once. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... which rest the labours of a solitary man in his study, the rock on which have been built commonwealths whose might casts a dwarfing shadow upon two oceans. Like a natural force which is obscured as much as illuminated by the multiplicity of phenomena, the power of renunciation is obscured by the mass of weaknesses, vacillations, secondary motives and false steps and compromises which make up the sum of our activity. But no man or woman worthy of the name can pretend to anything ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... consider themselves highly favored when I invite them to these evening parties so necessary for my amusement. I see with pain that you have never yet asked me to admit you there." "Sire," replied the duke, "the multiplicity of the labors with which your majesty has charged me, scarcely allows me time for my pleasures." "Oh, you are not so fully occupied but that you have still some time to spend with the ladies, and I think ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... no means divest myself of the fear of Fitz.'s arrival, I pleaded the multiplicity of my professional engagements as a reason for at once seeing the patient; upon which I was conducted up stairs by my two brethren, and introduced to a half-lighted chamber. In a large easy chair sat a florid-looking old man, with a face ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever

... mention of that daughter's name being forbidden in the family, would have been likely to throw her mind off its balance again. So he had learned to acquiesce in her permanent absence as a thing inevitable, and to drown, as far as possible, all thoughts about that absence in a multiplicity of business. But now that Amos and his brother and sister were going to spend some time in their poor mother's neighbourhood, there arose in Mr Huntingdon's mind a sort of vague idea that perhaps good to her might come of it. But the bustling election business so absorbed ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson

... was accustomed to hold large balances of the public money in his own hands and for his own profit, for long periods, owing to a complex system of accounts which was so rigorous as entirely to defeat its own object. The paymaster could not, through the multiplicity of forms and the exaction of impossible conditions, get a prompt acquittance. The audit sometimes did not take place for years after the accounts were virtually closed. Meanwhile the money accumulated in his hands, and its profits were his legitimate perquisite. Lord Holland, or his representatives, ...
— Burke • John Morley

... board a Mississippi steamer of any pretensions whose captain has not assured me, "She is the fastest thing afloat, sir. Nothing can pass her. We have beaten the—, and the—, and the—, in a fair race, sir." To a stranger, seeking correct information, the multiplicity of these ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox

... of De Morgan's seems to me full of instruction. There is too much of it, no doubt; yet one can put up with the redundancy for the sake of the multiplicity of shades of credulity and self-deception it displays in broad daylight. I suspect many of us are conscious of a second personality in our complex nature, which has many traits resembling those found in the writers of the letters ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... self-control. We may say of Mr. Gladstone that nobody ever had less to repent of from that worst waste in human life that comes of unkindness. Kingsley noticed, with some wonder, how he never allowed the magnitude and multiplicity of his labours to excuse him from any of the minor charities and courtesies ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... foliage. The swans displayed their brilliant plumage on the lake, the boughs of the trees were alive with parroquets and other winged creatures of the tropics. Add to the charms of this scene, Mrs. Becker returning from the prairie with a jar of warm, frothy milk—Mrs. Wolston and Mary busied in a multiplicity of household occupations, to which their white hands and ringing voices gave elegance and grace—Sophia tying a rose to the neck of a blue antelope which she had adopted as a companion—Frank distributing food to the ostriches and large animals, and admit, if there is a paradise on earth, ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... of each other's heart. The journalist took a tone of refined corruption to prove that love obeys no law, that the character of the lovers gives infinite variety to its incidents, that the circumstances of social life add to the multiplicity of its manifestations, that in love all is possible and true, and that any given woman, after resisting every temptation and the seductions of the most passionate lover, may be carried off her feet in the course of a few hours by a fancy, an internal whirlwind of which ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... play of sun and shadow, animate and accentuate the picture, is a matter for a person on the spot, and turning swiftly on his heels, to grasp and bind together in one comprehensive look. It is the character of such a prospect, to be full of change and of things moving. The multiplicity embarrasses the eye; and the mind, among so much, suffers itself to grow absorbed with single points. You remark a tree in a hedgerow, or follow a cart along a country road. You turn to the city, and see children, dwarfed by distance into pygmies, at play about suburban doorsteps; you have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... could conceive, or the heart desire, as a magnificent, comprehensive, majestic symbol of religious faith. All splendor was included within its verge, and there was space for all. She gazed with delight even at the multiplicity of ornament. She was glad at the cherubim that fluttered upon the pilasters, and of the marble doves, hovering unexpectedly, with green olive-branches of precious stones. She could spare nothing, now, of the manifold magnificence that had ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... conceptions that underlie Hindoo pantheism—Sansara, the unabiding pain-world; Nirvana world of rest and re-absorption; the deceptive veil of Maya, the wheel of life, the melting bubbles poured from the bowl of Saki, the Brahma fallen from unity and serenity into multiplicity and pain, the illusion of birth and death, the evil of all individual existence, the retreat from life, the euthanasia of the will and the return to non-existence,—these with their rich train of imagery thrill the jaded and blase European with a ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various

... world, hypostatized and established only through ignorance (avidya) and memory (sm@rti), have no more reality than the images in a mirror. They arise simply from the ideality of a particularizing mind. When the mind is disturbed, the multiplicity of things is produced; but when the mind is quieted, the multiplicity of things disappears. By ego-consciousness (manovijnana) we mean the ignorant mind which by its succession-consciousness clings to the conception of I and Not-I ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... was as economical with his time as a miser could be with his gold; rising at four o'clock in the morning, and allotting to every hour its appropriate work. "Leisure and I have taken leave of each other," said he. And yet such was the happy arrangement of his employments, that, amidst a multiplicity that would distract an ordinary man, he declares that "there are few persons who spend so many hours secluded from all company as myself." "The wonder of his character," said Robert Hall, "is the self-control by which he preserved himself calm, while he kept all in excitement around him. ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward



Words linked to "Multiplicity" :   magnitude, figure, many, few, multiple, number, multitudinousness



Copyright © 2024 Diccionario ingles.com