"Adaptation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Stanza, an adaptation of the stanza of the Nibelungenlied introduced by Uhland, is a stanza of four verses rhyming in couplets; each verse has six accented syllables with a fixed pause as indicated below in the scansion of the first two lines ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... of twelve years among kindergartners, however, has shown us that there is room for a number of books like this modest example; containing stories which need no adaptation or arrangement; which are ready for the occasion, and which have been thoroughly tried before audience after ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... is the little fishing island, where Magna Charta was signed. At the extremity of the valley is Windsor Castle, rising up in all the pomp of its massive towers. We recollect the scene as Windsor was. Whatever Mr. Wyattville may have done for its internal improvement, and for its adaptation to the purposes of a modern residence without sacrificing all its character of antiquity, we fear that he has destroyed its picturesque effect in the distant landscape. Its old characteristic feature was that of a series of turrets rising above the general ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... it wise to raise the specific point at which, in the process of seeking a finer use and adaptation of the human material which forms society, the progressive and reforming statesman parts company with the dogmatic Socialist. There is no need to labour a distinction which arises from the nature and ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... of Pompeii must not be overlooked in studying the style of Louis XVI, for it appeared in much of the decoration of the time. The beautiful little boudoir of the Marquise de Serilly is a charming example of its adaptation. The problem of bad proportion is also most interestingly overcome. The room was too high for its size, so it was divided into four arched openings separated by carved pilasters, and the walls covered with paintings. The ceiling was darker than the walls, which made it seem ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... was already in progress, for George Dally,—with that ready resource and quiet capacity of adaptation to circumstances which he had displayed on the voyage out and on the journey to the location,— had already kindled a fire, sent Scholtz to cut firewood, and was busy erecting the ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... nothing. Emerson says: "A man is like a bit of Labrador spar, which has no lustre as you turn it in your hand, until you come to a particular angle; then it shows deep and beautiful colors." There is no adaptation or universal applicability in ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... order, and design, and special adaptation which crowd the universe, and the a priori ideas of an unconditioned Cause and an infinite Intelligence which arise in the mind in presence of these facts, are inadequate to produce the logical conviction that it is the work of an intelligent mind, how can any preternatural ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... overwhelm the Gaelic population. Like the victory of the conquered English over the conquering Normans, which was even then making fast progress in England, it is a triumph of a kind that subsequent events have revealed as characteristically Anglo-Saxon, and it called into force the powers of adaptation and of colonization which have brought into being so great ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... amount of science. Scarlatti and Bach would laugh at the efforts styled 'canon' and 'fugue,' by the aspiring tyros of the present age. Our difficulties arise, not from musical complexity, but from want of suitableness, adaptation, and characterization, together with the ever-increasing feud between choir and congregational singing. In some churches on the Continent of Europe, these two latter modes are happily blended, certain services ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... would note that his stiff felt hat was an inch taller in the crown than those worn generally by the farming community, the pathetic assertion, perhaps, of an old sovereignty; invariably, too his coat and trousers betrayed a form within, which, in the effort at adaptation, had become high-shouldered and lank of leg. And the brown skin was there to be noticed, though you might pass it by, and the high cheek-bones and the liquidly muddy eye. He had taken on the signs of civilization at the level which he occupied; the farming community had lent him its look of ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... in thirteen of the tales, without excluding his brother from joint authorship. Exactly what each wrote of the joint productions has never been known. A single dramatic work of the Banim brothers has attained to a position in the standard drama, the play of 'Damon and Pythias,' a free adaptation from an Italian original, written by John Banim at the instance of Richard Lalor Shiel. The songs are also attributed to John. It is but just to say that the great emigration to the United States which absorbed the Irish during the '40's and '50's depreciated the sale ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... parties, and thus becoming artificially strengthened against both. But the Xenophontic Anabasis[124] betrays her real weakness against any vigorous attack; while it at the same time exemplifies the discipline, the endurance, the power of self-action and adaptation, the susceptibility of influence from speech and discussion, the combination of the reflecting obedience of citizens with the mechanical regularity of soldiers—which confer such immortal distinction on the Hellenic character. The importance of this expedition ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... respect is worth the having. There should be no limit placed upon the development of any individual because of color, and let it be understood that no one kind of training can safely be prescribed for any entire race. Care should be taken that racial education be not one-sided for lack of adaptation to personal fitness, nor unwieldy through sheer top-heaviness. Education, to fulfil its mission for any people anywhere, should ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... hardly be necessary to follow Dante step by step through the stages of the mountain of purification. We shall probably do best to consider the general plan on which Purgatory is arranged, the nature of the various penances, with their adaptation to the offences which they expiate, and the light thrown in this division of the poem on Dante's opinions about the elements of political ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... and often elegant style, it possesses no such wonderful rhetorical charm as the work of Renan; and it will probably never find half a dozen readers where the "Vie de Jesus" has found a hundred. But the success of a book of this sort is not to be measured by its rhetorical excellence, or by its adaptation to the literary tastes of an uncritical and uninstructed public, but rather by the amount of critical sagacity which it brings to bear upon the elucidation of the many difficult and disputed points in the subject of which it treats. Measured by this standard, ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... value of which is very uncertain. It was an adaptation of the florin, which was first coined in Florence in the year 1252, and was worth about $2.50. Of the value of the gold gulden of Luther's time various estimates are given. Schaff, Church History, 3 vi., p. 470, calls it a guilder and says it was equal to about $4.00 of the present ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... Guildhall and direct their future proceedings. Lawless and ferocious as was the main body of the rioters, there were shrewd heads to guide their fury; and the very first order issued by this committee was marked by such acute foresight, and such a skillful adaptation to the requirements of the moment and the humor of the people, that it remains in force to this day. It was hardly strange that men in open insurrection against the king's authority should turn their wrath against ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... 24. Peace begot Plenty. An adaptation of the wellknown saying which Puttenham in his Arte of English Poesie (ed. Arber, p. 217) attributes to Jean de Meung. Puttenham gives ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... it here. It will be abundantly elucidated in the proper place. For the present, it is sufficient to refer to the junction, in a composite Ministry of hostile statesman, as one of the singular results flowing from that necessity of adaptation to circumstances which was rendered unavoidable by the unyielding character of ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... neighbours were wiser than herself. Such ideas did occasionally present themselves to Miss Thorne's mind and make her sad enough. But it never occurred to her that her favourite quintain was but a modern copy of a Norman knight's amusement, an adaptation of the noble tourney to the tastes and habits of the Saxon yeomen. Of this she was ignorant, and it would have ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the Church of Christ, but I have been conversant with only a few, a very few, whose attributes of power seemed to me quite equal to his. The clearness of his conceptions was almost angelic. If I am fitted to do any good in the world, I owe what intellectual adaptation I have very much to his admirable training, especially as he took ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... stibadium. If this formed the seat in the north-western recess, there would be ample room behind it (3ft. 9in.) to pass by. The next fragment must have been fixed beneath this or a similar capping, and is also carved on each side; the convex side having an adaptation of the well-known honeysuckle fairly drawn, whilst the convex side of it, with the exception of a floriated panelled pilaster in the centre, is the work of an accomplished sculptor. On the right of this pilaster, ...
— The Excavations of Roman Baths at Bath • Charles E. Davis
... prevent the same liberal adaptation of these principles to Belgium as Gregoire had proposed for the welfare of the Savoyards. A few deputations of the liberated people, asking for union with France, would enable some equally skilful dialectician to discover ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... kingdom of Whitefriars, with all its frowzy and questionable population, has been admirably drawn by Scott in his fine novel of "The Fortunes of Nigel," recently so pleasantly recalled to our remembrance by Mr. Andrew Halliday's dexterous dramatic adaptation. Sir Walter chooses a den of Alsatia as a sanctuary for young Nigel, after his duel with Dalgarno. At one stroke of Scott's pen, the foggy, crowded streets eastward of the Temple rise before us, and ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the encampment of your battalion is arranged deserves my special commendation. On very bad camping-ground, beset with rocks and bush, and afflicted with dust between, I find your companies excellently established by ingenious and industrious adaptation to circumstances. The regularity and tidiness are conspicuous, and have been noted by me with great satisfaction. I need not say how much neatness of arrangements must conduce to quickness and good quality ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... valued friend who acted as spokesman for his fellow-members, and who was himself the only non-American member of the said Cabinet. There is a horseman by Macmonnies, and a big bronze vase by Kemys, an adaptation or development of the pottery vases of the Southwestern Indians. Mixed with all of these are gifts from varied sources, ranging from a brazen Buddha sent me by the Dalai Lama and a wonderful psalter from the Emperor ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... allotted to man, is amazed at the precariousness of our existence. It seems indeed uncanny that so delicate a mechanism should function so regularly for so many years. The mysticism connected with this and other phenomena of adaptation would disappear if we would be certain that all cells are really immortal and that the fact which demands an explanation is not the continued activity but the cessation of activity in death. Thus we see ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... Congress, and the National Board of Trade, have uniformly, emphatically, and most of them repeatedly, expressed themselves in favor of placing all Government forest work in the Department of Agriculture because of the peculiar adaptation of that Department for it. It is true, also, that the forest services of nearly all the great nations of the world are under the respective departments of agriculture, while in but two of the smaller nations and in one colony are they under the department of the interior. This is the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... the acts of lower animals, but we may safely assume that one apparent ground or distinction between instinct and reason may be found in the common incompetence of instinct to move out of the beaten track of existence, and in the adaptation of reason, through the teachings of experience, to new and unwonted circumstances. Let Dr. Carpenter speak as an authority on such a subject. "The whole nervous system of invertebrated animals, then, ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... execute, to persevere. I must see all the aids and all the obstacles. I must see the means of correcting the plan, where correctives would be wanted. I must see the things; I must see the men. Without a concurrence and adaptation of these to the design, the very best speculative projects might become not only useless, but mischievous. Plans must be made for men. We cannot think of making men, and binding Nature to our designs. People at a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... nature myth was forgotten, and the fight between the two gods became the type of the everlasting war which good men wage against sin. In Coptic literature we have the well-known legend of the slaughter of the dragon by St. George, and this is nothing but a Christian adaptation of the legend ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... necessity of policy—that the wise and kind, few or many, shall govern the unwise and unkind; and they are evil so far as they miss of this, or reverse it. Not does the form, in any case, signify one whit, but its firmness, and adaptation to the need; for if there be many foolish persons in a state, and few wise, then it is good that the few govern; and if there be many wise, and few foolish, then it is good that the many govern; and if many be wise, yet one wiser, then it is good that one should govern; ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... language was then, and for a long time after, regarded by educated Germans very much as the Russian is regarded at the present day, as the language of vulgar life, unsuited to learned or polite intercourse. Frederic the Great, a century later, thought as meanly of its adaptation to literary purposes as did the contemporaries of Leibnitz. When Gellert, at his request, repeated to him one of his fables, he expressed his surprise that anything so clever could be produced in German. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... With this adaptation of the Refrain to himself, he stalked out of the room closely followed by Cavalletto, whom perhaps he had pressed into his service because he tolerably well knew it would not be easy to get rid of him. Mr Flintwinch, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... anxiety, of fear. Their acquiescence may seem like a change; yet as it springs from no germinating tastes or desires or inner initiative, so it acquires no true momentum. Not in that, nor in any other submissive adaptation to the needs of the passing moment, shall we see where the villagers are really rousing out of stagnation into a new ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... last necessity is eating. The animated world is unceasingly eating and digesting itself. None could see this truth clearly but an enthusiast in diet like Epicurus, who, discovering the unexceptionableness of the natural law, proceeded to the work of adaptation. Ocean, lake, streamlet, was separately interrogated, 'How much delicious food do you contain? What are your preparations? When should man partake?' In like manner did the enthusiast peregrinate through Nature's empire, fixing his chemical eye upon plant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... that wonderful adaptation of the human soul to any circumstances. It's the one thing that makes me respect our fallen nature. Fallen? It seems to me that we ought to call it our risen nature; it has steadily mounted with the responsibility that Adam took ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... the time when the Sons of Life reached the human level. It is preceded by a period in which all conditions lead up to that crowning event; and it is followed by one which may be called a time of adaptation and of perfecting ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... with blocks to connect the base of the upper with the capital of the lower shaft; and this feature in a less crude shape was permanently retained in the Indo-Mahomedan architecture of Gujerat. Nowhere better than at Ahmedabad can the various stages be followed through which this adaptation of a purely Hindu style to Mahomedan purposes has passed. It was at first somewhat violent and clumsy. The earliest mosque in Ahmedabad, that of Ahmed Shah, is practically a Hindu temple with a Mahomedan facade, and the figures of animals and of idols can still be traced on the ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... had an adaptation of a Southern method of housekeeping in the use of a detached house called a slave-kitchen, where the meals of the negro house and farm servants were cooked and served. The slave-kitchen of the old Bergen homestead stood unaltered ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... books, and, whenever he appears, considerately to turn the conversation to the bantling he is known to fondle. In the Norse heaven of our forefathers, Thor's house had five hundred and forty floors: and Man's house has five hundred and forty floors. His excellence is facility of adaptation, and of transition through many related points to wide contrasts and extremes. Culture kills his exaggeration, his conceit of his village or his city. We must leave our pets at home when we go into the street, and meet men on broad grounds of good meaning and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... his nest. Its coarse material and rough masonry are creditable neither to his skill as a workman nor to his taste as an artist. I am the more forcibly reminded of his deficiency in this respect from observing yonder hummingbird's nest, which is a marvel of fitness and adaptation, a proper setting for this winged gem,—the body of it composed of a white, felt-like substance, probably the down of some plant or the wool of some worm, and toned down in keeping with the branch on which ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... writing so of his own creed, would be tempted to make it "stupid," or, at all events, "unintelligible." The struggle of man, as he sees it, is more than impotent; it is gratuitous and purposeless. There is, to his eye, no grand ingenuity, no skilful adaptation of means to end, no moral (or even dramatic) plan in the order of the universe. He can get out of it only a sense of profound and inexplicable disorder. The waves which batter the cockleshells ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... bodies' inertia seems to be accompanied, began to respond to represented objects, and to maintain that inertia not absolutely by resistance but only relatively and indirectly through labour. Reason has thus supervened at the last stage of an adaptation which had long been carried on by irrational and even unconscious processes. Nature preceded, with all that fixation of impulses and conditions which gives reason its tasks and its point-d'appui. Nevertheless, such a matrix or cradle for reason belongs only externally to its life. The ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... kisses, and thrust it next my fluttering heart. I then proudly showed the note to Mackaye. He looked pleased, yet pensive, and then broke out with a fresh adaptation of ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... developed in a quite natural way, according to the law of evolution, out of the class of animals standing next below him. You are aware that we do not favor the first view, but so much the more earnestly embrace the latter. According to the law of evolution and adaptation the talents and capacities of animals were steadily changed in the course of thousands of years, following the changed relations of climate and soil, so as to fit themselves for the new conditions of sustenance ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... pipe in a corner, and now and then throwing in an unexpected and random comment on whatever happened to be the topic of conversation, was known as "Feathery" Joltram, though why "Feathery" did not seem very clear, unless the term was, as it appeared to be, an adaptation of "father" or "feyther" Joltram. Matt Peke explained that old "Feathery" was a highly respected character in the "Quantocks," and not only rented a large farm, but thoroughly understood the farming business. Moreover, that he had succeeded in making himself somewhat of a terror ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... in its course towards Chesapeake Bay, and here, where the hills recede to a distance, it expands into a great width, and its face is covered with islands. The only drawback to its being a grand river is its shallowness, and want of adaptation, therefore, to the purpose of navigation. There are no splendid steamboats to be seen here as on the Ohio, which make one feel that river, at the distance of more than 2000 miles from the sea, to be ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... world of Nature is more wonderful than the gift of bird song, and nothing proves more clearly the doctrine of design, or, at least, of adaptation to a specialized purpose. ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... illuminate objects in the softer season of the year, and in the forty-third degree of latitude. Even the birds appeared to rejoice in the beauties of the time, and sang and fluttered among the oaks, in numbers greater than common. Nature usually observes a stern fitness in her adaptation of means to ends. Birds are to be found in the forests, on the prairies, and in the still untenanted openings of the west—and often in countless numbers; more especially those birds which fly in flocks, and love ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... needs to be added that the conscious selection of codes that tend to preserve life is a factor of growing importance in insuring movement in this same direction. Altogether, moral progress consists primarily in an increasing adaptation of codes to ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... becomes an organ of art which aids in making the poetry prominent. The modern poet no longer finds the Chorus in nature; he must needs create and introduce it poetically; that is, he must resolve on such an adaptation of his story as will admit of its retrocession to those primitive times and to that simple ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... by history will be complete until the knowledge of man is perfect; but we cannot approach the threshold of understanding without realizing that our national achievement has been the outcome of singular powers of assimilation, of adaptation to changing circumstances, and of elasticity of system. Change has been, and is, the breath of our existence and ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... Then the caprices of fashion, which in England are so various and despotic, have here a more limited influence: the form of a dress changes as long as the material is convertible, and when it has outlasted the possibility of adaptation to a reigning mode, it is not on that account rejected, but is generally worn in some way or other till banished by the more rational motive of its decay. All the expences of tea-visits, breakfast-loungings, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... peculiar shape, low at the crown and broad at the brim, was worn with an air of devil-me-care defiance; his watch-chain, garnished with a profusion of rings and seals, hung low from his white waistcoat; and the adaptation of his nankeen inexpressibles to his well-shaped limbs was a masterpiece of art. His whole dress and air was not what could properly be called foppish, it was rather what at that time was called "rakish." Few could so closely approach ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which dragged helplessly upon the floor, entered the hall, bearing a broad, shallow tank of silver. In the tank flapped and swam four superb sterlets, their ridgy backs rising out of the water like those of alligators. Great applause welcomed this new and classical adaptation of the old custom of showing the LIVING fish, before cooking them, to the guests at the table. The invention was due to Simon Petrovitch, and was (if the truth must be confessed) the result of certain carefully measured supplies of brandy ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... what has been popularly denominated "The Lecture System" has been confidently predicted by those who, granting them the wisdom which they assume, should have been so well acquainted with its nature and its adaptation to a permanent popular want as to see that it must live and thrive until something more practicable can be contrived to take its place. If anything more interesting, cheaper, simpler, or more portable can be found than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... resulted in 100% failure, while I had more than 50% success with it. He was willing to discard his type of grafting for mine, which was adequate for the work we were doing, but I wanted to check his grafting performance and urged him to continue with his own (an adaptation of the bark-slot graft to the end of a cut-off stub). We both used paper sacks to shade our grafts. Although results proved that my methods averaged a slightly higher percentage of successful graftings in this latitude and for the type ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... any other house in Pattaquasset pretended to; and the same was true of its arrangements and furniture. It was comfortable and ample; so was everything in it; with besides that touch of ease and fitness and adaptation which shews always—or generally—that people have lived where there is a freedom from fixed standards. It was so here; for Judge Harrison's family during the life-time of his wife had always spent their winters and often part of their summers away from Pattaquasset—in one of the great cities, ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... she was encouraged to think some miraculous thing had happened when the priest asked her to tell him exactly what her window was like. She had often told him before but he had never listened to her. But now he recognised her window as an adaptation of Fra Angelico's picture, and he told her how the saint had wandered from monastery to monastery painting pictures on the walls. More he could not tell her, but he promised to procure a small biography of the saint. She ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... selection of words, nor seeks any neatness of phrase: he has no elegancies, either lucky or elaborate: as his endeavours were rather to impress sentences upon the understanding than images on the fancy, he has few epithets, and those scattered without peculiar propriety or nice adaptation. It seems to follow from the necessity of the subject, rather than the care of the writer, that the diction of his heroick poem is less familiar than that of his slightest writings. He has given not the same numbers, but the same diction, ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... and the various nations found no difficulty in interchanging their divinities—a new god either representing a new power not hitherto discovered, or one with which they were already familiar under a new name. With such a power of adaptation and enlargement, if there had been nothing more in it than this, such a system might have gone on accommodating itself to the change of times, and keeping pace with the growth of human character. Already in its later forms, as the unity of nature was more clearly observed, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... relatively shameless, more intelligent, more capable, less restrained. He is rising against his tradition, and almost against his will. The serf still bulks large in him. The whole trend of circumstance is to substitute science for mere rote skill in him, to demand initiative and an intelligent self-adaptation to new discoveries and new methods, to make him a professional man and a job and pieceworker after the fashion of the great majority of professional men. Against all these things the serf element in ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... and although the street had been graded, the houses retained their airy elevation, and were accessible only by successive flights of wooden steps to the front door, which still gave perilously upon the street, sixty feet below. I now painfully appreciated Enriquez's adaptation of the time-honored joke about the second floor. An invincible smell of garlic almost took my remaining breath away as the door was opened to me by a swarthy Mexican woman, whose loose camisa seemed to be slipping from her unstable ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... the Great Britain before dinner, between five and six o'clock,—a great structure, as to convenient arrangement and adaptation, but giving me a strong impression of the tedium and misery of the long voyage to Australia. By way of amusement, she takes over fifty pounds' worth of playing-cards, at two shillings per pack, for the use of passengers; also, a small, well-selected ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... being the principle of movement to the place, which is connatural to that body by reason of its weight, can, in a way, be called "natural love." In the same way the appetible object gives the appetite, first, a certain adaptation to itself, which consists in complacency in that object; and from this follows movement towards the appetible object. For "the appetitive movement is circular," as stated in De Anima iii, 10; because the appetible object moves the appetite, introducing itself, as it were, into its intention; ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... was a regression, and decadent sex worship as it existed during the middle ages was an attempt by certain unhealthy elements in the race to revert to the primitive. In decadent sex worship we are dealing with an instance of faulty mental adaptation in a way in which we had not been accustomed to consider it. It is a case of faulty adaptation in the race, or at least in certain elements of it, rather than in the individual. These general analogies are noteworthy from the standpoints of ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... that of any other system of psychology. While it places the intellectual, moral and spiritual faculties at the top as supreme, it is just as vitally interested in the care of the body, education, discipline, self-culture, choice of occupation, matrimonial adaptation, heredity and all the practical affairs of life. How could a person be more healthy, happy and successful than by normally and harmoniously developing all his faculties as phrenology ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... the astonishing results of instinct, with their love of the marvellous, must add a good share of reason to their other faculties,—"an adaptation of means to ends, that reason alone could produce." It is very true, without close inspection, and comparing the results of different swarms in similar cases, one might arrive at such conclusion. It is difficult, as ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... throughout the volume to various authors and publishers. A general assurance of most grateful appreciation is here tendered to many who have responded with material and suggestions in the research, and to the numerous teachers whose resourcefulness has led to the adaptation of many games to school conditions. The author regrets the impracticability of mentioning all of ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... game which I find most useful in developing the intellect, and which incidentally answers the purpose of a language lesson. It is an adaptation of hide-the-thimble. I hide something, a ball or a spool, and we hunt for it. When we first played this game two or three days ago, she showed no ingenuity at all in finding the object. She looked in places where it would have been impossible to put the ball or the spool. For instance, ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... of old books, and exhibit some few of the enrichments that artist and engraver gave to the written or printed volumes which passed from their hands; at the same time we shall endeavour to take a more general survey of the adaptation of art to works ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... ATHENIAN: The adaptation of art to the characters of men. Choric movements are imitations of manners occurring in various actions, fortunes, dispositions,—each particular is imitated, and those to whom the words, or songs, or dances ...
— Laws • Plato
... published by Mr. Frank Harrison Hill in 1887. "Peel," says Mr. Hill, "did not believe in governing against Parliamentary and public opinion." "To him the art of government was the measurement of social forces, and the adaptation of policy to their direction and intensity. When it was clear to him that a thing must be done, and that his help was essential to the doing of it, his duty was plainly marked out." Up to this time, however, Peel did not see that the Catholic question had reached such a stage, ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... who uses machinery as a brute, is merely a passing phase of human stupidity. This tram road beside us will be a triumph of design. The idea will be so unfamiliar to us that for a time it will not occur to us that it is a system of beautiful objects at all. We shall admire its ingenious adaptation to the need of a district that is buried half the year in snow, the hard bed below, curved and guttered to do its own clearing, the great arched sleeper masses, raising the rails a good two yards above the ground, the easy, ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... the only reason that their existence did not bear upon the eternal salvation of the children of Adam. Furthermore, a minute study of the first chapters of Genesis has proved to me the existence of two successive creations separated by untold ages, of which the second is only, so to speak, the adaptation of a corner of the earth to the needs ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... different natures, different laws, and fundamentally different origins. But the energies which express themselves in their pursuit—energies vital, primordial, and necessary even to man's physical survival—have all been evolved under the same stress of adaptation of the human creature to its surroundings; and have therefore, in their beginnings and in their ceaseless growth, been working perpetually in concert, meeting, crossing, and strengthening one another, until they have become indissolubly ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... intoxicated with the idea that the world could make itself without design, purpose, skill, or intelligence: in short, without life. We completely overlooked the difference between the modification of species by adaptation to their environment and the appearance of new species: we just threw in the word 'variations' or the word 'sports' (fancy a man of science talking of an unknown factor as a sport instead of as x!) and left them to 'accumulate' ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... a foreign volunteer was allowed to join a commando, and before he received his equipment, he was obliged to take an oath of allegiance to the Republic. Only a few men who declined to take the oath were allowed to join the army. The oath of allegiance was an adaptation of the one which caused so much difficulty between Great Britain and the Transvaal before the war. A ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... the pains, and withal the loneliness of pioneer life; for the hardest and at the same time the most significant battles of the 19th century were fought with axes and plows in the winning of the West. The frontier called for men with large capacity for adaptation—men with flexible and dynamic natures. Especially did it require men who could break with the past, forget traditions, and easily discard inherited political and social ideas. The key to the character of the pioneer is the law ...
— History of the Constitutions of Iowa • Benjamin F. Shambaugh
... eloquent vituperation; coincidence of opinion as to the single point of immediate emancipation has been sufficient to unite men of the most discordant character. There is in this conduct such a strange want of adaptation between the means and the end which they profess to have in view, as to stagger the faith of most persons in the sincerity of their professions, who do not consider the extremes to which even good men may be carried, when they allow one subject to take ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... 38: Contaminatio the blending of the parts of different comedies into one whole—e.g. the Andria of Terence, an adaptation of Menander's ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... The peculiar adaptation of his character to this mission of humanity was not only felt by his fellow laborers in the New-York Association, but was acknowledged wherever he was known. Dr. Walter Channing, brother of the late Dr. William Ellery Charming wrote to him as follows, ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... rose quietly, and after giving thanks on her knees that the gentle spirit had passed through all unscathed, untainted with even the perception of evil, she applied herself to the adaptation of one of her morning caps to her poor shorn lamb's head. Nor did Aurelia wake again till her father came to the door to make sure that all was well with his recovered treasure, and to say that Loveday would recover for her the box of clothes, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the evening, also,—the leisure hour of the day. But, alas! our houses are not built with an adaptation to this subject. They are seldom made to look toward the sunset. A careful inquiry and close observation, such as have been called for in preparation of this paper, have developed the fact that not a single house in this town faces the sunset! There may be windows looking that way, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... into effect measures calculated to meet requirements for housing, sanitation, medical attention and education. Systematic medical inspections were given, and projects for the erection of houses and the adaptation of existing buildings for lodgings are under way. Eighty negro physicians of the city collected information which took the form of a weekly report of the Bureau of Health. Real estate dealers were asked to submit lists of every house immediately available for the relief of the overcrowded ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... of these expeditions late one evening about ten days after Christmas, accompanied by the collie. It had been snowing lightly and steadily all day and the snow was still falling. Darrell was whistling softly to himself, and Duke, who showed a marvellous adaptation to Darrell's varying moods, catching the cue for his own conduct, began to plunge into the freshly fallen snow, wheeling and darting swiftly towards Darrell as though challenging him to a wrestling-match. Darrell gratified his evident wish and they tumbled promiscuously ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... future aqueducts and consular highways of Rome. On the other hand, the Etruscans repeated, and at the same time corrupted, the ornamental architecture of the Greeks: for while they transferred the laws established for building in stone to architecture in wood, they displayed no thorough skill of adaptation, and by the lowness of their roof and the wide intervals between their columns gave to their temples, to use the language of an ancient architect, a "heavy, mean, straggling, and clumsy appearance." The Latins found in the rich stores of Greek ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... present drama of Pickwick has been honoured by crowded houses, and greeted by shouts of laughter and reiterated peals of applause upon every representation, and has been acknowledged by the public Press to be the only successful adaptation. ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... department of British Machinery) are palpable plagiarisms from his invention, and not well done at that. He, of course, does not claim the idea of a Centrifugal Pump as his own, for it is much older than any of them, but he does claim that adaptation of the idea which has rendered it effective and valuable. I am reliably informed that he has just sold his Scotch patent only for the comfortable sum of L10,000 sterling, or nearly $50,000; and this is but one of several inventions for which he has found a ready market ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... work to copy or steal from their vanquished foes everything that might enhance the beauty and splendor of their own city. Greek artists were transported to Rome and placed in charge of the most important public works. Roman art is, consequently, but a development or adaptation of the Greek. It is noticeable, however, that it almost completely ignored the most characteristic and popular of the Greek forms—for example, the anthemion—and adapted those, such as the acanthus and the scroll, which had been considered ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... that the reader may know I do not presume to offer the little tale which follows as an "adaptation" of Andersen's famous story. I offer it plainly as a story which children have liked, and which grew out of my early memories of Andersen's The ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... by which this process of fertilization is secured are so marvellous, that I confess I am completely staggered by the idea that these contrivances have been caused by the self-growth and adaptation of the plant without guidance. There is a plant called Salvia glutinosa[1]—easily recognized by its sticky calyx and pale yellow flowers. The anthers that bear the pollen are hidden far back in the hood of the flower, ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... accommodating. They are open to the play of every influence, and are sensitive to environment; they are loyal when others are loyal, but if there be a change in spirit round them they immediately correspond, and they do so not from any selfish calculation, but merely through a quick adaptation to environment. People of this kind find themselves by an instinct on the winning side, but they would be mightily offended if they were charged with being opportunists. They are at each moment thoroughly convinced of their integrity, and are ever on the side which commends ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... This special adaptation will not, it is hoped, render the series less useful in other schools. The graduated arrangement of the books, although, perhaps, one to which every teacher may not choose to conform, may yet serve as a test by which to compare the attainments of the pupils in any particular school with ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... these German hymns, one is struck by their adaptation to the seasons and occurrences of ordinary life. Obviously, too, the writer's religion was not a Sunday matter only, it had its place in week-days as well. In these hymns there is little gloom, a healthy ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... the use of side-wheels for full freights, an adjustable stern-wheel was tried. This could be raised or lowered in adaptation to the ...
— History of Steam on the Erie Canal • Anonymous
... the reader demanded to be led onward by a succession of half imperceptible shocks of pleasure in the beauty and vigour of diction, or in the ingenuity of phrasing, in sentence after sentence—pleasure inseparable from that caused by a perception of the nice adaptation of words to thought, pleasure quite other than that derivable from the acquisition of fresh knowledge[84]." The direct influence of the man who first taught us this lesson, who showed us that a writer, to be successful, should seek not merely to ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... line therefore exists only as the result of race experience. This fact alone is sufficient to suggest that one should not dismiss it lightly as the outgrowth of bigotry. Is is not perhaps a social adaptation with survival value? ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... fairly choke in the process. The attempts, induced by an excellent, exact translation,[3] would not succeed anywhere—a fact to which the Weimar stage, after honest and repeated efforts, can give unexceptionable testimony. If we wish to see a Shakespearean play, we must return to Schroeder's adaptation; but the dogma that, in representing Shakespeare, not a jot or tittle may be omitted, senseless as it is, is constantly being reechoed. If the advocates of this view should retain the upper hand, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... for myself, I can but say, looking back upon my life, that it does seem to have been regulated hitherto by a very tender and intimate kind of guidance, though I did not always see how delicate the adaptation of it was at the time. The idea of this book, that there is a certain golden thread of hope and love interwoven with all our lives, running consistently through the coarsest and darkest fabric, was what I set out to illustrate rather than to prove. ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... The adaptation, of this architecture to the peculiar environment indicates that it has long been practiced under the same conditions that now prevail. Nearly all of the ancient pueblos were built of the sandstone found in natural quarries ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... matter of curriculum was treated by the more passive scholars as a matter of course, and by the sharper and less reverent disciples as a matter of fun. Indeed, if any personality is then evinced in the adaptation of these old world themes, it is generally connected with a more or less emphatic disparagement or grotesque ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... designed temple. His genius fitted him to deal with this, and with this alone, in any adequate manner. His moral analysis, at once keen and veracious, enabled him not only to lay bare all the “disproportions” of humanity, but, moreover, to unfold the adaptation of Christianity as a spiritual system to meet and remedy these disproportions. This is the real “apologetic” work of the ‘Pensées,’ and the only one for which Pascal’s mind pre-eminently fitted him. ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... the winter with her father. After an exchange of letters Wark joined them there. In the twelve years since her return to the family, she had by degrees adapted herself to the task of looking after her young lady. The adaptation was not all on one side. Many of Vida's friends wondered that she could put up with a lady's maid who could do so few of the things commonly expected of that ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... adopted the International System of Units (SI, or metric system) as their official system of weights and measures. Although use of the metric system has been sanctioned by law in the US since 1866, it has been slow in displacing the American adaptation of the British Imperial System known as the US Customary System. The US is the only industrialized nation that does not mainly use the metric system in its commercial and standards activities, but there is increasing acceptance in science, medicine, ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... which this book is illustrated were specially taken for me at considerable expenditure of time and trouble by various good friends in Sark and elsewhere. If, in one or two cases, we have permitted ourselves some little license in the adaptation of the present to the past, it is only for the purpose of presenting to the reader as nearly as possible what was in the writer's mind when working on ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... attains its complete development; and twenty-five is a proper age for the young man to marry. Romantic love, personal affection on a basis of congeniality, mutual adaptation, a similar social sphere of life, should determine his choice. Nature and custom indicate that the husband should be somewhat older ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... water just sufficient for the requisite purposes, fell in through a fissure from above, forming such a little subterraneous cascade in the cavern as human design itself could scarcely have surpassed in felicity of adaptation to the objects ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the number and quality of his capacities determine what is called individuality. This is what makes each child differ from all others, and this distinctive nature cannot be essentially changed, within our brief lives, though it does possess marvelous powers of development and adaptation. For illustration: Cultivation may develop a perfect specimen of a crabapple, but no amount of careful training could change the crabapple into a Johnathan. Likewise, no system of education can hope to change ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... improving the breed, by preserving in each successive generation the individuals which he prizes most, and by destroying the worthless individuals, slowly, though surely, induces great changes. As the will of man thus comes into play, we can understand how it is that domesticated breeds show adaptation to his wants and pleasures. We can further understand how it is that domestic races of animals and cultivated races of plants often exhibit an abnormal character, as compared with natural species; for they have been ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... round the gun, and I drew near to have a look at it. No neater adaptation of means to end could be devised than your eighteen-pounder. She is as docile as a child, and her "bubble" is as sensitive to a touch as mercury ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... is not. Really, you're not very encouraging, but I didn't expect you to be. I know my step-uncle, and I'm prepared for a stiff and extensive campaign. All I'm asking for is a detonator—something to start the action, you know, or something novel in the way of an explosive. Perhaps an adaptation of one of those grenades that the Chinese pirates throw when they want to drive their victims suffocating into the sea. I realize that there isn't much use engaging Uncle John with ordinary Christian weapons; ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... merely as a dramatic narrative in which, for the purpose of tracing out the innermost workings of the soul, advantage has been taken of the dramatic method, without otherwise conforming to the stringent rules of theatrical composition, or seeking the dubious advantage of stage adaptation. It must be admitted as somewhat inconsistent that three very remarkable people, whose acts are dependent on perhaps a thousand contingencies, should be completely developed within three hours, considering that it would scarcely be possible, in the ordinary course of events, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller |
