"Compactness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Brussels is almost certain to make upon the visitor is its compactness. Its population, including the outskirts, is nowadays rather over 600,000; but it is almost impossible to realize that nearly one-eleventh of the whole population of Belgium is concentrated in this one city, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... business of the day. It was a scattering village; the houses and the churches stood and called to each other across great spaces of fields and fences between; but just where the crossing of two roads made a business point, there was a little more compactness. There was the baker's, and the post-office, and two stores and various other houses, and a blacksmith's shop. Up to the corner where the principal store stood, came the pony and his mistress, and forthwith out came Mr. Lamb the storekeeper, to see what the little pony chaise wanted ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... polla) on the one hand, and from the "non-ens" on the other. It was his disciple, Parmenides, who imagined the logical necessity of identifying plurality with the "non-ens" and thus denying all immediate cognition of the phenomenal world. The compactness and logical coherence of the system of Parmenides seems to have had a peculiar charm for the Grecian mind, and to have diverted the eyes of antiquity from the views of the more earnest and devout Xenophanes, whose opinions were too often confounded with those of his successors of the Eleatic ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... lesson taught by the wreckage of the past, that it is from itself that the emancipation must come; that it is itself which must essentially think, act and strike; that its forces, long torn asunder and dispersed, must be marshalled in invulnerable compactness and iron discipline; and so that its hosts may not again be routed by strategy, no man or set of men should be entrusted with the irrevocable power of executing its decrees, for too often has the courage, boldness and strength of the many been ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... their warmth, and compactness for shedding water. The oil spread over them during the preening is useful as a ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... neat rows of bunks, mess-tables, sizzling sauce-pans over kitchen-fires. Everywhere were endless ingenuities in the way of camp-furniture and household decoration. Farther down the road a path between fir-boughs led to a hidden hospital, a marvel of underground compactness. While we chatted with the surgeon a soldier came in from the trenches: an elderly, bearded man, with a good average civilian face—the kind that one runs against by hundreds in any French crowd. He had a scalp-wound ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... invention, and was composed of four rings within a fifth, each of which was rivetted. Single-chain mail was worn by the Crusaders, in Henry III's time; and when the number of rings was doubled, it became double-chain mail. Its great advantages were compactness and pliability. Horses were now ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... decrement; lessening, shrinking &c. v.; compaction; tabes[obs3], collapse, emaciation, attenuation, tabefaction[obs3], consumption, marasmus[obs3], atrophy; systole, neck, hourglass. condensation, compression, compactness; compendium &c. 596; squeezing &c. v.; strangulation; corrugation; astringency; astringents, sclerotics; contractility, compressibility; coarctation[obs3]. inferiority in size. V. become small, become smaller; lessen, decrease ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... on page 120 illustrates the control wiring of the new steel motorcars. The method of assembling the apparatus differs materially from that adopted in wiring the outfit of cars first ordered, and, as the result of greater compactness which has been attained, the aggregate length of the wiring has ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... chapters of this novel lack the brisk movement, the sparkling compactness, the stinging surprises of Mr. Reade's usual style, but he kindles and condenses as he proceeds. As a whole, the work compares favorably with his most brilliant compositions. He is a writer difficult to criticize, because his defects are pleasing defects. Dogmatism is commonly offensive, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... to do more than touch lightly upon the many excellences of these books. We have given extracts enough to enable our readers to see for themselves the severe elegance of style, the compactness and force of the narrative, the verisimilitude of the characters, the unity of plan, and the cogency of the reasoning. We trust they will also perceive the great moral effect that cannot fail to be produced. Such books are specially ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... an automobile which will attain to a sufficient speed to satisfy the average person without acquiring any of those breakneck velocities which are so universally condemned; a machine which will be admired by man, woman, and child alike for its compactness, its simplicity, its safety, its all-around convenience, and—last but not least—its exceedingly reasonable price, which places it within the reach of many thousands who could not think of paying the comparatively fabulous ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... in size, shape and construction, there was nothing to prevent the occupant from subsequently enlarging and improving his house. For the present, however, the interests of all were best served by speed and compactness. ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... a camouflage of numbers. A thousand men marching past in column of fours does not make upon the mind the same impression of multitude as the sight of half that number in a disordered rabble. Regularity and compactness reduce the appearance of mass; and you receive a profounder suggestion of size from a comparatively small pile of natural rocks than you do from the geometrical pyramids. In the same way an army whose formations are ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... south of Poona. It was placed in the angle between two rocks; it measures in front 7 inches wide, and 1.5 in. high; posteriorly it slopes away into an obtuse angle fitting the crevice in which it was deposited; the cavity is 4 in. in diameter, perfectly circular, and 2.25 in depth. The compactness of the nest is such that it might be thrown about without being damaged. It is composed throughout of fine black roots, only a stray piece or two of light coloured grass being intermixed, and the whole basal portion is cemented ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... keystone of him. "I want to be a Good Influence upon all the people I meet." I do not think it has ever dawned upon him that he himself is any way short of perfection; and, so far as I can see, the triumph and end of his good influence is cleanliness of cuff, compactness of umbrella, and general assimilation ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... ropes. This platform is peculiar, in that it fills the interior of the building like a floor and serves to furnish the family with a dry sitting or lying down place when, as often happens, the whole region is under water. The thatching of the roof is quite a work of art: inside, the regularity and compactness of the laying of the leaves display much skill and taste on the part of the builder; outside—with the outer layers there seems to have been less care taken than with those within—the mass of leaves of which the ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... classical poets are turned to great and frequent account throughout the poem; and yet the work has a strong air of originality, partly owing to the subject, partly to the abundance of love-scenes, and to a certain compactness in the treatment of the main story, notwithstanding the luxuriance of the episodes. The Jerusalem Delivered is stately, well-ordered, full of action and character, sometimes sublime, always elegant, and very interesting-more so, I think, as a whole, and in a popular ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... helmet. Their horses are nowise signal either in fashion or in fleetness; nor taught to wheel and bound, according to the practice of the Romans: they only move them forward in a line, or turn them right about, with such compactness and equality that no one is ever behind the rest. To one who considers the whole it is manifest, that in their foot their principal strength lies, and therefore they fight intermixed with the motions and engagements of the cavalry. So that the infantry are elected from amongst the most robust ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... felt warranted in saying that he was at the same time a very great and a very insignificant lawyer. His mind was logical and direct. Generalities and platitudes had no charm for him. He had the ability to seize the strong points of a case and present them with clearness and compactness. His power of comparison was great. He rarely failed in a legal discussion to use this mode of reasoning. Yet he knew practically nothing of the rules of evidence, of pleading, of practice, as laid down in the text-books, and seemed to care little about them. Sometimes he lost cases of the plainest ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... much stiffen the whale-line for the close coiling to which it must be subjected; but as most seamen are beginning to learn, tar in general by no means adds to the rope's durability or strength, however much it may give it compactness and gloss. Of late years the Manilla rope has in the American fishery almost entirely superseded hemp as a material for whale-lines; for, though not so durable as hemp, it is stronger, and far more soft and elastic; and I will add (since there is an aesthetics in ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... his enemy down with the trident. "With a mighty groan the hapless boy rolls at full length upon the grass, and the grass yields, bloody, and over his earthy limbs the ants of the fields already make their way." The rapidity, the compactness of the sentences, impressed Gaston Paris as very remarkable. The assassin gallops away upon his mare, and seeks by night to cross the Rhone. A singularly felicitous use of the supernatural is made here. Ourrias is carried to the bottom of the river by ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... that period. It must be owned, however, as before intimated, that the practical operation did not always correspond with the theory of their respective functions in these rude times; and that the powers of the executive, being susceptible of greater compactness and energy in their movements, than could possibly belong to those of more complex bodies, were sufficiently strong in the hands of a resolute prince, to break down the comparatively feeble barriers of the law. Neither were the relative privileges, assigned to the different orders ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... his tune, moreover, the English interest, under the auspices of an undisturbed dynasty, and a cautious, politic Prince (Henry VII.), began by slow and almost imperceptible degrees to recover the unity and compactness it had lost ever since the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... whether it can claim a greater longevity than ours. There is a hint of a typical difference in the American and the Englishman which I have long recognized in the two elms as compared to each other. It may be fanciful, but I have thought that the compactness and robustness about the English elm, which are replaced by the long, tapering limbs and willowy grace and far-spreading reach of our own, might find a certain parallelism in the people, especially the females of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... melted state from volcanic orifices. We meet occasionally with extremely compact beds of volcanic materials, interstratified with fossiliferous rocks. These may sometimes be tuffs, although their density or compactness is such as the cause them to resemble many of those kinds of trap which are ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... and outlandish and strange as some of it is, the beautiful rich yellow of the stone under the blue sky and the dark shadows thrown by the brilliant sun make the whole a building of real beauty. Even the wild west window is helped by the compactness of its outline and by the plainness of the wall in which it is set, and only the great coral branches of the round buttresses are actually unpleasing. The size too of the windows and the great thickness of the wall give the Coro a strength and a solidity which agree well with ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... to find the secret by virtue of which sermons that made Barrow his reputation for eloquence escaped the fate of most eloquent sermons so far as to find a place in the standard "Libraries of English Classics," but it lies probably in their compactness, clearness, and simplicity. Barrow taught Sir Isaac Newton mathematics, and his style suggests the method of thought which Newton ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... surface effect is that most frequently seen in the basketry of our western tribes, as it results from the great degree of compactness necessary in vessels intended to contain liquids, semiliquid foods, or pulverized substances. The general surface effect given by closely woven work is illustrated in Fig. 294, which represents a large wicker carrying basket obtained from the Moki Indians. In this instance the ridges, ...
— A Study Of The Textile Art In Its Relation To The Development Of Form And Ornament • William H. Holmes
... spanned the full height of the page, or broad bands of floriated tracery that occupied its entire width, were the only indications of changes of chapter or subject. In printer's phrase the composition was "close-up and solid" to the extreme degree of compactness. The uncommonly free use of red ink for the smaller initials was not altogether a matter of taste; if the page had been written entirely in black ink it would have been unreadable through its blackness. This nicety in writing consumed much time, but the mediaeval copyist ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... it were not so, it will be found quite as strong against the writing of sermons. For how large a proportion of sermon writers have these very same faults of style! what a great want of force, neatness, compactness, is there in the composition of most preachers! what weakness, inelegance, and inconclusiveness; and how small improvement do they make, even after the practice of years! How happens this? It is because they do not make this an object of attention and study; and some ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... imagines them to be vortex-rings, they may differ in size, thickness, and rate of rotation; either of these might make all the observed difference between the elements, including their density. In the second way, density implies compactness of molecules. Thus if a cubic foot of air be compressed until it occupies but half a cubic foot, each cubic inch will have twice as many molecules in it as at first. The amount of air per unit volume will have been doubled, the weight will have been doubled, the amount of matter as determined ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... somewhat indifferent to the adventure, was caught by the redness and whiteness, the brandnewness and compactness of the little houses; she was seduced beyond prudence by the sham ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... Scudamore had made a clean leap one day, for his own satisfaction, out of it. Sharp eyes saw him, and sharp wits were pleased, and a strong demand had arisen that he should perform this feat perpetually. Good nerve, as well as strong spring, and compactness of power are needed for it; and even in this athletic age there are few who ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... water is frequently to be found under the very sands of the sea-shore, whither it has oozed underground from the upper country, and where it overlies the denser salt water; or else abuts against it, if the compactness of the sand resists free percolation. In very many places along the skirt of the great African desert, fresh water is to be found by ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... most of the Swedish country churches, the belfry stands apart, a squat, square tower, painted red, with a black upper story, and is sometimes larger than the church itself. The houses of the peasants are veritable western shanties, except in color and compactness. No wind finds a cranny to enter, and the roofs of thick thatch, kept down by long, horizontal poles, have an air of warmth and comfort. The stables are banked with earth up to the hay-loft, and the cattle ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... edition is "a marvel of beauty, cheapness, and compactness.... For the busy man, above all for the working student, this is the best of ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... lights and shadows in the now half-finished picture will be blended and melted into one harmonious whole,—when all the now disjointed stones in the temple will be seen to fit into their appointed place, giving unity, and compactness, and ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... and followed out in detail in the opening of 'Homer and the Homeridae;' but this is evidently the note from which that grew, and is here given alike on account of its compactness and felicity.—ED.] ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... virtue of Turgenef's art is the skill with which he contrives to tell the most with the least number of words, the skill with which he contrives to produce the greatest effect with the least expenditure of force. There is a compactness in his stories which I can only describe as Emersonian. Of his six great novels, only one has as many as three hundred pages; of the other five, not one has over two hundred. Turgenef's art is thus in striking contrast with ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... do not mellow a heavy soil. The effect of the potash is to overcome the granular structure and increase compactness. Coal ashes, because they are coarser in particles and devoid of potash, do promote mellowness, and are valuable mechanically on a heavy soil although they do not contain appreciable amounts of plant food. You are overfeeding your tomato ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... eight in number, are built around three courts, producing an admirable compactness and unity. To the west of this central block of buildings, is the Palace of Fine Arts, and to the east, Machinery Hall. The Palace of Horticulture and Festival Hall are located in the great South Gardens. The Zone lies in the extreme eastern wing of the grounds, and the corresponding ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... with a secret glee I watched her. Had I been a gentleman I believe Madame would have found favour in my eyes, she was so handy, neat, thorough in all she did: some people's movements provoke the soul by their loose awkwardness, hers—satisfied by their trim compactness. I stood, in short, fascinated; but it was necessary to make an effort to break this spell a retreat must be beaten. The searcher might have turned and caught me; there would have been nothing for it then but a scene, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... these ascending streams of warm air would be almost wholly obstructed by the compactness of a trodden path, and they would naturally divide at some distance below it, and pass up through the loose earth on each side, leaving the ground along the line of the path, to a great depth beneath ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... of bone itself as a mere material or tissue, with its admirable lightness, compactness, and flawlessness. And every bone in our body is a triumph of engineering architecture. No engineer could better recognize the direction of strain and stress, and arrange his rods and columns, arches and buttresses, to suitably meet them, than these problems are solved in the long ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... not hear the footstep which she might have recognised ringing rapidly down the frosty road. She was too busy rustling about with perpetual motion, folding and refolding, and smoothing into miraculous compactness all the heterogeneous elements of that mass. When a sudden knock came to the door she started, struck with alarm, then paused a moment, looking round her, and perceiving at one hasty glance that nobody could possibly enter without seeing both ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... had a profound analytic power; his visions were clear, and he was emphatically the master of statement. His pursuit of the truth was indefatigable, terrible. He reasoned from his well-chosen principles with such clearness, force, and compactness, that the tallest intellects in the land bowed to him with respect. He was the strongest man I ever saw, looking at him from the stand-point of his reason—the throne of his logic. He came down from that height with an irresistible and crushing ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... on producing practical results. There are no false motions. Every swaying of the preacher's weapon is a blow, and every blow is a hit. There is hardly another example in homiletic literature of such compactness, such solidity, such logical consecutiveness, such cogency, such freedom from surplusage. Tare and tret are excluded. Every thing counts. You meet with two or three adjectives, and you at first naturally assume, that, after the usual manner of homilists, ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... been felled, with the bark still clinging to them, and without having undergone other transformation than being cut to a certain length, and notched at either end, so as to sink into each other, when crossed at right angles, until their bodies met, thereby forming a structure of compactness, strength and solidity. Some ten or twelve feet from the ground, the two upper end logs of the cabin projected a foot or eighteen inches beyond the lower, and supported what were called butting poles—poles which crossed these projections ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... yet done. The enemy, though scattered and dismayed, has still many fragments of his late army hovering about us, and, aided by an exasperated population, he may again unite in treble our numbers and fall upon us to advantage if we rest inactive in the security of past victories. Compactness, vigilance, and discipline are therefore our only securities. Let every good officer and man look to these cautions and ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... must partake largely of the nature of a guess, yet certain forecasts may be made with reasonable probability. Thus it can hardly be doubted that at the absolute zero all matter will have the form which we term solid; and, moreover, a degree of solidity, of tenacity and compactness greater than ever otherwise attained. All chemical activity will presumably have ceased, and any existing compound will retain unaltered its chemical composition so long as absolute zero pertains; though in many, if not in all cases, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... poem, blunderingly misprinted in all the collections, is that addressed to the Countess of Cumberland. It is an amplification of Horace's Integer Vitae, and when we compare it with the original we miss the point, the compactness, and above all the urbane tone of the original. It is very fine English, but it is the English of diplomacy somehow, and is never downright this or that, but always has the honor to be so or so, with sentiments of the highest consideration. ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... may judge for himself, of what precision, compactness, and energy, a language is capable, which has so little need of circumlocution. It must be mentioned, however, that not all these verbs are complete; as indeed it is obvious from their very nature, that in ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... city, on the other hand, the extreme compactness of the political structure made representation unnecessary and prevented it from being thought of in circumstances where it might have proved of immense value. In an aristocratic Greek city, like Sparta, all the members of the ruling class met together and voted in the assembly; in a democratic ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... you; you can conceive it. It is not one of the great sensations of antique art; but it is perfectly felicitous, and, in spite of having been put to all sorts of incongruous uses, marvellously preserved. Its slender columns, its delicate proportions, its charming compactness, seem to bring one nearer to the century that built it than the great superpositions of arenas and bridges, and give it the interest that vibrates from one age to another when the note of taste is struck. If anything were needed to make this little toy-temple a happy production, the service ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... hardness, of those products of art which contain an endless repetition of the same elements. Their affinities are necessarily few; they are not fit for many uses, nor capable of expressing many ideas. The heroic couplet, now too much derided, is a form of this kind. Its compactness and inevitableness make it excellent for an epigram and adequate it for a satire, but its perpetual snap and unvarying rhythm are thin for an epic, and impossible for a song. The Greek colonnade, a ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... energy, industry, perseverance, decision, vigilance, self-control, arrogance, love of power, firmness, and hardihood. These faculties express concentration of purpose and their functional equivalents are power of elaboration, constructiveness, condensation, firmness of fiber, compactness of frame, and endurance of organization. The pulse is full, firm, and regular, the muscles are strong and well marked, the hair and skin dark, the temporal region is not broadly developed, the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... the short cut to the productions of nature, while others, in pursuit of them, are obliged to wind through the labyrinth of a very intricate state of society. They seize upon the fruit of the labour; they seize upon the labourer himself. Were France but half of what it is in population, in compactness, in applicability of its force, situated as it is, and being what it is, it would be too strong for most of the states of Europe, constituted as they are, and proceeding as they proceed. Would it be wise to estimate what the world of Europe, as well as the world of Asia, had to dread from Genghiz ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... effective intercourse has involved personal presence at the point where intercourse occurs. The possibility, therefore, of going and coming and doing that day's work has hitherto fixed the extreme limits to which a city could grow, and has exacted a compactness which has always been very undesirable and which is now for the first time in the ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... Federal Legislatures by local majorities—sometimes by minorities—where money and influence could be employed, particularly where a line in a tariff spelt a fortune to a section of the people, in the manipulation of the floating vote. Parties may boast of their voting strength and their compactness, but their voting strength under the present system of voting is only as strong as its weakest link, discordant or discontented minorities, will permit it to be. The stronger a party is in the Legislature the more is expected from it by every ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... cataract, and then desperately breaking and perishing to fall, the white disembodied ghosts of rapids, down to the bottom of the vast and deep ravine through which the river rushed away. Now the waters seemed to mass themselves a hundred feet high in a wall of snowy compactness, now to disperse into their multitudinous particles and hang like some vaporous cloud from the cliff. Every moment renewed the vision of beauty in some rare and fantastic shape; and its loveliness isolated it, in spite of the great town on the other shore, the station ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... all through the geological ages the continents had been increasing in size and compactness, and that just at the close of the Tertiary Age they received a considerable addition of land to the north. The astronomer also informs us that at a comparatively recent epoch the eccentricity of the earth's orbit became very great. The conditions being favorable, it is not strange ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... the 'Epistle to a Friend', in 1798; 'Columbus', in 1812; 'Jacqueline', in 1813; 'Human Life', in 1819; 'Italy', in 1822-34. His later years were occupied in revising, correcting, or amplifying his published poems, and in preparing the notes to 'Italy', which are admirable studies in compactness and precision of language. A disciple of Pope, an imitator of Goldsmith, Rogers was rather a skilful adapter than an original poet. His chief talent was his taste; if he could not originate, he could appreciate. The fastidious care which he lavished on his work has preserved it. In his commonplace-book ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... up to some height, then came another tier of timbers, crossed as before, and this was repeated again to a considerable height, the inner ends of the beams being fastened to a planking within the wall, so that the whole was of immense compactness. Fire could not damage the mineral part of the construction, nor the battering ram hurt the wood, and the Romans had been often placed in great difficulties by these rude but admirable constructions, within which the Gauls placed their families and cattle, building huts for present shelter. ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... person, in a single action, at a single place, in a single time. More than any other modern form of literature, the short story requires the observance of the old Greek unities of time, place and action: its brevity and compactness do not admit of the proper treatment of the changes wrought by the passage of time, the influences of different scenes, or the complications resulting from the interrelation of many characters of varied ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... the estate at last, both sides went at it in a lively and spirited manner, and expense was no consideration. Then, he launched into a general eulogium on the Commons. What was to be particularly admired (he said) in the Commons, was its compactness. It was the most conveniently organized place in the world. It was the complete idea of snugness. It lay in a nutshell. For example: You brought a divorce case, or a restitution case, into the Consistory. Very good. You tried it in the Consistory. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... oval, her hair and eyes blond and blue in a strong light, but brown and steel-gray at other times, and her complexion of that ripe fairness into which a ruddier color will sometimes fade. Her form, neither plump nor square, had yet a firm, elastic compactness, and her slightest movement conveyed a certain impression of ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... of the city of New York. The present north boundary of civilized settlement is almost identical with the statutory limit of the city, or that of the island itself. There is no perceptible break, though there are gradations of compactness, in the settled district between the foot of the island and Central Park. Beyond the Park, Haarlem Lane, Manhattanville, and Carmansville take up the thread of civic population, and carry it, among metropolitan houses and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... popular were the fables of Babrias and their Latin translation, during the Roman empire, that the work of Phaedrus was hardly noticed. The latter was a freedman of Augustus, and wrote in the reign of Tiberius. His verse stands almost unrivalled for its exquisite elegance and compactness; and posterity has abundantly avenged him for the neglect of contemporaries. La Fontaine is perhaps more indebted to Phaedrus than to any other of his predecessors; and, especially in the first six books, his style has much of ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... friend; and, after allowing time that they might admire everything, which they did, walking to and fro the deck, looking down the pumps and up the rigging, I requested that they would follow me, and I would show them below. The compactness of the cabin, the comfort of the berths, the height between decks, the combination of ease and elegance in the furniture, the copper-plate drawings, the swinging table, the pantry with every drawer and cupboard exactly where ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... likewise, with the huge stables, into which we drove whilst the horses were putting to or baiting, were very clean and commodious. The rooms, with a door into this hall-like stable and storehouse in one, were decent; and there was a compactness in the appearance of the whole family lying thus snugly together under the same roof that carried my fancy back to the primitive times, which probably never existed with such a golden lustre as the animated imagination lends when only able to ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... its beneficent work. The benefit resulting from cultivating the surface of the ground is counteracted by the first unfavorable change of the weather; a single heavy rain, by saturating the soil, returning it to nearly its original condition of clammy compactness. In favorable seasons, these difficulties are lessened, but man has no control over the seasons, and to-morrow may be as foul as to-day has been fair. A crop of corn on undrained, retentive ground, is subject to injury from disastrous changes of the weather, from planting ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... writers of the cruder kind of pantomime songs—"round the houses," for example, being both a rhyme to and a synonym for "trousies" (garments beloved of those bards!)—and thus the vogue developed. This is only a theory. The one thing certain is that a clumsy form of slang, devoid of the humour and compactness which justify slang—and which were on the whole once characteristic of metropolitan slang—has tickled the ear of some millions of men who, but for the war, would never have fallen under its temptation. The only thing to hope for is that ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... knowledge is more than knowledge. It is an immediate consciousness of personality, any evaluation of which carries some emotion, joy or sorrow, shame or exaltation. But in a foreign land we try to find our compensation for the meagreness of our data by the compactness of the generalisation which our imperfect sympathy itself helps us to form. When a stranger from the West travels in the Eastern world he takes the facts that displease him and readily makes use of them for his rigid conclusions, fixed upon the unchallengeable ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... Ores are a mixture of many minerals; the proportions vary through the same ore-body. Despite this, a few partial analyses, which are usually available from assays of samples and metallurgical tests, and a general inspection as to the compactness of the ore, give a fairly reliable basis for approximation, especially if a reasonable discount be allowed for safety. In such discount must be reflected regard for the porosity of the ore, and the margin of safety necessary may vary from 10 to 25%. If the ore is of unusual character, as in leached ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... tanks, etc. In the center was a room, fifteen feet square, that was called the engine-room. Everything that could be thought of that could add to comfort had been supplied, always with reference to compactness and weight. Not an ounce of superfluous weight would the architect allow. He had calculated very carefully and knew to a pound, almost, just what his great ship would carry, and how much fuel would keep her afloat a certain number of hours. ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... their highly inflected forms, lend themselves to an elaborately periodic structure that would be boring in English. English allows, even demands, a looseness that would be insipid in Chinese. And Chinese, with its unmodified words and rigid sequences, has a compactness of phrase, a terse parallelism, and a silent suggestiveness that would be too tart, too mathematical, for the English genius. While we cannot assimilate the luxurious periods of Latin nor the pointilliste style of the Chinese classics, ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... and worsted goods to inspection, color is found to have a different tone or cast in each fabric. Fancy colors in cotton, while decidedly firm and clear in effect, are non-lustrous, raw, and dull in toning. Silk colorings, on the contrary, possess both compactness and brilliancy; woolen colorings have a unique depth and saturation of hue characteristic of the material employed in the manufacture of woolen goods; while worsted colorings are bright, definite, and smart ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... water is held by a pulverized and open soil, than by a compact and close one. Water is held in the soil between the minute particles of earth. If these particles be pressed together compactly, there is no space left between them for water. The same is true of soil naturally compact. This compactness exists more or less in most subsoils, certainly in all through which water does not readily pass. Hence, all these subsoils are rendered more permeable to water by being broken up and divided; and ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... and compactness. The whole works— poems, and sonnets—are contained in one small volume: yet the page is perfectly clear and readable... For the busy man, above all for the working Student, the Globe Edition is the best of ...
— MacMillan & Co.'s General Catalogue of Works in the Departments of History, Biography, Travels, and Belles Lettres, December, 1869 • Unknown
... fresh supply. The paper is as yet too fragile to travel alone, and the web felt carries it between two metal rolls called the first press-rolls. These squeeze out more water, give a greater degree of compactness to the fibers, smooth the upper surface, and finally deliver the web of paper to a second felt apron which carries it under and to the back of the second press-rolls. In this way the under surface comes to the top, and is in its turn subjected to the smoothing process. A delicate scraper or blade, ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... fraternity of the faith in which I had been reared. I accepted this as a necessary consequence of our new freedom—a freedom that left us less close and unyielding in our religious loyalty by withdrawing the pressure that had produced our compactness. And I hoped that, in time, the Prophets themselves—or, at least, their successors—would grow into a more liberal sense of citizenship as their people grew. I knew that our progress must be a process of evolution. I was content to wait upon the slow amendments ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... The laconic compactness of these utterances, their constant applicability, the pungent patness with which they hit some fact of experience, principle of human nature, or phenomenon of life, the ease with which their racy sense may be apprehended and remembered, give them a powerful charm for the popular fancy. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... judge how great a change had come over the drama. Nowhere is there any incident approaching the nature of 'The Sacrifice of Isaac', nowhere is there any character worthy to stand beside the Mary of the Miracle Play. Those are the losses. On the other hand, we perceive a new compactness—still loose, but much in advance of what existed before—whereby the central figure is always before us, urged along from one act and one set of surroundings to another, towards a goal which is never lost sight of. Also there is the invention which provides ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... the planning lay in the economy of space. It succeeded in reaching a compactness that made for convenience without leading to overcrowding. Great as this Exposition was to be, in its range worthy to be included among the expositions of the first class, it should not weary the visitors by making them walk long distances from point ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... this pueblo is quite different from that of the present villages, and approaches the older types in symmetry and compactness. There is a notable absence of the arrangement of rooms into long parallel rows. This typical Tusayan feature is only slightly approximated in some subordinate rows within the court. The plan suggests that the original pueblo was built about three sides of a rectangular court, the fourth or ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... the day, Hepburn got far more credit and honour than old sedate Bannerman; for his lads were lighter in the heel, glegger in the eye, and brisker in the manoeuvres of war: moreover, they were all far more similar in their garb and appearance, which gave them a seeming compactness that the countrymen had nothing like. But when the sham contest began, it was not long till Bannerman's disciples showed the proofs of their master's better skill to such a mark, that Hepburn grew hot, and so kindled his men by reproaches, that there was like to have been fighting ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... sufficiently large to admit water, which, by the action of frost, subjects the rock to rapid disintegration. Portions of the rock may, nevertheless, be selected partially free from this difficulty, and which are possessed of sufficient compactness to render them of value as a coarse building stone; horn-stone, striped jasper (imperfect); hog-toothed spar, calcareous spar, and fluor spar, are imbedded in the rock, although the ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... poverty? He says that to be naked is better than any purple robe, and to sleep on the bare ground is the softest bed; and he gives as a proof of each thing that he affirms his own courage, his tranquillity, his freedom, and the healthy appearance and compactness of his body. There is no enemy near, he says; all is peace. How so, Diogenes? "See," he replies, "if I am struck, if I have been wounded, if I have fled from any man." This is what a scout ought to be. But you come to us and tell us one thing after another. ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... the piston far enough to sufficiently compress the mixture. The unusual linkage necessary to create these unequal strokes in the Atkinson engine made it seem impractical for a carriage engine, where compactness was desired. ...
— The 1893 Duryea Automobile In the Museum of History and Technology • Don H. Berkebile
... because getting into space wasn't as easy as they made it sound. The bubbs, one of the basic inventions that made interplanetary travel possible, were, for all their almost vagabondish simplicity, still a concession in lightness and compactness for atmospheric transit, to that first and greatest problem—breaking the terrific initial grip of Earth's gravity from the ground upward, and gaining stable orbital speed. Only a tremendously costly rocket, with a thrust greater than its own ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... former manager he writes in the same letter: "I miss him dreadfully. The sense I used to have of compactness and comfort about me while I was reading, is quite gone; and on my coming out for the ten minutes, when I used to find him always ready for me with something cheerful to say, it is forlorn. . . . Besides which, H. and ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... times! It is well known that many of our novelties were in use by our ancestors! In the history of the human mind there is, indeed, a sort of antique furniture which I collect, not merely for their antiquity, but for the sound condition in which I still find them, and the compactness which they still show. Centuries have not worm-eaten their solidity! and the utility and delightfulness which they still afford make them look as fresh and as ingenious as ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... to explaining what the writer means by civilization, does not raise so vivid a conception of it as the single expression, that Civilization is a different thing from Cultivation; the compactness of that brief designation for the contrasted quality being an equivalent for a long discussion. So, if we would impress forcibly upon the understanding and memory the distinction between the two different conceptions of a representative ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... slightly browned, nervous complexion, all well given in the best current photographs, were united to a figure slightly bent in the shoulders, of more respiratory than digestive breadth, in outlines almost equally balancing ruggedness and grace, of compactness wrought by the pressure of perhaps few more than fifty summers, not above medium height, but composed throughout of silk and steel. A certain similarity between the decorations of the parlor and the character of the owner, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... elements, and containing but little moisture, air, and fire, lasts for an unlimited period when buried in underground structures. It follows that when exposed to moisture, as its texture is not loose and porous, it cannot take in liquid on account of its compactness, but, withdrawing from the moisture, it resists it and warps, thus making cracks in the structures in which it ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... ten room constituted the entire home. A shed roof slanted from eight feet high on the door and window side to a bit more than five on the other. A bed in one corner took up most of the space, and the remaining necessities were bestowed with the compactness of a ship's cabin. The rough boards of the roof and walls had been hidden by a covering of newspapers, with a row of illustrations pasted picture height. Cushions and curtains of turkey-red calico brightened ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... kind of common-life novel writing) of a string of unconnected events which have little or no bearing on one main plot, and are introduced evidently for the sole purpose of bringing in characters and conversations; but have all that compactness of plan and unity of action which is generally produced by a sacrifice of probability: yet they have little or nothing that is not probable; the story proceeds without the aid of extraordinary accidents; the events ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... functions of the soil is to support the plant in an upright position, and this is a function which requires in the soil a certain amount of compactness or firmness. On the other hand, however, a soil must not possess too great compactness, otherwise the plant-roots will experience a difficulty in pushing their way downwards. This is especially the case during ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... not sure of that. If everybody is to have independent thought, would there not be a fearful instability and want of compactness? Another thing, too—conformity often saves so much time ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... that it was a wonder he lived so long. His weakness of body seems to have acted upon his strong mind, which must account for much that is satirical and splenetic in his writings. Very short, thin, and ill-shaped, his person wanted the compactness necessary to stand alone, until it was encased in stays. He needed a high chair at table, such as children use; but he was an epicure, and a fastidious one; and despite his infirmities, his bright, intellectual eye and his courtly manners caused him to ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... For more compactness and that we may be more useful we are gathered in still smaller circles in the home group. And there you have the same varieties again; brothers, sisters, husband and wife; all different in temperaments and tastes. It is fortunate that it should be so. If the husband ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... about, and the snow so robbed the land of all variety, that Ladyfield house with its peats burning ceaselessly, its clean paven court, its store of books he had gathered there, was an enviable place for compactness and comfort, and he could feel as if the desirable world was in his immediate neighbourhood. Down in the street he knew the burgh men were speeding the long winter nights with song and mild carousal; the lodges and houses up the way, each ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro |
