"Attribute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stated that Princess Alix was sympathetic to her brother's attachment, but was she altogether so? I could not but attribute her coolness and her reticence to some scruple. She walked daily with her brother, and it was evident that she was fond of him, or why was she here? But how much of personal prejudice and of private conviction had she ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... than any two-edged sword. The key of knowledge of the depravity of the heart is furnished the liquor dealer in the above interview, by the concession, "I would like to live a different life." The saloon keepers generally attribute their remaining in the business to the necessity of it in order to obtain a livelihood. But there are other occupations in which they could be diligently employed in order to maintain their families. Imagine a frail, aged, weak woman, cheerfully bringing gospel light into these dark dens of ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... had ideas in his groups, but he was not sculpturesque. His friends protest against this judgment, and attribute it, ad nauseam, to "malevolence" and "envy." What if his technique was less brilliant than that of Hals, they say; what if his shadows are less transparent than those of Rembrandt (and they will make no meaner comparison)? He is "teeming with noble ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... did not attribute his success, foolishly, to "his star," or to any magic. He said, truly, that the reason why such greatly superior numbers quailed before him was, as one of his prisoners confessed, because they lacked a cause,—a kind of armor which he and his party never lacked. When the time came, ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... pattern. If we follow Him, we also shall take with us these bodies, changed, purged, and glorified of course, but yet bodies in every sense. Will not the eye then see perfectly, the ear hear every sound in the celestial key? Not only every attribute of the mind, but every organ of the body will be prefect in its operation. ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... the effective direction. Owen felt this to be the case in his own and Edward's attempts to follow up the clue afforded them. Think as he might, he could not think of a crucial test in the matter absorbing him, which should possess the indispensable attribute—a capability of being applied privately; that in the event of its proving the lady to be the rightful owner of the name she used, he might recede without obloquy from ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... bourgeoisie does not become the supreme passion of the working-man, the inevitable consequence is drunkenness and all that is generally called demoralisation. The physical enervation and the sickness, universal in consequence of the factory system, were enough to induce Commissioner Hawkins to attribute this demoralisation thereto as inevitable; how much more when mental lassitude is added to them, and when the influences already mentioned which tempt every working-man to demoralisation, make themselves felt here too! There is no cause for surprise, ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... the senat grudge at the free & liberall granting of a grace in that behalfe, and perceiued how they refused to attribute diuine honors vnto him, in recompense of so foolish an enterprise, it wanted little that he had not slaine them euerie one. From thence therefore he went vp into a throne or royall seate, and calling therewith the common people about him, he told them ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (3 of 8) • Raphael Holinshed
... comparatively young upon the Earth. We may attribute some thousands of centuries of existence to it ... and some ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... wondered more than a thousand times why the Honourable Mrs. Harrington should do all for the FitzHenrys and nothing for Agatha. She did not attempt to attribute reasons. She knew her sex too well for that. She merely wondered, which means that she cherished a question until it grew into a grievance. The end of it she knew would be a quarrel. This might not come until the FitzHenrys should have grown to man's estate and ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... entertained of it by the North, whether physically or morally considered; views however that, on both these points, I have decided are singularly overcharged, even by persons one would conceive possessed of the information likely to lead to a correct judgment. This I attribute partly to the habit we are in of taking reports of places for granted, and repeating them from father to son without much personal examination, or rather comparison, and partly to the changes constantly operating upon society here, with a rapidity at least equal to the growth ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... must we attribute the differences in the combination of the Five Skandhas has which makes every individual different from ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... the road together a fortnight later, and that was as far as he got in explanation. It was enough. I could read men a little. To Mick women—all women—were sacred creatures. In the scheme of nature woman was good and man was evil. Passion was a male attribute, an evil fire that scorched and burned and rendered impotent the protesting innocence ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... of relief money had been given out. Help had come from Valencia, from Madrid, from every corner of Spain, thanks to the whimpering publicity given the inundation in the local press; and since the pious believer must attribute all his boons to the protection of some patron saint, the peasants thanked Rafael and his mother for this alms, resolving to be more faithful than ever to the powerful family. So—long live the Father of ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? Secondly, I think that I could make somewhat of a case against the enormous importance which you attribute to our greatest men; I have been accustomed to think, second, third, and fourth rate men of very high importance, at least in the case of Science. Lastly, I could show fight on natural selection having done and ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... When the child resembles either grandparent more closely than its immediate parents, our attention is not much arrested, though in truth the fact is highly remarkable; but when the child resembles some remote ancestor, or some distant member in a collateral line,—and we must attribute the latter case to the descent of all the members from a common progenitor,—we feel a just degree of astonishment. When one parent alone displays some newly-acquired and generally inheritable character, and the offspring do not inherit it, the cause ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... a hand in the ordering of affairs here, who has more intellect than we are accustomed to attribute to the red man;" and the minister glanced at the young Indian, as if to say, "It ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... forget that! She no longer seemed a human creature: her hair was streaming, her face distorted, her garments torn; she hurled herself forward with a rattle in her throat,—one knew not whether to attribute it to either joy, anguish, or rage,—and darted out her hands like two claws to snatch her child. ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... because of a primeval club. Man craved woman and he procured her. Considering the beginnings of the institution of marriage, it is interesting, if nothing more, to consider the efforts of the priest to give it an attribute of sanctity, to call it a sacrament. In truth, marriage is the most artificial of the relations which exist in the social body. It is a device of man at his worst—a mixture of slavery, savage egotism and priestcraft. It is ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... averaged near-zero growth in 1998-2001 and contracted by 2.3 percent in 2002, in response to regional contagion and an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease. On a per capita basis, real income has stagnated at 1980 levels. Most observers attribute Paraguay's poor economic performance to political uncertainty, corruption, lack of progress on structural reform, substantial internal and external debt, and deficient infrastructure. Aided by a firmer exchange rate and perhaps a greater confidence in the economic ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... satisfied, and on that point we are no longer at issue. If, therefore, you still retain any wish to do me the honour you hinted at, I shall be most happy to meet you, when, where, and how you please, and I presume you will not attribute my saying thus much to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... "Pleurez, pleurez, Madame, car c'est un grand malheur que de n'avoir pas le coeur bon." I do not think that of Charles so much as the rest of the world does, and to which he has undoubtedly given some reason by his behaviour to his father, and to his friends. I attribute it all to a vanity that has, by the foolish admiration of his acquaintance, been worked up into a kind of phrensy, I shall be very unwilling to believe that he ever intended to distress a friend whom he loved as much as I believe ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... rival. He had never been able to make any mental picture of the stranger who had come between him and his betrothed. He had been inclined to fancy that the man must needs be much handsomer than himself, possessed of every outward attribute calculated to subjugate the mind of an inexperienced girl like Marian; but the parish-clerk at Wygrove and Miss Long had both spoken in a disparaging tone of Mr. Holbrook's personal appearance; and, remembering this, he was fain to believe that Marian had been won by some charm ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... spacious, and his line stretched out so far, That Man may know he dwells not in his own— An edifice too large for him to fill, Lodged in a small partition; and the rest Ordained for uses to his Lord best known, The swiftness of those Circles attribute, Though numberless, to his Omnipotence, That to corporeal substances could add Speed almost spiritual. Me thou think'st not slow, Who since the morning-hour set out from Heaven Where God resides, and ere midday arrived In Eden—distance inexpressible By ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... Story of the Soil should ever fall into the hands of any individual who suspects that he has contributed to its information, the author begs that he will accept as belonging to himself every gracious attribute and take it for granted that anything of opposite savor was ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... Publishing Company, refers to the frontpiece, which, from time to time, has caused question as to its origin. To Bliss he says: "It is a thing which I manufactured by pasting a popular comic picture into the middle of a celebrated Biblical one—shall attribute it to Titian. It needs to be ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... but is said to have occasioned no other sensation there, than a little merriment. Carnot's bold negative was a little talked of, but as it was solitary, it was considered harmless. To the love of finery which the french still retain to a certain degree, I could alone attribute the gay appearance of the eggs in the market, upon which had been bestowed a very smart stain of lilac colour. The effect was so singular that I could not ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... from Pythagoras and Philolaus. In this connection it is curious that he makes no mention of Aristarchus, who I think will be regarded by conservative historians as his only demonstrated predecessor. To the hold of the older ideas upon his mind we must attribute the fact that in constructing his system he took great pains to make as little change as possible in ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... the abode of the herdsmen—a lawless race, and, therefore, an abomination to their more civilized countrymen. The ass was the beast of burden. The horse was bred for the war-chariot—that great attribute of ancient power. The breed was small but fine and peculiar to the country. They were kept in stables along the Nile, and hence they do not appear in the landscapes. Horticulture was extensively and elaborately practised, both for use and pleasure; and the Pharaohs, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... only child of Mr. Allison and a much admired member of the city's middle class. And while it is true that a certain equality in class and social refinement was an attribute of the American people which found great favor in the eyes of the older world inhabitants, it is equally true that this equality was more seeming than real. This was due to a great extent to the distinction ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... intense surprise—shared, as far as I can see, by all my friends and relatives—I have managed to pass the "Bar Final"! I attribute the portentous fact to the Examiners having discreetly avoided all reference to the "Rule ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... establishment of large forest reserves near the headwaters of our streams, which are to serve also the purpose of national parks. In assigning a cause for the lowering of our streams, and the drying up of many of our lakes, in a former part of this work, I attribute it to the plowing up of their valleys and watersheds, and not to the destruction of the forests, because I do not think that the latter reason has sufficiently progressed to produce the result, although it is well known that the destruction of ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... he had headed down again. Slone imagined that the great stallion had been daunted by the tremendous chasm, but had finally faced it, meaning to put this obstacle between him and his pursuers. It never occurred to Slone to attribute less intelligence to Wildfire than that. So, dismounting, Slone took Nagger's bridle and started down. The mustang with the pack was reluctant. He snorted and whistled and pawed the earth. But he would not be left alone, ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... Harold sayin' as I got most to the boat landin', "the phosphorescence that ignorant sailors attribute to electricity in the air is really ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... only from the equilibrium of opposing thoughts. To make the citizen respect the city, it must be reciprocal; each has his soul. It is his right and his first duty is to be true to it.... I have no illusions, and in this world of prey I do not attribute an exaggerated importance to my own conscience, but however small we may be or little we may do, we must exist. We are all liable to err, but deceived or not, a man should be sincere; an honest mistake is not a lie, but a stage on the road to truth. The real lie is to fear the truth and ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... inanimate objects, may at first appear arbitrary; but it is part of the beautiful consistency of Andersen's genius that it never stoops to mere amusing and fantastic trickery. The character of the darning-needle is the character which a child would naturally attribute to a darning-needle, and the whole multitude of vivid personifications which fills his tales is governed by the same consistent but dimly apprehended instinct. Of course, I do not pretend that he was conscious of any such consistency; creative ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... conscious of the difference in her manner, but even she, with all her intuition, failed to attribute it to its rightful cause. To her, Magda was so indubitably, essentially the Magda she loved that she was hardly sensible of that shadowing of her radiant beauty which had revealed itself with a merciless clarity to ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... then go on into Scotland." From Liverpool he wrote on the 21st: "The enthusiasm has been unbounded. On Friday night I quite astonished myself; but I was taken so faint afterwards that they laid me on a sofa, at the hall for half an hour. I attribute it to my distressing inability to sleep at night, and to nothing worse. Everything is made as easy to me as it possibly can be. Dolby would do anything to lighten the work, and does everything." The ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... to demand, in the name of God, who had? "Without a memory, in what manner was this illustrious personage to recall her duties to her royal consort, her duties to her royal offspring, her duties to her royal self? Memory was peculiarly a royal attribute; and without its possession no one could properly be deemed of high and ancient lineage. Memory referred to the past, and the consideration due to royalty was scarcely ever a present consideration, but a consideration connected with the past. We venerated the past. Time was divided into the ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... they would also suffer for the very same and only crime of which I have been found guilty. But I am to be the victim. Alas! my youthful inexperience, and not depravity of will, is the sole cause to which I can attribute my misfortunes. But so far from repining at my fate, I receive it with a dreadful kind of joy, composure, and serenity of mind; well assured that it has pleased God to point me out as a subject through which some greatly useful (though at ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... ascribe to the single personification of a passion, a faculty, or a moral and social principle, another would just as naturally refer to a personal and more complex deity:—that which in one instance would form the very nature of a superior being, in the other would form only an attribute—swell the power and amplify the character of a Jupiter, a Mars, a Venus, or a Pan. It is in the nature of man, that personal divinities once created and adored, should present more vivid and forcible images to his fancy than abstract personifications of physical objects and moral impressions. ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Havana brand. The plants attain a remarkable size, and grow up like many kinds of tropical vegetation, without much care being bestowed upon them, although the plants are regularly cultivated and hoed. The planters are not troubled with that foe of most tobacco fields, "the worm." They attribute this in part to the excellence of their soil and partly to the abundance of birds and yellow jackets. The planters do not always "top" the Havana and do very little "suckering." If the ground is rich, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... it, the curses that must assuredly follow the parents of decadence who started it,—all of this needs to be brought home to the minds of those who have thoughtlessly or ignorantly accepted it, for it is to this undoubtedly that we have to attribute not only the diminishing birth-rate, but the diminishing value of ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... of glory and a diadem of beauty unto the residue of His people, and for a spirit of judgment to him that sitteth in judgment, and a spirit of strength to them that drive back the battle from the borders " (xxviii. 5, 6). Jehovah is a true and perfect King, hence justice is His principal attribute and His chief demand. And this justice is a purely forensic or social notion: the righteousness of the Sermon on the Mount can only come into consideration when civil justice and order have come to be a matter of course—which at that time ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... of his famous lieutenant with sincere pleasure—and was the first upon every occasion, not only to express the fullest sense of Jackson's assistance, and the warmest admiration of his genius as a soldier, but to attribute to him, as after the battle of Chancellorsville, all the merit of ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... power of analysis and combination—that power which reduces the most complex idea into its elements, which traces causes to their first principle, and, by the power of generalization and combination, unites the whole in one harmonious system—then, so far from deserving contempt, it is the highest attribute of the human mind. It is the power which raises man above the brute—which distinguishes his faculties from mere sagacity, which he holds in common with inferior animals. It is this power which has raised the astronomer from being a mere gazer at the stars to the high intellectual eminence ...
— Remarks of Mr. Calhoun of South Carolina on the bill to prevent the interference of certain federal officers in elections: delivered in the Senate of the United States February 22, 1839 • John C. Calhoun
... candidates for office. Consider this for a moment: Since our women have voted there has never been an embezzlement of public funds, or a scandalous misuse of public funds, or a disgraceful condition of graft. I attribute the better character of our public officials almost entirely to the ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... that Webster was harshly criticized for making that speech. It is dimly remembered that the Abolitionists called him "Traitor", refusing to attribute to him any motive except the gaining of Southern support which might land him in the Presidency. At the time—so bitter was factional suspicion!—this view gained many adherents. It has not lost them all, ...
— Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and the Secession Movement • Herbert Darling Foster
... not to gamble, and I have never gambled. I cannot tell who is losing in games that are being played. She admonished me, too, against liquor-drinking, and whatever capacity for endurance I have at present, and whatever usefulness I may have attained through life, I attribute to having complied with her pious and correct wishes. When I was seven years of age she asked me not to drink, and then I made a resolution of total abstinence; and that I have adhered to it through all time I ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the work of Vulcan, such as the dogs in the palace of Alcinous, etc., we may suppose to be the work of foreigners. A poet could scarcely attribute to the gods a work that his audience knew an artificer in their own ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not awake till rather late the next morning; and when I did, I felt considerable drowsiness, with a slight headache, which I was uncharitable enough to attribute to the mead which I had drank on the preceding day. After feeding my horse, and breakfasting, I proceeded on my wanderings. Nothing occurred worthy of relating till mid-day was considerably past, when I came to a pleasant valley, between two gentle hills. ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... life, and that when he was thought only tired he was really so ill that he believed scarce another man would stay in company. I was quite shocked at this account, and told him, honestly, that I had done him so little justice as to attribute all his languors ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... Wheeling, Virginia, and when shipped or transferred to this depot, with four hundred others, was but two years old, rising three. She was worked, at least a year or more, too young; and to this cause I attribute certain injuries which I shall speak of hereafter. This mule, with two hundred others, was transferred to the Army of the Potomac, and went through its campaigns from 1864 up to the fall of Richmond. She is an excellent worker, ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley
... "Battledores". &c.); and these Things possess many ATTRIBUTES (such as "baked", "beautiful", "black", "broken", &c.: in fact, whatever can be "attributed to", that is "said to belong to", any Thing, is an Attribute). Whenever we wish to mention a Thing, we use a SUBSTANTIVE: when we wish to mention an Attribute, we use an ADJECTIVE. People have asked the question "Can a Thing exist without any Attributes belonging to it?" It is a very puzzling question, and I'm not going to try to answer ...
— The Game of Logic • Lewis Carroll
... called you is holy.' God's holiness is the very attribute which seems to separate Him most from the creatures; for its deepest meaning is His majestic and Divine elevation above all that is creatural. But here, of course, the idea conveyed by the word is not ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... alarm his happily inexperienced brothers, and greatly increase Fulbert's penitence; but by the time Mr. Froggatt drove the sisters home, and Wilmet wondered that she could not go out for a night without some one being ill, he had arrived at a state which she could be left to attribute ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... entertained very conflicting opinions as to its general character; some regarding it as epizooetic, others as contagious; some attributing it to atmospheric influence, others to foulings in the stable or yard. Others, again, attribute it to freezing of the feet in winter. Cattle-doctors in a majority of cases, fail to cure it. I have, however, by a simple course of treatment, effected many signal cures. Some parties are so confident of the contagious character of the disease that they refuse to ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... in his time, the delight of the Court and darling of the Muses, was one so filled with Phoebean fire, as for excellency of his wit, was worthy to be Crowned with a Wreath of Stars, though some attribute the strength of his lines to favour more of the Grape than the Lamp; Indeed he made it his Recreation, not his Study, and did not so much seek fame as it was put upon him: In my mind he gives the best Character of himself in those Verses of his in ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... pelted solitary of her sex, our temporary world blows direct East on her shivering person. The scandal is warrant for that; the circumstances of the scandal emphasize the warrant. And how clever she is! Cleverness is an attribute of the selecter missionary lieutenants of Satan. We pray to be defended from her cleverness: she flashes bits of speech that catch men in their unguarded corner. The wary stuff their ears, the stolid bid her best sayings ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the same figure that a north country pedlar is a merchantman, you may style an author. It is like overreach of language, when every thin tinder-cloaked quack must be called a doctor; when a clumsy cobbler usurps the attribute of our English peers, and is vamped a translator. List him a writer and you smother Geoffrey in swabber-slops; the very name of dabbler oversets him; he is swallowed up in the phrase, like Sir S.L. [Samuel Luke] in a great saddle, nothing to be seen but ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... the work of creation, and that hence the world of everyday was as inspired as the Torah, the one throwing light on the other. The written Law must be interpreted in every age in accordance with the ruling attribute of God—for God governs in every age by a different attribute, sometimes by His Love, sometimes by His Power, sometimes by His Beauty. "It is not the number of ordinances that we obey that brings us into union with God," ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... kinde of people doe performe that in action, which the other do make shew of: and no doubt many when they heare of any rare exploit performed which cannot enter into their capacity, and is beyond their reach, straight they attribute it to be done by the Deuill, and that they worke by some familiar spirit, when indeede it is nothing els but meere illusion, cosoning, and legerdemaine. For you haue many now adaies, and also heeretofore many writers haue bene abused, as well by vntrue reports as by illusion ...
— The Art of Iugling or Legerdemaine • Samuel Rid
... a very important one, is to attribute the guilt of Adam and Eve to their descendants. This is the famous doctrine of imputation, which is now rejected by all the leading schools of modern Orthodoxy. That we can be guilty of Adam's sin, either by imputation or in any other way, seems too absurd and immoral ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... when I came in, but she did not look up; now she hardly ever gives me a glance. She seems to grow silent too; to me she rarely speaks, and when I am present, she says little to others. In my gloomy moments I attribute this change to indifference, aversion, what not? In my sunny intervals I give it another meaning. I say, were I her equal, I could find in this shyness coyness, and in that coyness love. As it is, dare I look for it? What could I do with it ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... of the coal itself, or the absence in it of earthy particles and sand, throughout areas of vast extent, is a fact which appears very difficult to explain when we attribute each coal-seam to a vegetation growing in swamps. It has been asked how, during river inundations capable of sweeping away the leaves of ferns and the stems and roots of Sigillariae and other trees, could the waters fail to transport ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... the truth I am experiencing other symptoms quite unknown to that beloved physician and so unfamiliar to myself that I attribute them to the influences of the locality. Altitude affects the heart, does it not, and this ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... woman of few words and very shy and reserved. But Raskolnikoff was very superstitious, and traces of this remained in him long after. In all the events of this period of his life he was ever ready to detect something mysterious, and attribute every circumstance to the presence of some ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... beginning of religion in the lowest known form of it and thus makes for the belief that the course of the world's faith has been upward from the first. But it presents the gravest difficulties; for why should the savage make a god of a stick or a stone, and attribute to it supernatural powers? Who told him about a god, that he should call a stick god, or about supernatural powers, that he should suppose a stick to work wonders? There is nothing in the stick to suggest such ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... "maha ledda," the great "sickness;" they look upon it as a special manifestation of devidosay, "the displeasure of the gods;" and the attraction of the cheetahs to the bed of the sufferer they attribute to the same indignant agency. A few years ago, the capua, or demon-priest of a "dewale," at Oggalbodda, a village near Caltura, when suffering under small-pox, was devoured by a cheetah, and his fate was regarded by those of an opposite faith as a ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... the destruction of Ireland would be to us: of countries I speak differing in language from the French, little habituated to their intercourse, and inflamed with all the resentments of a recently conquered people. Why will you attribute the turbulence of our people to any cause but the right—to any cause but your own scandalous oppression? If you tie your horse up to a gate, and beat him cruelly, is he vicious because he kicks you? If you have plagued and worried a mastiff dog for years, is he mad because he flies at you whenever ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... The worst attribute of these khouans is, that after having excited the ignorant Kabyles to many a losing war by their magnetism, they remain themselves behind ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... greatest danger to herself. She was horribly afraid. She knew this man far better than he suspected, realized the treachery and the unscrupulousness of him. She knew he would stop short of nothing, that he was without honour and without a single attribute ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... when I had attended to Dulcie I gave them some. For the next two hours everything was confusion. All the passengers had been severely shaken, and some were seriously hurt, but fortunately not one had been killed. Our extraordinary escape I shall always attribute to the fact that we travelled in a Pullman, a car that has ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... body; they presuppose that it is extended or spatial; they are modi extensionis, as feeling, volition, desire, representation, and judgment are possible only in a conscious being, and hence are merely modifications of thought. Extension is the essential or constitutive attribute of body, and thought of mind. Body is never without extension, and mind never without thought—mens semper cogitat. Guided by the self-evident principle that the non-existent has no properties, we ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... [FN439] Easterns attribute many complaints (such as toothache) to worms, visible as well as microscopic, which may be held a fair prolepsis of the "germ-theory" the bacterium. the bacillus, the microbe. Nymphomania, the disease alluded to in these two ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... the present race of Chippeways were induced to work so perseveringly to obtain it, why did not the children continue to work, at least enough to finish the jobs already commenced by their progenitors? We cannot consistently attribute the Herculean labor expended on these mines to the ancestors of the indolent race of North American Indians. We incline, rather, to the opinion that the miners were the mound-builders, who resided south of the mines, and ultimately found a home in Mexico. The condition in which the mines were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... mercy is not strain'd, It droppeth as the gentle raine from heauen Vpon the place beneath. It is twice blest, It blesseth him that giues, and him that takes, 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest, it becomes The throned Monarch better then his Crowne. His Scepter shewes the force of temporall power, The attribute to awe and Maiestie, Wherein doth sit the dread and feare of Kings: But mercy is aboue this sceptred sway, It is enthroned in the hearts of Kings, It is an attribute to God himselfe; And earthly power doth then shew likest Gods When mercie seasons Iustice. Therefore Iew, Though Iustice be thy ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the utterances of Lee, resembling those we might attribute to the ideal Christian warrior; and, indeed, it was such a spirit that lay under the plain uniform of the great Virginian. What he ordered was enforced, and no one was disturbed in his person or property. ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... ourselves or others kept an unnecessary length of time in mental suffering because we fail to attribute a morbid mental state to its physical cause. We blame ourselves or others for behavior that we call wicked or silly, and increase the suffering, when all that is required is a little thoughtful care of the body to cause the silly wickedness ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... foreign state to mediate a negotiation of the greatest importance, without furnishing him with certain, indubitable credentials of the truth and authenticity of his mission? And to consider further, whether it be just or seemly, to attribute to the Omniscient, Omnipotent Deity, a degree of weakness and folly, which was never yet imputed to any of his creatures? for unless men are hardy enough to pass so gross an affront upon the tremendous ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... observations by artificial arrangement; and the composition will be a poem, merely because it is distinguished from prose by metre, or by rhyme, or by both conjointly. In this, the lowest sense, a man might attribute the name of a poem to the well-known enumeration of the days ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... population. There are other agencies, no doubt, which have contributed to debase and brutalize this class of the white population, but I judge, that the causes above indicated, are the principal ones. Some will, no doubt, attribute this in part to the disparity between the lower classes in the South, and what they choose to term the slaveholding aristocracy. They will contend, that the vast difference between the higher and lower classes in the South, results in the deterioration of the ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... roughness in Norah. Boyish and offhand to a certain extent, the solid foundation of womanliness in her nature was never far below the surface. She was perfectly aware that while Daddy wanted a mate he also wanted a daughter; and there was never any real danger of her losing that gentler attribute—there was too much in her of the little dead mother for that. Brownie, the ever watchful, had seen to it that she did not lack housewifely accomplishments, and Mr. Linton was wont to say proudly that Norah's scones were as light as her hand on the horse's mouth. There ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... reconcile their consciences to the permission of this thing. They go into the woods and carry drinks to the savages in order to get their furs for nothing when they are drunk. Immorality, theft and murder ensue.... We had not yet seen the French commit such crimes, and we can attribute the cause of them only to the pernicious traffic ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... writing; I heard Shenac MacIvor—or, as English lips made it, Jane MacIvor—spoken of as a very beautiful woman (the Gaelic spelling is Sinec); but at this time I do not think it ever came into the mind of anybody to think whether she was beautiful or not. She had one attribute of beauty—perfect health. There never bloomed among the Scottish hills, which her father and mother only just remembered, roses and lilies more fresh and fair than bloomed on the happy face of Shenac, and her curls of golden ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... fro in the small room, which seemed then to grow even smaller and unfit to hold his dignity, the attribute of a supreme warrior. That swing of the shoulders that had frozen the timid when he was but a lad had increased with his growth and education at the ratio of ten to one. It, combined with the sneer upon his mouth, told mankind that there was nothing in space which could appall him. Maggie ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... collision with the mass, where they are compelled to come in competition with those whose physical condition prepares them for mental labor, and whose situation in society holds forth every inducement to their exertions. To this system, which is co-eval with the foundation of the State, I attribute, in a great degree, that wonderful energy of character which distinguishes the people of New England, and which has filled the world with ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... had ever yet shown himself in his attendance upon the Court of Marie de Medicis, constantly joining her evening circle, and absenting himself entirely from the apartments of his royal consort; a circumstance which Anne did not fail to attribute to the evil offices of the Tuscan Princess, who, as she asserted, was perpetually labouring to undermine her dignity, and to usurp her position, Soon, however, it became rumoured that it was to no effort on her own ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... conduct, or else this small body of wrongdoers may bring shame upon the great mass of their innocent and right-thinking fellows—that is, upon our nation as a whole. Good manners should be an international no less than an individual attribute. I ask fair treatment for the Japanese as I would ask fair treatment for Germans or Englishmen, Frenchmen, Russians, or Italians. I ask it as due to humanity and civilization. I ask it as due to ourselves because we must act ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... inflicted plagues by shooting his poisoned arrows among the people, just as the heat of the sun engenders deadly fevers. We have retained a trace of the old feeling, as our language betrays where consciousness utterly fails. We attribute certain sudden attacks of illness to sunstroke. That word "stroke" brings vividly before us the smiting of the Greek camp on the plain before Troy. Representing the sun, as Apollo did, the head of this god often appears radiated upon coins, particularly upon the ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... me, Gentlemen, to suppose that no soldier in the world would be capable of a despicable and culpable act. I do not ask, assuredly, the suppression of all courts-martial; but to be induced to attribute to a man dressed in a military uniform, a personal part in this frightful drama, proofs or contemporary testimonies would be required, of which ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... civilised world fixed on the vast slaughter-grounds of Europe, I shall not spend much time describing Windhuk. It is a pretty, picturesque little town, built amongst brown and purple hills. In most ways it is highly finished; reflects the spirit of German thoroughness that is an admitted attribute of the race. As usual in South-West Africa, it has nothing of the colonial town about it; it might be another suburb of Berlin. Many of the houses are thoroughly built into the sides of the surrounding kopjes—perched like great red-roofed cages on the ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie
... suffer a witch to live." Margaret Agar and Julian Cox, (see Glanvill's Collection of Relations, p. 135, edition 1682,) on whom he dwells with such delighted interest, were very inferior subjects to what, in his hands, Elizabeth Sothernes would have made. They had neither of them the finishing attribute of blindness, so fearful in a witch, to complete the sketch; nor such a fine foreground for the painting as the forest of Pendle presented; nor the advantage, for grouping, of a family of descendants in which witchcraft might be transmitted ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... Shakespeare's plays give no clew to his character. He is all. He grovels in Falstaff; he towers in Prospero. He smites all strings that have music in them. He baffles us like a spirit, hiding himself in darkness. To attribute the authorship of the plays to Bacon is, to my thought, not to rid us of our difficulty, but rather to increase difficulty. Bacon we know. He was jurist, statesman, natural philosopher. Add to these the possibility of his having written Shakespeare, and the magnificence of his achievement ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... she had done enough, but she plunged on desperately: "In spite of his really deep philosophy we notice a certain—one might almost say dash about his poetry, and a lack of—er—meditation which I should attribute to his immaturity and his a—rather wild life. If he had lived longer I think he might ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... he could no longer look the doctor in the eye. "I should deserve all those epithets and still more brutal ones if I should marry, knowing that my marriage would cause such horrors. But that I do not believe. You and your teachers—you are specialists, and consequently you are driven to attribute everything to the disease you make the subject of your studies. A tragic case, an exceptional case, holds a kind of fascination for you; you think it can ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... makes us old. Only the soldiers who enter Capua with wounded feet leave it demoralised. And yet George, who never had to wait or fight for a pleasure, fell enervate long before his death. I can but attribute this to the constant persecution to which he was subjected by duns and ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... proved in each case by Sabine's analysis of the Hobarton and Toronto observations), extends to all three "magnetic elements," affecting not only the position of the horizontal or declination needle, but also the dip and intensity. It seems not unreasonable to attribute some portion of the same subtle power to the planets and even to the stars, though with ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... transpired in the past few days. It was not that they really blamed the travellers for the nation's calamity: It was simply that their minds were half stunned by the news of defeats, and, not thinking for a moment to blame themselves, or even not thinking to attribute the defeats to mere numbers and skill, they were savagely eager to fasten it upon something near enough at hand ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... with intent to plunder the priory of its deeds and muniments, but on seeing the glowing crucifix, they went off in fear and trembling, and the villagers were saying this morning that the priory had been protected by a miracle, while you see in my case they attribute it to the work of the devil. And now, Edgar, tell me all that has befallen you ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... asleep," said he. "I beseech your Highness's forgiveness; I have slept this long while." It was no business of his if Wogan chose to attribute his own escape from Newgate as an exploit of the King's. The story was a familiar one at Bologna, whither they were hurrying; it was sufficiently known that Charles Wogan was its hero. All this was Wogan's business, not Gaydon's. Nor had Gaydon anything to do with any city of dreams or with any ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... Wharton with emphasis, "and for thinking so about the particular kind of brain-power I happen to possess, which is the point. The processes by which a Birmingham jeweller makes the wonderful things which we attribute to 'French taste' when we see them in the shops of the Rue de la Paix are, of course, mere imbecility—compared to my performances in Responsions. Lucky for me, at any rate, that the world has decided it so. I get a good time of it—and the ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... envelopes can without decomposition render bread doughy, badly raised, sticky, and incapable of swelling in water. On the other hand, although some distinguished chemists deny or exalt the nutritive properties of bran, agriculturists, taking practical observation as proof, attribute to that portion of the grain a physiological action which has nothing in common with plastic alimentation, and prove that animals weakened by a too long usage of dry fodder, are restored to health by the use of bran, which ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... more favorable idea of their nature than they are able to maintain in after years. Real life, like the weather, is made up of gray and cloudy days alternating with those when the sun shines and the fields are gay. Young people, however, exhibit fine weather and no clouds. Later they attribute to marriage the evils inherent in life itself; for there is in man a disposition to lay the blame of his own misery on the persons ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... that night he won all hearts by the grace of his manners, the sweetness of his smiles, his ready courtesy to all, and the brilliant sallies that escaped his lips which set the whole table sometimes in a roar. He possessed that ready adaptability to circumstances which is often an attribute of the highest birth. The motherly heart of Mistress Devenish went out to him at once, and she would fain have known something of his history, and how it came that so fair and gentle a youth was wandering thus alone in ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the paths of life, But sought in vain amidst its cares and strife; Claimed by the many—known but to the few Who keep thy great Original in view; Who, void of passion's dross, behold in thee A glorious attribute of Deity! ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... conceal a certain conscious satisfaction beneath. "Mr. Grey," he said, with pained severity, "as a personal friend of mine, and a representative of the press,—a power which I respect,—I overlook a disparaging reflection upon a lady, which I can only attribute to the levity of youth and thoughtlessness. At the same time, sir," he added, with illogical sequence, "if Ramierez felt aggrieved at my attentions, he knew where I could be found, sir, and that it was ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... they kept them away from those contests in which victory is assigned, not by the judge, or by the issue of the contest itself, but by the voice of the vanquished begging the victor to spare him as he falls. This attribute of never being conquered, which they so jealously guard among their citizens, can be attained by all men through virtue and goodwill, because even when all else is vanquished, the mind remains unconquered. For this cause no one speaks of the three hundred Fabii as conquered, ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... may be said, it is unjust to attribute to the masses of the Democratic party intentions so bad as those of which we have spoken. That party, in past times, has done great things for the land, has always professed the highest patriotism, and its name and fame are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... one but Himself. There are no second causes at work, no chance, no laws of nature, no subordinate agents, nothing that is not the immediate manifestation of His free will.[4] This is evident to our senses. But what is equally obvious is that His acts do not tally with His attribute of goodness, and that no facts known or imaginable can help us to bridge over the abyss between the infinite justice ascribed to Him and the crying wrongs that confront us in His universe, whithersoever we turn.[5] ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... that she had all that a man can desire to find in a woman: a beautiful face, lively and well-formed eyes, a beautiful mouth, with good teeth, a healthy complexion, well-developed breasts, and everything in harmony. It is true that I had felt that her hands could have been smoother, but I could only attribute this to hard work; moreover, my Swiss girl was only eighteen, and yet I remained entirely cold. What was the cause of this? That was the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... put my trust and confidence in our Lord Hakem, the One, the Eternal, without attribute and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... prepare a speech, would make a few impromptu remarks as best she could. Then the papers would comment on the difference between the beautiful and amiable Mrs. Stanton and the aggressive and jaded Miss Anthony, and attribute it to the fact that one was a wife and the ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... must not attribute it all to Fame, Sir, they are too learned and wise to take up things from Fame, Sir: our Intelligence is by ways more secret and sublime, the Stars, and little Daemons of the Air inform us all things, past, present, and ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... elevation there was always a strong wind, and at times the kite rose to an enormous height, as well as travelling for great distances laterally. In fact, the kite became, in a short time, one of the curiosities of Castra Regis and all around it. Edgar began to attribute to it, in his own mind, almost human qualities. It became to him a separate entity, with a mind and a soul of its own. Being idle- handed all day, he began to apply to what he considered the service of the kite some of his spare time, and found a new pleasure—a new object ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... another story of Medea almost too revolting for record even of a sorceress, a class of persons to whom both ancient and modern poets have been accustomed to attribute every degree of atrocity. In her flight from Colchis she had taken her young brother Absyrtus with her. Finding the pursuing vessels of Aeetes gaining upon the Argonauts, she caused the lad to be killed and his limbs to be strewn over the sea. Aeetes on reaching ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... the public taste, which followed that of the dramatic writings, equally show its competency to effectuate good. Rousseau, who had little less dislike to plays and players than Jeremy Collier, says, in a letter to D'Alembert, "Let us not attribute to the stage the power of changing opinions or manners, when it has only that of following and heightening them. An author who offends the general taste may as well cease to write, for nobody will ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... certain stanzas are written, under what are called the fourteen stazioni or stations of the cross, (places where our Saviour is supposed to have halted, or fainted under his load, on his way to Calvary.) Stanzas we were at first profane enough to attribute to Metastasio, but afterwards found that it was only the metastasis of his metre adapted to the use of the church. They are much better than most of our sacred poetry, as it is strangely miscalled, which is frequently ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... the North are unable to disabuse ourselves of the idea that the Negro is a dark skinned Yankee and we think, therefore, that if all is not as it should be that something is wrong, that somebody or some social condition is holding him back. We accuse slavery, attribute it to the hostility of the Southern white. Something is holding him back, but it is his inheritance of thousands of years in Africa, not slavery nor the Southern whites. It is my observation that the white of the black belt deal with the Negro more patiently and endure far more of shiftless ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey
... inquiries and several threats of prosecution for libel in consequence of what I have written in regard to impostors who (for money) perform tricks of legerdemain and attribute them to the spirits of deceased persons, I have only to say, I have no malice or antipathies to gratify in these expositions. In undertaking to show up the "Ancient and Modern Humbugs of the World," I am determined so far as in me lies, to publish nothing but the ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... you attribute this singular indifference to your fate on the part of your family ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... beginning of a great fear in the breast of the Belgian for his savage companion. He had never understood the transformation that had been wrought in Tarzan by the blow upon his head, other than to attribute it to a form of amnesia. That Tarzan had once been, in truth, a savage, jungle beast, Werper had not known, and so, of course, he could not guess that the man had reverted to the state in which his childhood and young ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... His supreme power, and a righteous jealousy of mankind, who attribute to each other the gifts He Himself bestows upon them, it pleased Him to take one of the most unworthy of the creation, to make known the fact that His graces are the effects of His will, not the ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... the marcke of the crosse, the skinne beyng pretely slitte. Thei vse in the warres, Bowe, Pique, Habregeon, and helmette. Their highest dignitie is priesthode, the next, thordre of the Sages, whiche thei cal Balsamates, and Tamquates. They attribute moche also to the giltelesse and vprighte dealing man, whiche vertue they estieme as the firste staier to climbe to the dignitie of the sages. The nobilitie hath the thirde place of dignitie, and the pencionaries ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... something was wrong; but, a foreigner by birth himself, he had early observed, and long known, the peculiar exterior and phlegm of the people of the country, which so nearly resemble the stoicism of the aborigines, as to induce many writers to attribute both alike to a cause connected with climate. The present was not a moment however, nor was the impression strong enough to induce the master of the place to enter into any inquiries. Turning his eyes in the direction of the two bearers of the flag, he there beheld matter for new interest, ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... still greater number of non-Communists who are loyally working with them for the economic reconstruction of the country. I do not agree with the Communists in this, nor yet with their opponents, who attribute the death of political discussion to fear of the Extraordinary Commission. I think that both the Communists and their opponents underestimate the influence of the economic ruin that affects everybody. The latter particularly, ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... on the Diatomaceae ("On Conjugation in the Diatomaceae," "Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist." Volume XX., 1847, pages 9-11, 343-4; "Further Observations on the Diatomaceae," loc. cit., 1848, page 161). See "Life and Letters" II., page 292.) I should attribute most of such structures to quite unknown laws of growth; and mere repetition of parts is to our eyes one main element of beauty. When any structure is of use (and I can show what curiously minute particulars are often of highest use), I can see with my prejudiced eyes no limit to the perfection ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... patience', as Michelangelo affirms, Amy had some claim to the divine attribute, for she persevered in spite of all obstacles, failures, and discouragements, firmly believing that in time she should do something worthy to be called ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... have been accumulating in us for centuries, but which have been turned aside from their primitive and divine object, and which have wandered after a mystic, imperfectly seen and intangible beauty. There are some women like that, who blossom only for our dreams, adorned with every poetical attribute of civilization, with that ideal luxury, coquetry and aesthetic charm which surrounds woman, that living statue who brightens our life, like ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... were noted everywhere for their good health, which I attribute firstly to the quantity of bread and meat which I was able to give them and secondly to the liquor which I was able to obtain by an arrangement with the Jesuits of Polotsk. These good Fathers, all of them French, had a big farm at Louchonski, where there was a distillery ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... of our nature to mingle our interests and prejudices with the operation of our reasoning powers, and attribute to the objects of our likes and dislikes qualities they do not possess and effects they can not produce. The effects of the present tariff are doubtless over-rated, both in its evils and in its advantages. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown; His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this scepter'd sway; It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself: And earthly power doth then show likest ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... How know we that there is a certain and definite goal, even in heaven? How know we that excellence may not be illimitable? Enough that we improve, that we proceed. Seeing in the great design of earth that benevolence is an attribute of the Designer, let us leave the rest to Posterity and ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... restraints of prison life; and I am now delighted to find this opportunity of writing to you. Since my last letter, which was dated at Libby Prison, I have been confined at Danville, Virginia; Macon and Savannah, Georgia; and at this point. My health for the most part has been very poor, which I attribute to the inactivity of prison life. I have also suffered much for want of clothing. I have a pair of shoes on to-day that I bought more than a year ago; have run about barefoot for days and weeks during the ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... Lil?" asked Marjorie, leaning back contentedly against the cushions on the window seat. "Not that I think we need to——" she hastened to add, lest her hostess might attribute ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... thoughts were always distracted, as well when he gave audience as when he sat in judgment. He did not know to what to attribute this absence of mind; and that ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... so into the habit of going to the forester's house that he was oftener there than at his own; and the Head Forester, not knowing to what love of fishing to attribute these visits, often found himself embarrassed at being obliged to refuse the multiplicity of presents which the worthy ex-magistrate (he himself being very much at home) begged of him to accept in ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... [17]: Most commentators attribute a higher principle to the partiality of Rebekah; they imagine that it was founded upon the prophecies, choosing him whom the Lord had chosen: but I can perceive no good reason for ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... breath of wind, no drive of spray nor wash of sea. We were in the heart of peace in the midmost centre of the storm. Margaret was in high spirits, and her laughter vied with the clang of the jiggermast. Mr. Pike was gloomy, but I knew him well enough to attribute his gloom, not to the elements, but to the inefficients futilely freezing on the yard. As for me, I looked about at the four of us—blue-eyed, gray-eyed, all fair-skinned and royal blond—and somehow it seemed that I had long ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... admiration of men has placed her, she abandons at once her claim to that flattering reticence of speech, and that specially attentive courtesy of bearing, which are in men the outward and visible signs of the spiritual grace which they assume as an attribute of all women. In spite of what the crazy theorists of the perfect equality school may say, men still continue to expect and to admire in women precisely those qualities in which they feel themselves to be chiefly deficient. Their ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... woods and valleys of the Zagros chain formed the attraction which led him to prefer the region where he built his town to the banks of the Tigris. But all the evidence that we possess seems to show that this monarch was destitute of any love for the chase; and seemingly we must attribute his change of abode either to mere caprice, or to a desire to be near the mountains for the sake of cooler water, purer air, and more varied scenery. It is no doubt true, as M. Oppert observes, that the royal palace at Nineveh was at this time in a ruinous state; but it ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... understand what a flower will do, and why it does it, than, given anything we as yet know of stone-nature, to understand what a crystal will do, and why it does it. You at once admit a kind of volition and choice, in the flower, but we are not accustomed to attribute anything of the kind to the crystal. Yet there is, in reality, more likeness to some conditions of human feeling among stones than among plants. There is a far greater difference between kindly-tempered and ill-tempered crystals of the same mineral, than between any two specimens ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... as you invite me," she said, "the least part always implies a greater. Let me ask what you esteem the greater part of the rare quality you are pleased to attribute to him." ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... later Black Bruin was climbing the mountainside on the way to his fastness when the wind brought him a new scent that he had sometimes smelled before, but what to attribute it to he had never known. The scent was very strong and Black Bruin knew that the intruder of his domain was near at hand. At last he made out a dim gray shape, near the trunk of a tree. Its color so blended with its surroundings that he might not have noticed it at all, ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... gentleman who wrote has a further interest in the matter; for he believes that King John was innocent, not only on this point, but as a whole. He thinks King John has been very badly treated; though I am not sure whether he would attribute to that Plantagenet a saintly merit or merely ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... heard the koel calling there, but have seen a young koel being fed by crows. Now, at Almora alone of the hill stations does Corvus splendens, the Indian house-crow, occur, and this is the usual victim of the koel. I would therefore attribute the presence of the koel at Almora and its absence from other hill stations to the fact that at Almora alone the koel's ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... residing there. The mother was silent, gloomy, and sometimes bitter, seldom saying a word about Herbert Fitzgerald or his prospects, but saying that word with great fixity of purpose when it was spoken. "No one," she said, "should attribute to her the poverty and misery of her child. That marriage should not take place from her house, or with her consent." And Clara for the most part was silent also. In answer to such words as the above she would say nothing; but when, as did happen once or twice, ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... nonsense, her countenance rapidly assumed an almost death-like expression. She would sit and gaze and breathe, but it was plain that there was not a single idea stirring in her mind. She could not even be called good; goodness is not an attribute of birds. In consequence either of her frivolous youth or of the air of Paris, which she had breathed from her childhood's days, there was rooted in her a kind of universal scepticism, which usually found expression ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... Pharisee; "let us hasten: for this generosity in the heathen is unwonted; and fickle-mindedness has ever been an attribute of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... that any one should attribute the possibility of such wayward behaviour to the venerable Earl. In his agitation he ate another muffin. After all, if the nobleman did go jumping in the winter why should this young and horsey man presume ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... be that they are influenced by a consideration which is said to be always present to an American,—'Will it pay?' and of course so practical a people as this see that anarchy doesn't pay; but I would rather attribute their conduct to nobler, more generous motives, and in doing this seem to myself to be doing them no ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various |
