"Abstruse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... even a brief account of all his physical researches would require a separate volume; and many of them are too abstruse or mathematical for the general reader. His varied services have been acknowledged by numerous distinctions, including the highest honour a British man of science can obtain—the Presidency of the Royal Society of London, to which ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... successful and economical practice depends. These investigations, while they have thrown much light on the matter, have by no means exhausted it, and it will be readily understood that the complete elucidation of a subject of such complexity, touching on so many of the most abstruse and difficult problems of chemistry and physiology, and in which the experiments are liable to be affected by disturbing causes, dependent on peculiarities of constitution of different animals, cannot be otherwise ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... apart for a physician, but when compelled to study anatomy and physiology, he would hide his Euclid and Archimedes and stealthily work out the abstruse problems. He was only eighteen when he discovered the principle of the pendulum in a lamp left swinging in the cathedral at Pisa. He invented both the microscope and telescope, enlarging knowledge of the vast and ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... was a native of Side in Pamphylia; and his genius, like that of Bacon, embraced as his own all the business and knowledge of the age. Tribonian composed, both in prose and verse, on a strange diversity of curious and abstruse subjects; a double panegyric of Justinian and the life of the philosopher Theodotus; the nature of happiness and the duties of government; Homer's catalogue and the four-and-twenty sorts of metre; the astronomical canon ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... writer of English who developed real style; as a Greek scholar, his fame rests chiefly upon his work in the field of historical syntax. He assumed that his students could read Greek as easily as they could read French, and the really important tasks he set them had to do with the most abstruse fields of philology. For work of this kind Page had little interest and less inclination. When Professor Gildersleeve would assign him the adverb [Greek: prin], and direct him to study the peculiarities of its use from ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... am sorry I wasn't listening but you seemed to be scolding and I couldn't think of anything else." Even the abstruse Mr. Macnair saw that her surprise was genuine. His tone ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... paths of beauty and success, and became young, and fresh, and whole-hearted as he; tackling abstruse problems with a childlike, vigorous air; holding him spell-bound with her own charm of conversation one moment, and leading him on to talk with ease ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... a collection of abstruse formulas that you are learning just for the sake of practice. They are used every clear night on board ship, or should be, and are just as vital to know as time ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... phenomenon "stereochemic parthenogenesis." Apparently the propinquity of foreign pollen serves to stimulate a female cell into division, although the pollen cell retains fixed molecular identity, and does not fuse with the female cell. I need not bring up abstruse questions of chromatin or of subatomic ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various
... Grand Wazir of a certain witch famed for the Black Art who could conjure down the stars from heaven; and who was a noted dweller in the capital. So going to the Sultan he spake highly of her skill in knowledge of the abstruse,[FN337] saying "Let the King, I pray thee, send for this sorceress and enquire of her concerning his lost son." And the King replied, "'Tis well said: let her be brought hither and haply she shall give me tidings of the Prince and how he fareth." ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... by color at any hour of the night. It was this passion of his for the stars which showed him his work as a boy. That started him fabricating glasses to see them better. He has a supreme eye for light, circles and foci, and a brain that just plays with heavy mathematics—the most abstruse calculations. Yet, you see, he carries it all with the ease of a boy. I think men who come with a task to do are like that. It's part of them. They don't feel the weight of what they know, because ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... [Hear, hear!]—is not a philosopher. Common sense is good enough for him; and in our business affairs common sense is good enough for me. Well, what is our business here in the Sierra Nevada, chosen by the Moors as the fairest spot in Spain? Is it to discuss abstruse questions of political economy? No: it is to hold up motor cars and secure a ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... attaining such skill and accuracy as to solve the most difficult problems. Depending upon his own system of mental arithmetic he learned to obtain accurate results just as quickly as Mr. Zerah Colburn, a noted calculator of that day, who tested the Negro mathematician.[1] The most abstruse questions in relation to time, distance, and space were no task for his miraculous memory, which, when the mathematician was interrupted in the midst of a long and tedious calculation, enabled him to take up some other work and later resume his ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... fire. The diversity of these, if we may so express them, "camp stools" of imagination, is worthy of remark, both as to their application and amplitude. For instance, after one line, and that if perused with attention, comparatively less abstruse than its fellows, the gifted poet satisfies himself with the insertion of three sonorous, but really simple syllables, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... Bewildered amid abstruse researches, metaphysical and historical, Mr. Cargill, living only for himself and his books, acquired many ludicrous habits, which exposed the secluded student to the ridicule of the world, and which tinged, though they did not altogether obscure, the natural civility of an amiable ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... of nearly three hundred pages. As usual, ANDERSEN is not abstruse in his way of putting things. His narrative is adapted alike for the juvenile mind and for the adult. There is no periphrasis in it. One understands his meaning at a glance; therefore the book should be a very popular one when summer time sets in, and people ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... the Vulgar; This, that should have taught them the forced, quaint, unnatural Tract they were in (and induce them to follow a more natural One), was the very Thing that kept them attach'd to it. The ostentatious Affectation of abstruse Learning, peculiar to that Time, the Love that Men naturally have to every Thing that looks like Mystery, fixed them down to this Habit of Obscurity. Thus became the Poetry of DONNE (tho' the wittiest Man ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... might be weakened, and better found in their rooms to confirm what is there said. He shewed finely whence it happens that good writers are not admired by the present age; because there are but few in any age that do mind anything that is abstruse and curious; and so longer before any body do put the true praise, and set it on foot in the world, the generality of mankind pleasing themselves in the easy delights of the world, as eating, drinking, dancing, hunting, fencing, which we see the meanest ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... is not only by definition but by etymology a reasoned knowledge or theory of a God or gods, it becomes desirable, before we proceed further, to define the sense in which I understand and shall employ the word God. That sense is neither novel nor abstruse; it is simply the sense which I believe the generality of mankind attach to the term. By a God I understand a superhuman and supernatural being, of a spiritual and personal nature, who controls the world or some part of it on the whole for good, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... world on fire to demonstrate some chemical theory, so it is possible that the flame of culture may be cherished without kindling a conflagration, and truth transmitted from sire to son without the construction of edificial monsters too big for the knees, too abstruse for the brains, and too great for the lifetime of humanity. I am not a very constant reader of Mr. Robert Browning, but I own to many a pleasant grin over his Sibrandus Schafnabrugensis dropped into the crevice of the plum-tree, and afterward pitifully reclaimed, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... accommodate their phraseology to the obligations of verse; the Pali authors of antiquity were accustomed to accompany their metrical compositions with a tika or running commentary, which contained a literal version of the mystical text, and supplied illustrations of its more abstruse passages. Such a tika on the Mahawanso was generally known to have been written; but so utter was the neglect into which both it and the original text had been permitted to fall, that Turnour till 1826 had never met with an individual who had critically read the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... quite the same power of recovery. He stood with his hands in his pockets looking at Miss Klegg's back. His face was white. "It's—it's a difficult question." He appeared to be paralyzed by abstruse acoustic calculations. Then, very awkwardly, he took a stool and placed it at the end of Ann Veronica's table, and sat down. He glanced at Miss Klegg again, and spoke quickly and furtively, with eager eyes ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... have been formed around the will, and both able and learned and earnest men have taken opposite sides on the subject of the will under the party names of Necessitarians and Libertarians. This is not the time, nor am I the man, to discuss such abstruse subjects; but those students who wish to master this great matter of the will, so far as it can be mastered in books, are recommended to begin with Dr. William Cunningham's works, and then to go on from them to a treatise that will reward all their talent and all their enterprise, Jonathan ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... girls are certainly much quicker than boys, and I presume would retain what they learnt if it were not for their subsequent duties in making puddings, and nursing babies. Yet there are affairs which must be performed by one sex or the other, and of what use can algebra and other abstruse matters be to a woman in her present state ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... suppress the thirst he had for knowledge, and the delight he felt in reading; and this prevailed in him to such a degree, that he has been frequently known by his intimates, to retire late at night from a tavern to his chambers, and there read and make extracts from the most abstruse authors, for several hours before he went to bed; so powerful were the vigour of his constitution and ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... spake our sire, and by his countenance seemed Entering on studious thoughts abstruse; ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... mother's altered circumstances. She was now absolutely dependent upon me for food and clothing, for the funds requisite to maintain the household—for everything, in fact, save the roof that covered her; and it needed no very abstruse calculation to convince us that my wages as chief mate were wholly inadequate to the demands that would now be made upon them. If only I could but obtain a command, all would be well; but I had no interest whatever outside the employ ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... we usually remember afterwards—he drove them away by energetic bursts of work. On one occasion, he says, 'When I was so bad that I thought I should have gone distracted, I shut myself up, and for three days studied all the most abstruse works that I could find on the origin of government and society, such as Godwin, Goguet, Rousseau, et caetera, from seven in the morning till twelve at night, which quite set me up again.' 'Natural history,' at another time he tells his sister, 'is ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley
... confidence in your knowledge of the state of inefficiency existing in your regiment. Only I will beg you to remember in future that I am the judge as to the capabilities of movement of the units composing this column. But let us discuss the prospects of peace, or some other less abstruse subject than the Mount Nelson Light Horse. In the meantime, colonel, just to emphasise what I have said, my Intelligence officer has orders to go out to those farms over there to see if he can get suitable guides. I have ordered him to take a troop of your men. He will start in fifteen minutes. ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... discovered, among other great scientific facts, the functions of the lever. The solution of an abstruse problem having occurred to him while in the bath, he leaped out of the water, and ran naked ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... thousands, both inside and outside the Church, the God whom Jesus called "Our Father" was no more than a cold philosophical abstraction; and that many pastors in the Lutheran Church, instead of trying to make God a reality, were wasting their time in spinning abstruse speculations, and discussing how many legions of angels could stand on the point of a needle. As this sort of philosophy rather disgusted Zinzendorf, he determined to frame a theology of his own; and thereby he arrived at the conclusion that the only way ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... Her father had taught her French and Italian, and a few of the ordinary authors in those languages ornamented her shelves. He had endeavoured also to be her preceptor in music; but as he began with the more abstruse doctrines of the science, and was not perhaps master of them himself, she had made no proficiency further than to be able to accompany her voice with the harpsichord; but even this was not very common in Scotland at that period. To make amends, she ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... the last two lift it high into the empyrean. Let any one attempt to get the same upward effect with a stress, however light, laid on the last syllable of the line, or with words of fewer than three syllables apiece, and he will have to confess that, however abstruse the rules of its working may be, there is virtue in metrical cunning. The passage in the Seventh Book from which these lines are quoted would justify an entire treatise. The five regular alternate stresses ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... whirl of indignation, Mrs. Hanway-Harley burst in upon Senator Hanway. That ambitious gentleman was employed in abstruse calculations as to tariff schedules, and how far they might be expected to bear upon his chances in the coming National Convention. Senator Hanway was somewhat impressed by Mrs. Hanway-Harley's visit; his study had never been that lady's favorite ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... They are about as easy to comprehend as the air-pump, the law of refraction of light, or the atomic theory of chemistry. Distort them by inapposite metaphors, view them in perplexing attitudes, and you may make them more abstruse than the hardest proposition of the "Principia". What is far worse, by involving a simple fact in inextricable contradictions, they have led people gravely to recognise self-contradiction as the natural and the proper condition of a certain class of questions. Consistency is ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... knows Dr. FUSSELL. He is a member of countless learned Societies. Over many of them he presides, to some he acts as secretary. He reads papers on abstruse questions connected with sanitation, he dashes with a kind of wild war-whoop into impassioned newspaper controversies on the component elements of a dust particle, or the civilisation of the Syro-Phoenicians. He is acute, dialectical, scornful and furious. He denounces those who oppose ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... eminent professor of the art of legerdemain. One would have thought that a person of this description ought, from his knowledge of the thousand ways in which human eyes could be deceived, to have been less than others subject to the fantasies of superstition. Perhaps the habitual use of those abstruse calculations, by which, in a manner surprising to the artist himself, many tricks upon cards, etc., are performed, induced this gentleman to study the combination of the stars and planets, with the expectation of obtaining ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... the night the town seems to have cleaned and preened itself, and the creamy, shadow-fretted streets of the Sabbath belong more to some Southern region than to Battersea or Barnsbury. The very houses have a detached, folded manner, like volumes of abstruse theological tracts. From every church tower sparks of sound leap out on the expectant air, mingling and clashing with a thousand others; and the purple spires fling themselves to heaven with the joy of a perfect thought. In the streets there is an atmosphere of best ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... made the fortunes of Jansenism. He outlived his Cartesianism and became its most influential spokesman. His Provinciales (1656) rendered abstruse questions of theology more or less intelligible, and invited the general public to pronounce an opinion on them. His lucid exposition interested every one in the abstruse problem, Is man's freedom such as not to render grace superfluous? But ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... greater knowledge of the law than is common to mankind, when other things are equal, would be gross injustice and cruelty. The mass of mankind can give but little of their attention to acquiring a knowledge of the law. Their other duties in life forbid it. Of course, they cannot investigate abstruse or difficult questions. All that can rightfully be required of each of them, then, is that he exercise such a candid and conscientious judgment as it is common formankind generally to exercise in such matters. If he have done this, it would be monstrous to punish him criminally for his errors; ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... borne him triumphant through the acquirement of such a language. If the simple request for something to eat presented such apparently insurmountable obstacles to pronunciation, what must the language be in its dealings with the more abstruse questions of theological and metaphysical science? Imagination stood aghast at ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... to demand a corresponding closeness of attention, and a right to say with Bishop Butler, in answer to a similar complaint: 'It must be acknowledged that some of the following discourses are very abstruse and difficult, or, if you please, obscure; but I must take leave to add that those alone are judges whether or no, and how far this is a fault, who are judges whether or no, and how far it might have been avoided—those only who will be at the ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... languages, especially the dead, The sciences, and most of all the abstruse, The arts, at least all such as could be said To be the most remote from ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... is naturally abstruse on the metaphysical side, but it is always picturesque on the dramatic; for it issues in that love of the unusual which is so striking to every reader of Mr. Browning's works; and we might characterize these in a few ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... ejected a spent cartridge case from his magazine and pulled back the safety catch. "I'm glad I hit him. It'll be something for the boy to take away with him. I suppose he'll remember it." Shorty's brow wrinkled with the strain of this abstruse theological problem. Then he shrugged his shoulders and gave it up. "So long, son; you made good—you did well. But the old Tank has cleared 'em out, an' I must be toddling on." Then he remembered something, and produced his own patent weapon. It was only as he actually ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... passed some time in my country, then?" said the Count with awakened interest, a little glad of a topic scarce so abstruse as sex. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... term; who has lived in all orders of society, and observed man in every phase of civilisation; who has a penetrative intellect which enables him to follow as by intuition the most profound of all questions, and a power of communicating with precision the most abstruse ideas; whose wealth would make Monte Cristo seem a pauper; who is so far above his race that woman seems to him a toy, and man a machine,—this thrice miraculous Sidonia, who can yet stoop from his elevation to win a steeplechase from the Gentiles, or return their ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... doing was to set himself an abstruse and difficult problem in mathematics, in order to see if his brain would respond. It did so, he solved it and thus had no more fears as to ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... however, were not confined to his endeavours to meet with a lady rectoress. He sometimes surprised his hearers with the originality of his abstruse theories. One morning he called me into the stable yard to join in consultation with his gardener as to the advisability of killing a pig. There were two, and it was not easy to decide which was the fitter for the butcher. The rector selected one, I the other, and the gardener, who had nurtured ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... discussed with me the character and effect of the Sorbonne address, rather hotly denounce those who affected to regard Mr. Roosevelt's restatement of obvious, but too often forgotten truth, as platitudinous. "The finest and most beautiful things in life," said this scientist, "the most abstruse scientific discoveries, are based upon platitudes. It is a platitude to say that the whole is greater than a part, or that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and yet it is upon such platitudes that astronomy, by aid of which ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... into a cultivated refined woman, sufficiently conversant with the sciences to comprehend their contemporaneous development, without threatening us with pedantry, or adopting a style suitable to the groves of Crotona in the days of Damo, or the abstruse mystical diction that doomed Hypatia to the mercy of the monks. After all, why scare up a blue-stockinged ogre, which may have no intention of depredating upon our peace; for to be really learned is no holiday amusement in this cumulative age, and offers little temptation to a ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... biology masquerades in infant schools as "natural history." Here, however, the resemblance between counterpoint and mathematics ends, for the simplicity of genuine contrapuntal style is a simplicity of emotion as well as of principle; and if the style has a popular reputation of being severe and abstruse, this is largely because the popular conception of emotion is conventional and dependent upon an excessive amount of external ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... into a long recapitulation of arguments sufficiently familiar to those inquiring minds, whom alone a writer on abstruse subjects can be conceived to address. Perhaps the most clear and vigorous statement of the intellectual system is to be found in Sir ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... his rifle and laid it on a bench with the other guns. There was a small arsenal on a bench at one side of the laboratory. The array looked much more like arms for in expedition into dangerous territory than a normal part of apparatus for an experiment in rather abstruse mathematical physics. There were even gas masks on the bench, and some of those converted brass Very pistols now used only for discharging tear- and ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... "The Origin of Language" is typical of his quality. Treating of an abstruse, though enticing problem,—almost profound, and that in comparison with the soundest and sincerest thinking of our time,—it is yet so clear and broad, its details are so perfectly held in solution by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... are asked which looks best together, blue and green, or pink and yellow; for, indeed, their selections are often as outrageous as these would be. I never conceived people could be so stupid at combining ideas, even upon this least abstruse of subjects; and you would think, to hear these fine ladies talk the inanity they do about their own clothes, now they are compelled to think about them for themselves, that they have no natural perceptions of even color, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... to be a memento: and they show Nature in her grandest as well as her gentlest moments." As he tramped the Western States and Territories, taking tin-types, the boy was continually getting hold of books, good, bad, and indifferent, popular and abstruse, from the novels of Sylvanus Cobb to Euclid's Elements, both of which I found (to my almost equal wonder) he had managed to peruse: he was taking stock by the way, of the people, the products, and the country, with an eye unusually ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... circumstances that he was decided to take to mathematics, and in that field won a European reputation. He soared, however, so far beyond ordinary ken that even Europe must be taken to mean a small set of competent judges who might almost be reckoned upon one's fingers. But devoted as he was to these abstruse studies, Smith might also be regarded as a typical example of the finest qualities of Oxford society. His mathematical powers were recognised by his election to the Savilian professorship in 1860, and the recognition of his other abilities was sufficiently shown ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... again, I have enclosed in brackets. Such suggestions have always arisen from the text. I fancy my English version will be found to give a reasonably accurate idea of the contents of one of the most abstruse symbolical works in the world. The notes that I have added are not intended to be final or exhaustive, but to give the general reader some guidance towards understanding the intensely interesting topics with which the powerful mind of the ancient mystical writer was ...
— The Gnosis of the Light • F. Lamplugh
... scholarship had descended to Sylvia amusingly. She had never attended school, but he had taught her systematically at home, and his interests were hers. The students attributed to her the most abstruse knowledge, and stories of her precocity were repeated proudly by the Lane folk. Many evenings spent with her grandfather at the observatory had not been wasted. She knew the paths of the stars as she knew the walks of the campus. Dr. Wandless, the president emeritus, addressed her always ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... understood. It dealt, in the first place, with the laws and forms of thought and knowledge, with language, in which Latin formed the basis, or with grammar and rhetoric, as also with the highest problems and most abstruse questions of physics, and comprised even a general knowledge of natural science and astronomy. A complete study of all these subjects was not merely requisite for learned theologians, but frequently served as an introduction to that of ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... the "Professor" and the "Poet." The talk of the "Professor" was somewhat more abstruse, though equally interesting to cultivated readers. The "Poet" attacked the dogma of the endless duration of future punishment. The "Autocrat" was easily superior in freshness as ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... to use a complex formula that may be misapplied." However, many readers undoubtedly read only the lead paragraph, sagely nodded their heads when they reached the word "fictitious," which confirmed their half-formed conviction that anything as abstruse as the Coriolis component could have no bearing upon a practical problem, and turned the page ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... No very abstruse argumentation is needed, in the first place, to prove that the powers, or faculties, of all kinds of living matter, diverse as they may be in degree, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... literary and archaeological material previously existing only in MS. or in unique printed copies, was at the outset very restricted in its zone and its scope; but, in spite of the circumscribed interest felt by general readers in the more abstruse or obscure provinces of research, the movement, at first confined to scholars and patrons of literature, at length became universal in its range and distribution. There is no country pretending to culture without several of these institutions. In Great ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... ball, and a domino of salmon-coloured satin still hung loosely over his shoulders. As the feeble light of the lamp glimmered upon the jet-bugles and steel-spangles of his costume, there was visible the perpetual contrast of his destiny,—a mingling of the most abstruse researches and the most extravagant frivolities. Jewels sparkled upon his hands and bosom; the varicose veins on his temples throbbed with a feverish precision; the fumes of the wine-cup flushed his cheek and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... universally beloved Governor" would be the customary reference to such a functionary; and "an era of glorious progress" would be the only way of characterising his administration. Indeed, a glance over a Mexican book or article or speech seems to show that the writer has made use of every elegant and abstruse word in the dictionary. In a dissertation upon any subject he seems called upon to begin from the very beginning of things, desde la creacion del mundo—"from the beginning of the world," as the Spanish-American himself ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... capitalists, finding no other outlet for their savings, gave an unnatural stimulus to production, by buying up and storing immense quantities of our home manufactures. This they must have done upon some abstruse but utterly false calculation of augmented demand from abroad, making no allowance for change of season, foreign fluctuation, or any other of the occult causes which influence the markets of the world. The result, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... how much they are required to do. This is one fair sign of intellectuality. The ease too with which young Japan, educated in Occidental schools and introduced to Occidental systems of thought, acquires abstruse speculations, searching analyses, and generalized abstractions proves conclusively Japanese possession of the higher mental faculties, in spite of the long survival in their civilization of primitive puerility and superstitions and the lack ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... Read the table of contents of the eight folio volumes of the Cologne edition[230] of his works, as given by Dr. Henry in the appendix to the fourth volume of his history of our own country; and judge, however you may wish that the author had gone less into abstruse and ponderous subjects, whether it was barely possible to avoid falling upon such themes, considering the gross ignorance and strong bias of the age? Before this, perhaps, I ought slightly to have noticed ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... at this than at the other ill news did Josie express any regret or concern. She sat with her fingers clasped together, gazing before her at the fire in the grate, as if making some deep and abstruse calculation. But when the door-bell rang, she started and listened attentively, as the servant went to the door, and then ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... degradation, are displayed before us, in their struggles, vicissitudes, and infinitely diversified combinations: an inheritance beyond all price—a vast repository of fruitful and immortal truths. There is nothing so mean or so dignified; nothing so obscure or so glorious; no question so abstruse, no problem so subtile, no difficulty so arduous, no situation so critical, of which we may not demand from history an account and elucidation. Here we find all that the toil, and virtues, and sufferings, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... spirits or genii, Amchaspands, on one side, and Ahriman with the Devs (who may represent the infernal crew of Christendom) on the other. Egypt, in the Mosaic and Homeric ages, seems to have attained considerable skill in magic, as well as in chymistry and astrology. As an abstruse and esoteric doctrine, it was strictly confined to the priests, or to the favoured few who were admitted to initiation. The magic excellence of the magicians, who successfully emulated the miracles of Moses, was apparently assisted by a legerdemain similar to that of the Hindu ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... letters and messages brought to him that day, and in studying for an hour or so by the help of the few theological books his library boasted. Father Uria was an intelligent and well-educated man, and took delight in the investigation of the abstruse subjects and doctrines his Church afforded. He did this from natural inclination, and not from any practical use to be made of such study in his capacity as head of the mission. People in Nueva California, in those days, ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... occupied with a long walk, during which he appeared to his simple neighbours to be lost in profound thought, as if working out in his own mind the details of one of his great battles, or busy with some abstruse point of Puritan theology. If accompanied by one of his brothers, or by some other intimate friend, he was still for the most part silent. Always good-humoured, and enjoying sarcasm when of a grave, high class, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... sentiment. But to these trifling moral incongruities, both the pastor and his parishioners were alike indifferent; their subtle mental exercises having given birth to a tendency of aptly reconciling all seeming discrepancies, as well as of accommodating the most abstruse doctrines to the more familiar interests ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... absence and approaching end of the minister, and, as a kind of prologue to the bloody comedy of the Fronde, sharpened the malice and even fired the passions of the Parisians. This confusion was not displeasing to them. Indifferent to the causes of the quarrels which were abstruse for them, they were not so with regard to individuals, and already began to regard the party chiefs with affection or hatred, not on account of the interest which they supposed them to take in the welfare of their class, but simply because as ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... told by men of science that all the ventures of mariners on the sea, all that counter-marching of tribes and races that confounds old history with its dust and rumour, sprang from nothing more abstruse than the laws of supply and demand, and a certain natural instinct for cheap rations. To any one thinking deeply, this will seem a dull and pitiful explanation. The tribes that came swarming out of the North and East, if they were indeed pressed onward from behind by others, ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the three sections of Physiology, Zoology, and Botany were combined. Professor Moore stood stoutly for the older views, and "believed that he could demonstrate a step which connected inorganic with organic creation." Then he gave an abstruse and highly technical account of a process by which in "solutions of colloidal ferric hydroxide, exposed to strong sunlight," compounds could be formed similar to those to be found in the green plant. With a proper grouping of molecules it might ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... be quoted:—'If we compare Behmen's doctrine of the Trinity,' says the learned and evangelical Bishop, 'with that which is contained in the otherwise so admirable Athanasian Creed, the latter but displays to us a most abstruse metaphysic; a GOD for mere thought, and in whom there is nothing sympathetic for the heart of man. Behmen, on the contrary, reveals to us the LIVING GOD, the GOD of Goodness, the Eternal Love, of which there is absolutely ...
— Jacob Behmen - an appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... Zeppelin had begun his experiments in 1873 it was not until 1890 that he actually began the construction of his first airship. The intervening years had been spent in constructing and testing models, in abstruse calculations of the resistance of the air, the lifting power of hydrogen, the comparative rigidity and weight of different woods and various metals, the power and weight of the different makes of motors. In these studies he spent both his time and his money lavishly, with the result that when ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... grave without ever having tasted it fresh from the nut under a tropical verandah), yet it may be safely asserted that for the last three hundred years the philosopher who has not at some time or other of his life meditated upon that abstruse question is unworthy of such an exalted name. The cosmogony and the milk in the coco-nut are, however, a great deal closer together in thought than Sanchoniathon or Manetho, or the rogue who quoted them so glibly, is ever at all likely, in his wildest moments, ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... are needed in sending this little book out into the world. It is the third of a series of Manuals designed to meet the public demand for a simple exposition of Theosophical teachings. Some have complained that our literature is at once too abstruse, too technical, and too expensive for the ordinary reader, and it is our hope that the present series may succeed in supplying what is a very real want. Theosophy is not only for the learned; it is for all. ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... notable that this conversion might bring others in its train. Moreover the maiden herself interested him. But it was not so easy to go about it. Pocahontas's knowledge of English did not extend beyond the simplest expressions; and he found it necessary to translate the long and abstruse theological dogmas into familiar terms. He had almost despaired of making her comprehend until he recalled how his Master had taught in parables. So he retold the incidents of His life in stories which held the Indian maiden spellbound. He showed her pictures ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... don't set fire to my ricks with your foreign chaplain's tricks. I spied you puffing behind one t' other day. There,' the squire dispersed Peterborough's unnecessary air of abstruse recollection, 'don't look as though you were trying to hit on a pin's head in a bushel of oats. Don't set my ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to me many rare and abstruse things, which perhaps have never yet been fully understood, and all of which I noted down, hoping one day, by the help of some learned man, to give them to the public. Of Michelangelo's studies in anatomy we have ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... hooted at by the advocates of potato-digging and other practical pursuits, than defended by their legitimate protectors. It is not to be denied that there is a powerful element of Materialism among us, and that too often we neither appreciate nor respect the earnest, abstruse scholar. The progress of humanity must be shouted in popular catch-words from the house-tops, and the noisy herald appropriates the laudation of him who in pain and weariness traced the hidden truth. We hear men of enlarged thought and lofty views derided as old fogies ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... to practise, infinitely more. Just now the paramount problem is, how Prince can best make his bread. Six months ago, he was prospectively so rich that he could indulge the whim of blowing scientific soap-bubbles labelled with abstruse symbols; at present, necessity directs his attention to paying ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... word!—"review of a work on Chinese Metaphysics." It had need to be copious therefor, for it is a very large subject. Mr. Pickwick himself must have been very familiar with the Encyclopedia, for he at once objected that he was not aware that so abstruse a topic was dealt with in its pages. He had perhaps consulted the book, say, at Garraway's Coffee House, for, alas! the good man was not able to have a library of his own, living, as he did, in lodgings or at the "George and ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... the impersonal Spirit of Hindu philosophy. The universe is the expression of Tao and in conforming to Tao man finds happiness. For Confucianism, as for Europe, man is the pivot and centre of things, but less so for Taoism and Buddhism. Philosophic Taoism, being somewhat abstruse and unpractical, might seem to have little chance of becoming a popular superstition. But from early times it was opposed to Confucianism, and as Confucianism became more and more the hall-mark of the official and learned classes, Taoism tended to become popular, ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... peculiar cap. On the tables within the spaces flickered numerously the "Bunsen burners," his invention, and it was easy to fancy as one saw him, surrounded by the large company of reverent disciples, that you were in the presence of the hierophant of some abstruse and mysterious cult, in whose honour waved the many lambent flames. I think he was unmarried, without domestic ties, and lived almost night and day among his crucibles and retorts, devoted to his science and pupils toward ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... worthy to open the grand procession of modern poets. He had chosen his subject in a region remote from popular thought—too awful for it, too abstruse. He had accepted frankly the dogmatic limits of the Church, and thrown himself with even enthusiastic faith into her reasonings, at once so bold and so undoubting—her spirit of certainty, and her deep contemplations on the unseen ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... invisible. Where the note of the audible reaches the unheard, even there he gathers the tremulous message. That mystery which lies behind the expressed, is the object of his questioning also; and he, in his scientific way, attempts to render its abstruse discoveries ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... banking trade may appear somewhat abstruse, the practice is capable of being reduced to strict rules. To depart upon any occasion from those rules, in consequence of some flattering speculation of extraordinary gain, is almost always extremely dangerous and frequently fatal to the banking company which attempts it. But the constitution ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... confusion in which their own folly is worse confounded. And yet, I am sorry to say it, the languages of all ages and nations have been too frequently perverted, and compiled into a heterogeneous mass of abstruse, metaphysical volumes, whose only recommendation is the elegant bindings in ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... class of readers were jousting, hunting, and making love. Hence the preponderance of these matters in the literature of its leisure hours. No detail of the joust or hunt was unfamiliar or unwelcome to these readers; no subtle arguments concerning the art of love were too abstruse to delight a generation steeped in amorous casuistry and allegories. And if some scenes seem to us indelicate, yet after comparison with other authors of his times, Chretien must be let off with a light sentence. It is certain he intended to avoid what ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... who engages in a party has seldom to do with any thing remote or abstruse. The present state of things is before his eyes; and, if he cannot be satisfied without retrospection, yet he seldom extends his views beyond the historical events of the last century. All the knowledge that he can want is within his attainment, and most of the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... dormant and suffer. All classes therefore were required to "undergo" amusements, and many were the precepts to encourage them in the pursuit. I added to these the force of my own example; for, though occupied incessantly with the cares of government and with abstruse meditations, I nevertheless attended amusements of all kinds, and often gave fetes of great beauty and magnificence for the recreation of the people. I was a frequent attendant at places of amusement, public games, and ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... had as prominent place as that of the natural sciences. It could not be otherwise with such a man as Ex-President Hopkins in the chair of instruction. Dr. Hopkins has had, in a remarkable degree, the faculty of making these studies, usually regarded as abstruse and repulsive to the majority of students, both intelligible and attractive. It has been his conviction that we may know and ought to know what is nearest to us—ourselves; that we are capable of ascertaining the laws and movements of our own being. This is properly the ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... flowers of the Phaseolus by the odour emitted from them. Did they perceive the holes by the sense of touch in their proboscides, whilst sucking the flowers in the proper manner, and then reason that it would save them time to alight on the outside of the flowers and use the holes? This seems almost too abstruse an act of reason for bees; and it is more probable that they saw the humble-bees at work, and understanding what they were about, imitated them and took advantage of the shorter path to the nectar. Even with animals high in the scale, such as monkeys, we should be surprised ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... unjust by being over nice, (For superstition, virtue turns to vice) Let Crassus ghost, and Labienus tell How twice in Parthian plains their legions fell, Since Rome hath been so jealous of her fame, That few know Pacorus, or Monaeses name. And 'tis much safer to leave out than add * * * * * Abstruse and mystic thoughts, you must express, } With painful care, but seeming easiness; } For truth shines brightest, thro' the plainest dress, } Your author always will the best advise, Fall when he falls, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... that I do.' 'This,' says he, 'will create no difficulty. We may all enjoy her conversation; and we shall be wise enough to consider the sensual intercourse as a very trivial object.' It was impossible not to acknowledge that the understanding often finds the problem rather abstruse of deciding whether an action will or will not secure ultimately the largest balance of happiness. Calvin was no fool, and yet he deliberately came to the conclusion that in burning Servetus he was promoting the welfare of mankind; but 'Calvin was ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... Thought should never venture with any other Intention than to wonder and adore. But I find I have been imperceptibly led on from Thought to Thought, not only to trespass upon the common Stile of a Letter, by these abstruse Reasonings and religious Conclusions, but upon the ordinary length of one likewise; therefore shall conclude by complimenting my own Taste in Characters, when I assure you ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... latest "text-book," that Mars is the lord of Aries—a fiery planet in a fiery sign; but astrologers still say that Pisces is watery and Aries fiery, WHICH IS NOT THE CASE, IF THE STARS HAVE ANY INFLUENCE AT ALL. It is not necessary," say these logical thinkers, "to learn your abstruse science if we can demonstrate that the very basis upon which your conclusions rest is in every sense fundamentally false." The scientific facts of the case are as follows: The influence of the twelve signs, as described ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... was and ever will be preferable to Vice, in the Opinion of all wise Men. But to call Virtue it self Eternal, can not be done without a strangely Figurative Way of Speaking. There is no Doubt, but all Mathematical Truths are Eternal, yet they are taught; and some of them are very abstruse, and the Knowledge of them never was acquir'd without great Labour and Depth of Thought. Euclid had his Merit; and it does not appear that the Doctrine of the Fluxions was known before Sir Isaac Newton discover'd that concise Way ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... Harriet dropped her abstruse studies, which she had taken up to please her husband, but which could only puzzle her small brain. She soon developed some of the unpleasant traits of the class to which she belonged. In this her sister Eliza—a hard and grasping middle-aged woman—had ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... head between his hands, he seemed to lose himself in the study of an abstruse problem in mathematics. It was the list of the winning numbers from the last drawing of the great lottery which had been the one inspiring fact of so many years of his existence. The conception of a life deprived of that periodical sheet of paper had slipped away from him entirely, ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... year he had tended and fertilized, weeded and pruned them, with something like religious care. They were of the rarest character, and had been planted by the learned and famous Dr. Swinnerton, who, on his death- bed, when he left his dwelling and all his abstruse manuscripts to his favorite pupil, had particularly directed his attention to this row of shrubs. They had been collected by himself from remote countries, and had the poignancy of torrid climes in ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the nymphs, near the city of Mieza, as a school-house and dwelling; and there to this day are shown the stone seat where Aristotle sat, and the shady avenues where he used to walk. It is thought that Alexander was taught by him not only his doctrines of Morals and Politics, but also those more abstruse mysteries which are only communicated orally and are kept concealed from the vulgar: for after he had invaded Asia, hearing that Aristotle had published some treatises on these subjects, he wrote him a letter in ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... abstruse, Mrs. Berry added briskly: "You know nothing about that yet, my dear. Only mind me and mark me: don't neglect your cookery. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... While the abstruse question, to which the shark had thus given rise, was being further discussed, the explorers returned to the thicket, where they buried the skeleton beside the other graves. A close search was then made for any object that ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... in political concerns to attribute to deep-laid plans and abstruse combinations, effects which are the natural result of private passions and isolated interests. Robespierre is said to have promoted both the destruction of the republican armies and those of La Vendee, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... and obstacles which Horrox had to encounter may be best described by quoting his own words. He writes: 'There were many hindrances. The abstruse nature of the study, my inexperience and want of means dispirited me. I was much pained not to have any one to whom I could look for guidance, or indeed for the sympathy of companionship in my endeavours, and I was assailed by the languor and weariness which are ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... the electrical arts, that they serve to present a picture of the whole development effected in the last fifty years, the most fruitful that electricity has known. The effort has been made to avoid technique and abstruse phrases, but some degree of explanation has been absolutely necessary in regard to each group of inventions. The task of the authors has consisted largely in summarizing fairly the methods and processes employed by Edison; and some idea of the difficulties ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... greater part of the world then known; and resided for many years at the court of the sultan of that hoary Egypt, which still retained its fame for abstruse science and magic lore. He had not in vain applied himself to such tempting and wild researches; and had acquired many of those secrets now perhaps lost for ever to the world. We do not mean to intimate that he attained to what legend and superstition impose upon our faith ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book I. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the arts had their origin in magical practices, and to the growth of popular education necessitated by the centralization of business in the temples. It remains with us to deal now with priestly contributions to the more abstruse sciences. In India the ritualists among the Brahmans, who concerned themselves greatly regarding the exact construction and measurements of altars, gave the world algebra; the pyramid builders of Egypt, who erected ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... romance-like work, called the "Life of John Buncle, Esq." 'Tis very interesting, and an extraordinary compound of all manner of subjects, from the depth of the ludicrous to the heights of sublime religious truth. There is much abstruse science in it above my cut and an infinite fund of pleasantry. John Buncle is a famous fine man, formed in nature's most eccentric hour. I am ashamed of what I write. But I have no topic to talk of. I see ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... is not happy. As the ages roll on woman has materially elevated herself in the scale of being. Now she stops at nothing. She soars. She demands the coeducation of the sexes. She thinks nothing of delving into the most abstruse problems of the higher branches of analytical science. She can cipher out the exact hour of the night when her husband ought to be home, either according to the old or the recently adopted method of calculating time. I never knew of but one married ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... did learn was that Macfarlane was a veritable storehouse of abstruse knowledge; a living dictionary, and a thinker and philosopher besides. He had at least one vanity: the claim that he knew every word in the English dictionary, and he made it good. The younger man tried repeatedly to discover a word that ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... proclaims himself to be. But Burke and Browning, the best conversationalists in the history of the Anglo-Saxon race, like all the famous women of the French salon, from Mme. Roland to Mme. de Stael, kept pace with any number of interlocutors on any number of subjects, from the most abstruse science to the lightest jeu d'esprit. Good talk between two is no doubt a duet of exquisite sympathy; but true conversation is more like a fugue in four or eight parts than like a duet. Furthermore, general and tete-a-tete conversation have both their place and occasion. At a dinner-table in ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... complete, all that remained was to find a suitable medium for its publication. This was not so easy. Distinguished mediums would not lend themselves to contradictions of Grampus, or if they would, Merman's article was too long and too abstruse, while he would not consent to leave anything out of an article which had no superfluities; for all this happened years ago when the world was at a different stage. At last, however, he got his rejoinder printed, and not on hard terms, since the medium, in ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... people. Instead of mingling mathematics with his great theme, to such an extent as to alarm the neophyte at the very threshold of the temple of astronomy, he has with a wise judgment selected from the best works, including the latest, those parts that were least encumbered with the abstruse and the unintelligible; and the illustrations serve to make his sublime ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... Bryant, to dinner, and he made me my best day out of the ten days of our Windsor sojourn. He has insisted upon lending me some more books, all concerning the most distant parts of the earth, or on subjects the most abstruse. His singular simplicity in constantly conceiving that, because to him such books alone are new, they must have the same ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... a way as to make the subject interesting and its treatment readable and comprehensible to the man without technical knowledge. Foreign exchange is no easy subject to understand; there are few important subjects which are. But, on the other hand, neither is it the complicated and abstruse subject which so many people seem to consider it—an idea only too often born of a look into some of the textbooks on exchange, with their formidable pages of tabulations, formulas, and calculations of all descriptions. For the average man there is ...
— Elements of Foreign Exchange - A Foreign Exchange Primer • Franklin Escher
... of his swiftness, his industry, and his skill in economizing time is to be found in the quantity of his literary work, which, considering the abstruse nature of the subjects to which most of it is related, would have been creditable to the diligence of a German professor sitting alone in his study. As to the merits of the work there has been some controversy. Mankind ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... Ironically or humorously used to refer to {religious issues}. 2. Technical fine points of an abstruse nature, esp. those where the resolution is of theoretical interest but is relatively {marginal} with respect to actual use of a design or system. Used esp. around software issues with a heavy AI or language-design component, such as the smart-data ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... burnishing his arms, he sate down patiently to compute how much half a dollar per diem would amount to at the end of a six-months' campaign; and, when he had settled that problem, proceeded to the more abstruse calculations necessary for drawing up a brigade of two thousand men on the principle of ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... you reverse this, which has generally been the system of instruction pursued—if you set a child to learn its multiplication, pence, and other tables, before you have shewn it by realities, the combinations of unity which these tables express in words—you are rendering the whole abstruse, difficult, and uninteresting; and, in short, are giving it knowledge which it is unable ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... conception it has never been surpassed. In bringing it forward Mr. Gladstone spoke five hours, and during that length of time held the House spellbound. The speech was delivered with the greatest ease, and was perspicuity itself throughout. Even when dealing with the most abstruse financial detail his language flowed on without interruption, and he never paused for a word. "Here was an orator who could apply all the resources of a burnished rhetoric to the elucidation of figures; who could make ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... made extensive researches in the British Museum into the history of Paracelsus, the great leader in sixteenth century medical science; but in the poem the facts are subordinated to a minute analysis of the spiritual history of Paracelsus. The poem was too abstruse in subject and style to bring Browning popularity, but his genius was recognized by important critics, and, though he was but twenty-three, he was admitted into the foremost literary circles of London. One of his most distinguished ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... think that they too had a literary gift. Philetas was not only a profound logician, but he affected to be an amatory poet. [38] Callimachus, the brilliant and courtly librarian of Philadelphus, wrote nearly every kind of poetry that existed. Aratus treated the abstruse investigations of Eudoxus in neat verses that at once became popular. While in the great periods of Greek art each writer had been content to excel in a single branch, it now became the fashion for the same poet to be Epicist, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... lift that veil of esotericism, the speculations of western scholars will go for little. Why it should be kept esoteric, one can only guess; I think if it were known, the cycles and patterns of human history would cease to be so abstruse and hidden from us: we should know too much for our present moral or spiritual status. As usual, our own savants are avid to dwarf all dates, and bring everything within the scope of a few thousand years; as for the native authorities, they simply try confusions ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... large before us—complicated, abstruse even, yet—suitably to the subject—a delicate one! To hunt down an elusive word, and a more elusive notion! It is to find a set of determinings which, laid together, shall form a circle fitted to confine that inconfinable spirit—a Fairy; or, if you better like plain English, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... come into closer contact than was possible with any other Jews. For the studious, Germany possessed the attraction which the "land of universities" exerts upon seekers after knowledge the world over. To whom, indeed, could the profound and abstruse speculations of Leibnitz and Kant make a stronger appeal than to the Jew who had been initiated into metaphysical abstractions from his very childhood? It is no wonder, then, that immigration from Russo-Poland into Germany was constantly on the increase, until, ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... ingenious mathematical approaches for stimulation criteria, in biological research—a very abstruse field—even your multiplex machines with elaborate means of intercommunication are not sophisticated enough—or ever will be—to cope with the complexities inherent in the numerous interacting biosyntheses on the subcellular ultratopographical ...
— On Handling the Data • M. I. Mayfield
... those years. We see him jotting down everything that comes into his head, for his own amusement, and certainly without any thought of publication; engaging in learned controversies, writing treatises on abstruse mathematical problems, composing comedies to be acted before Count Waldstein's neighbours, practising verse-writing in two languages, indeed with more patience than success, writing philosophical ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... sciences which involve long mathematical calculations. In fact, the stating of the problem to be solved is the most important element in the calculation; and that is so thoroughly a labour of common sense that an utterly uneducated man may, and often does, state an abstruse problem clearly and correctly; seeing what ought to be proved, and perhaps how to prove it, though he may be unable to work the problem out, for want ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... adventure for a while into the field of science known as geometry, and study therein the nature of that curve which the discovery of Kepler has raised to such unparalleled importance. The subject, no doubt, is a difficult one, and to pursue it with any detail would involve us in many abstruse calculations which would be out of place in this volume; but a general sketch of the subject is indispensable, and we must attempt to render it such justice as may ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... those who have no strength. Learning may bring her ample pages and her ponderous records, rich with the spoils of every age, gathered from every land, and gleaned from every source. Philosophy and science may bring their abstruse researches and wonderous revelations—Literature her elegance, with the toils of the pen, and the labors of the pencil—but they are idle tales compared to the truths of Christianity. They may cultivate the intellect, enlighten the understanding, ...
— The Story of Mattie J. Jackson • L. S. Thompson
... with men and with the ordinary affairs of life, and as, before everything else, they are to be men of the world and men of business, it is even supposed to be dangerous, if they allowed themselves to become absorbed in questions of abstruse scholarship or in researches on ancient religion, ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... of an important departure in a man's life will only appear satisfactory to fatalists who worship the blind god Environment. And without indulging in any abstruse psychological discussion, but rather looking at the question from a general point of view, we can understand how an intellect of Lyly's type, as revealed by the Euphues, found its ultimate expression in comedy. Comedy, as Meredith tells us, is only possible in a ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... I propose to draw for the materials of the present course. It will be best to begin with the few simple facts regarding light which were known to the ancients, and to pass from them, in historic gradation, to the more abstruse discoveries of ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... these are not pine-trees—these are oaks.' And Cuthbert answered, 'Oaks, good sooth, they are! In youth I knew the twain apart: the pine Wears on his head the Cross.' Instruction next He gave them, how the Cross had vanquished sin: Then first abstruse to some appeared his words. 'Father,' they answered, 'speak in parables! For pleasant is the tale, and, onward passed, Keeps in our hearts thy lesson.' While they spake, A youth rich-vested tossed ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere |
