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More "Positiveness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with positiveness," she stated. "Frankly, Jimmie appeared impartial in his attentions to the twins. When he wasn't with Barbara he was with Helen, and ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... Edinburgh Review, giving any adequate idea of what was really taking place in America[48]. The lesser British papers generally followed the tone of the leading journals, but without either great interest or much acumen. In truth the depth of British newspaper ignorance, considering their positiveness of utterance, appears utterly astonishing if regarded from the view-point of modern historical knowledge. But is this, after all, a matter for surprise? Was there not equal confusion at least, possibly equal ignorance, in America itself, certainly ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... and the thirty-nine articles, contain the same points, even the doctrine of predestination.' JOHNSON. 'Why yes, Sir, predestination was a part of the clamour of the times, so it is mentioned in our articles, but with as little positiveness as could be.' BOSWELL. 'Is it necessary, Sir, to believe all the thirty-nine articles?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, that is a question which has been much agitated. Some have thought it necessary that they should all be believed; ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... it may answer an end perhaps as useful, in discovering to us the weakness of our own understanding. If it does not make us knowing, it may make us modest. If it does not preserve us from error, it may at least from the spirit of error; and may make us cautious of pronouncing with positiveness or with haste, when so much labour may end ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... the faultlessness and completeness of his teachings give them a position by themselves, and are among the strongest internal evidences of their divinity. They are also distinguished from the ethical systems of other teachers by their positiveness. Others say, "Thou shalt not;" Jesus Christ says, "Thou shalt." They forbid and prohibit; He commands. They prescribe abstinence from evil; He, a constant approach to perfection. Buddhism is, in our time, often referred to as occupying ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... any good will come of it. To the outsider it looks as if the babes and sucklings who have no experience and no precedents would have to save China—if. And it's an awful if. It's not surprising that the Japanese with their energy and positiveness feel that they are predestined to ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... lines about the mouth. All that one can notice is a disappointed, somewhat peevish look in the eyes. Such was Henrietta. The fact that she had not been much wanted or appreciated hitherto began to show now she was eighteen. She was either shy and silent, or talked with too much positiveness for fear she should not be listened to; so that though she was not a failure at dances and managed to find plenty of partners, there were none of the interesting episodes that were continually occurring on Louie's evenings, and for a year or two her hopes were not realized. The Prince Charming ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... the slave of jailers, be loaded with fetters; thus shall you be cleared from every unworthy aspersion, and restored to reputation and honour!' This is the consolation she affords to those whom malignity or folly, private pique or unfounded positiveness, have, without the smallest foundation, loaded with calumny." For myself, I felt my own innocence; and I soon found, upon enquiry, that three fourths of those who are regularly subjected to a similar treatment, are persons whom, even with all the superciliousness ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... things in the world is success in getting money and ingenuity in spending it. With all the rest she was a woman of some direct force of character which, in times of crisis as at the present moment, asserted itself with considerable positiveness. ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... rigid again, his hand stiffly placed upon the sabre. "It is not given to man to say with positiveness what he can do, sir. But it is necessary that this right be turned before McClellan is aware of his danger. Each day makes it more difficult to conceal the absence of my army from the Valley. Between the danger of forced marching and the obvious danger that lies in delay, I should choose ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... been listening to the voice of Fate, and whether, Guinevere swayed the bridle-rein, or Elaine's web flew out and floated wide, or Lancelot sang tirra-lirra by the river, it was asserted with the positiveness of a Hebrew chronicle, which we do not question because it is history. But we hardly have such an illusion in reading the late Idyls. We seem to be in the presence of a constructor who arranges things, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... Angel,—call it what you will,—came forward and assumed control. Then my trembling muscles became firm again, every rift and flaw in the rock was seen as through a microscope, and my limbs moved with a positiveness and precision with which I seemed to have nothing at all to do. Had I been borne aloft upon wings, my deliverance could not have ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... be modern books, is, they admit, a desirable accomplishment if it can be gained without too much cost, but not to be allowed the place of more valuable knowledge. A typical modern father, writing not long ago to a modern educator, after giving with equal positiveness the subjects that his boy must have and must not have included in his course of study, added by way of concession, "The boy might, if he has time, take ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... changed,—upon the weather, the hard winter, the prospects of the Cause, a criticism upon the commander-in-chief's management of affairs, the attitude of Congress, etc., between Mr. Blossom and the count; characterized, I hardly need say, by that positiveness of opinion that distinguishes the unprofessional. In another part of the room, it so chanced that Mistress Thankful and the baron were talking about themselves; the assembly balls; who was the prettiest woman in Morristown; and whether Gen. Washington's attentions to ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... it's about time it was stopped!" declared Bud with as great positiveness as before. This time he picked up the hat he had dashed to the ground and dusted it off. "I'm going to do ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... and to know him so perfectly, that I could say, without flattery, he had all the depth of understanding that was requisite in an able statesman, and all that honesty which commonly is wanting; that he was brave without vanity, and knowing without positiveness; that he was loyal to his prince, and a lover of his country; that his principles were full of moderation, and all his counsels such as tended to heal, and not to widen, the breaches of the nation: that in all his conversation there appeared a native candour, and a desire of doing good ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... last to looseness of life and general demoralisation. And it is possible for the scientific instincts, when developed at the expense of the aesthetic and the sympathetic, to evolve a hard, unemotional type of character which is self-centred and selfish owing to its positiveness and lack of imagination. But these are instances of inharmonious growth. When growth is harmonious and many-sided, it leads of necessity to out-growth, to escape from self. For the expansive instincts are so many ways of escape from self which Nature opens up to the soul;—the ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... words of Taliesin," said I; "none can say with positiveness whether I be fish or flesh, least of all myself. God ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... eloquence, "worthy," as the press say of poor misguided Mitchell, "of a better cause." Altogether, a much-enduring Ulysses, unscrupulous, tough-hided, ready to do and suffer anything fair or foul, for what he honestly believed—if a confused, virulent positiveness be worthy of the name "belief"—to be ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... naturally at the close of a complete statement, as "I am here"; and hence, words indicating completeness, positiveness, resolution, are appropriately uttered with downward intervals. In effecting a downward intonation the voice operates in one of two ways: either the weaker mode, in which it descends from a radical pitch at or near the current tone to a lower pitch; or the stronger mode, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... said with positiveness. 'That track shows a foot four times as big as any coyote's that ever scratched fleas. Wolf? Maybe. It would be a whopper of a wolf at that. Look at the size of it, man! Why, the ugly brute would be ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... few minutes and she would breathe heavily after them. At the end of one attack she wiped the froth from her mouth with her handkerchief and gave it to her aunt, saying, "Burn that, it is poison." This is perhaps a little less like epilepsy. It is plainly impossible for us to say with any positiveness that either these were or were not genuine convulsions, but it is nevertheless important to record them, because such phenomena are observed fairly frequently in dementia praecox cases but are practically ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... subordinated themselves more easily. In January, 1862, Lincoln found it necessary to bow Cameron out of the war office, and to put in his place Edwin M. Stanton, a man of intensely practical mind, vehement impulses, fierce positiveness, ruthless energy, immense working power, lofty patriotism, and severest devotion to duty. He accepted the war office not as a partisan, for he had never been a Republican, but only to do all he could in "helping to ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... in the blue of the rainy sky, in the many tints of morning flowers, in the sunlight on summer foliage and field, there are more sources of mere sensual color-pleasure than in the single streak of wan and dying light. It is not then by nobler form, it is not by positiveness of hue, it is not by intensity of light, (for the sun itself at noonday is effectless upon the feelings,) that this strange distant space possesses its attractive power. But there is one thing that it has, or suggests, which no other object ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... There is a different point of view in his exposition of the Mu'tazilite physics, which he presents in a more systematic and favorable light than Maimonides, defending it against the strictures of the latter. But everywhere Aaron ben Elijah lacks the positiveness and commanding mastery of Maimonides. He is not clear what side of a question to espouse. For the most part he places side by side the opposed points of view and only barely intimates his own attitude ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... not believe you," I said, not angrily nor resentfully, as might have been earlier in our acquaintance, but with a painful, slow positiveness. "Perhaps I was wrong in assuming the place I did in Wallencamp, but it was not in the way you think. I don't know—I can't see the way myself, clearly—always, but I believe that what you have ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... to plunge into an animated conversation with his guests. Indeed, it assumed the character of a monologue in which he frequently adverted to the weather, to be off on a tangent the next moment on a discussion of finance, politics, sociology, on which subjects, however, he was far from showing the positiveness and fixed opinion that he did while descanting upon the weather. In all the subjects he touched upon, he exhibited a certain skill in so framing his remarks that they would not run counter to any prejudices ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... received a rapid impression of a white, delicate, aged face, with a high forehead, a small mouth, and a pair of cold blue eyes which had kept much of the freshness of youth. Madame de Bellegarde looked hard at him, and returned his hand-shake with a sort of British positiveness which reminded him that she was the daughter of the Earl of St. Dunstan's. Her daughter-in-law stopped playing and gave him an agreeable smile. Newman sat down and looked about him, while Valentin went and kissed the hand of ...
— The American • Henry James
... soon took on interest from the positiveness of the opinions discussed; but so thoroughly had Colonel Roosevelt covered his tracks that, although he wrote in his usual style, in not a single instance was his name connected with the department. Lyman Abbott was the favorite "guess" at first; then after various other public men had been ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... by the absence of her husband in the field, she returned to the parental roof, to beguile the time in the companionship of her mother. But the separation, with the anxiety it brought, became intolerable; besides, from the positiveness of her opinions and the warmth of her zeal, she soon became ill at ease in the land of her birth. So, with her mother's approval, she resolved to face all perils, and to return and share the fortunes of the Confederacy. ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... young men of his own age who were of similar ambition. But they were even poorer than Slosson, and what particularly grieved them was the fact that their lineage was obscured by dark clouds of doubt. That is to say, they were unable to determine with any degree of positiveness whether they were of noble extraction; their parents refused to inform them, and consequently they were deeply distressed, as you can well imagine. Slosson was much charmed with their handsome bearing, chivalric ways, and honorable aspirations, and his pity was evoked by their poverty and ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... nation were the descendants of Attila and his people, though he acknowledged that they were probably of the same race. Attila and his armies, he said, came and disappeared in a very mysterious manner, and that nothing could be said with positiveness about them; that the people now known as Magyars first made their appearance in Muscovy in the year 884, under the leadership of Almus, called so from Alom, which, in the Hungarian language, signifies a dream; his mother, before his birth, having dreamt that the child with which she was enceinte ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... positiveness by Swedenborg's followers, and indeed, apparently by the seer himself, if we may take as authoritative, the translations of his works, that the revelations accorded to him covered a period of many years, whereas, we find in most ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... full of moral sensibility and of a grave, reflecting, philosophical character, and neither a visionary in religion nor in politics, only of a somewhat austere and uncompromising turn of mind, and with some of the positiveness of a theorist who has a lofty opinion of his own capacity, and has never undergone that discipline of the world, that tumbling and tossing and jostling, which beget modesty and diffidence and prudence, from the necessity which they inculcate of constant compromises with antagonist interests ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... understood the purpose of the little expedition, opened her sorrowing heart to her General. Sure of his sympathy, she spoke her inmost thoughts, while he listened, commented, asked questions and comforted, then repeated his prediction of a happy ending with a positiveness that aroused in her new hope of better days yet ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... the conscious subject is a mere phenomenon, or "series of phenomena," with more indignation than Hamilton. Notwithstanding the contradictory assertion, "that the subject is unknown," he still teaches, with equal positiveness, "that in every act of perception I am conscious of self, as a perceiving subject." And still more explicitly he says: "As clearly as I am conscious of existing, so clearly am I conscious, at every moment of my existence, that the conscious Ego is not itself a mere modification [a phenomenon], ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... its effects upon the national literature, one quickly discerns two main streams of influence. On the one hand, there is the influence of the original Puritans—whether of New England or of the South—, who came to the New World with a ready-made philosophy of the utmost clarity, positiveness and inclusiveness of scope, and who attained to such a position of political and intellectual leadership that they were able to force it almost unchanged upon the whole population, and to endow it with such vitality that it successfully resisted alien opposition later on. And on the other hand, ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... putting as strong a note of positiveness into his voice as possible, for he now began to suspect to whom the notebook had belonged. "The desk contained only personal and a little business correspondence. Morgan and I examined all the signatures. ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... himself to all kinds of company, in consequence of which he is a universal favourite. There is a mystery about him, which, wherever he goes, serves not a little to increase the sensation naturally created by his appearance and manner. Who he is, no one pretends to assert with downright positiveness: it is whispered, however, that he is a scion of royalty; and who can gaze for a moment upon that most graceful figure, that most intelligent but singularly moulded countenance, and those large and expressive eyes, without feeling as equally convinced that he is of no common lineage, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... like a dog another man, who can not or will not defend himself, what did I care for Count Claudieuse? What did I care for your threats or for his hatred?" He said these words with perfect calmness, but with that cold, cutting tone which is as sharp as a sword, and with that positiveness which enters irresistibly into the mind. The countess was tottering, and stammered ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... marriage certificate, and I will acknowledge the marriage, and acknowledge the child;" but they could not, and I knew they could not; and I kept the estate for my darling boy,' cried the old gentleman, with the exultation of successful positiveness again appearing strong in his physiognomy; but suddenly changing and relaxing, his countenance fell, and he added, 'But now I have no darling boy. What use all!—all must go to the heir-at-law, or I must will it to a stranger—a ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... stanching the flow from a cut finger gives the impression that it contains a little salt. Every fluid of the body is salty, and every cell of the body is bathed in salt water. It is too long since the ancestors of our cells swam in the seas of the Eozoic time for us to assert with any positiveness that the ancestral habit is responsible for this trait in the descendants. Sure it is that to-day our cells, like their ancestors of old, live in water, and this water is slightly salty—as were probably ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... surprise. This was news to him. It must have occurred while he was on the high seas. The verbose positiveness of the doctor did not permit any doubt whatever.... Besides, that lady ought to know better than those who ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... gradually left it, retaining only the habit of expressing myself in terms of modest diffidence; never using, when I advanced any thing that may possibly be disputed, the words certainly, undoubtedly, or any others that give the air of positiveness to an opinion; but rather say, I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so and so; it appears to me, or I should think it so or so, for such and such reasons; or I imagine it to be so; or it is so, if I am not mistaken. This ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... useless for the king to entreat, and as useless for him to try his utmost to overcome her positiveness, which was but too apparent, and did not in reality exist; the poor girl was completely overwhelmed—the aspect of death itself could not have awakened her from her torpor. The king saw in her repeated negative replies a mystery full of unkindness; he began to look all round the apartment with a ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... our history, ideal and social, will be grand and of new import; it is perfectly natural to the American to mould in clay and carve in stone. The permanence of material and solid, relief in the forms correspond to the positiveness of his nature better than the mere ephemeral and even tricky methods of the painter,—to his need of motion and action, better than the chambered scribbling of the poet. He will thus record his best experiences, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... them," cried Hermon, interrupting his companion with angry positiveness. "The city of Alexandria, which is growing with unprecedented vigour, is their home. There, the place to which every race on earth sends a representative, the pulse of the whole world is throbbing. There, whoever ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Aunt Mary with a positiveness that was final. "I don't want her. My heavens, Lucinda, ain't we just had enough of her? Anyhow, if you ain't, I have. I don't want her, nor no livin' soul except my trunk; an' I want that just as quick as Joshua can haul it ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... the contrary. If this Inquiry and its important statements had not been accessible to them, at any rate they could readily have learned the same lesson from the well known History of Father Joseph de Acosta. That author says, and repeats with great positiveness, that the Sun was in Peru a secondary divinity, and that the supreme deity, the Creator and ruler of ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... NOSES.—Sharp noses indicate a quick, clear, penetrating, searching, knowing, sagacious mind, and also a scold; indicate warmth of love, hate, generosity, moral sentiment—indeed, positiveness in everything. ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... come to the catastrophe of Chopin's life, the rupture of his connection with George Sand. Although there is no lack of narratives in which the causes, circumstances, and time of this rupture are set forth with absolute positiveness, it is nevertheless an undeniable fact that we are not at the present moment, nor, all things well considered, shall be even in the most distant future, in a position to speak on this subject otherwise ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... difficulty that I succeeded in gently moving away M. le Duc d'Orleans, plunged as he was in the most bitter grief. I made him traverse the chamber at once, and supplicated him to return to Paris. At last he consented. He wished me to remain and give orders, and begged, with much positiveness, Madame de Saint-Simon to be present when seals were put upon the effects, after which I led him to his coach, and he went away. I immediately repeated to Madame de Saint-Simon the orders he had given me respecting ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... enunciations; not so: too often it happens that, in proportion to the narrowness of his knowledge, is, not his distrust of it, but the deep hold it has upon him, his absolute conviction of his own conclusions, and his positiveness in maintaining them. He has the obstinacy of the bigot, whom he scorns, without the bigot's apology, that he has been taught, as he thinks, his doctrine from heaven. Thus he becomes, what is commonly called, a man of one idea; which properly means a man of one ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... these symptoms off with great volubility. The Count looked at him with open-eyed wonder. The professor was not less astonished at the positiveness with which Dr. Jones thus detailed the Count's symptoms without any previous knowledge ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... friend is going to stop here," Mr. Mouell broke in, with frank positiveness. "If I cannot have him at my own house,—and for certain reasons it is not advisable,—I shall at least have the satisfaction of knowing he is in the charge of ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... is serious," she rejoined with equal positiveness. "You do not know daddy. Nothing ever discourages him, and he meets everything with a smile—but he cannot stand any more losses. The explosion was bad enough, but if this 'fill' is to be rebuilt, I don't know what will be the end of it. Tell me over again, please—how did he look when ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Moreover, there were other serious defects in the Letter. He criticised at some length certain forms of expression used by one of his assailants. Cooper's remarks on language are almost invariably marked by the pretension and positiveness that characterize the writers on usage who are ignorant of their ignorance; but in this case they are in addition frequently puerile. His personal references were not especially objectionable. But the best that can be asserted of them is, that he said with good taste ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... citizens in which they set forth the avowed opinions of their candidate. The document asserted that he believed the Bible to be a tissue of fictions and fables; Jesus a sinful man like others, neither risen from the dead, nor sitting in the glory of his Father; no one can assert with positiveness a life beyond the grave; and the opinion that we are reconciled to God by Jesus Christ, merely a superstition and a day-dream. The authors of the circular besought the ecclesiastical council to deliver them and their children from the promulgation of such ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... my reflections on what I had occasion to observe concerning that famous trial; and, on my return to England two years after, I could not help pitying the self-sufficiency of some people, who, at this distance, pretended to pass their judgment on that verdict with as great positiveness as if they had been in the secrets of the cause, or upon the jury who tried it; and that from no better authority than the declamations of Lord A—'s emissaries, and some falsified printed accounts, artfully cooked up on purpose to ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... "I imagine his positiveness is the secret of his success." Marian knew that Segur was half in jest and was fond of Howard. But she ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... on the guarantee did not exist. He admitted the Congress might declare war, notwithstanding these declarations of the President. In like manner, they might declare war in the face of a treaty, and in direct infraction of it. Among other positions laid down by him, this was with great positiveness; that the constitution having given power to the President and Senate to make treaties, they might make a treaty of neutrality which should take from Congress the right to declare war in that particular case, and that ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... no one, I believe, ever experiences any shock at Romeo's forgetting his Rosaline, who had been a mere name for the yearning of his youthful imagination, and rushing into his passion for Juliet. Rosaline was a mere creation of his fancy; and we should remark the boastful positiveness of Romeo in a love of his own making, which is never shown where love is ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... affords no parallel, and of which our senses are inadequate to the conception. Thus far, my young friend, 1 believe in the Gods, or in what you will of existences removed from the sphere of my knowledge. That you should believe, with positiveness, in one unseen existence or another, appears to me no crime, although it may appear to me unreasonable; and so, my doubt of the same should appear to you no moral offence, although you might account it erroneous. ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... that is commonly and absurdly called "existence," is a flow, or a current, or an attempt, from negativeness to positiveness, and is ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... again instantly heard—the characteristics of the sounds in this instance being rapidity and energy, or positiveness. ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... Roxanne, with beautiful positiveness. "I decided to have Him for one of my friends 'most two years ago after Father and Mother died almost together. When Douglass told me that we would have to sell Byrd Mansion and move down here in this old cottage that had been great-grandfather's gardener's house, ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... dull, and that Mr Pope is the author of it.' The writer of Gulliveriana is of another opinion, and says, 'The whole, or greatest part, of the merit of this treatise must and can only be ascribed to Gulliver.'[188] (Here, gentle reader! cannot I but smile at the strange blindness and positiveness of men, knowing the said treatise to appertain to none other but to me, Martinus Scriblerus.) We are assured, in Mist of June 8, 'That his own plays and farces would better have adorned the Dunciad than those of Mr Theobald, for he had neither genius ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... him. The war could not last forever. Unexpected circumstances might arise, and a steadfast course must win a certain kind of respect. At any rate it was not in his nature to falter, especially when her tolerance was parting with much of its old positiveness. His presence undoubtedly had the sanction of her father and mother, and for the former he was gaining an esteem and liking independent of his fortunes with the daughter. Love is a hardy plant, and thrives on meagre sustenance. It was evident that the relations ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... be helped. There is no one to go with us." This came with some positiveness, yet with a note of ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... fell upon, the company, for two of the best informed people present were entirely convinced that some one other than Shakespeare wrote the plays. It was simply lack of tact that betrayed this lady into a positiveness and obtrusiveness of statement that made others uncomfortable and aroused their antagonism. Here is still another instance: One lady was introduced to another lady who was the wife of a gentleman much older than herself. After catching the name the lady said: "Are you the wife of old Mr. C——?" ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... method, Jung has succumbed to the attractions of that other popular method, equally decried by his former master: the symbolical method of Joseph and Daniel.[9] But at least he has bravely called in question views which he once espoused with exaggerated positiveness. ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... come," said Miss Terry with her old positiveness, glancing towards the window where the Christmas ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... as the divine principle working through all nature, is at the very center of Browning's creed. His is the heartiest, happiest, most beautiful poetic voice that his age has read. He stands apart from most others of his kind and age in the positiveness of his religious faith, a faith that is based upon a conviction of the conquering universality of love ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... tuberculous material of human origin and his success in causing progressive and fatal tuberculosis in the same kinds of animals when inoculated with tuberculous material of bovine origin. With such positiveness did he hold to the constant and specific difference between the human and bovine bacillus that he promulgated an experimental method of discriminating between them. Speaking of the etiology of intestinal ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... always added with great positiveness, "It's exactly like her to stay away on purpose, just ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... overthrowing Reconstruction. Other questions practically dropped out. The whole discussion of the canvass turned on these two controlling propositions. No violence of design which the Republicans imputed to their adversaries exceeded their open avowals. The greater positiveness of General Blair, the keener popular interest in the Southern question and the broader realization of its possible dangers, made the issue on Reconstruction overshadow the other. The utterances of Southern leaders confirmed its superior importance in the public estimate. The jubilant ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... Frank," Rouletta answered with positiveness. 'Poleon started. Through the gloom he stared incredulously ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... case, is the orthodox theory of rent. The labourer gets less than he would if the products of the soil were equally distributed. Both wages and profits must fall as more is left to rent, and that this actually happens, he says, with unusual positiveness, is an 'incontrovertible truth.'[285] The fall enables the less fertile land to be cultivated, and gives an excess of produce on the more fertile. 'This excess is rent.'[286] He proceeds to expound his doctrine by comparing land to a set of machines for making corn.[287] If, in manufacture, a ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... delightful to watch her eager happiness as she arranged meats, and sweetmeats, in tempting order for the hungry young man. He thoroughly enjoyed this provision for his comfort; and as he ate, he talked to his father of those things interesting to him, answering all questions with that complaisant positiveness of youth which decides everything at once, and without reservation. No one understood this better than General Hyde, but it pleased him to draw out his son's opinions; and it also pleased him to watch ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... man, and extended the doctrine to include all who bore the human form. But in feeling he was an equally pronounced aristocrat. A servant's rights he would have defended to the last ditch; familiarity he would have resented with equal positiveness. Something of this ancestral feeling stirred within him now. While Nichols's position in reference to the house was, in principle, equally as correct as the colonel's own, and superior in point of time—since impressions, like photographs, are apt to grow dim with age, and ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... harsh in comparison. Nothing else has that definite indefiniteness, that melting permanence, that evanescing changelessness. Clouds in vain strive to imitate it; they are made of slighter stuff; they can be blunt or ragged, but they cannot have that solid positiveness. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... Older Man. "Twenty is nothing but the 'sere and yellow leaf' of infantile caprice! But thirty is the jocund youth of character! On land or sea the Lord Almighty never made anything as radiantly, divinely young as—thirty! Oh, but thirty's the darling age in a woman!" he added with sudden exultant positiveness. "Thirty's the ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... obtained; but of such landscape as his favorite Yorkshire Wolds, and banks of Rhenish and French hill, and rocky mountains of Switzerland, like the St. Gothard, already so long dwelt upon, he has expressed the power in what I believe to be for ever a central and unmatchable way. I do not say this with positiveness, because it is not demonstrable. Turner may be beaten on his own ground—so may Tintoret, so may Shakespeare, Dante, or Homer: but my belief is that all these first-rate men are lonely men; that the particular work they did ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... unbelievers. Argument kills the spirit of any religion, and the person who desires to prove his position by argument is not ready to be convinced by the spirit. If you are obliged to carry on a conversation with an argumentative person, silently deny all his statements of error, and with calm positiveness affirm for him intelligence, wisdom, and a desire to know truth. In other words, recognize his spiritual self, which is in perfect peace and harmony, and the outward disturbance or inharmony, which is simply nothingness expressed by him, is annulled. Possibly you may ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... while his hesitance makes it the harder. Of his theology I will say more some other time. He, also, has been through the great distress, the "Conflict of Ages," but has come out at a different end from Edward, and stands with John Foster, though with more positiveness than he. ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... was. But here lies the difference. Before, my positiveness was founded, without examination, upon prejudice; but now, ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... expression, no relief in deeds. The substance of this warning essay is repeated, often word for word, but considerably amplified with new material, and rendered more convincing by increased breadth of outlook and positiveness of assertion, the fruit of six years of observation and reflection, as part of a treatise, entitled, "Von der nthigen Sorge fr die Erhaltung des Gleichgewichts unter den menschlichen Krften: Besondere Warnung vor dem Modefehler die Empfindsamkeit zu berspannen." It ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... fact of their having a secret. Then the thought came to her that Emmett's sin had found him out in as strange a way as that of the man who talked in his sleep or the chicken thief to whom the feather clung. It was one more proof added to the forty in Aunt Letty's book. Richard's positiveness made a deeper impression on her than she liked to acknowledge. She shut her eyes a moment, squinting them up so tight that her eyelids wrinkled, and hoped as hard as she could hope that everything would turn ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the author describes his landing in Ithaca, and arrival at the rock Korax and the fountain Arethusa, as he designates it with sufficient positiveness.—This rock, now known by the name of Korax, or Koraka Petra, he contends to be the same with that which Homer mentions as contiguous to the habitation of Eumaeus, the faithful swine-herd of Ulysses.—We ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... in part: and it gives them the interest which has been noticed in other cases. Indeed in one respect—as a writer—Kingsley is perhaps better in his letters than in his Essays, where he too often affects a Macaulayesque positiveness on rather inadequate grounds. The following specimen should show him in pleasantly varied character—as a thoroughly human person, a good sportsman, and what Matthew Arnold (by no means himself very liberal of praise to his literary ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... overlooked the act of political fickleness in his earlier career, which was so warmly resented by many of his contemporaries. Abandonment of party is too common and often too justifiable to be accounted as necessarily a crime; and it can rarely be said with positiveness, whatever the probabilities, that a political deserter is certainly moved by base motives. It is rather from ex post facto than from immediate evidence, as in Madison's case, that a just verdict is likely to ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... of Natural Law," answered I, slowly and deliberately. "I recognize in you the soul of Arletta, of Sageland, my eternal companion, and a fulfilment of her prophecy that she would be born again. But while I make this declaration with the utmost positiveness, still I am at a loss to understand how such a thing could be, as the soul of that lovely being, having but just left its material body, should according to Natural Law, have attached itself to an embryo form, while you are a full-grown woman." At these words she ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... of confusion which one would have if desired to study a pattern from the back of a piece of embroidery. There is, however, a class of minds which delight in the fogs of mystery, and, when a book puzzles them, accept this as evidence of depth of thought. I have been bewildered at times by the positiveness and reasoning folly of the insane, and I think most trained intelligences will feel that books like these mystical volumes require an amount of care and thinking to avoid bewilderment of which the mass of men and women are not possessed. In a few years they will be the rarely read and dusty ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... Day of Judgment, or whether any of us be so (for there may be different Ways to the same End, and I am not for circumscribing God Almighty's Mercy:) This I am sure of, one shall meet with the same Positiveness in Opinion, in some of the Priests of all these Sects; The same Want of Charity, engrossing Heaven by way of Monopoly to their own Corporation, and managing it by a joint Stock, exclusive of all others ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... maiden lady, who, having brought a cart-load of personal necessaries and comforts, which were positively essential to her continued existence, and having been firmly refused the transmission of the greater part of them, declared with the utmost positiveness that the lord chancellor had himself expressly informed all the guests at the banquet that each was at liberty to take an unlimited quantity of goods; nor could any explanation convince her of her mistake. Let them say what they pleased, she had heard the word unlimited ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... physical competency attained in athletic games has its reaction upon every mental condition. Many boys who are hampered by unreasonable diffidence, a lack of normal self-confidence and self-assertion, find unexpected ability and positiveness through this avenue alone and, on the other hand, the physical test and encounter of the game serves to bring a proper ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... at this frank reference to their looks; and a few in the encircling crowd laughed grimly. Plainly there could be no collusion between this witness and Ugger and Quinley; and this apparent fact gave almost the positiveness of proven truth to his testimony, in the ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... canvas. An equivalent of such a line is a gradation, often the shadow from the figure serving to effect this union. If the shadow unites the outline with the background in such a tone as to subdue or destroy this outline, the attachment becomes stronger and at the same time the positiveness of outline on the light side finds its contrast and balance in this area of ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... seen; but on reaching the Feejees, six months later, in 1840, I found there similar facts on a still grander scale and of a more diversified character, so that I was afterward enabled to speak of his theory as established with more positiveness than he himself, in his philosophic caution, had been ready to adopt. His work on coral-reefs appeared in 1842, when my report on the subject was already in manuscript. It showed that the conclusions on other points, which we had independently reached, were for the most ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... replied to Captain Downs's query did not sound human. It was a sort of muffled wail, but there was no mistaking its positiveness. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... extraordinary powers as a linguist, and for the originality of his character, not to speak of the wonderful adventures he narrates, and the ease and facility with which he tells them. He kept us laughing a good part of breakfast time by the oddity of his remarks, as well as the positiveness of his assertions, often rather startling, and, like his books, partaking of ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... he cried with abrupt positiveness. "Before the year is out I'll put an even hundred of those little yellow-boys into your hand. I don't ask you to believe me. All you have to do is wait ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... with equal positiveness. "And a fine fellow he was, too, and one of the best for cheering of us up with his stories and songs; and not above a bit of a prayer, too, when the worst came to the worst. I ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... the Latins at the lake Regillus. There is no doubt but that Posthumius, after the battle, spread the report of such an appearance. No person could deny it whilst it was said to last. No person, perhaps, had any inclination to dispute it afterwards; or, if they had, could say with positiveness what was or what was not seen by some or other of the army, in the dismay and amidst the tumult of ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... withhold it when you ask it; at the same time leaving you perfectly at liberty to reject it, if not adopted by your own judgment. The experience of old age Is very likely to be balanced by the weaknesses incident to that age. I have not, however, its positiveness yet; and willingly abandon my criticism to the vigour of ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... stood in profound silence, leaning upon his walking-stick, whilst the committal was making out for Bampfylde the second. The fear of ridicule was struggling with the natural positiveness of his temper: he was dreadfully afraid that the story of his being taken in by the king of the gipsies would get abroad; and, at the same time, he was unwilling to give up his prejudice against ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... shut my eyes to his faults, and wondered, not that he had them, but that they had not crushed or dwarfed his soul. But in spite of Macaulay's brilliancy and his admirable faculty of making the commonplace seem fresh and picturesque, his positiveness wearied me at times, and his frequent sacrifices of truth to effect kept me in a questioning attitude very unlike the attitude of reverence in which I had listened to the ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... in something eternal, something objective, something true, which would exist just as much though we and all the world disbelieved it. The strength of belief comes from that which is believed in; if you separate it from that, it becomes a mere self-opinion, a sensation of positiveness; and what sort of strength that will give, history will tell us in the tragedies of the Jews who opposed Titus, of the rabble who followed Walter the Penniless to the Crusades, of the Munster Anabaptists, ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... old man with gentle positiveness. "Because of the way of the white man, which is without understanding and never twice ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... them a certain practical positiveness of meaning, and Theos was somewhat impressed by their seeming truth. After all, it WAS a curious and unfounded conceit of a man to imagine himself the possessor of an immortal soul,—and yet ... if all things were the outcome ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... collection of frequently astonishing and important things, but when we ask for the source of this collection we get "that must be,'' in variations, from a shrug of the shoulders to a flood of words. The inexperienced judge may be deceived by the positiveness of such expressions and believe that such certainty must be based on something which the witness can not utter through lack of skill. If, now, the judge is going to help the "unaided'' witness with "of course you mean because,'' or "perhaps because,'' ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... baker's wife," cried Juffrouw Mabbel, with a positiveness in her tone which showed her intention to ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... The reply came with some positiveness and a slight touch of irony. He had made up his mind now that if the speaker had a pull, he would meet it by keeping strictly ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... mood, without change of termination. I have not yet knowingly used it so myself, nor does it appear to have been classed with the auxiliaries, by any of our grammarians, except Webster.[258] I shall therefore not presume to say now, with positiveness, that it deserves this rank; (though I incline to think it does;) but rather quote such instances as have occurred to me in reading, and leave the student to take his choice, whether to condemn as bad English the uninflected examples, or to justify ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... am excessively concerned that I should be pre- vailed upon, between your over-niceness, on one hand, and my mother's positiveness, on the other, to be satisfied without knowing how to direct to you at your lodgings. I think too, that the proposal that I should be put off to a third-hand knowledge, or rather veiled in a first-hand ignorance, came from ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... must decide within yourself whether he is worth the sacrifice," Grace answered with deep positiveness. Privately she did not consider that a young man, who took it upon himself to interfere with an enterprise which benefited many and harmed none, was quite worthy of her generous little comrade. "It's like this, Arline. You must be true to yourself, no matter what it ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... of the papers which left him helpless to openly resist the claim being made upon him on behalf of the mysterious Phyllis. His only hope, therefore, lay in recovering these; but, with time limited, he had been sent back on a wild goose chase, while Keith alone knew, with any degree of positiveness, where those documents really were. Hawley certainly had them in his possession the day before, for he had taken them to Miss Maclaire to thus convince her as to the truth of his statements. And Hawley was still in Sheridan. However, it was not likely the man would risk carrying documents ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... deal of Wagner. Only occasionally—as in the pianissimo passage for flutes, clarinets, and divided strings, following the first outburst of the full orchestra—does his own individuality emerge with any positiveness. MacDowell withheld the score from publication, at the time of its composition, because of his uncertainty as to its effect. He had not had an opportunity to secure a reading of it by one of the Cur-Orchester which had accommodatingly ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... organism, and how diffused and even unconscious the sexual impulses may be, it becomes very difficult to assert that she has never shown any manifestation of the sexual impulse. All we can assert with some degree of positiveness in some cases is that she has not manifested sexual gratification, more particularly as shown by the occurrence of the orgasm, but that is very far indeed from warranting us to assert that she never will experience such gratification or still less that she is organically incapable of experiencing ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... spoken of in that article is so great that I feel some hesitation in answering your letter and the article from the "Democrat" as I might do if I had access to the archives at Washington; but, writing from memory, I think I can say with great positiveness there was never any despatch from you to me, or from you to any one in Washington, disparaging General Thomas's movements at Nashville. On the contrary, my recollection is that when I met you on your way to Wilmington, N. C., subsequent to the ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... wherever he goes, serves not a little to increase the sensation naturally created by his appearance and manner." {189a} Borrow was much attracted to this mysterious personage, about whom nothing could be asserted "with downright positiveness." ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... I tell you," the father insisted. Then he went on quickly, with a tone of utmost positiveness. "If you don't, what are you going to do the day your wife is thrown into a patrol wagon and carried to Police Headquarters—for it's sure to happen? The cleverest of people make mistakes, and some day she'll ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... forgets the elevation of his nature towards good. There is a tendency to depreciate human nature, and to overlook the joyousness of life. What is needed, therefore, is the expression of Christianity in a new form—a reconstruction which shall emphasise the positiveness, activity, ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... whose names are even less remembered to-day. But though the reviewer speaks of her genius and learning in high terms of admiration, he cannot be said to treat her sympathetically. He objects to the dogmatic positiveness of her prefaces, and protests warmly against her 'reckless repetition of the name of God'—a charge which, in another connection, will be found fully and fairly met in one of her later letters. On points of technique he criticises her frequent use of the perfect participle with ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... judgment, and to suggest less precipitancy in the future; but to no good purpose. Mrs. Turner's faith in the justice of her prognostications was sublime, though not unusual. It has been within the compass of our experience to meet and know undaunted women who, day after day, could, with equal positiveness, announce their theories as incontrovertible facts, or flatly contradict the assertions of those whose very position enabled them to be well informed. When Mrs. Turner was confronted with the proof of her error, and gently upbraided by the placid ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... a quaint, fascinating expression of positiveness. "Now, my friend," said she, "drop that fancy. It isn't sensible. And it threatens to become silly." Her smile suddenly expanded into a laugh. "The idea of you and me married—of ME married to YOU! I'd drive you crazy. No, I shouldn't stay long enough for that. I'd be of on the wings ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... resulted from Gwen's headstrong action in bringing the old lady away from the scene of this accident. She might have been provided for otherwise, but Gwen's beauty and positiveness, and her visible taking for granted that her every behest would be obeyed, had swept all obstacles away. As for her Cousin Clotilda, she was secretly chuckling all the while at the wayward young lady's reckless incurring of responsibilities ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... movements. She had now a way of taking a deep breath when she was interested, that made her seem very strong, somehow, and brought her at one quite overpoweringly. If he seemed shy, it was not that he was intimidated by her worldly clothes, but that her greater positiveness, her whole augmented self, made him feel that his accustomed ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... the phraseology of Roman contract-law had been largely drawn upon to describe that reciprocity of rights and duties which men had always conceived as existing between sovereigns and subjects. While the world was full of maxims setting forth with the utmost positiveness the claims of kings to implicit obedience—maxims which pretended to have had their origin in the New Testament, but which were really derived from indelible recollections of the Caesarian despotism—the consciousness of correlative rights ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... Sadie answered, with roguish positiveness. "Things will go cross-wise, the fire won't burn, and the kettle won't boil, and the milk-pitcher will tip over, and all sorts of mischievous things will go on happening after a little bit, just as usual, and you will feel ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... act by being impressed with the fact that delay may make it altogether too late or may possibly postpone part of the advantage to be gained or may permit some one else to get ahead. Decision oftentimes is also induced by a direct or indirect compliment to the individual's decisiveness, positiveness, and ability to take action when he sees that action is necessary. A very successful salesman often used this method: "You say rightly that you want to think it over. That shows that you are a wise man, because a man who acts without thinking is foolish. On the other hand, the ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... armor and made to walk under water along the bottom of the canal, being fed with air through a pump. As we have never seen a mule in action while decorated with submarine armor, we are unable to say with positiveness what his conduct would be under such circumstances. But the objections to the plan are of a formidable character. The mule would, of course, be wholly excluded from every opportunity to view the scenery upon the route, and we fear that this would have ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... the Chevalier a la Charette and the corresponding prose settled this in my mind long ago; and though I have been open to unsettlement since, I have not been unsettled. The most unlucky instance of that over-positiveness to which I have referred above is M. Cledat's statement that "nous savons" that the prose romances are later than the verse. We certainly do not "know" this any more than we know the contrary. There ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... the pen, he discussed matters with one statesman after another, his lips snapping with metallic positiveness. ...
— The Angel of Lonesome Hill • Frederick Landis
... question, and when he possessed confidence himself, it was rarely, indeed, that he failed to inspire it in others. For the second time, the landlord of the Gethin Castle found himself in doubt; he was staggered by the positiveness of the young man's assertions, and by the force and flow of his glowing words. In spite of himself, he began once more to think that he might have been mistaken in condemning him as an impostor, after all; as Richard ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... said Cornish with equal positiveness; "since my turn-down by Wade on that bond deal, I'm out of touch with the lower Broadway and Wall Street element. It seems clear to me that you are the only one to ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... the question with any degree of positiveness, and he went to bed wishing that he had never seen the valley of ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... 'like a trumpet call to fill the benches.' The great qualities, then, of his essays and his 'History' are those which give success to the best sort of popular oratory—dramatic vividness and clearness, positiveness, and vigorous, movement and interest. He realizes characters and situations, on the external side, completely, and conveys his impression to his readers with scarcely any diminution of force. Of expository structure he is almost as great a master as Burke, though in his essays and 'History' ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... answered Tom Reade with reassuring positiveness. "You're out of sorts, to-night. Your head, or your nerves, or some thing, has gone back on you, and you walk through this blackness with half a notion that you're going to walk over a precipice, or drop head-first into some danger. With such a feeling it would be cruelty to let ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... back of a piece of embroidery. There is, however, a class of minds which delight in the fogs of mystery, and, when a book puzzles them, accept this as evidence of depth of thought. I have been bewildered at times by the positiveness and reasoning folly of the insane, and I think most trained intelligences will feel that books like these mystical volumes require an amount of care and thinking to avoid bewilderment of which the mass of men ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... of our history, ideal and social, will be grand and of new import; it is perfectly natural to the American to mould in clay and carve in stone. The permanence of material and solid, relief in the forms correspond to the positiveness of his nature better than the mere ephemeral and even tricky methods of the painter,—to his need of motion and action, better than the chambered scribbling of the poet. He will thus record his best experiences, and these records will adorn the noble structures that ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... possible," says Jeremy Taylor, "for a man to bring himself to believe any thing he hath a mind to." But what is this belief?—Analyse it into its constituents;—is it more than certain passions or feelings converging into the sensation of positiveness as their focus, and then associated with certain sounds or images?—'Nemo enim', says Augustin, 'huic evidentiae contradicet, nisi quem plus defensare delectat, quod sentit, quam, quid ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... different point of view in his exposition of the Mu'tazilite physics, which he presents in a more systematic and favorable light than Maimonides, defending it against the strictures of the latter. But everywhere Aaron ben Elijah lacks the positiveness and commanding mastery of Maimonides. He is not clear what side of a question to espouse. For the most part he places side by side the opposed points of view and only barely intimates his own attitude or preference. ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... removed, in which Mary would probably have joined, but that she was now in her little sleeping-chamber with Tibb, who was exerting her simple skill to console the young lady for her mother's death. But the younger Glendinning stood up in defence of her property, and, with a positiveness which had hitherto made no part of his character, declared, that now the kind lady was dead, the book was Mary's, and no one but Mary ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... silence, leaning upon his walking-stick, whilst the committal was making out for Bampfylde the second. The fear of ridicule was struggling with the natural positiveness of his temper: he was dreadfully afraid that the story of his being taken in by the king of the gipsies would get abroad; and, at the same time, he was unwilling to give up his prejudice against ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... yard, likely, Dick," said Tom, but his tone lacked positiveness. It was evident that he had fears that such ...
— The Dare Boys of 1776 • Stephen Angus Cox
... will," Billy rejoined with great positiveness. "It's us for the San Joaquin. We don't know what's in our country. No wonder we're out ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... Regillus. There is no doubt but that Posthumius, after the battle, spread the report of such an appearance. No person could deny it whilst it was said to last. No person, perhaps, had any inclination to dispute it afterwards; or, if they had, could say with positiveness what was or what was not seen by some or other of the army, in the dismay and amidst the tumult ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... my purpose. First, that this part of the world has actually been peopled (Q.E.D.) to support which we have living proofs in the numerous tribes of Indians that inhabit it. Secondly, that it has been peopled in five hundred different ways, as proved by a cloud of authors, who, from the positiveness of their assertions, seem to have been eye-witnesses to the fact. Thirdly, that the people of this country had a variety of fathers, which, as it may not be thought much to their credit by the common run of readers, the less we say on ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... his people, though he acknowledged that they were probably of the same race. Attila and his armies, he said, came and disappeared in a very mysterious manner, and that nothing could be said with positiveness about them; that the people now known as Magyars first made their appearance in Muscovy in the year 884, under the leadership of Almus, called so from Alom, which, in the Hungarian language, signifies a dream; his mother, before his birth, having dreamt that the ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... they be modern books, is, they admit, a desirable accomplishment if it can be gained without too much cost, but not to be allowed the place of more valuable knowledge. A typical modern father, writing not long ago to a modern educator, after giving with equal positiveness the subjects that his boy must have and must not have included in his course of study, added by way of concession, "The boy might, if he has ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... other alienists (Wernicke, for example, in his Grundriss der Psychiatrie, Theil ii., Leipzig, 1896) have explained "paranoiac" conditions by a laming of the association-organ. But the higher mystical flights, with their positiveness and abruptness, are surely products of no such merely negative condition. It seems far more reasonable to ascribe them to inroads from the subconscious life, of the cerebral activity correlative to which we as yet ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... might think this ought to make such a person modest in his enunciations; not so: too often it happens that, in proportion to the narrowness of his knowledge, is, not his distrust of it, but the deep hold it has upon him, his absolute conviction of his own conclusions, and his positiveness in maintaining them. He has the obstinacy of the bigot, whom he scorns, without the bigot's apology, that he has been taught, as he thinks, his doctrine from heaven. Thus he becomes, what is commonly called, a man of one idea; which properly means a man ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... are nearly the arguments which Antiochus used to urge at Alexandria, and many years afterwards, with much more positiveness too, in Syria, when he was there with me, a little before he died. But, as my case is now established, I will not hesitate to warn you, as you are my dearest friend, (he was addressing me,) and one a good deal younger ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... the taproom to consult the driver of the Carlisle coach, who was taking a glass before going to bed—his hours of work being in the night and his hours of rest being in the day. That authority recommended, with the utmost positiveness of advice, that Robbie should take a seat in his coach when he left for the ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... candidate. The document asserted that he believed the Bible to be a tissue of fictions and fables; Jesus a sinful man like others, neither risen from the dead, nor sitting in the glory of his Father; no one can assert with positiveness a life beyond the grave; and the opinion that we are reconciled to God by Jesus Christ, merely a superstition and a day-dream. The authors of the circular besought the ecclesiastical council to deliver them and their children from the promulgation of such doctrines, and further reminded them that ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... similarity to Lemuel. She felt certain, too, that she had noticed vestiges of the Five Towns accent beneath his Americanisms. But apart from these reasons, she knew by a superrational instinct that Lionel Belmont was her father; it was not the call of blood, but the positiveness of a woman asserting that a thing is so because she is sure ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... used every effort to induce her to compose herself, and at length succeeded; but she only resumed her composure to express herself with the same positiveness as before. "No, Reuben, I'll bring disgrace hame to nae man's hearth; my ain distresses I can bear, and I maun bear, but there is nae occasion for buckling them on other folk's shouthers. I will bear my load alone—the back is ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... except that of permitting closer daily intercourse between families. And it is questionable if the petty society of such a village can compensate for the freedom and purity of rural family life now existing. It may even be asserted with some degree of positiveness that the small village, on the moral and intellectual sides, is distinctly inferior to ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... to the field to-morrow,"—his habitually calm, unfeeling positiveness left no ground for objection; "I cannot support you in idleness, ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... of sympathetic emotions which finds no actual expression, no relief in deeds. The substance of this warning essay is repeated, often word for word, but considerably amplified with new material, and rendered more convincing by increased breadth of outlook and positiveness of assertion, the fruit of six years of observation and reflection, as part of a treatise, entitled, "Von der nthigen Sorge fr die Erhaltung des Gleichgewichts unter den menschlichen Krften: Besondere Warnung vor dem Modefehler die Empfindsamkeit zu berspannen." It is in the third volume of the ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... matches, ends of cigars and pipe tobacco, while the ash-crumbs speckled all dark objects, not excepting the green rug under his feet. Warrington smoked incessantly while at work, now a cigarette, now a cigar, now a pipe. Specialists declare with cold authoritative positiveness that the use of tobacco blunts the thought, dulls the edge of invention; but Warrington knew better. Many a night he had thrown his coat over his smoking-jacket and dashed down the street to the corner drug-store for a fresh supply of tobacco. He simply could not work without ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... for say, state, and the like. It means "to declare," "to affirm," or "to assert with the idea of positiveness" and is not applicable to ordinary statements not ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... awakening to the infinite, and ask a thousand questions of the spirits that are to unfold our destinies, too far-reaching to be clothed in words. Who does not feel the sway of such a voice? It makes the whole range of our capacities resound and tremble, and, when there is positiveness enough to give an answer, ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Mr. Tilden. Not wanting the sense of humor, he seldom indulged it. In spite of his positiveness of opinion and amplitude of knowledge he was always courteous and deferential in debate. He had none of the audacious daring, let us say, of Mr. Elaine, the energetic self-assertion of Mr. Roosevelt. Either in his place would have ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... the matron, with smiling positiveness, "Susie is boss only out of doors; I am, in the house. There is a fresh- made cup of coffee and some eggs on toast in the dining-room. Having taken such an early start, you ought to have a lunch before being put ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... Robin answered with amazing positiveness. "No, I hated his eyes. They were not true eyes. But—I like Dale—lots." And just here, for the second time, she locked her lips on her precious secret for Dale must never know that she remembered him; all that belonged to her childhood. Beryl might laugh, too, as she often ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... He's awful good-natured, but he isn't the sort of young man I would like," concluded Carrie, with amusing positiveness. ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... in conformity with their obligations and honest convictions of duty in bringing in their verdicts. They had sworn to decide according to the law and the evidence. The law under which they were required to act was laid down with absolute positiveness by the Court. They were bound to receive it, and to take and weigh the evidence that was admitted; and to their minds it was clear, decisive, and overwhelming, offered by persons of good character, and confirmed by a great number of confessions. If it had been within their province, as it always ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Captain Downs's query did not sound human. It was a sort of muffled wail, but there was no mistaking its positiveness. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... sufficient positiveness that I will finish the book at no particular date; that I will not hurry it; that I will not hurry myself; that I will take things easy and comfortably—write when I choose to write, leave it alone when I do so prefer... I have got everything at a dead standstill, and that is where it ought to be, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... shopkeeper, Lavinia," she said with some positiveness, "nor a barber, nor a painter, nor a cook, nor a dentist. We'll try and keep him a gentleman, my dear, whatever happens. As for his being a musician, I think you will agree with me, that music is only possible ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... that terrible fear to contend against with all your other troubles?" asked Mr. Corbin, in a tone of compassion. "No, Miss Montague," he added, with grave positiveness, "I do not believe that Walter Dinsmore—and I knew him well—ever willfully committed a wrong against any human being. Now," he resumed, smiling, to see the look of trouble fade out of her eyes at his assurance, "I am going to try to ferret out the 'mystery' ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Brownson was the most satisfactory to him. I thought then that this was due to the authority of Brownson's masterful tone, the definiteness of his views, the force of his 'understanding,' as the word was then philosophically used in distinction from the reason. Brownson's mental vigor and positiveness were very agreeable to a candid mind which was speculatively adrift and experimenting, and, as it seemed to me, which was more emotional than logical. Brownson, after his life of varied theological and controversial activity, ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... of command, becomes agreeable and necessary to him. Thus many of the same causes which make a young man a pleasant companion abroad, tend naturally to make him a tyrant at home. This perversity and positiveness of temper, ultimately arise from the want of occupation, and from deficient energy of mind. We may guard against these evils by education: when we see a playful, active child, we have little fear of his temper. ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... the truth, it may answer an end perhaps as useful, in discovering to us the weakness of our own understanding. If it does not make us knowing, it may make us modest. If it does not preserve us from error, it may at least from the spirit of error; and may make us cautious of pronouncing with positiveness or with haste, when so much labour may end ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... not answer the question with any degree of positiveness, and he went to bed wishing that he had never seen the valley of ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... was ready to execute one of those changes of front which lent variety to his positiveness, and he addressed himself particularly to Albert, with the persuasive tone and gesture of a man to another man in a company ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... cried with abrupt positiveness. "Before the year is out I'll put an even hundred of those little yellow-boys into your hand. I don't ask you to believe me. All you have to do is ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... shock at Romeo's forgetting his Rosaline, who had been a mere name for the yearning of his youthful imagination, and rushing into his passion for Juliet. Rosaline was a mere creation of his fancy; and we should remark the boastful positiveness of Romeo in a love of his own making, which is never shown where love ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... that time would soften Marian's feelings toward him. The war could not last forever. Unexpected circumstances might arise, and a steadfast course must win a certain kind of respect. At any rate it was not in his nature to falter, especially when her tolerance was parting with much of its old positiveness. His presence undoubtedly had the sanction of her father and mother, and for the former he was gaining an esteem and liking independent of his fortunes with the daughter. Love is a hardy plant, and thrives on meagre sustenance. It was evident that the relations between Marian and Strahan ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... smiled at his crestfallen look. It was plain that, in talking over myself and my situation, he had declared with the positiveness which I found was part of his character, that I had fallen into some trouble at school ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... fancy and of fact, of childish credulity with more than mere haphazard prophecy of mechanical and physical results which have been so lately reached in the progress of science as to be among new things even six centuries after Bacon's death. Its positiveness of statement is puzzling, when tested by what is known from other sources of the nature of the discoveries and inventions of that early time; and were there reason to question Bacon's truth, it would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... to time in the early summer the newspapers contained definite statements, authorized from Washington with increasing positiveness, that the cordon around the N.P.C. was tightening. In July Barclay's scorn of Inspector Smith grew into disquietude; for a letter from Judge Bemis, of the federal court,—written up in the Catskills,—warned ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... a la Charette and the corresponding prose settled this in my mind long ago; and though I have been open to unsettlement since, I have not been unsettled. The most unlucky instance of that over-positiveness to which I have referred above is M. Cledat's statement that "nous savons" that the prose romances are later than the verse. We certainly do not "know" this any more than we know the contrary. There is important authority both ways; there is fair argument both ways; but the positive evidence ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... the baker's wife," cried Juffrouw Mabbel, with a positiveness in her tone which showed her intention to ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... method of stanching the flow from a cut finger gives the impression that it contains a little salt. Every fluid of the body is salty, and every cell of the body is bathed in salt water. It is too long since the ancestors of our cells swam in the seas of the Eozoic time for us to assert with any positiveness that the ancestral habit is responsible for this trait in the descendants. Sure it is that to-day our cells, like their ancestors of old, live in water, and this water is slightly salty—as were ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... of all occurred in the case of an old maiden lady, who, having brought a cart-load of personal necessaries and comforts, which were positively essential to her continued existence, and having been firmly refused the transmission of the greater part of them, declared with the utmost positiveness that the lord chancellor had himself expressly informed all the guests at the banquet that each was at liberty to take an unlimited quantity of goods; nor could any explanation convince her of her mistake. Let them say what they pleased, she had heard the word unlimited with her own ears: and hearing ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... life and general demoralisation. And it is possible for the scientific instincts, when developed at the expense of the aesthetic and the sympathetic, to evolve a hard, unemotional type of character which is self-centred and selfish owing to its positiveness and lack of imagination. But these are instances of inharmonious growth. When growth is harmonious and many-sided, it leads of necessity to out-growth, to escape from self. For the expansive instincts are so many ways of escape from self which ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... cried Hermon, interrupting his companion with angry positiveness. "The city of Alexandria, which is growing with unprecedented vigour, is their home. There, the place to which every race on earth sends a representative, the pulse of the whole world is throbbing. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... here given. Belasco and Akop would be recognized as very tall Igorot in any part of the mountains. Two of the above are pygmy and all but seven are below 1600, and correspond to Topinard's "below medium" statures. We may say, then, with positiveness that the Igorot is one of the exceptionally short races of mankind. With three or four exceptions the arm-reach is greater than the height, usually by 40 to 50 mm. Thus, the short stature is somewhat compensated for by long arms, heavy, robust ...
— The Negrito and Allied Types in the Philippines and The Ilongot or Ibilao of Luzon • David P. Barrows
... such a case an advertisement is the proper thing. But, my boy, your positiveness on this subject is extraordinary. How could you drop the wallet? Do you keep it in the same ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... that two buffaloes were amply sufficient to carry all they would bring. I now find that they have more than full loads for two buffaloes, two mules, and two donkeys; but when these animals fall down under them, they assure me with so much positiveness that they are not overloaded, that I have to be silent, or only, as I have several times done before, express the opinion that they will kill these animals. This observation on my part leads them to hide their ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... the baby's testimony; and yet if we had it it would not do us any good—a furtive conjecture, a sly insinuation, a pious "if" or two, would be smuggled in, here and there, with a solemn air of judicial investigation, and its positiveness ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... carelessness of culture have reigned in that family? I know many who seem to be excellent men in society, but who are any thing but amiable men at home. In one they are pleasant, affable, kind, and charitable; in the other, cross-grained, hard, unkind, and unjust. I declare with all positiveness, that when a family or a neighborhood of children is bad, there is a reason for it outside of the children. There are bad influences which descend upon them, and work out their natural ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... with wild witty Irish eloquence, "worthy," as the press say of poor misguided Mitchell, "of a better cause." Altogether, a much-enduring Ulysses, unscrupulous, tough-hided, ready to do and suffer anything fair or foul, for what he honestly believed—if a confused, virulent positiveness be worthy of the name "belief"—to be the true ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... and its effects upon the national literature, one quickly discerns two main streams of influence. On the one hand, there is the influence of the original Puritans—whether of New England or of the South—, who came to the New World with a ready-made philosophy of the utmost clarity, positiveness and inclusiveness of scope, and who attained to such a position of political and intellectual leadership that they were able to force it almost unchanged upon the whole population, and to endow it with such vitality that ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... in the world is success in getting money and ingenuity in spending it. With all the rest she was a woman of some direct force of character which, in times of crisis as at the present moment, asserted itself with considerable positiveness. ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... herself and was a-laying out ter tell you some enflirtment she had been a-trying ter have with him. Don't pay no 'tention to it." By this time she had regained her composure and was able to reassure Caroline with her usual positiveness to which she added an amount of worldly tact in substituting a highly disturbing thought in place ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... stand by him, and day after day elapsed and nothing was settled. In the meantime London was alive with reports; and the on dit of the day, repeated with every variety of circumstance and with the usual positiveness of entire ignorance, would fill a volume. Time crept on, and Parliament was to adjourn on the 13th (this day). On the 9th Canning went to the King, and, after a long audience, he came away without anything ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... since the event spoken of in that article is so great that I feel some hesitation in answering your letter and the article from the "Democrat" as I might do if I had access to the archives at Washington; but, writing from memory, I think I can say with great positiveness there was never any despatch from you to me, or from you to any one in Washington, disparaging General Thomas's movements at Nashville. On the contrary, my recollection is that when I met you on your way to Wilmington, N. C., subsequent to the battle of Nashville, you explained the situation at Nashville ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... aged face, with a high forehead, a small mouth, and a pair of cold blue eyes which had kept much of the freshness of youth. Madame de Bellegarde looked hard at him, and returned his hand-shake with a sort of British positiveness which reminded him that she was the daughter of the Earl of St. Dunstan's. Her daughter-in-law stopped playing and gave him an agreeable smile. Newman sat down and looked about him, while Valentin went and kissed the hand of ...
— The American • Henry James
... appealed to, failed to remember anything about the club, the latter suggesting that probably it flourished before he came to C———. Jessie was quite sure she recalled Henry, but the others could not do so with much positiveness. ...
— The Old Folks' Party - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... name with a peremptory positiveness that was almost an accusation. He rose calmly, raising his eyebrows ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... idea that the conscious subject is a mere phenomenon, or "series of phenomena," with more indignation than Hamilton. Notwithstanding the contradictory assertion, "that the subject is unknown," he still teaches, with equal positiveness, "that in every act of perception I am conscious of self, as a perceiving subject." And still more explicitly he says: "As clearly as I am conscious of existing, so clearly am I conscious, at ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... without change of termination. I have not yet knowingly used it so myself, nor does it appear to have been classed with the auxiliaries, by any of our grammarians, except Webster.[258] I shall therefore not presume to say now, with positiveness, that it deserves this rank; (though I incline to think it does;) but rather quote such instances as have occurred to me in reading, and leave the student to take his choice, whether to condemn as bad English ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... own souls; the supply of our necessary temporal wants; and the extension of his kingdom. These are the kind of blessings that we are to ask; and the degree of confidence with which we are to look for an answer must be in proportion to the positiveness of the promises. Our Lord assures us that our heavenly Father is more willing to give good things, and particularly his Holy Spirit, to them that ask him, than earthly parents are to give good gifts to their children; and he declares expressly, that our sanctification is ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... is going to stop here," Mr. Mouell broke in, with frank positiveness. "If I cannot have him at my own house,—and for certain reasons it is not advisable,—I shall at least have the satisfaction of knowing he is in the charge of ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... scowled at this frank reference to their looks; and a few in the encircling crowd laughed grimly. Plainly there could be no collusion between this witness and Ugger and Quinley; and this apparent fact gave almost the positiveness of proven truth to his testimony, in ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... gentleman more than to hear William Pitt called by his tardy honors; and yet, unwilling to give up what he thought his political opinions, he exclaimed, with an unanswerable positiveness of argument, ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... want her," said Aunt Mary with a positiveness that was final. "I don't want her. My heavens, Lucinda, ain't we just had enough of her? Anyhow, if you ain't, I have. I don't want her, nor no livin' soul except my trunk; an' I want that just as quick as Joshua can haul it down ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... back!" he said, using positiveness in his argument; "that is, not for awhile. You'd have all Deadwood down on us in a jiffy. I'll give you work in the shaft, at three dollars a day. You can accept that offer, or submit to confinement until I see fit to set ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... two, to which they responded only "hmm," and began the examination. Miss Harper sent her three nieces away. I lay and listened in the busy stillness. Presently one of the examiners murmured with a certain positiveness to the other, who after a moment's silence replied with conviction; Miss Harper touched our surgeon's arm inquiringly and he looked back in a glad way and nodded. Miss Harper nodded to me; they had located the ball! Now the ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... position by argument is not ready to be convinced by the spirit. If you are obliged to carry on a conversation with an argumentative person, silently deny all his statements of error, and with calm positiveness affirm for him intelligence, wisdom, and a desire to know truth. In other words, recognize his spiritual self, which is in perfect peace and harmony, and the outward disturbance or inharmony, which is simply nothingness expressed by him, is annulled. Possibly you may seem obliged to ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... very dull, and that Mr Pope is the author of it.' The writer of Gulliveriana is of another opinion, and says, 'The whole, or greatest part, of the merit of this treatise must and can only be ascribed to Gulliver.'[188] (Here, gentle reader! cannot I but smile at the strange blindness and positiveness of men, knowing the said treatise to appertain to none other but to me, Martinus Scriblerus.) We are assured, in Mist of June 8, 'That his own plays and farces would better have adorned the Dunciad than those of Mr Theobald, for he had neither genius for tragedy ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... the marriage certificate, and I will acknowledge the marriage, and acknowledge the child;" but they could not, and I knew they could not; and I kept the estate for my darling boy,' cried the old gentleman, with the exultation of successful positiveness again appearing strong in his physiognomy; but suddenly changing and relaxing, his countenance fell, and he added, 'But now I have no darling boy. What use all!—all must go to the heir-at-law, or I must will it to a stranger—a lady of quality, who has just found out she is ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... lies the difference. Before, my positiveness was founded, without examination, upon prejudice; but now, after ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... exist just as much though we and all the world disbelieved it. The strength of belief comes from that which is believed in; if you separate it from that, it becomes a mere self-opinion, a sensation of positiveness; and what sort of strength that will give, history will tell us in the tragedies of the Jews who opposed Titus, of the rabble who followed Walter the Penniless to the Crusades, of the Munster Anabaptists, and many another ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... faults, and wondered, not that he had them, but that they had not crushed or dwarfed his soul. But in spite of Macaulay's brilliancy and his admirable faculty of making the commonplace seem fresh and picturesque, his positiveness wearied me at times, and his frequent sacrifices of truth to effect kept me in a questioning attitude very unlike the attitude of reverence in which I had listened to the ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... in profound silence, leaning upon his walking-stick, whilst the committal was making out for Bampfylde the Second. The fear of ridicule was struggling with the natural positiveness of his temper. He was dreadfully afraid that the story of his being taken in by the king of the gipsies would get abroad; and, at the same time, he was unwilling to give up his prejudice ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... cited his own son as an example of the havoc wrought by present- day university methods. The elder Anthony's wealth and position made it good copy. The yellow journals liked it immensely, and, strangely enough, notwithstanding the positiveness with which the newspapers spoke, the facts agreed essentially with their statements. Darwin K. Anthony and his son had quarrelled, they were estranged; the young man did prefer idleness to industry. Exactly as the published narratives related, he toiled not at all, he ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... see her." The reply came with some positiveness and a slight touch of irony. He had made up his mind now that if the speaker had a pull, he would meet it by ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... ears of Donna Giulia, first of all, that I imparted the state of my feelings, my hopes, fears and prayers with regard to Aurelia. There was that about Count Giraldi, a diamantine brilliancy, a something hard and crystalline, a positiveness, an incisiveness of view and reflection, which on first acquaintance decided me not to take him into my confidence. When I came to know him better, or to think that I did, I followed my natural bent and talked to him unreservedly; but in the lady, from the beginning, I found a very interested ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... to produce tuberculosis in cattle and other animals by inoculating them with tuberculous material of human origin and his success in causing progressive and fatal tuberculosis in the same kinds of animals when inoculated with tuberculous material of bovine origin. With such positiveness did he hold to the constant and specific difference between the human and bovine bacillus that he promulgated an experimental method of discriminating between them. Speaking of the etiology of intestinal ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... letter had a certain volubility about it, and the writer seemed to me to pull out rather adroitly one or two loose sticks in his opponents' bundle, and to lay them vehemently about their backs. But, alas! the acrimony, the positiveness, ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the same with that of the Church of England. Their confession of faith, and the thirty-nine articles, contain the same points, even the doctrine of predestination.' JOHNSON. 'Why yes, Sir, predestination was a part of the clamour of the times, so it is mentioned in our articles, but with as little positiveness as could be.' BOSWELL. 'Is it necessary, Sir, to believe all the thirty-nine articles?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, that is a question which has been much agitated. Some have thought it necessary that they ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... abhorrence, be the slave of jailers, be loaded with fetters; thus shall you be cleared from every unworthy aspersion, and restored to reputation and honour!' This is the consolation she affords to those whom malignity or folly, private pique or unfounded positiveness, have, without the smallest foundation, loaded with calumny." For myself, I felt my own innocence; and I soon found, upon enquiry, that three fourths of those who are regularly subjected to a similar treatment, are persons whom, even with ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... with a cool positiveness that bred belief. Martin, in almost as vengeful a mood as the other, was grimly ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... the last few years has been more discussed than that of their influence upon prices. Opinions have differed widely, the opponents of the Combinations usually believing that they have increased prices materially, their defenders claiming with equal positiveness that they have reduced prices. Differences of opinion have probably originated largely from the fact that the subject has been approached from different points of view; and mistakes have also, in many cases, been made through lack of a careful interpretation of available ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... that this bearded patriarch, who now poses as the only original Adam, has never been able, with any degree of positiveness, to answer the question as to whether or not he was provided with a caudal appendage—a question which I am prepared to answer definitely, at any moment, if called upon by the proper authorities, and, if need be, to produce not only the tail itself, but the fierce and untamed pterodactyl ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... needs reform in manners. We all need a new social intercourse, which shall breathe genuine refinement; which shall unite the two great elements of politeness, self-respect, and a delicate regard to the rights and feelings of others; which shall be free without rudeness, and earnest without positiveness; which shall be graceful, yet warm-hearted; and in which communication shall be frank, unlabored, overflowing, through the absence of all assumption and pretence, and through the consciousness of being safe from ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... procrastinator had a very doubtful future. Every day at nine o'clock his lordship seated himself at his desk, and stayed there writing industriously, hour after hour, upon his dispatches; every day he foretold with much accuracy and positiveness of manner that these would surely be ready, and the ship would inevitably sail, on the next day. Thus week after week glided by, and still he uttered the same prediction, "to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow." Yet in spite of this wonderful industry of the great man his letters never got written, ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
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