"Attribute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his soul has, so to say, photographed itself. Acts are unquestionably more significative than words; yet if we wish to inquire into his poetry, not by way of appreciating his genius (with which at present we have nothing to do), but the nature of the man, let us do so loyally. Let us not attribute to him the character which he lends to his heroes, nor the customs which he attributes to them, simply because here and there he has given to the one something of his manner, to the other some of his sentiments; or because he has harbored them, in the belief ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... It is not forced. (2) It is gentle. (3) It carries a twofold blessing. (4) It is the most powerful attribute in men of might. (5) It is divine in ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... joy, peace and love. But can not such feeling be excited by other causes? We know there are dozens of causes that will produce such feelings. In the absence of clear testimony, what right has any one to attribute such feeling to the personal presence of the Holy Spirit? A man is found murdered. The testimony shows that any one of a dozen men could have killed him. Is there an intelligent jury in the land that would convict any one of the men of being the murderer? What ...
— The Spirit and the Word - A Treatise on the Holy Spirit in the Light of a Rational - Interpretation of the Word of Truth • Zachary Taylor Sweeney
... a good deal of truth in what you say about not publishing a third edition if the second is sold off. People would probably attribute it to the wrong motive, and say I had been stopped in some way, or was afraid; and nobody gets any credit for disinterestedness. Fortunately the first edition was a very small one, for you could have sold 5,000 as easily as 2,500, and this has given a check to the sale, which I do not regret. ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... postilion, on the contrary, who had travelled this road even day of his life, and who found no gratification in gazing upon rocks, woods, and waterfalls, lit his pipe, and occasionally talked to his horses. So essential an attribute of the beautiful is novelty! Essper at length made his appearance, attended by five or six peasants, dressed in holiday costume, with some fanciful decorations; their broad hats wreathed with wild flowers, their short brown jackets covered with buttons and fringe, ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... which was for vengeance; it was granted that I should remain on earth, and thwart your will. That as long as we were enemies, you should not succeed; but that when you had conformed to the highest attribute of Christianity, proved on the holy cross, that of forgiving your enemy, your task should be fulfilled. Philip Vanderdecken, you have forgiven your enemy, and both our ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... they diminish the poetry which rhetoricians and sentimentalists have cast over the melancholy of Lincoln's temperament. Yet they fall far short of wholly accounting for a gloom which many have loved to attribute to the mysticism of a great destiny, as though the awful weight of his immense task was making itself felt in his strange, brooding nature long years before any human prophet could have forecast any part ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... we discern but slowly, often become our life-long friends. Music which is too easily heard is identical with that which is immediately forgotten. The first impulse created by any great work of art is our longing to know it better. Its next attribute is its power to arouse and hold our steady affection. These observations may be applied literally to Bach's music, which can be heard for a lifetime, never losing its appeal but continually unfolding new beauties. Furthermore, in Bach, we feel the force of ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... Australian dog always becoming, when bred for one or a few generations in confinement, mottled in their colours; when we see people living in certain districts or circumstances becoming subject to an hereditary taint to certain organic diseases, as consumption or plica polonica,—we naturally attribute such changes to the direct effect of known or unknown agencies acting for one or more generations on the parents. It is probable that a multitude of peculiarities may be thus directly caused by unknown external agencies. But in breeds, characterized ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... depth of guile, to make the Earl of Chatham, and all the great orators of opposition, believe that the wish was furthest from his thought;—that he earnestly desired to preserve the connexion of the colonies with his "dear old mother country." While at the same time, however, that American writers attribute the origin of the grand idea to Benjamin Franklin, they admit that it was the pen of an English writer that rendered the most effective service in this particular—a pen that was wielded by the infidel, Thomas Paine! Originally ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... defence. You have now declared yourself 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 any unworthy motive. I have the honour ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... are we not entitled to infer from God's actions a good deal of the nature of the instruments He uses? Are we not quite safe in the case of S. Mary in the deduction from the nature of her vocation of the spiritual perfection to attribute to her? Does not God's use of a person imply qualities in the person used? It is on this ground that I feel that we are quite safe in inferring the spiritual attitude of S. Mary and of S. Elizabeth from ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... 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 could not have been ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... 1649), he urges his point again (5 March): if extension can describe matter, the same quality must apply to the immaterial and yet be only one of many attributes of Spirit. In his second letter to More (15 April), Descartes answers firmly: "It is repugnant to my concept to attribute any limit to the world, and I have no other measure than my perception for what I have to assert or to deny. I say, therefore, that the world is indeterminate or indefinite, because I do not recognize in it any limits. But I dare not call it infinite as I perceive that God is greater than ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... do not, by any means, "treat all objections as profane, and discard exceptions unanswered as shocking and immoral." (p. 100.) Neither does the Church think herself "omniscient and infallible;" (p. 96;) though she holds Omniscience to be an attribute of GOD; and Infallibility, of the Bible. But she deprecates in the strongest manner vague insinuations and unsupported doubts of the reality of her LORD'S Miracles, sown broad-cast over the land; and she is at a loss to understand how ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... forgiveness be an attribute which ennobles our nature, may we not hope to find pardon for ...
— Speed the Plough - A Comedy, In Five Acts; As Performed At The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden • Thomas Morton
... only curious. It was no furtive light. Though the curtains were closed, it displayed itself boldly in the eyes of the neighbors and of the two or three ornamental constables who made their infrequent rounds in County Street. He could only attribute it to old Maggs, who lived in the coachman's cottage at the far end of the property, though as to what old Maggs could be doing in the house at this hour in the evening, at a time when the parents were abroad and ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... on behalf of the captors, as to the place of capture. Yet to this day it has never been done. The brig Fanny was alleged to be taken within five miles from our shore; the Catharine within two miles and a half. It is an essential attribute of the jurisdiction of every country to preserve peace, to punish acts in breach of it, and to restore property taken by force within its limits. Were the armed vessel of any nation to cut away one of our own from the wharves of Philadelphia, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... render them terrible, and lived in the open Fields. It is really somewhat surprzing that People so near in Situation, should differ so essentially in Disposition, as the Inhabitants of those Islands have in all Ages; Hospitality having been the distinguishing Attribute of the Irish, and it's opposite Defect, that of the Britons; the Account given of them by Horace 1700 and odd Years ago, Visam Britannes Hospitibus feros, being as literally applicable to them at this Day, where the Force of Education ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... constant round of excitement. Several times Nellie awoke in the night to find her weeping, but, upon inquiring the cause of her tears, Violet would either avoid a direct reply, or allow her friend to attribute her grief ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... easy attitude of the other man was just a little puzzling. Morgan, however, was inclined to attribute it to his confidence that they were not in a position to actually fasten any guilt upon him. He suspected that the man was playing a game, and this not only nettled him, but served to strengthen his ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... the distinction between a Christian life on earth and one in heaven is by no means so sharply drawn in Scripture as it generally is by us, and that death has by no means so great importance as we faithlessly attribute to it. The life here and hereafter is like a road which passes the frontiers of two kingdoms divided by a bridged river, but runs on in the same direction on both sides of the stream. The flood had to be forded until Jesus bridged it. The elements of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of German Baroness, the proverbial wealth of the bankers of Frankfort, to whom the people were accustomed to attribute everything that was singular and bizarre, had been most admirably combined by the Count de Fersen, to account for anything strange or remarkable in the appearance of the royal equipages; nothing, however, excited attention, and they arrived without interruption ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... that the people actually light and burn them up, and do not consume them as dainties these hard times. And one thing more, Brandt! It would be pleasant to me if you would excite a few people against me and his highness the Elector, while you tell them various bad things about me, and attribute it as a crime to the Elector that he is so devoted to me. You might then urge on to the palace such people as you have stirred up and goaded, so that, as soon as the Electoral Prince arrives, they might shout with loud distinct voices: 'Long live the Electoral Prince! Long live our savior ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... to-day!" she said sorrowfully as she went. That her absence, rather than her services or instruction, was in request, had been readily apparent to Elizabeth-Jane, simple as she seemed, and difficult as it was to attribute a motive for ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... same time; the life and spirit of Germany have no secrets for you, and your characters are drawn with a pencil as delicate as it is strong. I feel very proud of the approbation you give to my works, and of the influence you kindly attribute to them on your own talent; an author who write as you do is not a pupil in art any more; he is not far from being ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... they provided. They were run by the French for some time after our arrival, but later were taken over by our own Brigade, and put under the care of Capt. E. M. Hacking, who was attached to Brigade Headquarters. We feel, however, we must attribute to the somewhat casual sanitary measures adopted by the French, the presence of so many rats in this sector. One often met them in droves in the trenches, and never before or after did we come across such numbers of the beasts, ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... speaks of the man, Ulysses, and designates his main attribute by a word, which may be translated versatile or resourceful, though some grammarians construe it otherwise. Thus we are told at the start of the chief intellectual trait of the Hero, who "wandered much," and who, therefore, had ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... she said, in a tremulous voice, "that justice, religion, mercy—every human attribute which bears the name of virtue, calls loudly upon me no longer to hold you to vows made ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... I wasn't shrill. I spoke in a very ordinary voice. And I don't know why you should attribute such thoughts ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... these three stories reveals the fact that one attribute is beyond dispute in each. Something happens, all the time. Every step in each story is an event. There is no time spent in explanation, description, or telling how people felt; the stories tell what people did, and what they said. And the events are the ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... neglected at the ball play, and is also strictly observed by many families on occasion of eating the new corn, at each new moon, and on other special occasions, even when it is necessary to break the ice in the stream for the purpose, and to the neglect of this rite the older people attribute many of the evils which have come upon the tribe in later days. The latter part of autumn is deemed the most suitable season of the year for this ceremony, as the leaves which then cover the surface of the stream are supposed to impart their ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... lets in adequate light for what might otherwise be a dark interior. In summer it can be screened to keep out flies and mosquitoes. Through it on fair winter days, especially if it faces south or west, pours that most valuable attribute of country living, ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... at this stage of his discovery Volta was inclined to attribute tho origin of the current to the contact between the metals and his moist "conductors of the second class," though later in the same article he says it is impossible to tell whether the impulse ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... than that of an infinitely rarer ether than even the luminiferous; and to this ether—in unison with it—the whole body vibrates, setting in motion the unparticled matter which permeates it. It is to the absence of idiosyncratic organs, therefore, that we must attribute the nearly unlimited perception of the ultimate life. To rudimental beings, organs are the cages necessary to confine them ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... were all marked out as so many problems suddenly conjured up for my unaided solution, and kept me awake for many hours. I had never seen a glacier or moraine on land before, but being familiar with sea ice and berg transport, from voyaging in the South Polar regions, I was strongly inclined to attribute the formation of this moraine to a period when a glacial ocean stood high on the Himalaya, made fiords of the valleys, and floated bergs laden with blocks from the lateral gulleys, which the winds and currents would ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... modes of expressing them with interest, but to plans for getting rid of them; and to this disposition or habit,—too rare among men of genius, men of a much higher class than mere sentimentalists, but whose sensibility is out of proportion with their inventiveness or activity,—we are to attribute no small influence in the fortunate conduct of his subsequent life. With such a turn of mind, Schiller, now that he was at length master of his own movements, could not long be at a loss for plans or tasks. Once settled at Bauerbach, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... hastily, the poor youth shouted to those outside to let them know what had occurred, but no one paid the least attention to him. He was about to renew his cries more loudly, when the thought occurred that perhaps they might attribute them to fear. This kept him quiet, and he made up his ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... without looking up, 'if my eyes have not deceived me, there is a gentleman present who was acquainted with me in my former life. It may be profitable to that gentleman to know, sir, that I attribute my past follies, entirely to having lived a thoughtless life in the service of young men; and to having allowed myself to be led by them into weaknesses, which I had not the strength to resist. I hope that gentleman will take warning, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... take a look at his personal appearance. Visionaries are usually slovens. They despise fashions, and imagine that dirtiness is an attribute of genius. To do the honourable member for Artois justice, he was above this affectation. Small and neat in person, he always appeared in public tastefully dressed, according to the fashion of the period—hair well combed back, frizzled, and powdered; copious frills at ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... with an air of cold constraint. She could not attribute Edward's agitation to any other cause than his anxiety on Helen's account, and the conviction ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... seeker's index, the scholar's counsellor? His work is not merely that of administration, manifold and laborious as its duties are. He must have a quick intelligence and a retentive memory. He is a public carrier of knowledge in its germs. His office is like that which naturalists attribute to the bumble-bee,—he lays up little honey for himself, but he conveys the fertilizing pollen from ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... helplessly on her side. Several other Ants passed her without taking any notice, but soon one came up, examined her carefully with her antennae, and carried her off tenderly to the nest. No one, I think, who saw it could have denied to that Ant one attribute of ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... last week we have experienced much thunder and lightning. Our fishermen attribute their want of success to this cause; for the fishery has been unusually unproductive. Early this morning it began to rain, and for an hour continued to do so more heavily than any of us had before witnessed, after which; a ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... the monastery, and was within an ace of becoming a monk. He seems to me to have betrayed unconsciously, and so early, that timid despair which leads so many in our unhappy society, who dread cynicism and its corrupting influences, and mistakenly attribute all the mischief to European enlightenment, to return to their 'native soil,' as they say, to the bosom, so to speak, of their mother earth, like frightened children, yearning to fall asleep on the withered bosom of their decrepit ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... copy" for it is based on that universal attribute—the desire to "get on" in business and as an employee. This letter has the right kind of appeal, rightly presented. Compare that letter with the one sent out by a tailor to the professional men of ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... the same men as poets. To the force of their intention we owe their mythological ornaments, and the greater definiteness of their imagery; and their passion for the beautiful, the voluptuous, and the artificial, we must in part attribute to the same intention, but in part likewise to their natural dispositions and tastes. For the same climate and many of the same circumstances were acting on them, which had acted on the great classics, whom they were endeavouring to imitate. But the love of ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... and generated diarrhoeas, in the early part of the spring. When the grass and weeds, however, were grown sufficiently to protect the surface of the soil from the sun and wind, this effect entirely ceased; and I know not that any other inconvenience was experienced from the same source, unless we attribute to this, as may fairly be done, the destruction of the purity of the well. This formerly afforded very good water; and, since that period, it has much improved. When the corporations of Southwark and Moyamensing shall introduce, as it is to be hoped they will, ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... requirements. Each window had to confront, not a particular quarter, but a particular ninetieth, of the compass. A full view of the sea had to be achieved from a sitting-room not exposed to its glare, an attribute destructive of human eyesight, and fraught with curious effects on the nerves. But the bedrooms had to look in directions foreign to human experience—directions from which no wind ever came at night. A house of which every story rotated on an independent vertical axis might have answered—nothing ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... unconscious inference from a mass of data buried in the inscrutable darkness of our forgotten self. Together with this, there is also a levelling-up philosophy, a sort of modernized ontologism, which would attribute all natural intuition to a more immediate self-revelation on God's part than ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... conception of it, as it existed in his mind, and thus endeavour to get at the knowledge of its properties, but that it was necessary to produce these properties, as it were, by a positive a priori construction; and that, in order to arrive with certainty at a priori cognition, he must not attribute to the object any other properties than those which necessarily followed from that which he had himself, in accordance with his ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... body of Christ. For another chapel, lower down, he executed a panel-picture containing Our Lady, S. Jerome, and S. Bartholomew. On these two works he bestowed no little labour; but he went on deteriorating from day to day. I do not know to what I should attribute his misfortune, for poor Raffaellino was not wanting in industry, diligence, and application; yet they availed him little. It is believed, indeed, that, becoming overburdened and impoverished by the cares of a family, and being ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... of being known to him, explaining, in a few words, who I was, and entreating him to intercede with the Duc de Choiseul for the transmission of my passports. To the kindness of this nobleman alone can I attribute the success that followed this step; for, the tenth month from the date of my letter to M. le Comte de Herouville, I saw a decked galliot arrive at Cayenne, equipped at Para by order of the King of Portugal, manned with thirty oars, and commanded by a captain ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... country. This paved the way for the glorious Revolution. The wicked fell into the pit which they had dug for the righteous; the hopes of the Papists were crushed; toleration to worship God was established. Let us follow Bunyan's example, and attribute these ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... temporarily vanquished Time, but will soon obtain the full audit. If the Sonnet is addressed to the god of love it reduces him to the limitations of mortality; if it is addressed to his friend, it indicates that, though but for a little while, Nature has lifted him to an attribute of immortality. The latter interpretation makes the poet enlarge and glorify his subject; the former makes him belittle it, and bring the god of love to the audit of age and the ravage of wrinkles. This is the last sonnet of the first series; with the next begins the series relating to ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... It would be simplest to let him attribute her passing weakness to physical causes. And she went forward blindly, resolutely, with a proud lift of her chin, never looking at ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... have been incautious; but you must not attribute my question to impertinent curiosity. I am anxious to learn all I can about a very old friend, of whom I have long lost sight, and I hoped that you might have been able ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... had a mind to warn Natacha, to go to her and say, 'Get rid of that man. He will betray you. If you need an agent, I am at your service.' But that day, at Krestowsky, destiny prevented my rejoining Natacha; and I must attribute it to destiny, which would not permit the loss of that man. Michael Nikolaievitch, who was a traitor, was too much in the 'combination,' and if he had been rejected he would have ruined everything. I caused him to disappear! The great misfortune then was that Natacha, holding me responsible for ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... old, when he led the Israelites against the pagan inhabitants of the promised land. Up to this time, no inconsistencies disgraced him. His prayers and his exhortations were in accordance with his actions, and the most scrutinizing malignity could attribute nothing to him but sincerity and ardor in the cause which he had so warmly espoused. As magistrate, as member of parliament, as farmer, or as general, he slighted no religious duties, and was devoted to the apparent interests of England. Such a man, so fervent, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... German Government had no knowledge of the text of the Austrian note before it was handed in and has not exercised any influence on its contents. It is a mistake to attribute to ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... generation before whom so many portentous events and figures have passed—find it hard to realize the tremendous magnetism and brilliancy of a man who has been so long dead, or properly to estimate the high historical significance of such a life. The human attribute which is the most immediately impelling in direct intercourse—personality—is the most elusive to preserve. If Webster's claim to remembrance rested solely upon that attribute, he would still be worthy of enduring fame. But his gifts flowered at a spectacular climax of national ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... on Liberty and Necessity, and bid me read South's Sermons on Prayer; but avoided the question which has excruciated philosophers and divines, beyond any other. I did not press it further, when I perceived that he was displeased[306], and shrunk from any abridgement of an attribute usually ascribed to the Divinity, however irreconcilable in its full extent with the grand system of moral government. His supposed orthodoxy here cramped the vigorous powers of his understanding. He was confined by a chain which early imagination and long habit made him think massy and strong, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... his coffin. I have, I think, already said that his body had been embalmed, in order to allow of its being conveyed from Switzerland to England. Therefore I had no dread of being confronted by that attribute of Death alluded to by D'Arcy which is the most cruel and terrible of all—corruption. But then what change should I find in the expression of those features which on the day of the interment had looked so calm? A thrill ran through my frame as I pictured ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... have thought as little of murder. However this may be, the necessity of at once instructing and gratifying the people produced the great distinction between the Greek and the English theatres;—for to this we must attribute the origin of tragi-comedy, or a representation of human events more lively, nearer the truth, and permitting a larger field of moral instruction, a more ample exhibition of the recesses of the human heart, under all the trials and circumstances that ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... secular affairs or to interfere in any way with the political concerns of the government in which they were laboring. That there were occasional instances of the disregard of this regulation by the enthusiastic members of the order may be supposed, but it will be unjust and unfounded to attribute to this society a settled policy of interference in the affairs of the nations where they were employed ...
— Japan • David Murray
... representative, it appears as if one is dealing directly with the Emperor. Consider these few words—in the presence of the Emperor; they carry an immeasurable weight in the scales of contemporaries. For them, he has every attribute of Divinity, not only omnipotence and omnipresence, but again omniscience, and, if he speaks to them, what they feel far surpasses what they imagine. When he visits a town and confers with the authorities of the place on the interests of the commune ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... pardon, sir," said Mrs. Lecount; "you kindly attribute to me a knowledge that I don't possess. Propositions, I regret to say, ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... so unsatisfactory that, under ordinary conditions, nine or ten knots was all we could get out of her; she was therefore not permitted to run any avoidable risks, and to this I attribute her extraordinary success where better boats failed. As long as daylight lasted a man was never out of the cross-trees, and the moment a sail was seen the 'Banshee's' stern was turned to it till it was dropped below the horizon. The ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... a parent,' said Miss Wren, 'and consequently it's of no use talking to you upon a family subject.—To what am I to attribute ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... developed one attribute of royalty—a feeling that I need not reveal all my mind or my secret designs even to my intimate friends. I had fully resolved on my course of action. I meant to make myself as popular as I could, and at the same time to show no disfavour to Michael. By these means I hoped to allay the hostility ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... the latent griefs of the heart and filling up all the vacant corners doth flow from that blessed fellowship of the Father and the Son. Now, though these two be only mentioned yet the Holy Ghost must not be excluded, for the apostolic prayer doth attribute chiefly our fellowship with God to the Spirit, so that it is the Spirit unites our hearts, and associates them to God, and that seems to correspond between him and us. So then there is such a fellowship with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, that leaves no vacuity in the heart, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... easy when he began to collect his young company about him? And what if Brutus had been "mistaken?" Was there not a higher wisdom than that which could fashion nations? Horace had seen his dead face at Philippi. Had he done right ever afterwards, however reverently, to attribute a blunder to that mighty spirit which had left upon the lifeless body such an imprint of majesty and repose? Surely common sense, temperance, honest work, honourableness, fidelity, were good fruits of human life and of useful citizenship. But was there ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... made much of that good-looking and delightful Withers. Though not a pious man, in the formal sense of the term, she felt sure he was religious according to that stained-glass and fragrant religion of the tastes which is an essential attribute of every gentleman,—that is, of every well-born man of cultivated preferences and sensitive antipathies,—and she had no doubt that gentlemen's souls could be saved by that arrangement just as satisfactorily, and so much more gracefully. She only wished, my dear, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... Your black magic's all humbug. It lacks the essential attribute of fulfilment. It doesn't work. Black magic that doesn't ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... not know whether the end of the line was anywhere near Guatemala, though he was full of stories of the dangers to travelers in that country. A languid, good-natured crowd filled the car. We are so accustomed to think of lack of clothing as an attribute of savages that it was little short of startling to see a young lady opposite, naked to the waist but for a scanty and transparent suggestion of upper garment, read the morning newspaper and write a note ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... providence, but not what its nature is. This is not known because its laws are arcana, hitherto hidden in the wisdom of angels. These laws are to be revealed now in order that what belongs to the Lord may be ascribed to Him, and nothing ascribed to man that is not man's. For very many in the world attribute everything to themselves and their prudence, and what they cannot so attribute they call fortuitous and accidental, not knowing that human prudence is nothing and that "fortuitous" and "accidental" are ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... a little, and let us see, that no geometrical demonstration for the infinite divisibility of extension can have so much force as what we naturally attribute to every argument, which is supported by such magnificent pretensions. At the same time we may learn the reason, why geometry falls of evidence in this single point, while all its other reasonings command our fullest ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... 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
... that of the General. I send him to you, darling child, for a little change and recreation—relaxation from the strain of my husband's illness. Marshall is so sympathetic and feels for others so deeply. His is indeed a rare nature; but one which does not, alas! always quite do itself justice. I attribute this to an unfortunate upbringing rather than to any real fault in himself. So be good to him, Damaris. In being good to him—as I have said all along—you are being good to your fondly loving and, just now, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Lane. I attribute it to the superior quality of the wine, sir. I have often observed that in married households the champagne is ...
— The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People • Oscar Wilde
... miracles. When Ignatius had been dead nearly sixty years, the Jesuits, conceiving a wish to have the founder of their order placed in the Roman calendar, began, as it should seem, for the first time, to attribute to him a catalogue of miracles which could not then be distinctly disproved; and which there was, in those who governed the church, a strong disposition to admit upon ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... and 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 to ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... shall always attribute my recovery to you, at all events; and so will my good mother, who I hope will some day be able to thank you in person for all that you've done for me ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... affirmed to be in this isle, and no place in this sea hath more shipwrecks than upon Bornholm. Some give the reason thereof from the strait pass between this isle and the continent; yet is the coast clean and without rocks, and hath good roads; others attribute the cause of these shipwrecks to the great and dangerous sands about this and the other isles of this sea, which (especially about this isle of Bornholm) do lie out far and shallow in the sea, on which many ships have been struck and lost; and here Whitelocke's ship was ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... are called 'the good old customs' are not now observed in the rural districts of Ireland; and I have heard ignorant old men attribute the falling off to the introduction of railways, the improvement of agricultural operations, and cattle shows! Amongst some of the customs that I remember in the south-east of ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... Of late years they have suspected that he has been very angry with them for having allowed the white men to obtain a footing in their country, a proof of which they think they see in the greater mortality that has recently prevailed among them. This, however, they at other times attribute to the God of the Christians, whom they also denounce, accordingly, as a cruel being, at least to the New Zealander. Sometimes they more rationally assign as its cause the diseases that have been introduced among them by the whites. Until the whites came to their country, they say, young people ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... the reverse of this. It holds that all men are not born free and equal; that men have not an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and that men are not in their very constitution fitted for liberty, and benefited by it. They hold that liberty is an attribute of power; that it is a blossom which belongs to races, and not to mankind; that a part were born to rule, and a part were ordained to serve; that liberty is dangerous to the many; that servitude, the most rigorous, is a blessing; that it ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher
... these causes and attribute low prices to a want of domestic currency, that has increased and is increasing continually, must be blind to the great forces that in recent times throughout the world are tending by improved methods and modern inventions to lessen ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... that, generally speaking, it is impossible to say whether a man is a Serb, a Bulgar or a Serbo-Bulgar. These Macedonians were for centuries at such a distance from the other Slavs and were so thoroughly neglected that they lost their national consciousness, an attribute which many thousands of them, in the days of the vast, loose empires of Du[vs]an and Simeon, never possessed. Sir Charles Eliot, in his excellent book Turkey in Europe (London, 1900), says that it is not easy to distinguish Serb ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... the Thing "a rose" may have the Attributes "red," "scented," "full-blown," &c.; and the Attribute "red" may belong to the Things "a rose," "a brick," ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... scandalised 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
... are already complaining of the decrease of the number of square-rigged vessels that have visited their port during the recent season, and of the falling-off of the Chinese-junk trade, which they correctly attribute to the opening of the trade with China; thereby verifying my predictions. I fear that they will have still greater cause for complaint before twelve months shall have rolled away. But the merchants of Singapore, it gives me pleasure to add, are taking advantage of the times, ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... his personal friends and official advisers, and heard them with patience and dignity. At the close of a series of deliberative sessions which had almost the continuity of one session, two measures met his approval. Of these, the first was so extraordinary it is impossible not to attribute its suggestion to Phranza, who, to the immeasurable grief and disgust of our friend the venerable Dean, was now returned, and in the exercise of his ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... all.' 'What, not even the sun and moon?' 'No; why, he says that the sun is a stone, and the moon earth.' That, replies Socrates, is the old confusion about Anaxagoras; the Athenian people are not so ignorant as to attribute to the influence of Socrates notions which have found their way into the drama, and may be learned at the theatre. Socrates undertakes to show that Meletus (rather unjustifiably) has been compounding a riddle in this part of the ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... tobacco plant, but it has not yet met with a fair trial, any more than the sowing of hemp and flax. I failed in the experiment of sowing some winter wheat, which I brought with me from England; but I attribute this failure, to its being sown in an exposed situation, and too early in the autumn, the plant having been of too luxuriant a growth, before the severe frosts came on.—If sown in sheltered spots, and later in the season, there is ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... more securely to blood and plunder. He was a man of sanguinary and revengeful disposition, prone to quarrelling, and had been known to say, that if he caught particular individuals with whom he was at variance, in the woods alone, he would murder them and attribute it to the savages. He had led, when in England, a most abandoned life, and after he was transported to this country, was so reckless of reputation and devoid of shame for his villainies, that he would ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... upon worse authority; and that, in all probability, the tale was a pure invention. If I could remember, and were willing to repeat, the various misdoings which I have from time to time heard him attribute to himself, I could fill a volume. But I never believed them. I very soon became aware of this strange idiosyncrasy: it puzzled me to account for it; but there it was, a sort of diseased and distorted vanity. The same eccentric spirit would induce ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... controlled face, though in the eyes there was an expression such as wild animals betray when they fear the trap. He was surrounded by the unknown, apprehensive of what might happen, ignorant of what he should do, aware that he walked and bore himself awkwardly, fearful that every attribute and power of him was similarly afflicted. He was keenly sensitive, hopelessly self-conscious, and the amused glance that the other stole privily at him over the top of the letter burned into him like a dagger-thrust. He saw the glance, but ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... with the Premier, in which the latter explained his action, Lord Eynesford did not feel that more was required than a temperately expressed surprise and a hinted disapproval of the course adopted. He declined his wife's invitation to regard the matter in the most serious light, or to attribute any heinous offence to the Premier, contenting himself with remarking that Medland had a more powerful motive to maintain order than any one else; he also ventured to suggest that the best way of considering the question was not through a mist of ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... copartnership; coefficiency[obs3]. concomitant, accessory, coefficient; companion, buddy, attendant, fellow, associate, friend, colleague; consort, spouse, mate; partner, co- partner; satellite, hanger on, fellow-traveller, shadow; escort, cortege; attribute. V. accompany, coexist, attend; hang on, wait on; go hand in hand with; synchronize &c. 120; bear company, keep company; row in the same boat; bring in its train; associate with, couple with. Adj. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... 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 past summer; many of my comrades have been compelled to do the same. I do not look ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... often be seen wheeling through the air on the approach of a storm, and exhibits unmistakable signs of exultation when it is going to thunder. It is not a bird of song, but is unsurpassed as a screamer. To the common Kite, a plebeian member of the genus, has been ascribed an attribute which in fact belongs exclusively to this Banner species. The Kite, according to Dr. FRANKLIN, draws the lightning from the clouds, but this, in reality, is the proud prerogative of the Great American ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... monuments or in portraits, of a puisne judge being ornamented with this decoration. Can any of your correspondents produce another example? or can they account, from any other cause, for Richard Harpur receiving such a distinction? or may I not rather attribute it to the blunder of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various
... and in the lower forms of organism, and then to the perfect forms of bird and beast. In each case, we shall find the same evidence of Design and Intelligence, the same proof of "contrivance" and purpose, which we cannot attribute to the ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... requisite, for one so good and kind as you are, to turn away and dishonor, not only the young girl herself, but every member of her family as well. You know that the whole city has its eyes fixed upon the conduct of the female portion of the court. To dismiss a maid of honor is to attribute a crime to her—at the very least a fault. What crime, what fault has Mademoiselle de la Valliere ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... are kindly, but he 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 New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... is powerfully stated by a German metaphysician:—"Nothing calls us more powerfully to adore the living God than the appearance and embodiment of genius upon the earth. Whatever in the ordinary course of things we may choose to attribute to the mechanical process of cause and effect, the highest manifestations of intellect can be called forth only by the express will of the original Mind, independent of second causes. Genius descends upon us from the clouds precisely where we least look for it. ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... is not positively known. The German veterinarians attribute it to irritation of the muscles by cold, and classify azoturia as a rheumatic disorder. The conditions preceding the attack are not in favor of this theory, and cold can not be considered an important causative factor. The most acceptable is the auto-poisoning ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... epic boldness and wholeness we cannot attribute to Goethe. He is still a little straitened, a little pestered by the doubting and critical optics which our time turns upon man, a little victimized by his knowledge of limitary conditions and secondary laws. Nevertheless, a noble man is not to his eye ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... the Beneficent Father of the family of mankind, whose love and regard to his children, even such who were influenced by wrong dispositions, remained unchangeable. That we could not conciliate the Divine regard, but by acting agreeably to the Divine attribute, which was love, and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... reason and to p 111 meditative understanding only, and not to the imagination or to a desponding condition of mind, modern science has been accused, and not entirely without reason, of not attempting to allay apprehensions which it has been the very means of exciting. It is an inherent attribute of the human mind to experience fear, and not hope or joy, at the aspect of that which is ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... and Sigurd's fosterfather Regin forged them anew for the future dragon-slayer. But Sigurd's first deed was to avenge on Hunding's race the death of his father and his mother's father. Voelsunga tells this story first of Helgi and Sinfjoetli, then of Sigurd, to whom the poems also attribute the deed. It is followed ...
— The Edda, Vol. 2 - The Heroic Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 13 • Winifred Faraday
... gaff-topsail. The effect soon became apparent; for a few minutes after we had concluded our work the frigate fired another gun, the shot from which only reached to within about thirty fathoms of us. I was inclined to attribute this result, however, quite as much to our having eased the schooner away a trifle as to the extra canvas that we had packed upon her. I believed we should have done quite as well, if not better, without it; for the poor little craft seemed pressed down and buried by the enormous ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... 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 ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... said Scott. 'I attribute my entire success in life to the fact that I never find it too hot to eat muffins. Do you know Pillingshot? One of the hottest fieldsmen in the School. At least, he was just now. He's probably cooled off since then. Venables—Pillingshot, ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... Veronese a magnificent painter, and magnificence is the great attribute of his style; but before going farther into his merits and defects, I should like to quote to you a passage from Mr Ruskin, the most eloquent and dogmatic of art critics, prefacing the passage with ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... examining into the cases of thirty-eight boys who had formed the habit of using tobacco, found that twenty-seven of them had also a fondness for alcoholic stimulants. A large proportion of the Franklin Home inmates attribute their habit of drinking to the effects of company; many commenced in the army, and many were induced to drink at first by invitation. If smoking was a solitary habit, it would be less likely to lead to drinking; but the same companionship, and habits of treating prevail, as in the saloon, ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... memoirs badly written by imaginary governesses. The production of spurious memoirs and "autobiographies," even if they are skilfully composed, is always grossly immoral; and of the specimens occasioned by this war one may say that if they had been genuine it would have been possible to attribute the low morality of some Germanic princes to the literary style of the English governesses who had had a share in their education. The catchpenny manoeuvres of publishers are really only a branch of journalism,[19] ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... not,' said Mr. Smirkie, holding up both his hands, not at all understanding the old man's meaning, but intending to express horror at 'superstition,' which he supposed to be a peculiar attribute of the Roman Catholic branch of the Christian Church. 'Not ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... 1644, occurred the second great Indian massacre in Virginia's history. Opechancanough, King of the Pamunkey Indian confederation, planned and executed the massacre, which most historians attribute to the steadily increasing pressure exerted by the English on the Indians' lands. The white population had increased from 3,000 in 1630 to 8,000 in 1640, and more were pouring in yearly. Nearly four hundred English, living in exposed ...
— Virginia Under Charles I And Cromwell, 1625-1660 • Wilcomb E. Washburn
... the French Revolution, one need only refer to the speeches of Mr. Pitt, and especially to those of that profound statesman and most instructed man, Lord Shelburne, to find that we can boast no remarkable superiority either in political justice or in political economy. One must attribute this degeneracy, therefore, to the long war and our insular position, acting upon men naturally of inferior abilities, and unfortunately, in addition, ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... a guess at the cause of this singular confusion, I think I should attribute it to some peculiarity in the brain of the ant, or else to some consideration of which we are ignorant, but which weighs with ants, and not to any absence of the physical senses. Because they do not do as we should do under similar circumstances is no ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies |
