"Revert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... years, they'd get some results, we hoped. But there wasn't forty or fifty years' worth of raw stuff to tide us over until then. In a decade or so, our power would be just about gone. I could picture the sort of dog-eat-dog world we'd revert back to. Millions of starving, freezing humans tooth-and-clawing in it in the useless shell ...
— The Hunted Heroes • Robert Silverberg
... that, in the midst of her affliction, she should often revert to that sweet young lady of whom she had only caught a hasty glance, but whose sympathy, expressed in one slight brief action, dwelt in her memory like the kindnesses of years. She would often think, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... that they had fallen back. Again they advanced; again they took the trenches; again they were driven out. It began to look as if the victory upon the left would be fruitless, that the position would become an untenable salient and the Haricot Redoubt revert ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... force leads to outward decay, Spiritual existence means inward fulness. Let us revert to Nothing and enter the Absolute, Hoarding up strength for Energy. Freighted with eternal principles, Athwart the mighty void, Where cloud-masses darken, And the wind blows ceaseless around, Beyond the range of conceptions, Let us gain the Centre, ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... harshly," E.H. Clark was right. Periodicity, perhaps the deepest law of the cosmos, celebrates its highest triumphs in woman's life. For years everything must give way to its thorough and settled establishment. In the monthly Sabbaths of rest, the ideal school should revert to the meaning of the word leisure. The paradise of stated rest should be revisited, idleness be actively cultivated; reverie, in which the soul, which needs these seasons of withdrawal for its own development, expatiates ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... of the great number of estates which, in default of heirs to claim them, annually revert to the government. The treasury derives large sums from this source every year. And this is easily explained, for nowadays family ties are becoming less and less binding. Brothers cease to meet; their ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... revert to him and the party under his command. Having landed under the small battery on the point, it was instantly abandoned; but hardly had he time to spike the guns, when, at the distance of a quarter of a mile, he perceived a regular fort, ditched, and with a gate, ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... wisdom for. The lowest, least blessed fact one knows of, on which necessitous mortals have ever based themselves, seems to be the primitive one of Cannibalism: That I can devour Thee. What if such Primitive Fact were precisely the one we had (with our improved methods) to revert to, and ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... revert to the proceedings of Mr Mowbray at this eventful crisis of his life; but in these we find only one circumstance occurring between the day on which he solicited, and that on which he obtained, the hand ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... which live on their parent gods and yet tend to reduce them, we now revert to that happiness hereafter to which looks forward the epic knight that has not been tempted to 'renounce' desire. In pantheistic passages he is what the later remodeller makes him. But enough of old belief remains to show that the warrior really cared a ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... sharp but without sting. The moon shone with a clear brilliance which betokened rain in the near future. The road was clean and dry, and there was no dust in the air except the thin cloud which floated behind us. We passed the Welsh Harp without a check, and not until we reached Edgeware did Winter revert to his second speed. We ran through the little town with only momentary slackening of pace, and so we sped onwards until we opened the stretch of road leading to Brockley Hill. Here Winter, seeing the road clear ahead, jammed on his highest speed and the wheels droned ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... is attached by government to the West Indies, and it would be preposterous to infer that there is not, these become of great magnitude in the estimation of our colonial possessions, and if they are to revert to their former proprietors, it evidently should be for no mean equivalent; and it is but justice to say, that when I was in this part of the world, the apparent negligence in the protection and jurisdiction of these possessions, by the administration of the ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... land shall immediately revert to the people and remain common property until suitable regulations for its disposition can ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... never be taken from her, and learn like her, to sit humbly at the feet of Jesus." And this quiet day of rest, so still, so sweet, so unlike the bustle of the world without, is well calculated to arrest the current of worldly thought, and cause the mind to revert to the impressions of happy childhood, and often to incite a desire for joys more pure and stable than Earth ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... Concordat. "We intend," said their instructions, "that the bishops should be instituted according to the Concordat of Francis I., which we have renewed, and in such a manner as shall be established by the Council, and shall have received our approbation. However, it would be possible to revert to the Concordat on the following conditions: 1st. That the Pope should institute all the bishops that we have appointed; 2nd. That in future our appointment shall be communicated to the Pope in the ordinary form; that if three months after the court of Rome has not instituted, the institution ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... after battle joined, at the second or third assault the tenant acknowledge the tenement to be the right of the demandant, and for that acknowledgment the demandant grant to the tenant that he shall hold of him for life, and that afterwards the tenement shall revert to him (the demandant), that acknowledgment is as stable as if a fine were levied in a writ of warranty ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... sickness. His hat was a faded brown derby and his suit of clothes was of a tough, coarse fibre and much worn. Standing by him on the sidewalk was what appeared to be a much battered drummer's case to which the man's eye would revert oftener than the utmost caution would seem to have rendered necessary. Ensal passed on, but somehow this strange white man came into his mind and demanded a share in the thoughts which would otherwise have gone undividedly ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... Lord, I have to travel up to your grandfather; and when you have finished your appointed time on earth, and enjoyed the blessings bestowed here by the Almighty, then I trust that you will ascend to us; and if we then revert to our earthly days, believe me, children, I shall say then as now, 'From Copenhagen to Korsoer is indeed ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... the three dined together most unconventionally. The ladies talked over old hospital days, and Polly, greatly to her relief, was left much to herself. But although she rarely joined in the converse, her thoughts were not allowed to revert to their unpleasant channel, with the result that when she returned to school things had regained a little of their accustomed brightness, and she was ready to smile a ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... our present difficulties," said Father Hecker, speaking of the conflicts of religion in Europe, "is to revert to a spirituality which is freer than that which Providence assigned as the counteraction of Protestantism in the sixteenth century—to a spirituality which is, and ever has been, the normal one of the Christian inner life. That era accentuated obedience, this accentuates ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... hold, a certain qualified inevitability about this greater social state because we believe any social state not affording a general contentment, a general freedom, and a general and increasing fullness of life, must sooner or later collapse and disintegrate again, and revert more or less completely to the Normal Social Life, and because we believe the Normal Social Life is itself thick-sown with the seeds of fresh beginnings. The Normal Social Life has never at any time been absolutely permanent, ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... he said. "Your expression of opinion is interesting to me. In the meantime, to revert to business, am I right in concluding that you have nothing to say to me, that you do not wish even ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... bungler, and, having adopted this means in a hurry, I could at the time see no other easy way out. Timothy's hold on life, as you may have apprehended, was ever of the slightest, and I suppose I always knew that he must soon revert to the obscure. He could never have penetrated into the open. It was no life for ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... about their music which he had to say to her. It constituted a common bond between them on which they could talk, and to which they could always revert. It formed a medium for the communion of soul—a lofty, spiritual intercourse, where they seemed to blend, even as their voices blended, in a purer realm, free from ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... friend, or the loss of money,—something which disturbs what we call his poise or peace of mind. He becomes sleepless because, when he goes to bed and the shock-absorbing objects of daily interest are removed, his thoughts revert back to his difficulty; he becomes again humiliated or grieved or thrown into an emotional turmoil that prevents sleep. After the first night of insomnia a new factor enters,—the fear of sleeplessness and the conviction that one will not sleep. After a time the insult has lost its sting, or ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... sleeps by the tranquil Concord, upon whose shores the Old Manse was his bridal bower, those who knew him chiefly there revert beyond the angry hour to those peaceful days. How dear the Old Manse was to him he has himself recorded; and in the opening of the Tanglewood Tales he pays his tribute to that placid landscape, which will always be recalled ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... if you tried hard, you would in time find it possible to become what you yourself would approve; and that if from this day you began with resolution to correct your thoughts and actions, you would in a few years have laid up a new and stainless store of recollections, to which you might revert with pleasure." ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... anything minute or in detail upon a man's person, I should necessarily be supposed to do so under the ordinary blind feelings of interest in that subject which govern most people; feelings which I disdain. Now, having said all this, and made my formal protest, liberavi animam meam; and I revert to my subject, and shall say that word or two which I was obliged to promise you on ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... little later than these, one finds a marked tendency to revert to the more abbreviated modelling and broader execution which have been noted as characteristic of his pre-Roman style. The execution, however, is now much more confident and masterly, the draughtsmanship better, ...
— Raeburn • James L. Caw
... the wild sleety wind, That seems searching for something it never can find. The midnight is turning: the lamp is nigh spent: And, wounded and lone, in a desolate tent Lies a young British soldier whose sword... In this place, However, my Muse is compell'd to retrace Her precipitous steps and revert to the past. The shock which had suddenly shatter'd at last Alfred Vargrave's fantastical holiday nature, Had sharply drawn forth to his full size and stature The real man, conceal'd till that moment beneath All he yet had appear'd. From the gay broider'd sheath Which a man in his wrath flings ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... tantalizing thought. Not that he wanted it. God forbid! Ever after he would hate the sight of a corncrib. He simply resented the notion of leaving it behind for the vocal entertainment of Silas, who would likely get up again with the roosters and roar into it at "hoboes." Yes, the corncrib would revert to Silas, from whom he had merely rented it for one night at a most appalling price. The improvidence of it shocked him. Kenny retraced his footsteps in a blaze of indignation and made a bonfire on the corncrib floor to which ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... as he finished and said, "But, why not do both. Wouldn't that be more effective than fighting each other? How can continued destruction revert previous destruction inflicted in the same manner? Could not ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... idly, he came upon an article by a Southern writer, upon the perennial race problem that has vexed the country for a century. The writer maintained that owing to a special tendency of the negro blood, however diluted, to revert to the African type, any future amalgamation of the white and black races, which foolish and wicked Northern negrophiles predicted as the ultimate result of the new conditions confronting the South, would therefore be an ethnological impossibility; for the ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... theme, he said: "I have forborne to revert to myself in our interviews; they were too divine for that. You will always remember that I have ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... originated among the rude tribes of Thrace, who were notoriously addicted to drunkenness. Its mystic doctrines and extravagant rites were essentially foreign to the clear intelligence and sober temperament of the Greek race. Yet appealing as it did to that love of mystery and that proneness to revert to savagery which seem to be innate in most men, the religion spread like wildfire through Greece until the god whom Homer hardly deigned to notice had become the most popular figure of the pantheon. The ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... electorates become vacant by default of heirs, it shall revert to the Emperor, and be by him disposed of—Bohemia excepted, where the vacancy is to be supplied ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... feeling. He made the usual declaration, that he had seen many persons at the Court of Fairy, whose names he rehearsed particularly, and declared that all such persons as are taken away by sudden death go with the King of Elfland. With this man's evidence we have at present no more to do, though we may revert to the execrable proceedings which then took place against this miserable juggler and the poor women who were accused of the same crime. At present it is quoted as another instance of a fortune-teller referring to Elfland as the source ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... lesson that he could explain? Did she, in short, want anything he could possibly get her, or do for her? For a long while no answer could be obtained beyond a "no, no—not at all—no, thank you"; but he still persevered; and no sooner had he begun to revert to her own home, than her increased sobs explained to him where the grievance lay. He tried ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... down on my couch and I fear lest there be an object between him and the woman. What deemest thou of the affair?" Said the Wazir, "Allah prolong the king's continuance! What sawest thou in this youth?[FN147] Is he not ignoble of birth, the son of thieves? Needs must a thief revert to his vile origin, and whoso reareth the serpent's brood shall get of them naught but biting. As for the woman, she is not at fault; since from time ago until now, nothing appeared from her except good breeding ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Let me revert once more to my diary, for a specimen of the sharp changes and sudden disappointments that may come to troops in service. But for a case or two of varioloid in the regiment, we should have taken part in the battle of Olustee, and should have had (as was reported) the right of the ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... grander than ever you have!" Then they told us how this great one had been initiated into the Hindu mysteries by his family priest, and that the mystical benefits accruing from this initiation were to be caused to revert to the priest. This Reverting of the Initiation was to be one of the ceremonies. We watched the procession pass down the street. They were going for water from a sacred stream for the bathing of purification. When they return, said the women, ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... fellows who had either died under their servitude, or become scourges to the country. Numerous are the instances of the atrocious barbarities of a system, which for iniquity had no parallel; but it is not our object to enlarge on the dismal subject; and, as we may have occasion to revert to it again, for the present we will dismiss it from ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... letters. What motive could people have for putting them there?" At last I removed my eyes from the teapot, and thought for a few moments about the marks; presently, however, I felt the whirl returning; the marks became almost effaced from my mind, and I was beginning to revert to my miserable ruminations, when suddenly methought I heard a voice say, "The marks! the marks! cling to the marks! or—" So I fixed my eyes again upon the marks, inspecting them more attentively, if possible, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... to God, in the name of the people, for the preservation of the United States, is my first duty in addressing you. Our thoughts next revert to the death of the late President by an act of parricidal treason. The grief of the nation is still fresh; it finds some solace in the consideration that-he lived to enjoy the highest proof of its confidence by entering on the renewed ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... America, then retaken by a privateer and carried into Boston, where she took refuge in John Hancock's house. They can describe to you the Malbone Gardens, and, as the night wanes and the embers fade, can give the tale of the Phantom of Rough Point. Gliding farther and farther into the past, they revert to the brilliant historic period of Oldport, the successive English and French occupations during our Revolution, and show you gallant inscriptions in honor of their grandmothers, written on the window-panes by the diamond rings of ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... if you do not recoil from the blood-guiltiness that would stain your consciences through the massacre of our fellow-countrymen in the West Indies, on account of their race, complexion and enlightenment; finally, if you desire those modern Hesperides to revert into primeval jungle, horrent lairs wherein the Blacks, who, but a short while before, had been ostensibly civilized, shall be revellers, as high-priests and [9] devotees, in orgies of devil-worship, cannibalism, and obeah—dare to give the franchise to those West Indian Colonies, ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... showing the geographical distribution of Eastern rug-making reveals the relation of the industry to semi-arid or saline pastures, and makes the mind revert at once to the blankets of artistic design and color, woven by the Navajo Indians of our own rainless Southwest. Rug weaving in the Old World reached its finest development in countries like Persia, Turkestan, western Afghanistan, Baluchistan, western India and the plateau ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... experiences that lie apart from the graver political events with which I have been dealing. To begin with, I made a serious attempt at novel-writing in 1883. Perhaps my friendship with William Black and James Payn had some influence in leading me to revert to a kind of work which in my youth had attracted me greatly. I had already, as I have said, written one novel, "The Lumley Entail," published in the St. James's Magazine, and long since forgotten by everybody, including its ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... single syllable," answered Theodore, "and you may be sure I didn't, for I had long before banished all animosity from my heart, and come to look back upon my adventure with the sisters as a merry prank. I did, however, so far revert to the subject that I related to the priest how that, several years before, exactly the same sort of mischance befell me in one of Anfossi's arias as had just befallen him. I painted the period of my connection with the sisters in tragi-comical colours, ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... one reads or hears about a certain locality the more confused he is when he visits it. He was a traveller who first said, "The eye and the ear are close together, but what a distance between hearing and seeing!" This recurs to me constantly. But to revert to Canton. We decided to walk instead of following the custom of Europeans, who generally take sedan chairs and dash through, seeing nothing in detail. We cross the river by one of the innumerable boats rowed by women, and are in the city. For five hours we ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... he forms a part of an organised crowd, is likely to descend several rungs on the ladder of civilisation. Even the most cultured and intellectual of men, when he forms an atom of a crowd, tends to lose consciousness of his acquired mental qualities and to revert to his primal simplicity and sensitiveness ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... death was inevitable, he made every arrangement necessary for the sad change. He had large possessions, which he left to his wife and only child, though he showed his strong attachment to George by a liberal legacy. In the event of his child's death, the Mount Vernon estate would revert to George. The child did not long survive, whereupon this valuable estate came into George's possession. Although he was but twenty years old when his brother died, he was the ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... such a step, but had not always found a hearty sympathy. But as the king began to cool in his hatred to Spain, after his declaration of war against that power, it seemed desirable to Elizabeth to fan his resentment afresh, and to revert to those propositions which had been so coolly received when made. Sir Harry Umton, ambassador from her Majesty, was accordingly provided with especial letters on the subject from the queen's own hand, and presented them ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... future. Do we expect, and are we desirous, that future wars shall be conducted in accordance with buccaneering precedent, or with what has hitherto been the general practice of the nineteenth century? Your naval correspondents incline to revert to buccaneering and thus to the introduction into naval coast operations of a rigour long unknown to the operations of military forces on land; but they do so with a difference. Lord Charles Beresford (writing early in ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... Lothair's readiness to accept the conditions imposed by the Pope. Innocent invested him by a ring with the allodial or freehold lands of the Countess in return for an annual tribute and on the understanding that at Lothair's death they should revert to the Papacy. Lothair took no oath of fealty for them, but such oath was exacted from his son-in-law, Henry the Proud of Bavaria, to whom the inheritance was made over on the same conditions. ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... baby-nurseries, or the art-collections, or the botanical gardens. Understand in your own mind that there is something you can inquire for and be interested in, though you be dumped out of a car at New Smithville. It may, perhaps, happen that you do not for weeks or months revert to this reserved object of yours. Then happiness may come; for, as you have found out already, I think, happiness is something which happens, and is not contrived. On this theme you will find an ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... blood from the country is brought in to replenish their failing vital power. If unbelief shows the same incapacity to propagate itself by natural descent—if the descendants of unbelievers show a marked tendency to "revert to type," i.e., to religion—such a fact suggests only one adequate explanation, viz., the instinct of self-preservation, a return to the soil which made the growth of the flower possible. The ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... state of freedom. Accordingly he bequeathed these to his wife who he knew from her goodness of temper would treat them with unflagging kindness. But should the widow remarry, thereby putting her property under the control of a stranger, the slaves and the plantation were at once to revert to the testator's brother who was recommended to bequeath them in turn to his son Howell if he were deemed worthy of the trust. "It is my most ardent desire that in whatsoever hands fortune may place said negroes," ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... sister pasted old prints and gay pictures, and this resulted in giving the place a cheery aspect. Lamb loved old books, old friends, old times; "he evades the present, he works at the future, and his affections revert to and settle on the past,"—so says Hazlitt. His favorite books seem to have been Bunyan's "Holy War," Browne's "Urn-Burial," Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," Fuller's "Worthies," and Taylor's "Holy Living and Dying." ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... a more restricted sense, exhibited afresh, in relation to the home she had abandoned, the same exemplary character. In her poverty of guarantees at Stanhope Gardens there had been least of all, it appeared, a proviso that she shouldn't resentfully revert again from Goneril to Regan. She came down to the goose-green like Lear himself, with fewer knights, or at least baronets, and the joint household was at last patched up. It fell to pieces and was put together on various occasions before Ray ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... anyone inexperienced in mathematics, but since it is not necessary to have a very exact grasp of this work in order to understand the fundamental ideas of either the special or the general theory of relativity, I shall leave it here at present, and revert to it only towards the end of ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... behind the geraniums at their windows, and which had charmed him some months before he took up his abode at the Franciscan convent. There, amid the silence of the cloister, he could commune freely with his own mind, allow it full expansion, and revert, at will, from solitary contemplation to the most varied studies, especially to that he always so much appreciated—the study of mankind ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... shall ever be alienated from the tribe or be held or possessed by any person who is not a member thereof; and when ever the family of any proprietor becomes extinct, the real estate of said proprietor shall revert to said tribe and become the property thereof, in common. And whenever, hereafter, any common land shall be taken up to be occupied and possessed in severalty, by any member of the tribe, having the concurrence of the tribe therein, the same ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... invert, pervert, advertize, inadvertent, verse, aversion, adverse, adversity, adversary, version, anniversary, versatile, divers, diversity, conversation, perverse, universe, university, traverse, subversive, divorce; (2) vertebra, vertigo, controvert, revert, averse, versus, versification, animadversion, vice versa, controversy, tergiversation, obverse, transverse, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... you don't—not on all occasions; but now to revert to the more important business. I am anxious to be back in town because I want this matter with regard to the Towers to be carried into effect as soon as possible. By the way, have you spoken to Sir John Thornton ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... francs, and that brother adds something on his own account. Would a citizen of Paris—and they all, like Rivet, love their Paris in their heart—ever dream of building the spires that are lacking to the towers of Notre-Dame? And only think of the sums that revert to the State in property for which no ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... I wish to revert to the topic of the generic proof of religion. We have defined the tests which any special religion must meet, and unless conformably to such tests it is possible to justify some form of idealism, it is clear that the full possibilities of religion as a source of strength and ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... in prayer the 16th verse of the 71st Psalm, (in our Prayer-book version), my thoughts especially revert to the subject of the right appreciation of the Scriptures, and in what sense the Bible may be called the word of God, and how and under what conditions the unity of the Spirit is translucent through the letter, which, ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... consequence of my vulgar education, but because the king liked such modes of expression. *Louis XV had a habit of making his own coffee after dinner. One day the coffee boiled over the sides of the pot, and madame du Barry cried out, " Eh, Lafrance, ton cafe f —- le camp." (author) Let me revert to my marriage, which was performed secretly at the parish of Saint Laurent. I believe the king knew of it, altho' he never alluded to it any more than myself. Thus the malice of my enemies was completely balked in this affair. Some days afterwards comte Jean received a letter ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... pleased her—was still the only thing to do. The (to Somerset) surprising accident that the committee of architects should have pronounced the designs absolutely equal in point of merit, and thus have caused the final choice to revert after all to Paula, had been a joyous thing to him when he first heard of it, full of confidence in her favour. But the fact of her having again become the arbitrator, though it had made acceptance of his plans ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... parties, and had no wish whatever to go out at all. I was satisfied with Madame d'Albret's company, and had no wish to leave her. I may say that I was truly happy, and my countenance was radiant, and proved that I was so. My thoughts would occasionally revert to my father and my brother Auguste, and make me melancholy for the time, but I felt that all was for the best, and I built castles, in which I imagined my suddenly breaking in upon them, throwing myself in my father's arms, and requesting him to share the wealth and luxury with which I fancied ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... should like now to revert, appears in a new light. It would be a waste of time to lead the reader once more through all the adventures of the wanderer. He again, without difficulty, will find all the aforesaid elements in the parable, and will readily recognize the introversion and rebirth. I therefore pick out ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... marriage of the House of Vaufontaine has lost all his sons. With the death of the Prince of Vaufontaine, there is in France no direct heir to the house, nor can it, by the law, revert to my house or my heirs. Now of late the Prince hath urged me to write to you—for he is here in seclusion with me—and to unfold to you what has hitherto been secret. Eleven years ago the only nephew of the Prince, after some ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... consul; in fulfilment of which engagement they aided the consul, Publius Valerius, to carry the Capitol by assault. But Valerius being slain in the attack, Titus Quintius was at once appointed in his place, who, to leave the people no breathing time, nor suffer their thoughts to revert to the Terentillian law, ordered them to quit Rome and march against the Volscians; declaring them bound to follow him by virtue of the oath they had sworn not to desert the consul. And though the tribunes withstood him, contending that the oath had been sworn ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... in vain for them to show their zeal and kindness to him, when he who should reward them was perished. They were also afraid that they should be punished by the senate, if they should go on in doing such injuries; that is, in case the authority of the supreme governor should revert to them. And thus at length a stop was put, though not without difficulty, to that rage which possessed the Germans on account ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... thought seemed too much for him; it gave him a sense of inexplicable discomfort. He determined to think no more, for fear that the noises should revert again to the crash of hammers in his hollow head. . ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... under the parliamentary monarchy, although England was the example we followed in that regime, just as the United States is our example in our present government. But just as our backwardness in parliamentary customs was no cause for us to revert from a constitutional to an absolute monarchy, so the insufficiency of our republican customs constitutes no reason for abandoning the federal republic. There are no conditions more favorable for the political ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... exist in the United States," i.e., "the control by any one corporation of so large a proportion of any industry as to make it a menace to competitive conditions." But is it necessary to destroy this splendidly efficient concentration of industry in order to avoid its evils? The proposal to revert to the older competitive plan is reminiscent of the outcry against machine production a century earlier, and the earnest pleas then made to return to the hand-tool method. "Big business" constitutes one of the greatest advances in human industry, and therefore has surely come to stay. From ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... But to revert to the ownership. Mr. Lynch, in a moment of kindness, loaned these ear-rings to his wife. Mrs. Lynch again loaned them to Mrs. Bethune; and, as Hemmings says, whilst riding in a coach, she (Mrs. Bethune) gave ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... Mr. Moy's permission to revert to the alleged marriage, on the fourteenth of August, at Craig Fernie," he said. "Arnold Brinkworth! answer for yourself, in the presence of the persons here assembled. In all that you said, and all that you did, while you were at the inn, were you not solely influenced by the wish to make Miss ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... To revert to what I said above, I believe, too, that it is very bad for any man not to have a fixed occupation; however great his natural energy may be, it either relaxes with time, or expends itself uselessly. The mere thinker often ends by hovering ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... place. One day, the female was found in the cave's rear with four little whelps lying beside her, and that settled it! The family petted the young animals and they grew up tamer and more obedient than had been their father and mother. Protected by man, they were unlikely to revert to wildness. Members of the pack which grew from them were, in time, bestowed as valued gifts among the cave men of the region and much came of it. The two boys did a greater day's work than they could comprehend when they raided the ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... Greece. But to my sighs, the hollow-sounding waves Bring, save their own hoarse murmurs, no reply. Alas for him! who friendless and alone, Remote from parents and from brethren dwells; From him grief snatches every coming joy Ere it doth reach his lip. His restless thoughts Revert for ever to his father's halls, Where first to him the radiant sun unclos'd The gates of heav'n; where closer, day by day, Brothers and sisters, leagu'd in pastime sweet, Around each other twin'd the bonds of love. I will not ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... "That's rich. You with a sure income beyond your needs, in your own right, with youth and health and beauty, with all your life before you, wishing to revert to what you used to say was a living burial? That's equivalent to holding that the ostrich philosophy is the true one—what you cannot see does not exist. That ignorance is better than knowledge—that—that—Hang it, my dear, are you going to ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... a feeling. In consequence of your sparing me what you might still further have inflicted, I will let the past rest, and as if it had never happened really to me; and speak of it to others, but as a circumstance which I wish not to revert to, but prefer should be ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... caused Trent to wonder if she were not acting upon an intuition which taught her that a slight shock is pleasantly stimulating to the fancy, "and I suppose it's my association with him that convinces me if we'd leave your sex alone it would finally revert to the savage ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... neighbouring states, and the supplementing of that system by acceptance of any and every alien outlaw who might offer himself for service: lastly, revival of the dormant crusading spirit of Europe, which reacted on the Osmanlis, begetting in them an Arabian fanaticism and disposing them to revert to the obscurantist spirit of the earliest Moslems. To sum the matter up in other words: the omnipotence and indiscipline of the Janissaries; the contumacy of 'Dere Beys' ('Lords of the Valleys,' who maintained a feudal independence) ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... House and my lands attached thereto, demeaning himself meanwhile in an orderly and temperate manner. Should he fail at any time during said year to comply with this provision, said property shall revert to my general estate and become, without reservation, and without necessity for any process of law, the property, absolutely, of Marian Devereux, of the County ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... Aristotle, or, with Speusippus, the eternity of its antithetical existence, to surmise that it is only one of those notions which are indeed provisionally indispensable in a condition of finite knowledge, but of which so many have been already discredited by the advance of philosophy; to revert, in short, to the original conception of "The Absolute," or of a single Being, in whom all mysteries are explained, and before whom the disturbing principle is reduced to a mere turbid spot on the ocean of Eternity, which to the eye of faith ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... revert to a period when the British power, having conquered the plains of India and subdued its sovereigns, paused at the foot of the Himalayas and turned its tireless energy to internal progress and development. The "line of the mountains" formed ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... in contrast, that night of 1792 in Strasbourg, when the gray dawn, struggling with the night, fell upon the pale face and burning eyes of Rouget de Lisle—as with trembling hand he wrote the last words of the Marseillaise. The mind must revert, in contrast, to those ravished hearths and stricken homes and decimated camps, where the South wrought and suffered and sang—sang words that rose from men's hearts, when the ore of genius fused and sparkled in the hot blast of ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... of the efforts of science being unable to reanimate the Colonel, all my effects shall revert to Nicholas Meiser, my sole ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... he gets warmed up, it all comes back to him. He catches your step and away you go, a gay, adventurous, half-predatory couple. How quickly he falls into the old ways of jest and anecdote and song! You may have known him for years without having heard him hum an air, or more than casually revert to the subject of his experience during the war. You have even questioned and cross-questioned him without firing the train you wished. But get him out on a vacation tramp, and you can walk it all ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... fear the notion of a certain physiological process is embraced by some minds, and that these words will be taken as curtly enunciating the Indian's besetting weakness; but pray be not too eager to dissever them from what is yet to come, as I protest that I am not now wishing to revert to this sad failing). He imbibes freely—the current fashions of the hour amongst whites. If raffling, for instance, be held in honour as a method for expediting the sale of personal effects, the Indian will adapt the ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... claims of her father and the claims of her brother, but they could not ignore the fact that at the critical period she had no children. She had once had thirteen, but they all died in her lifetime, and it was necessary either to revert to the Stuarts or to make a new king by Act ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... constitute sources of visual delight which can be imparted only by a view of the objects themselves. And is excitement awakened in contemplating the borders of this graceful and magnificent river? Yes. When we revert to the awful convulsions of the physical world, and the important revolutions of human society, of which the regions it flows through have been successively the theatre—when we meditate on the vast changes, the fearful struggles, the tragic incidents and mournful ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... also, the effects would sink of themselves, and could not be renewed until a fresh surface of the sulphuret had been applied to the positive pole. This was in consequence of peculiar results of decomposition, to which I shall have occasion to revert in the section on Electro-chemical Decomposition, and was conveniently avoided by inserting the ends of two pieces of platina wire into the opposite extremities of a portion of sulphuret fused in a glass ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... continued, it may be surely better continued for some useful purpose than to keep up the parade of a great military corps designed merely to lie inactive in its quarters. On this ground, therefore, and on the supposition premised, I revert to my original sentiments in favor of the prince's plan; but as this will require some qualification in the execution of it, I will state my recommendation of it in the terms of a proposition, viz., that, if it shall be the resolution of the board to continue the detachment now ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of the prologue; they run, I think, thus, "And this is the yarn of Loudon Dodd"; add, "not as he told, but as he wrote it afterwards for his diversion." This becomes the more needful, because, when all is done, I shall probably revert to Tai-o-hae, and give final details about the characters in the way of a conversation between Dodd and Havers. These little snippets of information and faits-divers have always a disjointed, broken-backed appearance; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... may be clearly understood, I must revert for a moment to the period before the assault, and to the stories current in our camp of the treasure in jewels and gold stored up in the ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... his opportunities of growing rich at the expense of his fellow-man, but according to the services he performs; while, on the other hand, we find the Christian economists striving to induce a harassed and bewildered world to revert to an older and ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... from the practical and scientific attitude, contemplatively philosophical, with the fatalistic philosophy of the prophet Job, concerned rather with the causes than the results of things. Your barrister at Lincoln's Inn, after ten years of cosmopolitan experience in London or Washington, will revert in six months to the ancestral type of morals and manners; the spectacle is so common, even in the case of exceptionally assimilative men like Wu Ting-fang, or the late Marquis Tseng, that it evokes little or no comment amongst Europeans ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... demand has been keen from the first. Hipparchus and the Greek astronomers of the Alexandrian school, shaking off the vagaries of magic and divination, placed astronomy on a scientific basis, though the reaction of the Middle Ages caused even such a great astronomer as Tycho Brahe himself to revert for a time to ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... It is useless to revert to similar circumstances in the past. The pallid shades of memory struggle in vain with the life and freedom of the present. Looked at in this light nothing can be shallower than the oft-repeated appeal to Greek and Roman examples ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... abbreviated HK Type: dependent territory of the UK; scheduled to revert to China in 1997 Capital: Victoria Administrative divisions: none (dependent territory of the UK) Independence: none (dependent territory of the UK); the UK signed an agreement with China on 19 December 1984 to return Hong Kong to China on 1 July 1997; ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... realized that beast-killing might not suit his health because of the opportunities it gave for accidentally letting lions or tigers or what not out of their cages at unexpected moments, since he was not likely to revert to his renounced sport and you were not likely to be so much in demand and therefore less likely to be much under observation, Galen thought it safe to tell me. He says he has always believed that ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... Mississippi, and a Three Rivers youth, Pierre de Francheville, who intended to enter Holy Orders. The learned Intendant Talon was an examiner; he was remarked for the erudition his Latin questions displayed. Memory likes to revert to the times when the illustrious Bossuet was undergoing his Latin examinations at Navarre, with the Great Conde as his examiner; France's first sacred orator confronted by her ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... vengeance.[736] It did not matter to them that the wretched widows and orphans of these men would be left destitute. Nor did they stop to consider that these estates, if forfeited at all, could not be seized legally for private use, but should revert to the Crown. They thought only of repairing their ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... for two half-years at Carisbury. She made such progress with her music that after much wearisome and lifeless practising she could stumble through Thalberg's variations on the air of "Home, Sweet Home"; but in French she never acquired the true Parisian accent, and would revert at times to the "Doo, dellah, derlapostrof, day," of her earlier teaching, though there is no record that these shortcomings were ever a serious drawback to her in after-life. Besides such opportunities of improvement, she enjoyed the privilege ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... "I must revert to the period of your mother's marriage, Lucie," said Madame de la Tour, "and, as briefly as possible, detail those unhappy circumstances which so soon deprived you of her protecting love. You will no longer be surprised that I have repressed ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... in obedience to the colonel's command, the Nipe seemed to shake himself a little and go about his business more briskly, and the air and gravity seemed to revert to those ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... presumptuous invader punished, and the subjects of our King were saved from absolute ruin. I might indeed enumerate to you what crowds of the enemy fell in other places, but I turn rather—such is human nature—to more joyful themes, and revert to the point with which I at first commenced, namely that the Sovereign who has saved you from the hostile sword is determined now to avert from your Province the perils ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... thoroughbred, even if she had been born of middle-class parentage. He laughed bitterly. Middle class. A homeless, countryless derelict, and he had the impudence to revert to comparisons that no longer existed in this topsy-turvy old world. He was an upstart. The final curtain had dropped between him and his world, and he was still thinking in the ancient make-up. Middle class! He was no better than a troglodyte, set ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... Constable of England seized a village belonging to the monks. Proceedings were taken against him and sentence pronounced; but he evaded even the king's orders, and at last actually secured the possession of the village for his own life, after which it was to revert to the true owners. After the Conquest, however, all the lands of this nobleman were seized by the Conqueror, this village among the rest; nor could the Church of Ely ever regain it. In another instance Abbot Wilfric himself was ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... time that the testimony of Professor Joseph Henry was being increasingly used by Morse's opponents to discredit him in the scientific world and to injure his cause in the courts. I shall, therefore, revert for a moment to the matter for the purpose of emphasizing Morse's reluctance to do or say anything against ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... frequency, or otherwise, of their recurrence noted, as it is probable they will be found to be nearly always used under the same circumstances; that is, a writer may have a habit of beginning with a double capital when possible, but revert to the single form of the same letter in the body of the writing. Another writer will almost invariably disconnect the capitals from the rest of the word, while a third as regularly connects them. Some writers affect the more simple form, approximating to the printed ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... to give force to my narrative, it will be necessary for me to be more personal in some particulars than I could have chosen, and to revert to certain details of my early history belonging to that category which people of my profession or temperament are wont to dismiss as "emotional." I have had strange occasion to learn that this is a deep and delicate word, which can never be scientifically used, ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... now our duty to revert to the principal poem in the collection, respecting which we have already ventured to pronounce rather an unfavourable opinion. The "Drama of Exile" is the most ambitious of Miss Barrett's compositions. It is intended to commemorate the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... progressive development and improvement. If it be a comparatively modern race, owing its peculiarities of conformation to degeneracy, it is an illustration of what botanists call "atavism," or the tendency of varieties to revert to an ancestral type, which type, in proportion to its antiquity, would be of lower grade. To this hypothesis, of a genealogical connection between Man and the lower animals, I shall again allude in ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... not, therefore, the less distressing—that Rose should note, with wonder, a tendency in him to revert to the manner which had characterized his first call on her in New York; a tendency to be—of all things—polite. He didn't swear any more, nor contradict. He chose his words, got up when she did, picked ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... of the argument it will be proper to revert to a principle which has already been admitted as self-evident (p. 9), namely, that a state of perfect righteousness and a happy immortality are so essentially and necessarily related that one cannot subsist without the other. It is, however, to be said ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... houses better than Parma or Modena. Nay, the houses of the people of fashion, who come hither for the races, are palaces to what houses in London itself were fifteen years ago. People do begin to live again now, and I suppose in a term we shall revert to York Houses, Clarendon Houses, etc. But from that grandeur all the nobility had contracted themselves to live in coops of a dining-room, a dark back-room, with one eye in a corner, and a closet. Think what London would be, if the chief houses were in it, as in the cities in other countries, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... W. coasts are rugged and much indented. The climate is milder, more equable, and somewhat more rainy than that of England; but the cereal and green crops are the same. Flax is grown in the N. The tendency is to revert to pasturage however, agriculture being generally in a backward state. Unfavourable land-laws, small holdings, and want of capital have told heavily against the Irish peasantry. Fisheries are declining. The chief manufacture is linen ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... to become literally the embodiment of that quality upon which one most constantly thinks. Let, therefore, the object of your meditation be above and not below, so that every time you revert to it in thought you will be lifted up; let it be pure and unmixed with any selfish element; so shall your heart become purified and drawn nearer to Truth, and not defiled and dragged more ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen
... mind can never again take up exactly the same position as it once did in regard to religion and idealism. The great realistic theories have made too great a change in the standard of life, and in man himself, to make it possible for him to revert simply to the old conditions, and the older orthodox doctrines of religion can never again be accepted as a mere matter of course. But the great question has again come to the forefront—is there a higher world, or is the fundamental truth of ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... for when an irregular flower becomes perfectly regular or peloric, this may be attributed, at least partly, to reversion to a primitive and normal type. Even the position of a seed at the end of the capsule sometimes gives to the seedling developed from it a tendency to revert. Secondly, reversions often occur by means of buds, independently of reproduction by seed; so that a bud may revert to the character of a former state many bud-generations ago. In the case of animals, reversions may occur in the individual with advancing age. Thirdly and ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... the scenes of his former happiness renewed the bitterness of his spirit, and he reluctantly concluded to abandon his home. His own thoughts had not as yet clearly formed any decision in his mind as to where he would go or what he would do. It was inevitable, however, that he should revert to his scientific investigations. He found in them a new solace and distraction, but even then his passion for research would not have sufficed to adequately meet his desperate desire to escape his grief, if in a rather singular ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... suicide at one time or other of their lives. Their thoughts seem to revert to romance as soon as they find themselves in a corner. No," he added. "I never believe in threats of suicide in either man or woman. Life is always too precious for that, and especially if a woman loves, as ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... With the desire of the man and the reason of the mollusk, the genus homo would be all that he is painted by Dr. Maxwell. Should man become for one day "more beastial than the brute" his boasted civilization would revert to subter-savagery. Under such conditions human progress, society itself, were impossible. It is by no means true, as Dr. Maxwell asserts, that children are born solely because men are animals possessing animalistic instincts. True, they could not well be born were men not animals; but the "sweet ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... unkind, but showed no desire to revert to the topic upon which they had been conversing, when she had thought fit to ask her that jocular question which Phyllis ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... clause," Derville went on, with imperturbable coolness, "you pledge yourself to secure to Hyacinthe Comte Chabert an income of twenty-four thousand francs on government stock held in his name, to revert to ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... gambling industry probably represents over 40% of GDP. Macau depends on China for most of its food, fresh water, and energy imports. Japan and Hong Kong are the main suppliers of raw materials and capital goods. Macau is scheduled to revert to Chinese ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... controller of human affairs and devices, most inopportunely frustrated their intentions. The elder Clegg, too, was induced to aid the design, hoping that, should a union take place, the inheritance might revert into the old channel. We have seen the result: the wilfulness and obduracy of Alice, and the infatuation of the lover, who had thought to dazzle her with the riches he purposely spread before her, prevented the success of their schemes. She peremptorily refused and repulsed him, accusing ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... species, and may itself have been produced or increased by Natural Selection. When a species is subject to great changes of conditions, either locally or at uncertain times, it may be a decided advantage to it to become individually adapted to that change while retaining the power to revert instantly to its original form when the normal conditions return. But whenever the changed conditions are permanent, or are such that individual adaptation cannot meet the requirements, then Natural ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... suffered an injury. She had been too long under the tutelage of Old Jimmie, and his teachings were now too thoroughly the fiber of her very being, for her to alter permanently. She might change temporarily under the urge of an emotional revelation; but she would surely revert to her present self. There was no ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... we have now prepared for our use the various classes of causes which are the material out of which the remainder of our discourse must be woven, just as wood is the material of the carpenter, let us revert in a few words to the point at which we began, and then endeavour to add on a suitable ending to the ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... fires danced; but next morning the guns of the Discovery were trained on Koah, when he tried to come on board. That day sailors were landed for water and set fire to the village of the cocoanut groves to drive assailants back. How quickly human nature may revert to the beast type! When the white sailors returned from this skirmish, they carried back to the ships with them, the heads of two Hawaiians they had slain. By Saturday, the 20th, masts were in place and the boats ready to sail. Between ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... the soul that goes forth and builds up a new world out of the void, was ineffectual. It could only revert to the senses. His divinity was the phallic divinity. The other male divinity, which is the spirit that fulfils in the world the new germ of an idea, this was denied and obscured in him, unused. And it was this spirit which cried out helplessly in ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... his way homeward, his thoughts, by some unaccountable association, began to revert to such topics as the loneliness of man by himself, the need of kindred spirits, the solaces of sympathy, and other ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... oft revert to this, To show man's true descent From Him who is the source of bliss, Tho' now by ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... besides, I was overcome by an atavistic longing to do chores." He turned to Sylvia again, the gesture as unconscious and simple as a boy's. "My great-grandfather was a native of these parts, and about once in so often I revert to type." ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... must revert to the many beauteous haunts and hidden retreats of nature, whose varied phases of quiet sweetness and sublime grandeur are heightened and intensified by the charm of legend ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... revert to Virginia and Carolina; and also to the historical fact, that the African slave-trade once constituted the principal commerce of Liverpool; and that the prosperity of the town was once supposed to have been indissolubly linked to its prosecution. And I remembered that my father ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... not perhaps at Rome, nor is that Mark Antony—for we never knew Mark Antony to recognise him—but this mimic world has assumed an independent life and reality of its own. When, indeed, the passion subsides, and the eloquence of the poet is mute, things revert to their matter-of-fact condition, the actor is again there, and the boards of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... was changed; liberty was to succeed the dictatorship, now that the salvation of the revolution had been effected, and that it was necessary to revert to legal order, in order to preserve it. An exorbitant and extraordinary power, like the confederation of the clubs, would necessarily terminate with the defeat of the party which had supported it, ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... obstinately set against the will of God; while the sins arising from the frailty of human nature may be checked by the "right judgement" recalling, before it is too late, what the will of God is. This, however, is a different question, and we must not here pursue it too far. To revert to that of Dante's various demeanour, it will be seen that, with the limitation indicated above, his sympathy with the sinner does not vary with the comparative heinousness of the sin. Almost his bitterest scorn, indeed, is directed towards ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... with Rene and the Visconti of Milan. By this contest, Italy was divided into two parties, composed of the respective adherents of the houses of Anjou and Aragon, The rights of Rene were to revert later to the crown of France, and to serve as a ground for new wars. For twenty-three years Alfonso reigned wisely and prosperously in Southern Italy. He was a patron of letters, and promoted ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... shaken to their foundations. One man goes to England, and returns with the conception of a grander social life; another comes home from Germany with the notion of a more searching intellectual activity; a fellow just back from Paris has the absurdest ideas of art and literature; and you revert to us from the cowboys of Texas, and tell us to our faces that we ought to try Papa Lapham by a jury of his peers. It ought to be stopped—it ought, really. The Bostonian who leaves Boston ought to be condemned ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... that both were in the room," was Sinclair's reply. But I could see that he advanced this theory solely out of consideration for me; that he did not really believe it. "At all events," he went on, "we cannot prove anything this way; we must revert to our original idea. I wonder if Gilbertine will give me the chance ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... could write, and that he understood the science of navigation—although those were rare accomplishments among seamen in his time—fail sufficiently to account for Hudson's persistent employment of him. For my own part, I revert to my theory of fatalism. It is my fancy that this "ancient man"—as he is styled by one of his companions—was Hudson's evil genius; and I class him with the most finely conceived character in Marryat's most finely conceived romance: the ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... cat or a crow the same verse was used with an alteration of the second line so as to force a rhyme; instead of 'meikle caire', the words were 'a blak shot' for a cat, and 'a blak thraw' for a crow or craw. To revert again to the human form the ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... consider what other possibilities seem to offer themselves. Let us revert to the ideal we have already laid down, and consider what hopes and obstacles to its attainment there seem to be. The abounding presence of numerous experimental motors to-day is so stimulating to the imagination, there are so many ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... unruly longings. He was a strong man; adventurous days and nights spent in the open had coarsened the masculine side of his character, perhaps at expense to his finer nature, for it is a human tendency to revert. He was masterful and ruthless; lacking obligations or responsibilities of any sort, he had been accustomed to take what he wanted; therefore the gaze he fixed upon the sleeping woman betrayed an ardor calculated to deepen the color in her ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... each year had not been kept. Its charter was to expire in October, 1904, but, for 5,000,000 francs, the Colombia President granted a six-year extension. Even with this the French franchise would revert to Colombia in 1910. Colombia wished delay. The United States transcontinental railroads did not want a canal, as it would divert from them heavy, bulky, and imperishable freight. They therefore joined Colombia in seeking delay, playing off the Nicaragua plan against the ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... well aware that my fortune (which was entirely in money) would go in due course of law to the person of all others who would employ it to the best purpose—that is to say, to my sister as my nearest of kin. As I was now situated, my property would revert to my uncle if I died intestate. He was a richer man than I was. Of his two children, both sons, the eldest would inherit his estates: the youngest had already succeeded to his mother's ample fortune. ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... before I saw. It came the moment I wakened this morning, clear and sudden as an electric flash. If David Weatherbee was mentally unbalanced when he made that transfer, the last half interest in the Aurora mine ought to revert to her." ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... man did show up at the hearing—a slick-looking operator named Berwin. His claim was that Hawkes had been affiliated with Bryson a number of years ago, and that Hawkes' money should revert to Bryson by virtue of an obscure law of the last century involving the estates of professional gamblers ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... have not taken the chances of dying into account. Hence the expense reserve in any instance applies only to that individual case, and, in the event of death or surrender before the maturity of the policy, the amount of the expense fund not used would naturally revert to the insured. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... I am about to make you can take or you can leave, but I've a notion self-interest will prevail over your temporary pique, since you no doubt realize that unless something is done almost immediately this segregated land will revert to ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... revert once more to the topic of expediency and common interests. It is admitted, I presume, that, looking at the states collectively, half support your views, half ours; and in every single state one party is for Sparta and another for Athens. Suppose, then, we were to shake hands, from ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... was over at Manor Cross Lord George was obliged to revert again to the tidings he had received from Mr. Knox. He could not keep it to himself. He felt himself obliged to tell ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope |
