"Abortive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we ever heard of, at all rivaling this story in an abortive ending, is one which we once heard related at a party, where the conversation turned on the singular manner in which valuable articles thrown into the sea had been sometimes recovered, and restored to their owners—the ring ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... painter, not as now, shaping from shadow and in solitude the dim glories of his heart, caught at once his inspiration from the glow of earth and its living wanderers, and, lo, the canvas breathed! Oh! what are the dull realities and the abortive offspring of this altered and humbled world—the world of meaner and dwarfish men—to him whose realms are ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... benevolence. So under another phase of its primary sense we find the epithet used to express the excellence and characteristic qualities proper to the idea or standard of its subject, to wit, genuine, thrifty, well-liking, appropriate, not abortive, monstrous, prodigious, discordant. In the Litany, "the kindly fruits of the earth" is, in the Latin versions "genuinus," and by Mr. Boyer rightly translated "les fruits de la terre chaqu'un selon ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various
... lunch at a queer auberge, in an abortive village appropriately named Les Deserts, where the highroad for Chambery began. An outer room roughly flagged with stone, was kitchen, nursery, and family living-room in one. It swarmed with children, and was presided over by two of Macbeth's witches, ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... the close of the summer of 1841, this defile was occasionally traversed by adherents of the Ex-Queen-Regent Christina, entering Spain secretly and in small parties, to be ready to take share in the abortive attempt subsequently made to replace the reins of government in the hands of Ferdinand's widow. Not a few Carlists also, weary of the monotonous inactive life they were leading in France, prepared to join the projected insurrection; and, leaving the towns in which a residence had been assigned ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... 'Gan thunder, and both ends of heav'n: the clouds From many a horrid rift abortive poured Fierce rain with lightning mixt, water with fire In ruin reconciled; nor slept the winds Within their stoney caves, but rush'd abroad From the four hinges of the world, and ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... which so many abortive attempts are wrecked in the effort to achieve poise is a type of sentimentality ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... bridge. The reconnoissance was a success in one way —that is, in finding out that the enemy was at the point supposed by, General Pope; but it also had a tendency to accelerate Beauregard's retreat, for in a day or two his whole line fell back as far south as Guntown, thus rendering abortive the plans for bagging a large ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... prolonged the discussion that the war was over before a decision was reached; but Connecticut seized the Dutch lands at Hartford, and Roger Ludlow, who had moved to Fairfield from Windsor after 1640, began an abortive military campaign of his own. The situation remained unchanged as long as the Dutch held New Netherland, and the region between Greenwich and the Bronx continued to be what it had been from the beginning of settlement, a territory occupied only by Indians and a few ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... replied the Roman, "that there have been such reports; and it is not impossible that government may have made use of these men at particular periods, such as at the time of your abortive revolution, when your carbonari were so busy with their machinations all over the country. The information that men like these could collect, who were familiar, not merely with all the recesses and secret places of the mountains, but also with all the dark and ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... Perhaps I should have returned to Paris by way of Adrianople and Vienna, after annihilating the house of Austria. Well, my dear general, that is the project which that little hovel of a Saint-Jean-d'Acre rendered abortive!" ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... was conclusive evidence of the soft and yielding nature of the great creature's food. But there were signs that at some period of the development of the whale it had possessed a double row of teeth, because at the bottom of these upper sockets we found in a few cases what seemed to be an abortive tooth, not one that was growing, because they had no roots, but a survival of teeth that had once been perfect and useful, but from disuse, or lack of necessity for them, had gradually ceased to come to maturity. The interior of the mouth and throat was of a livid white, ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... confidence in our management of your finances or not; if you disapprove, the sooner I know it the better. Then he dashed into a close and elaborate defence in detail, under all the heads of attack,—his manner of dealing with the unfunded debt, his abortive scheme of conversion, his mode of charging deficiency bills. This astonishing mass of dry and difficult matter was impressed in full significance upon the House, not only by the orator's own buoyant and energetic interest in the performance, but by the ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... logs, trod those not yet under way, and so arrived on solid ground. The jam itself started with every indication of meaning business, gained momentum for a hundred feet, and then plugged to a standstill. The "break" was abortive. ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... given to me. But I much fear at my time of life that my Tragedy of Nero must remain unwritten, as also my Novel of Charlotte Clopton, and that thrilling Handbook of the Marvellous; not to mention my abortive Epic of Home, and sundry essays, satires, and other lucubrations which, alas! may now be considered addled eggs. In a last word, I somewhat vaingloriously claim for ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... be said to be in the command of the estuary of the Niger, and, therefore, any attempt to establish a channel of commerce without allowing them to participate in the profits, or to be permitted to exact a duty on all goods passing by water through their territory, must necessarily prove abortive. The jealousy of their character would be aroused, they would see in the traffic of the European a gradual decline of their own emoluments, and by degrees a total exclusion from those branches of commerce, from which they had hitherto derived the greatest profit. That the commerce of the interior ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... surely she was like a daughter of Venus, though Sievewright's wife was an ugly shrew, as he remembered to have heard afterwards. He made a long face, but, in truth, felt scarcely more sorrowful than a mute at a funeral. These first passions of men and women are mostly abortive; and are dead almost before they are born. Esmond could repeat, to his last day, some of the doggerel lines in which his muse bewailed his pretty lass; not without shame to remember how bad the verses were, and how good he thought ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... one of us. Do what you will and pray how you will, you will never make up for the million years that have passed him by, the million years during which the dim sketch which is the basis of all ethics has lain in his brain undeveloped, or developed only into a few fantastic and abortive God shapes and ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... possible that their suspicions were not a little increased by the malicious insinuations of persons, who, from motives too obvious to require any explanation, took great pains at that time to render abortive every public undertaking in which I was engaged. But be that as it may, the fact is, I could never find means to remove these suspicions entirely, and I met with so much difficulty in carrying the measure into execution, that I was induced at last to abandon it, or ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... lair. I feel certain of it. Of course they have been followed, but only in daylight, and then they are found to be on their ordinary business. But there is one of them who goes abroad at night; and all attempts at following him have proved abortive. He loses himself in the chapparal paths in spite of the spies. That is why I am certain ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... efforts, after many months of negotiation, a formal peace was signed (15th April, 1288). But through the influence, as was alleged, of Count Ugolino (Dante's) who was then in power at Pisa, the peace became abortive; war almost immediately recommenced, and the prisoners had no release.[4] And, when the 6000 or 7000 Venetians were thrown into the prisons of Genoa in October 1298, they would find there the scanty ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... outset of the attack the employment of fomentations, or especially a turpentine stupe, gives great relief, and occasionally in the non-specific form this treatment, combined with a good dose of calomel and salts, may render the attack abortive. Some relief is always obtained by inhalations, and theoretically, an acute specific bronchitis should be successfully treated by inhalation of antiseptic and soothing remedies. In practice, however, it is found that the strength cannot be sufficiently ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... scurry before the Bourbons scuttled out of Paris in 1814, Bourrienne was made Prefet of the Police for a few days, his tenure of that post being signalised by the abortive attempt to arrest Fouche, the only effect of which was to drive that wily minister into the arms ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... informed of my uncle's dangerous state of health, been inspired with the fear of hurrying me out of the world as I advanced in my pregnancy, by thus tormenting and obliging me to take sudden journeys to avoid him; and then his speculations on my uncle's fortune must prove abortive. ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... Richmond paper of September 12th (quoted in the "New York Gazette" of September 18th) declares that "the plot has been entirely exploded, which was shallow; and had the attempt been made to carry it into execution, but little resistance would have been required to render the scheme entirely abortive." But it is necessary to remember that this is no more than the Charleston newspapers said at the very crisis of Denmark Vesey's formidable plot. "Last evening," wrote a lady from Charleston in 1822, "twenty-five hundred of our citizens were under arms to guard our property and lives. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... Southern States would have been left to their own counsels, South Carolina would have stood alone, and her Secession of 1860 would have proved as abortive as her Nullification of 1832. The Disunion movement in the remaining States of the South originated in Washington. Finding that the Cotton States, especially those bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, were moving too slowly, the senators from ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... a satisfactory reply, and Mrs Jarley, after sticking a great many pins into various parts of her figure, and making several abortive attempts to obtain a full view of her own back, was at last satisfied with her appearance, and ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... Chamber of Deputies which was made the object of the criminal attempt of December 9, have the honor to address to the President of the Republic a last appeal in favor of the condemned."[10] It has long been the custom in France not to punish an abortive crime with the death penalty, and it was generally believed that Vaillant's sentence would be changed to life imprisonment. President Carnot, however, refused to extend any mercy, and Vaillant ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... never forgive himself for having advised the young man to embark in the cursed speculations. But Sheldon begged him not to be unnecessarily distressed, as it was no fault of his that the schemes proved abortive; and the good doctor finally coincided, and settled down to ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... coast of Kent, the rustics made short work of the few who were rash enough to land. Perkin sailed away to the Yorkist refuge in Ireland, but Kildare was no longer deputy. Waterford, to which he laid siege, was relieved, and the pretender sought in Scotland a third basis of operations. An abortive raid on the Borders and a high-born Scottish wife[24] were all that he obtained of James IV., and in 1497, after a second attempt in Ireland, he landed in Cornwall. The Cornishmen had just risen against Henry's extortions, marched on London and been defeated at Blackheath; but Henry's lenience ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... mean the abortive attempt at a military insurrection in St. Petersburg, to which I have alluded in the foregoing chapter—gave the key-note to Nicholas's reign. The armed attempt to overthrow the Imperial power, ending in the execution or exile of many young members of the first ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... years. So far as they were concerned, I had no ground to stand upon in making a protest. Yet when did this consideration restrain an angry lover? I had a savage feeling that they ought to have known, if they didn't. And reflection upon the late scene on the gulf side—upon the altercation, upon the abortive way in which I had allowed mastery of the situation to slip through my fingers, and upon poor Tulp's sufferings—only served to ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... laid out on the great rivers of the colony. As they were located in the middle region, east of the fall line, among pine barrens, or in malarial lands in the southern corner of the colony, they all proved abortive as towns, except Orangeburg[96:5] on the North Edisto, where German redemptioners made a settlement. The Scotch-Irish Presbyterians who came to Williamsburg, on Black River, suffered hardships; ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... the domain which she could not occupy, and on France especially she kept an eye of deep distrust. When, in 1541, Cartier and Roberval essayed to plant a colony in the part of ancient Spanish Florida now called Canada, she sent spies and fitted out caravels to watch that abortive enterprise. Her fears proved just. Canada, indeed, was long to remain a solitude; but, despite the Papal bounty gifting Spain with exclusive ownership of a hemisphere, France and Heresy at length took root in the sultry ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... caught the trick of his precursor's scolding. Volkmar had paraphrased Origen's words in a way of which his critic disapproved, and Tischendorf comments as follows: "But here again we have to do with nothing else than a completely abortive fabrication, a certificate of our said critic's poverty. For the assertion derived from the close of the work of Origen rests upon gross ignorance or upon intentional deception. The words of Origen to his patron Ambrosius, who had prompted ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... and the Squatters' Bill, both abortive measures, but, nevertheless, showing clearly the attitude of mind of the white rulers towards the Coloured races. In order to find employment for poor whites, Coloured railway employees who had served the country faithfully and well were dismissed. A white South Africa has been declared ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... chance is very great, that such obstacles prove insurmountable. In fine, there are few men who do not look back in secret to some period of their {p.226} youth, at which a sincere and early affection was repulsed or betrayed, or became abortive from opposing circumstances. It is these little passages of secret history, which leave a tinge of romance in every bosom, scarce permitting us, even in the most busy or the most advanced period of life, to listen with total indifference to a tale ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... of the abortive rising was no sooner over than the whole affair took an entirely new aspect and passed through a completely new phase when it came to deciding what should be thought of the incident and what should be ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... having secured his passage home, was in good spirits as far as his own affairs were concerned, though still irritable on the score of his nephew's. Since the abortive attempt on his confidence of the night before, Roger had avoided all private conversation with his uncle; and for once the old had to learn patience ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... grows moist as you lift your foot again. Pleasant to pass along this extensive walk, watching the surf-wave;—how sometimes it seems to make a feint of breaking, but dies away ineffectually, merely kissing the strand; then, after many such abortive efforts, it gathers itself, and forms a high wall, and rolls onward, heightening and heightening, without foam at the summit of the green line, and at last throws itself fiercely on the beach, with a loud roar, the spray flying above. As you walk along, you are preceded by a flock ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... members, of rudimentary and abortive limbs, does seem, at first sight, to be unfavorable to the idea of supremacy of purpose and all-pervading design. It should be remarked, however, that this is an argument based upon our ignorance, and not upon our knowledge. It ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... is the harbour of Yerba Buena crowded with strange craft, but its streets with queer characters—adventurers of every race and clime— among whom may be heard an exchange of tongues, the like never listened to since the abortive attempt at building ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... is it to reflect how his whole development has suffered for this mistake, all his life-blood gone to feed this abortive thing. The gentler charities of life have been neglected, fine qualities atrophied, the man has grown narrow and selfish, all the real things have been lost for this shadow: that he might become, ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... spot "Septimius Felton" was written; but the manuscript, thrown aside, was mentioned in the Dedicatory Preface to "Our Old Home" as an "abortive project." As will be found explained in the Introductory Notes to "The Dolliver Romance" and "The Ancestral Footstep," that phase of the same general design which was developed in the "Dolliver" was intended to take the place of this unfinished ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... attempt was made at Inneshannon, near Bandon, in Ireland, by the Hugnenot refugees, but proved abortive. The climate proved too cold or damp for the rearing of silkworms with advantage. All that remains is "The Mulberry Field," which still retains its name. Nevertheless the Huguenots successfully established the silk manufacture ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... son, if he has any defect, in the same manner we ought not [to contemn] our friend. The father calls his squinting boy a pretty leering rogue; and if any man has a little despicable brat, such as the abortive Sisyphus formerly was, he calls it a sweet moppet; this [child] with distorted legs, [the father] in a fondling voice calls one of the Vari; and another, who is club-footed, he calls a Scaurus. [Thus, does] this ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... civili, i.e. after the abortive attempt of Lepidus to make himself master of the state 77 B.C. C. Dolabellam, impeached for illegal extortion during his government of Macedonia. Repetundarum (sc. pecuniarum), post-Aug. for de repetundis (pecuniis), used i. of money extorted by an official and to be returned, ii. of money ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... miniature representatives of higher plants in the mycelium or roots, stem, branches, and at length capsules bearing sporidia, which correspond to seeds. It is true that leaves are absent, but these are sometimes compensated by lateral processes or abortive branchlets. A tuft of mould is in miniature a forest of trees. Although such a definition may be deemed more poetic than accurate, more figurative than literal, yet few could believe in the marvellous beauty of a ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... observers viewed Weaver's nomination as a tactical error on the part of the Populist leaders: "Mr. Weaver has belonged to the group of third-party 'come-outers' for so many years that his name is not one to conjure with in either of the old camps;... his name suggests too strongly the abortive third-party movements of the past to excite much hope or enthusiasm. He is not exactly the sort of a Moses who can frighten Pharaoh into fits or bring convincing plagues upon the monopolistic oppressors ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... Afghans holding the sungahs on its face. Sir Frederick Roberts had to recognise that the direct attack by so weak a force unaided by a diversion, could not succeed, and he ordered further efforts to be deferred. The casualties of the abortive attempt included three officers, one of whom, Major Cook, V.C. of the Goorkhas, than whom the British army contained no better soldier, died of his wound. Macpherson was directed to hold the ground he had won, including the lower advanced hill, ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... manufactured between 1780 and 1814 were all of one pattern, and the one which Gourdon composed upon the Cup-and-Ball will give an idea of them. They required a certain knack or proficiency in the art. "The Chorister" is the Saturn of this abortive generation of jocular poems, all in four cantos or thereabouts, for it was generally admitted that six ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... able to effectuat it, and then he procured Mr. Wm. Ramsay his second sone to be made conjunct Clerk of Edr. Bot his death att Newcastell some few years after made the designe of this profitable place abortive. ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... this a strong plea for good works? And is it not a strong argument that Restoration is true? Is it to be supposed that the divine government is based on any possibility of good efforts being abortive? Surely, in God's perfect government of the world it is so arranged that every good influence will have its due effect. To my mind, this consideration makes strongly for the truth of the theory ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... to find additional help, to escape in safety, and not bring both him and myself to destruction. At length we came to the following determination, which, however, after eight months' incessant labour, rendered my whole project abortive. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... insure the continuity of the collective mind; that is manifestly a primary necessity for Socialism. The attempt to realize the Marxist idea of a democratic Socialism without that, might easily fail into the abortive birth of an acephalous monster, the secular development of administrative Socialism give the world over to a bureaucratic mandarinate, self-satisfied, interfering and unteachable, with whom wisdom would die. And yet we Socialists can produce in our plans no absolute bar to these possibilities. ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... were reserved to fates not less abortive and wretched. The first entered the navy as surgeon-mate, but was discharged for drunkenness. He died in penury, an outcast. Harman became a portrait painter in New York, but he lost his strength of body and mind, and finally perished in an almshouse on Blackwell's Island. His body lies buried ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... of inanimate nature; in other words, he tacitly assumes that the Laws of Similarity and Contact are of universal application and are not limited to human actions. In short, magic is a spurious system of natural law as well as a fallacious guide of conduct; it is a false science as well as an abortive art. Regarded as a system of natural law, that is, as a statement of the rules which determine the sequence of events throughout the world, it may be called Theoretical Magic: regarded as a set of precepts which human beings observe in order to compass ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... which Alcyone is the chief. But since Maedler's time it has been demonstrated that the Pleiades cannot be the center of revolution of the universe, and, as already remarked, all attempts to find or fix such a center have proved abortive. Yet so powerful was the hold that the theory took upon the popular imagination, that even today astronomers are often asked if Alcyone is not the probable site of ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... that the higher powers favoured Dangerfield; and that, beside his absurd sentiment, not to say passion, which could not but be provoking, Puddock's complicity in the abortive hostilities of poor Nutter and the gallant O'Flaherty rankled in Aunt Becky's heart. She was, indeed, usually appeasable and forgiving enough; but in this case her dislike seemed inveterate and vindictive; and she ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... to the fair orphan having thus proved abortive, he lost no time in bewailing his miscarriage, but had immediate recourse to other means of improving his small fortune, which, at this period, amounted to near two hundred pounds. Whatever inclination he had to resume the character he had formerly borne in the polite world, he durst not venture ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... a step nearer Mr. Job Pratt, and the letter was reluctantly yielded; though not until the widow Martin had made a nervous but abortive ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... lady, owing to her great age, was also virtually an invalid; so that both she and her daughter scarcely ever left their room, and hence their influence upon young Ernst's education and training was practically nil. His uncle, however, after an abortive attempt to follow the law, had settled down to a quiet vegetative sort of existence, which he regulated strictly according to fixed rules and methodical procedure; and these he imposed more or less upon the household. Justizrath Otto (or Ottchen, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... comic thrusts which were intended to shape the policy of himself and his officers towards the crew. If the captain happened to be a person of no humour and without the sense of music this method of conveyance was abortive, but it went on all the same until nature forced a glimpse into his hazy mind of what it all meant! Happily there are few sailors who inherit such a defective nature. It is a good thing that some of these thrilling old songs have been preserved to us. Even if they do not convey an accurate impression ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... pans. The tea shrub is an evergreen, being in flower from October to January, and the seed ripens in the September or October following, so that both flower and seed may be gathered at the same time; but for one fully ripened seed, an hundred are abortive. There are the two sorts of seeds mentioned by Father Le Compte, in his description of tea; and what be describes as a third sort, under the name of slymie pease, consists merely of the young flower-buds, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... clear. Reference has already been made to them in the descriptions of several ruins, and for want of a better name they have been designated chimney-like structures. At the time that they were examined they were supposed to be new, and the first hypothesis formed was that they were abortive chimneys, but further examination showed that this idea was not tenable. Subsequently Nordenskioeld's book on the Cliff Dwellers of the Mesa Verde was published, and it appears therefrom that this feature ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... seven and twenty Yeas. The Ministers gave in their Arguments yesterday, else it had hardly gon, because several have married their wives sisters, and the Deputies thought it hard to part them. 'Twas concluded on the other hand, that not to part them, were to make the Law abortive, by begetting in people a conceipt that such Marriages were not against ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... to be anything more to say, nor did Lord Jasper seem anxious to continue the conversation; but just when it appeared that the effort to be pleasantly chatty was likely to be abortive, Lord Jasper suddenly walked towards the door of the box. "Come and have ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... not to warn: that was the question mainly agitating Members. The majority appeared to think that some system of sound-signals was desirable; others pointed out that many threatened raids proved abortive, and that sirens would interfere with business, as in the leading case of Ulysses. Thanks to the HOME SECRETARY'S conciliatory methods there was considerably less tension in the atmosphere when the time came for the PRIME MINISTER to make his statement. When air-raids are about there ...
— Punch, July 18, 1917 • Various
... de l'Academ. de Science, that the summer figs of Paris, in Provence, Italy, and Malta, have all perfect stamina, and ripen not only their fruits, but their seed; from which seed other fig-trees are raised; but that the stamina of the autumnal figs are abortive, perhaps owing to the want of due warmth. Mr. Milne, in his Botanical Dictionary (art. Caprification), says, that the cultivated fig-trees have a few male flowers placed above the female within the same covering or receptacle; which in warmer ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... General Thario and others in similar position, was enjoying the new comradeinarms atmosphere the abortive war had brought on, a sudden series of submarine attacks on the Pacific Fleet provided a disagreeable jolt and ended the bloodless stage of the conflict. Tried and proved methods of detection and defense became useless; the warships were nothing more than targets ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... World Wars, Lithuania was annexed by the USSR in 1940. In March of 1990, Lithuania became the first of the Soviet republics to declare its independence, but this proclamation was not generally recognized until September of 1991 (following the abortive coup in Moscow). The last Russian troops withdrew in 1993. Lithuania subsequently has restructured its economy for eventual integration into Western ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Influenced by the splendid prospects of this undertaking my father determined if possible to surpass it. He wrote to Fiel of Paris and expected to be able to secure an objective of 4 feet diameter, exceeding that of the Lick Observatory by one foot, a hopeless and as it proved an utterly abortive design. He spent an entire year in New York after leaving Irvington examining the various possible locations for his new observatory. The requisites were nearness to the equator, an equable climate, elevation and a clear atmosphere. During ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... fills, with paradoxical vacancy, the throne! Nothing but the sharpest essence of villany, compounded with the strongest distillation of folly, could have produced a menstruum that would have effected a separation. The Congress in 1774 administered an abortive medicine to independence, by prohibiting the importation of goods, and the succeeding Congress rendered the dose still more dangerous by continuing it. Had independence been a settled system with America, (as Britain has advanced,) she ought to have doubled ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... afterward was an instructor in the college at Zaragoza. Desiring to labor among the heathen, he entered the Philippine missions, arriving at Manila June 28, 1626. About that time, the Jesuits attempted to found missions in Formosa and Jolo, to which task Colin was assigned; but, these proving abortive, he remained at Manila, occupying a chair in the Jesuit college, and acting as confessor to Governor Nio de Tavora. After the latter's death, Colin became rector of the college, and soon afterward was sent (1634) to the new mission of Mindoro, where he spent three years. Recalled to Manila, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... the necessity of working," he added, after going through the catalogue of his abortive studies, "that is, not for my livelihood." Some of the governors nodded their heads a little, as though they recognised the ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... who had come as a deputation to ask counsel of the old sage. He, if any one, would find some means of averting or, at any rate, mitigating the fearful calamity impending over the town and country, and against which prayer, sacrifice, processions, and pilgrimages had proved abortive. They were quite resolved to leave no means untried, not even if heathen magic should ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a vain struggle to speak, but no words came! Only abortive sounds painfully shattered! How precious those unborn words! Oh, that ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... Channel, which was begun for that end, and designed to be 2000. paces long and 100. paces broad, betwixt the River Altmull, falling into the Danube above Ratisbone, and the River Rott, passing at Nurenberg, and thence running into the Main, and so into the Rhine. But yet this also proved abortive, though there was great appearance of success ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... in the far east, in Central and Further Asia, by the discoveries of Marco Polo and the Friar preachers following on the tracks of the earlier Moslem travellers. The first of these was a Northern secret, soon forgotten, or an abortive development, cut short by the Tartars; the second was an Arabic secret, jealously guarded as a commercial right; the third alone added much direct new knowledge to the main part of ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... is impossible to express the abortive attempt at a bow which accompanied this salutation "I want to know if the minister ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... "the abortive revolution of 1905." This novel is an emotional statement of those "nightmarish" days. Against this rather hazy, tempestuous background we have the sharply outlined portrait of an individual, a poet, containing a world within himself, a more radiant and orderly ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... citizen does not make that person a citizen in the honest sense of the word. Let Mr. Warrington live among us half a dozen years, and then we shall see. The senator, who is not without some wisdom and experience, will doubtless withdraw this abortive candidate. It's the only logical thing he can do. We dare say that the dramatist accepted the honor with but one end in view: to find some material for a new play. But Herculaneum declines to be so honored. He is legally, but not morally, a citizen. He is ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... not that I write with the imbecile idea of rendering those preparations abortive. No, I am not so mad. My sole view is to explain the motive of my conduct in a particular instance, and to obviate the accusation of treachery which may ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... functionaries, both high and low, the municipal officers, and the military commanders had all become extremely remiss in their duty, and presuming upon this impunity showed a pernicious indulgence to the rebels and their adherents which rendered abortive all the regent's measures of coercion. This general indifference and corruption of so many servants of the state had further this injurious result, that it led the turbulent to reckon on far stronger support than in reality they had cause for, and to count on their own side all who ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... that their design had proved abortive, went directly to the place of rendezvous, and told the first of his troops whom he met that they had lost their labour, and must return to their cave. He himself set them the example, and they all ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... who can see nothing but particular circumstances. Of lawgivers in whom the speculative element has prevailed to the exclusion of the practical, the world has during the last eighty years been singularly fruitful. To their wisdom Europe and America have owed scores of abortive constitutions, scores of constitutions which have lived just long enough to make a miserable noise, and have then gone off in convulsions. But in the English legislature the practical element has always predominated, and not seldom unduly predominated, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... illiberality, but a wide-embracing sympathy for the modes of Christian worship, and a reverence for individual belief, as a matter between the Deity and man's soul, and with which no other has a right to interfere. With the feeling here described, and with his acute intellectual perception of the abortive character of all intolerant measures, as defeating their own ends, it strikes one as nothing less than ludicrous that he should be charged with desiring to retain this obsolete enactment, standing, as it does, ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... on the whole was the flayed caricature of a man done so cunningly that through the abortive hideousness of its outlines, its ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... contemplate it through the medium of its natural motives of fidelity to the Government on the one hand, and of its artificial delusion on the other. He may now go to the bottom of Southern society, and find in its conflicting elements the antagonistic motives that render the plans of treason abortive. These will be sure to continue, and sure to strengthen on the side of fidelity to the National Government. When the South is made a solid, compact unit in political motive, it will become so, disarmed of all ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... confined to the southern portion of the province of San Paulo, and are called by the Brazilians Bugres — that is, slaves. A more unfitting name it would have been impossible to hit upon, as all efforts to civilize them have proved abortive, and to-day they still range the forests, attacking small parties of travellers, and burning isolated farm-houses. The Brazilians assert that they are cannibals, but little is known positively as to this. What has ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... this was that, between October and April, he was in the hospital four times, always owing to an increase in the low fever induced by physical and mental exhaustion. Through the winter, Becker had made a few feeble attempts at protection, all of which proved abortive. But finally, in the early spring, noting Ivan's look of frailty, and fearing a breakdown that must be brought to the notice of Prince Michael, he took the case in hand vigorously, and procured for the boy at least unbroken sleep at night, though he could force no other consideration from ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... with a will, discharged a smashing blow on his own knuckles. With admirable presence of mind he crushed down an oath and substituted the harmless comment, "Butter fingers!" But the pain was sharp, his nerve was shaken, and after an abortive trial he found he must ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... we found from a comparison of dates, must have followed almost immediately after his passing from the earth; and he said he thought that his two previous seizures were probably abortive attempts of his spirit to ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... that he was not the real owner. Failing in this, he stirred up the petty-governor and headmen against him. The petty-governor was urged to litigation, and when he received an unfavourable sentence, the priest, enraged at the abortive result of his malicious intrigues, actually left his vicarage to accompany his litigious protege to the chief judge of the province in quest of a reversion ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... miniature-painting with the city of Paris, have often dwelt on this notion of a Renaissance in the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century, a Renaissance within the limits of the middle age itself—a brilliant, but in part abortive effort to do for human life and the human mind what was afterwards done in the fifteenth. The word Renaissance, indeed, is now generally used to denote not merely that revival of classical antiquity which took place in the fifteenth century, and to which ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... Action of the Colonies. The earlier and largely abortive attempts to form non-intercourse associations generally did not mention slaves specifically, although the Virginia House of Burgesses, May 11, 1769, recommended to merchants and traders, among other things, to agree, ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the Emperor first turned his attention in 777, when he was invited by the discontented emirs on the north of the Ebro to free them from the Caliph of Cordova. The next year saw his abortive march through the pass of Roncesvalles to the walls of Saragossa—an expedition immortalised in the Chanson de Roland, the earliest and most famous epic of the Charlemagne cycle, but fabulous from first to last, except in ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... of the greater part of the Mercantile Marine, to be operated by them for the purpose of shipping foodstuffs to Europe generally, and to Germany in particular. The reluctance of the Germans to agree to this was productive of long and dangerous delays in the supply of food, but the abortive Conferences of Treves and Spa (January 16, February 14-16, and March 4-5, 1919) were at last followed by the Agreement of Brussels (March 14, 1919). The unwillingness of the Germans to conclude was mainly due to the lack of any absolute ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... romance, even in this form, was again abandoned, as we learn from the prefatory note to Pierce in "Our Old Home," written in July, 1863. He there speaks of it as an "abortive project, utterly thrown aside," which "will never now be accomplished." In November of that year, "The Dolliver Romance" was announced for serial publication; and in the first page of the isolated opening scene, published ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... given to celebrate his removal to London, "I cannot speak; if I could, I should not have left you." But if he could not speak he could write, and the establishment of Blackwood's Magazine, after its first abortive numbers, gave him scope. "The scorpion which delighteth to sting the faces of men," as he or Wilson describes himself in the Chaldee Manuscript (for the passage is beyond Hogg's part), certainly justified the description. ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... predecessors of the North British Alizarine Company. These patents expire in about two months, and the lecturer explained that an attempt made by the German manufacturers to further monopolize this industry (even after the expiry of the patent) proved abortive. He also stated that alizarine, 20 per cent. quality, is sold to-day at 2s 6d. per lb., but that if the price were reduced by one-half there will still be a handsome profit to makers, and that the United Kingdom ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... long-continued popularity; we hear of performances of them being given even a hundred years after his death, and Horace speaks with gentle sarcasm of the enthusiasts who put him on a level with Menander. With his contemporary Quinctius Atta (who died B.C. 77, in the year of the abortive revolution after the death of Sulla), he owed much of his success to the admirable acting of Roscius, who created a stage tradition that lasted long after his own time. To the mass of the people, comedy (though it did not err in the direction of over-refinement) seemed tame ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... Two abortive attempts characterised the sixties of last century in France. As regards the first of these, it was carried out by three men, Nadar, Ponton d'Amecourt, and De la Landelle, who conceived the idea of a full-sized ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... not succeed the minds of husband and wife are troubled by doubts and anxieties which are damaging to their intimate relationships. And, moreover, if this harmful restraint succeeds in preventing conception there eventuates the inevitable prevalence of sex excitement followed by abortive and half-realised satisfaction, and the enhanced risk of the man or woman yielding ...
— Love—Marriage—Birth Control - Being a Speech delivered at the Church Congress at - Birmingham, October, 1921 • Bertrand Dawson
... pirate—cruel, vicious, debased to the lowest degree of turpitude—established a moral code governing his actions and circumscribing his wanton license, and it was in the rigorous observance of these "trade laws" and customs of their realm that this abortive sense ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... at New Caledonia. After their decease the ships returned to France as rapidly as they could. They were detained by the Dutch at Sourabaya for several months, as prisoners of war, and did not reach Europe till March, 1796. Their mission had been abortive. ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott
... in a polite note expressed himself unable to accept Count BERNSTORFF'S offer as a full satisfaction of America's demands. The sands are evidently running out, and there is serious danger of the negotiations proving abortive. In the meantime a sharp Note has been addressed to England in regard to her interference with American commerce. Six munition works were yesterday blown up. The outrage is attributed to Germans. President WILSON is carefully ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various
... He made an elaborate provision for plants which depended for its efficiency on the presence of quadrupeds, He nevertheless, after all, neglected to place the quadrupeds in the same islands as the plants! Now, I submit that such abortive attempts at adaptation bring the thesis of the special creationists to a reductio ad absurdum; so that the only possible explanation before us is, that while the seeds of these plants were able to float to the islands, the quadrupeds were not ...
— The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution • George John Romanes
... of the Medici, Machiavelli, who for a few weeks had vainly hoped to retain his office under the new masters of Florence, was dismissed by decree dated 7th November 1512. Shortly after this he was accused of complicity in an abortive conspiracy against the Medici, imprisoned, and put to the question by torture. The new Medicean people, Leo X, procured his release, and he retired to his small property at San Casciano, near Florence, where he devoted himself to literature. In a letter to Francesco Vettori, ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... already said, was the response to Brunswick's proclamation. The bloody days of September were the reaction of panic at the capture of Longwy and Verdun by the Prussians. The surrender of Cambrai provoked the execution of Marie Antoinette. The defeat of Aix-la-Chapelle produced the abortive insurrection of the Tenth of March; and the treason of Dumouriez, the reverses of Custine, and the rebellion in La Vendee, produced the effectual insurrection of the Thirty-first of May 1793. The last of these two risings of Paris, headed ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... to airing his abortive sense of humor overmuch, and he was a sound judge of horse and man. If he was right—but the major had to laugh at such a possibility. Garrison to ride like that! He who had confessed he had never thrown a leg over a horse before! By a freak of nature he might possess the instinct ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... Cortlant had been store-keeper for the Company and deacon of the church; later he was burgomaster of New Amsterdam. Michiel Jansz and Thomas Hall were farmers, the latter, the first English settler in New York State, having come to Manhattan as a deserter from George Holmes's abortive expedition of 1635 against Fort Nassau on South River. Elbert Elertsz was a weaver, Hendrick Kip a tailor. Govert Loockermans, on the other hand, brother-in-law to both Couwenhoven and Cortlandt, was the chief merchant and Indian trader of the province, often in partnership with Isaac ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... occasion the bells of Horncastle Parish Church were rung in the night, announcing the joyful tidings that coal had been found. But, alas! all these hopes were illusory. Mr. Parkinson himself became a ruined man, and many a poor investor lost his all, sunk in the mine. The attempt thus proving abortive, the mine was closed, and remained so for several years, Mr. Parkinson himself disappearing from the scene, and his Woodhall property passing into other hands—the ancestors of the present owners of the estate. As the result of this ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... created the wave which bears themselves, and humanity, onwards. The artificial social movements which have had their origin in the arbitrary will of individuals, guided with however much determination and reason, have of necessity proved ephemeral and abortive. An Alexander might will to weld a Greece and an Asia into one; a Napoleon might resolve to create of a diversified Europe one consolidated state; and by dint of skill and determination they might for a moment appear to be accomplishing that which they ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... attracted by prurient sexual adventures. A vulgar work obviously meant to appeal to a neurotic taste for sexuality, it includes no attack on Swift as it explores at length some topics to which Gulliver in his memoirs only tangentially alludes. The second abortive effort, an animal satire of exotic talking fowl, also resembles Swift's satire as it touches on several similar topics—the hypocrisy of the people, the scepticism of their nobility, the love of luxury of the higher clergy—but again because ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous
... after her abortive attempt to break away, Gyp, with much heart-searching, wrote to Daphne Wing, telling her of Fiorsen's illness, and mentioning a cottage near Mildenham, where—if she liked to go—she would be quite comfortable and safe from all curiosity, and finally begging to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... The sketches of American life and tendencies, both Northern and Southern, are given with discrimination and truth. The dying scene, which closes the First Part, seems to us nobly wrought. The "death-bed hymn" of the slaves sounds a pathetic wail over an abortive life shivering on the brink of the Unknown. In the Second Part we find less of the color and music of a poem, and more of the rapid movement of a drama. The doom of Slavery upon the master now comes into full relief. The characters of Herbert and his father ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... south of Miliana, and soon appeared in full force in the Sahara as the bewildered French pursuers returned to their cantonments in despair of reaching him. This is a sample of the evolutions by which genius made amends for inferiority of force. The ablest military combinations were rendered abortive by an enemy that was ever slipping between columns, flitting in the front, hovering on the flanks, assailing the rear, and, with perfect knowledge of the country, was sometimes in the mountains and again in the plains, ubiquitous, unattainable ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... Here many a foetus laugh and half encore Clings to the roof, or creeps along the floor; By puffs concipient some in ether flit, And soar in bravos from the thundering pit; Some forth on ticket-nights {66} from tradesmen break, To mar the actor they design to make; While some this mortal life abortive miss, Crush'd by a groan, or strangled by a hiss. So, when "Dog's-meat" re-echoes through the streets, Rush sympathetic dogs from their retreats, Beam with bright blaze their supplicating eyes, Sink their hind-legs, ascend their ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... ones! That feeble in the mind's eye, lean your trust Upon unstaid perverseness! Know ye not That we are worms, yet made at last to form The winged insect, imp'd with angel plumes That to heaven's justice unobstructed soars? Why buoy ye up aloft your unfleg'd souls? Abortive then and shapeless ye remain, Like the untimely embryon of a worm! As, to support incumbent floor or roof, For corbel is a figure sometimes seen, That crumples up its knees unto its breast, With the feign'd posture stirring ruth unfeign'd In the beholder's fancy; so I saw These fashion'd, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... there was still delay; there were the usual abortive attempts at a congress, which, as in 1859, broke down through the refusal of Austria to give way. There were dark intrigues of Napoleon, who even at the last moment attempted to divert the Italians from ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... composed of the Corean contingent Kublai easily persuaded himself that this defeat did not indicate what would happen when he employed his own Mongol troops. He also succeeded in sending several envoys to Japan after his first abortive attempt, and they brought back consistent reports as to the hostility and defiance of the Japanese, who at last, to leave no further doubt on the subject, executed his envoy in 1280. For this outrage the haughty monarch ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... in an enemy's camp, I proceeded to strip the slain; and with some little difficulty—partly, indeed, owing to my unsteadiness on my legs—I succeeded in denuding the worthy alderman, who gave no other sign of life during the operation than an abortive effort to "hip, hip, hurra," in which I left him, having put on the spoil, and set out on my way the the barrack with as much dignity of manner as I could assume in honour of my costume. And here I may mention (en parenthese) that ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... protocols, joint declarations, sole mediation, joint mediation, identic notes, sole notes, united notes—everything has been tried. Couriers from the Queen have been scouring Europe with the exuberant fertility of abortive projects. After the termination of the most important Conference, held in the capital of the Queen, over which the chief Minister of Her Majesty's foreign relations presided, and which was attended with all the pomp and ceremony requisite for so great an occasion, we find that ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... applied after exposure to infection. This is called "early treatment." This term is inapplicable, as a disease cannot be treated before it exists. It is also likely to be confused with "abortive treatment," which implies treatment immediately ...
— Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) • Committee Of The Board Of Health
... gave no indication that he had that interview in mind. Claverhouse had learned one lesson, however—patience—and he would have many more to learn; he had also been taught not to take hasty views, but to wait for the long result. And his heart lifted when, after the abortive siege of Charleroi, he was summoned for a second time to the Prince's presence. On this occasion the Prince said little, but it was to the point; it was the ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... their course to the more northern parts of the continent, had been among the first adventurers to North America. Their voyages of discovery are of a very early date, and their attempts to establish a colony were among the first which were made. After several abortive efforts, a permanent settlement was made in Canada, in the year 1604, and the foundation of Quebec was laid in the year 1608. In November 1603, Henry IV. appointed De Mont lieutenant-general of that part of the territory ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... anxious he may have been, he could not have foreseen Essex's unaccountable and to this day unintelligible failure. But failure was the end, from whatever cause; failure, disgraceful and complete. Then followed wild and guilty but abortive projects for retrieving his failure, by using his power in Ireland to make himself formidable to his enemies at Court, and even to the Queen herself. He intrigued with Tyrone; he intrigued with James ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... keep awake at all, except over lives of the other sort; hence, one of great and successful villany is a prize for the scribe. In the dearth of such, let us content ourselves with briefly noticing one of the multitude of abortive cubs, its villany nipped—as Nature is wont to nip it—in the promising bud of its tenderness. Many a flourishing young rogue suddenly disappears, and the world never knows how or why. But it shall know, if it will heed our one-story tale, how Chip Dartmouth of these parts was turned down ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... ultimate duality would be rendered abortive if the future were determined in any more definite way than by the premonition, the hope, the dream, the passion, the prophecy, the vision, of those invisible companions whose existence is implied whenever two separate souls communicate their ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... The undertaking proved abortive. Johnson, having now abandoned all hopes of promoting his fortune in the country, determined to become an adventurer in the world at large. His young pupil, Garrick, had formed the same resolution; and, accordingly, in March, 1737, they arrived in London together. ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson |
