"Desideratum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Cheerfully, as she has already accepted so many modifications of old methods by "new thought," she accepts the idea of instilling mental and moral desiderata into the receptive pupil, via the charming tale. But, confronted with the concrete problem of what desideratum by which tale, and how, the average teacher sometimes finds her cheerfulness displaced by a sense ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... interest and value. To those who cultivate this fascinating pursuit with taste and intelligence, there are two indispensible conditions of success. The task of collecting the materials is a labour of love, and every fresh discovery in some out-of-the-way corner, of a long-sought desideratum, a delight which the patience and industrious enthusiast alone can appreciate." Then follows much genial advice on tasteful and judicious collecting, and how to illustrate. In the present case the interest and value could only be realized or conceived on the completion of a choice ...
— Banbury Chap Books - And Nursery Toy Book Literature • Edwin Pearson
... a working full-grown horse does not vary from day to day, as the weight of its egesta is equal to that of its food. The desideratum in the case of the working animal is that its food should be as thoroughly decomposed as possible, and the force pent up in it liberated within the animal's body: as an ox, on the contrary, increases in weight from day ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... Railroad Company. Its designed function was to build the railroad, and the plan was to charge the Union Pacific exorbitant and fraudulent sums for the work of construction. What was needed was a company chartered with comprehensive powers to do the constructing work. This desideratum was found in the Credit Mobilier Company of America, a Pennsylvania corporation, conveniently endowed with the most extensive powers. The stock of this company was bought in for a few thousand dollars, and the way was clear for ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... families, feared the gods, respected the State, and made an honest living, it became a land of great estates and wealthy men, and the self-respecting peasantry were transformed into soldiers for foreign wars, or joined the rabble in the streets of Rome. [14] Wealth became the great desideratum, and the great avenue to this was through the public service, either as army commanders and governors, or as public men who could sway the multitude and command votes and influence. Manifestly the old type of education was ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... conditions in this respect are revolutionised. There is no need to attempt the construction of wind-motors that shall run lightly in a soft zephyr of only five or six miles an hour, and stability is the main desideratum to be ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... such consultation with and approval by councilors of many distant countries as is presupposed by advocates of imperial federation. Why establish control by cumbersome, superfluous machinery when the war has made it clear as the sun at high noon that the essential desideratum, British Union, exists now? All the notable communities of the King's realms have demonstrated that they are in the mind, the condition of a voluntary empire. What more can be desired save by such as desire old country domination of all the concerned ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... point out the sand banks, the reefs, the shallows, the breakers, the monsoons, the coasts and currents which have wrecked their ships, for their shipwrecks brought them shame. There was no pilot, no compass for those pilgrims of marriage. This work is intended to supply the desideratum. ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... in brawling and smoking. At 9 A.M. the islanders, receiving intelligence of our arrival, came down the hill of which this island is formed, in great numbers, and held a market; but as we were unprovided with what they wanted, little business could be done. The chief desideratum was flesh of fish or beast, next salt, then tobacco—in fact, anything but what I had brought as market money, cloth and glass beads. This day passed in rest and idleness, recruiting from our ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... good. To these must be added, in a disease which chiefly affects the poor, another item, forming an important drawback on the utility of the ordinary vapour-bath,—the application of it is attended with no inconsiderable expense. A machine which should obviate these objections, was a desideratum; and we think such a one has been invented by Mr. Burnet, of Golden Square. It is so simple as to be easily described without a diagram, and so well adapted to the end, and so easy and cheap in application, that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 531, Saturday, January 28, 1832. • Various
... a partial and preliminary resource in the business of education; that, to avoid working positive harm, it must be restricted within due limits of age, capacity, and subject; that it is not, therefore, the real and total present desideratum of our schools; and that, subsequently to the completion of the more purely sensuous and percipient phase of the mind, and to the acquirement of the store of simpler ideas and information, and the degree of capacity, that ought to be secured during ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... them admit of the passage of two camels abreast. Several covered bazaars are built for merchandize. There are no native manufactures of consequence. Timbuctoo is properly a commercial depôt or emporium. The principal medium of exchange is salt, which is very inconvenient. The grand desideratum of merchants is the acquisition and accumulation of gold, but this is obtained only by a long and wearying residence in Timbuctoo, and is very uncertain in supply. The gold is brought from a considerable distance south-west. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... when viewed from any point. Breadth greatly to be desired, and should be in ratio to length of the whole head and face as 2 to 3. GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF BODY—Massive, broad, deep, long, powerfully built, on legs wide apart, and squarely set. Muscles sharply defined. Size a great desideratum, if combined with quality. Height and substance important if both points are proportionately combined. SKULL—Broad between the ears, forehead flat, but wrinkled when attention is excited. Brows (superciliary ridges) slightly raised. Muscles of the temples and cheeks (temporal and masseter) ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... fully examined except by a master of Arabic. It is less surprising, therefore, than it might at first appear, that a comprehensive and scholarlike treatment of the religions of the world should still be a desideratum. Scholars who have gained a knowledge of the language, and thereby free access to original documents, find so much work at hand which none but themselves can do, that they grudge the time for collecting and arranging, for the benefit of the public ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... it, however, shows that it abounds in inaccuracies, and exhibits most of the errors that can be made in an author catalogue. A catalogue of the City Library compiled in accordance with modern bibliographical practice is still a desideratum. ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... quite a desideratum," he reflected. "I want him first to give me a certificate that my uncle is dead, so that I may get the leather business; and then that he's alive—but here we are again at the incompatible interests!" And he returned to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... new medium happened to require). At other times he did not hesitate to employ modern colloquialisms (most of which have been "toned down"). He did not regard local color or historical atmosphere as a supreme desideratum. He wanted to express certain ideas, and he wanted to bring home the essential humanity of historical figures which, through the operations of legendary history, had assumed a strange, unhuman aspect. The methods he employed for these purposes have since been made familiar to the English-speaking ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... able to do from the sensible step he adopted of quitting active business before it wore him out. At the age of seventy-five he is still hale, hearty and vigorous, looking younger than his actual years, and possessing that great desideratum, a sound mind in a ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... somewhat of his force. The workmanship in these two bows is superb, and they are also delightful to play with, being well balanced and of controllable flexibility. This is a point in a bow that is frequently overlooked. Many imagine that flexibility alone is the chief desideratum, and bows have been shown to me almost indiarubber-like in their pliancy; the owners expecting me to wax enthusiastic over this—to my mind—serious defect. As a matter of fact, flexibility and pliancy are not correct ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... we meet this material in a form that attracts little attention, though it serves a purpose of perhaps unequalled utility. Mechanics are aware, that, from the time of James Watt to the year 1850, the grand desideratum of the engine builder was a perfect joint,—a joint that would not admit the escape of steam. A steam-engine is all over joints and valves, from most of which some steam sooner or later would escape, since an engine in motion produces a continual jar that finally impaired the best joint ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... presented in the following sheets, pointing out at once the article necessary to be consulted, prevents the drudgery of going through several pages in order to find it, and supplies by its convenience and universal adaptation, the desideratum so long needed ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... first essential, on an acknowledgment by Great Britain of the independence of the United States. Next, adequate boundaries were to be provided; the United States must extend as far west as the Mississippi, as far south as the thirty-first parallel, and as far north as Lake Nipissing. The third desideratum was undisturbed fishery rights on the banks of Newfoundland. Finally, it was expected that a treaty of commerce would be yielded by Great Britain after the peace was made. In 1781 Virginia, alarmed by Cornwallis's invasion, succeeded in carrying a very different set of ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... may be assumed as a general fact that external expression, unless repressed by habit or design, usually corresponds with internal emotion. The great desideratum in gesture is to make the visible expression in delivery harmonize with the audible, or, as Shakspeare has it, to "suit the action to the word, and ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... night before had resolved in his mind to supply the grand desideratum, of keeping up something like an incessant firing upon the enemy during the heat of the attack,—had no further idea in his fancy at that time, than a contrivance of smoking tobacco against the town, out of one of my uncle Toby's six field-pieces, ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... as renowned for her fast sailing, and repeated escapes from the cruisers, as Captain McElvina and his crew were for their courage and success. The capture of the vessel had long been a desideratum of the English Government; and Captain M—-, although gratified at her falling into his hands, was not very well pleased to find that a lad, whom he had intended to bring forward in the service should, as he supposed, ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... times Lycanthropy—such was the name given to this infatuation—has vanished from the earth, but it is nevertheless well worthy the consideration of the observer of human aberrations, and a history of it by some writer who is equally well acquainted with the middle ages as with antiquity is still a desideratum. We leave it for the present without further notice, and turn to a malady most extraordinary in all its phenomena, having a close connection with the St. Vitus's dance, and, by a comparison of facts which are altogether similar, affording us an instructive ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... Gladstone in 1887, he referred to the enormous power and responsibilities of the United States, and suggested that a desideratum was a new unity between our two countries. We had that of race and language, but we needed a moral unity of English-speaking people for ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... to this motor, engineers and electricians had been approaching more and more to that desideratum which is known as a steam horse in a watch case. Gradually the results of the pile of which Captains Krebs and Renard had kept the secret had been surpassed, and aeronauts had become able to avail themselves of motors whose lightness ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... the pavements kerbed and in good condition. Trees are bigger and more numerous than usual, and the place has a generally bowery appearance such as is uncommon in Ireland, which is not famous for its timber. Trees are in many parts the grand desideratum, the one thing needful to perfect the beauty of the scenery, but Ireland as compared with England, France, Holland, Belgium, or Germany may almost be called a treeless country. Strange to say, the Home Rule Bill, which affects everything, threatens to deprive the ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... acid, which is produced by the burning of sulphur, has the power of checking, or altogether destroying, the fermentation of substances. In the present case, it seems, enough of it had not been produced to answer the purpose effectually. Some other acids have the same power. Hence the desideratum mentioned in the text is easily supplied. The juice, it may be thought, will be changed by the addition of a strong acid, and rendered unserviceable. There can be no doubt, however, that when it is required for the purpose of making beer, &c. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... in some mysterious, intrinsic way. This time he chose to speak to us of guilt and innocence, of good and evil works, and their effect on man's salvation. He aired the theory, which roused approving murmurs in the listening circle, that to have a good intention was the chief desideratum for every son of Adam on his journey through the world, no matter though his works might turn out bad ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... the aspiring Negro youth of the land can study the character sketches and the literary productions of the scholarly men of their own race along with their study of the character sketches and the choice literary productions of the scholarly white men of the country, is a desideratum. ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... their buildings ruined by time or fire, as we have seen that stupendous fabric of Paul's Church, not a stone left on a stone, and lives now only in Mr. Hollar's Etchings in Sir William Dugdale's History of Paul's. I am not displeased with this thought as a desideratum, but I doe never expect to see it donn; so few men have the hearts to doe public good to give 4 or 5 pounds for a copper-plate." ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... last two years we have been given reason to hope that this great desideratum may be obtained, and within a year a learned Conference, in which many nations were represented, expressed opinions upon it with singular unanimity, and in a very ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various
... New Woman an unmitigated nuisance, and I respect him for saying so in no measured terms. Let women, if they want husbands, cease to write oratorios and other things in which man is, by his very constitution, facile princeps, and let her cultivate that desideratum in which she excels—a cosy home and a bright smile to greet him on the doorstep when he returns from a tiring day in the City. Until that is done I, ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... into a pool of ice cold water. I rose, confoundedly against my inclinations I will confess, and, we proceeded to a small rocky waterfall, where a man might wash himself certainly, but as to swimming, which is to me the grand desideratum, it was impossible, so I prowled away down the stream, to look out for a pool, and at last I was successful. On returning, as I only took a dip to swear by, the situation of my venerable Spanish ally ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... are here presented for the first time (with the exception of some which have appeared occasionally as children's books) in a cheap form, and rendered fit for the perusal of all classes; thus supplying an acknowledged desideratum. ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... be desired that some effectual means should be adopted, for the purpose of introducing and encouraging the use of this most excellent vegetable among the people of England as a general article of daily food, more especially in the winter. If this desideratum could be accomplished, its beneficial result would go far to assist in rendering us in a measure independent of the potato crop, which, of late years, has proved so uncertain. I am aware that haricot beans, as well as lentils, as at present imported and retailed as a mere ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli
... provisions, and made more room to circulate in and about the house. The necessity of putting so many casks, barrels and boxes within doors, had materially circumscribed the limits; and space was a great desideratum for several reasons, health ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... long winter evenings to the task. The time cannot be more profitably or pleasantly spent, and, as I am told you are somewhat of an aboriginal scholar, you can assist them with your advice and judgment. A perfect analysis of the language is a great desideratum. I pray you, in the spring, to let me have the fruits of ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... says in a letter to John Murray, written October 20, 1814: "In casting about how I might show you some mark of my sense of former kindness, a certain MS. History of Scotland in Letters to my Children has occurred to me, which I consider as a desideratum; it is upon the plan of Lord Lyttelton's Letters, as they are called." Nearly a year later he returns to the subject, and says: "I intend to revise my letters on Scottish History for you, but I will not get to press till November, for the country affords no ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... the desideratum of our age, We insisted on cheap gloves and shoes and wine and ribbons, and why not cheap divorces? Philosophers tell us that the alternate action of the seasons is one of the purest and most enduring of all sources of enjoyment; that perpetual summer or spring would ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... expression has only one definite reciprocal. If we are told that A is the brother of B, we can only infer that B is either the brother or the sister of A. A list of all reciprocal relations is a desideratum of Logic. ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... portable—which should stand to cannabis in the same relation which morphia bears to opium. I believe that, in collaboration with my friend Dr. Frank A. Schlitz (a young German chemist of remarkable ability and with a brilliant professional career before him), I have at last attained this desideratum. I have no room or right here to dwell upon this interesting discovery further than to say that we have obtained a substance we suppose to bear the analogy desired and to deserve the title of Cannabin. If further examination ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... customs, and dialect, indispensable to the collation of such reliques; and thus, although their national interest was universally recognised, they were silently permitted to fall into comparative oblivion. To supply this manifest desideratum, Mr. Dixon compiled his volume for the Percy Society; and its pages, embracing only a selection from the rich stores he had gathered, abundantly exemplified that gentleman's remarkable qualifications for the labour he had undertaken. After stating in his preface that contributions ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... with the assertion that he "has no prejudices to overcome, and would do the black all the good in his power," and winds up with a postscript strongly insisting upon the necessity of corporal punishment, the "great desideratum in obtaining labor from free blacks ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... People must see for themselves and draw their own inferences. In the meantime the thing, whatever it is, grows and grows upwards. A year ago I had to journey down east to find it. Now I must array myself gorgeously like a Staffordshire miner, and seek the salons of the West. The great desideratum, it still appears to me, is that some man with a name in science should examine the matter, honestly resolving to endorse the facts if true, but to expose them mercilessly if there be a loophole for suspicion. Omne ignotum pro magnifico ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... Procrustes, from the collector's point of view, is entirely logical, and might be considered as the acme of bookmaking. To the true collector, a book is a work of art, of which the contents are no more important than the words of an opera. Fine binding is a desideratum, and, for its cost, that of the Procrustes could not be improved upon. The paper is above criticism. The true collector loves wide margins, and the Procrustes, being all margin, merely touches the vanishing point of the perspective. The smaller the edition, the greater the collector's eagerness ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... education, that his system is not (like the Madras system) independent of the teacher's, ability, and therefore not unconditionally applicable.—Upon some future occasion we shall perhaps take an opportunity of stating what is in our opinion the great desideratum which is still to be supplied in the art of education considered simply in its intellectual purposes—viz. the communication of knowledge, and the development of the intellectual faculties: purposes which have not been as yet treated in sufficient insulation from the moral purposes. ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed. Let me add that it is the great desideratum by which this form of government can be rescued from the opprobrium under which it has so long labored, and be recommended to the esteem and adoption of mankind. By what means is this object attainable? Evidently by one of two only. Either the existence of ...
— The Federalist Papers
... 'wine-strainers' through which we pass our wines, that they may be refined, purified, and drawn the sooner." The information conveyed to our readers by Pliny, may be made of great practical use and benefit by mariners, to whom sweet water is such a desideratum; and is as important to those who traverse the arid deserts of Africa, where sweet water is so ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various
... qualities generally as depend upon second thoughts. A collection of specimens of English poetry, for the purpose of exhibiting the achievement of prose excellences by it (in their legitimate measure) is a desideratum we commend to Mr. Saintsbury. It is the assertion, the development, the product of those very different indispensable qualities of poetry, in the presence [8] of which the English is equal or superior to all other modern literature—the native, sublime, and ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... usual heroine of eighteenth century fiction, she married a title, and as Lady Jones was the Lady Bountiful of the district. From these tales it is clear that piety as the chief end of the story-book child has been succeeded by learning as the desideratum; yet morality is still pushed into evidence, and the American mother undoubtedly translated the ethical sign-boards along the progress of the ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... very important desideratum in the making of a cup of good coffee or tea, but the average housewife is very apt to overlook this fact. Do not boil the water more than three or four minutes; longer boiling ruins the water for coffee or tea making, as most ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... far as findable in all books that I have read—is, in books, about as close as we can get to our desideratum—that coal has fallen from the sky. Dr. Farrington, except with a brief mention, ignores the whole subject of the fall of carbonaceous matter from the sky. Proctor, in all of his books that I have read—is, in books, about as ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... editor of a popular Selection from the French Classics, has professionally experienced the want of a book of French Poetry for Children, and to supply this desideratum, has produced a little volume with the above title. It consists of brief extracts, in two parts—1. From Morel's Moral de l'enfance; 2. Miscellaneous Poems, Fables, &c., by approved writers; and is in French just what Miss Aikin's pretty poetical selection is in English. We hope it may become ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... his reputation for handling scientific subjects so as to make them clear to common apprehension. He announces, in his second page, that he has completed and will soon publish a Treatise of Popular Astronomy; a desideratum for France. Sir John Herschel has supplied it for English readers, in his Outlines. The present history and explanations of the Calendar may be recommended, as material, to your Professor Loomis. In the section concerning the period at which ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... bottom of the car into a gravel-pit, we did not think it worth while to continue the amusement. The reason may be asked why these waggons have such low splashboards as to admit all the gravel? The reason is simple. Go-ahead is the great desideratum, and they are kept low to enable you to watch the horses' hind legs; by doing which, a knowing Jehu can discover when they are about to break into a gallop, and can handle "the ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... that this desideratum is very nearly, if not quite, supplied by Plagiolophus, remains of which occur abundantly in some parts of the Upper and Middle Eocene formations. The patterns of the grinding-teeth of Plagiolophus ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... of reef gold from its matrix is a much more complicated process, and the problem how most effectively to obtain that great desideratum—a complete separating and saving operation—is one which taxes the skill and evokes the ingenuity of scientific men all over the world. The difficulty is that as scarcely any two gangues, or matrixes, are exactly alike, the ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... of the national exigencies requiring you to do so." The brothers replied, this is certainly true; but the proposed undertaking is not a commercial enterprise, although no doubt it would produce great commercial and colonizing results; but it is a grand national work,—a desideratum that has been wished for, looked for, and cared for, ever since the new world was discovered—that has repeatedly called forth great expenditure of money, great suffering, and loss of life in searching for it, to the north. It is, in short, the great high road between the Atlantic ...
— A Letter from Major Robert Carmichael-Smyth to His Friend, the Author of 'The Clockmaker' • Robert Carmichael-Smyth
... is effective for speed, but it soon wears out all but the strong, expert swimmer. In acquiring it you must remember that pace is the great desideratum, and, consequently, rapidity of action is requisite. To gain this you must combine two movements in one, by striking with the propeller on whichever side you swim at the same time as the feet, the sustainer acting in the same manner ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... desideratum, and, had he believed it possible without great trouble and work, he would have kindled one before that. The capture of a new horse could have pleased him scarcely more than the discovery of the matches, and he set about reaping the advantage ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... the guaranteed speed there is to be deducted from the contract price the sum of $25,000. There seems to be no doubt among the naval experts that she will meet the conditions as to speed, and this is a great desideratum, since her chief function is to be to sweep the seas of an enemy's commerce. To do her work she must be able to overhaul, in an ocean race, the ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... thanked heaven for it—and added, "Art is now within the reach of all." Furniture, carpets, curtains, pictures and books were being manufactured by machinery, and to glue things together and give them a look of gentility and get them into a house before they fell apart, was the seeming desideratum of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... roving is indeed the chief desideratum that bobbin and fly frames aim at, although they assist in making the strand of cotton more uniform by carrying still further to a limited extent the doubling principle so extensively utilised at ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... The first desideratum in taking exercise is to have every organ of the body free, therefore a gymnastic dress is a necessity. Then we should have the exercise conducted by some one who understands the peculiarities of each individual and knows just what exercises are suited for her in her special ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... then, is here implied? The sphinx moth, one of the lesser of the group. A larger individual might sip the nectar, it is true, but its longer tongue would reach the base of the tube without effecting the slightest contact with the pollen, which is, of course, the desideratum." How the moth, in sipping the nectar, thrusts his head against the sticky buttons to which the pollen messes are attached, and, in trying to release himself, loosens them; how he flies off with these little clubs sticking to his eyes; how they automatically adjust themselves ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... The other desideratum, more reasonable apparently, yet far from present accomplishment, is a means of storing and carrying a supply of electricity when it has been gathered by the means now used, ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... manufacturing arts, in which a perfectly controllable compressing power of vast potency might be serviceable, I many years ago prepared a design of an apparatus of a very simple and easily executed kind, which would supply such a desideratum. It was possessed of a range of compressing or squeezing power, which far surpassed anything of the kind that had been invented. As above said, it was perfectly controllable; so as either to yield the most gentle pressure, or ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... your idea also?" said he,—"some one to love; is not that the great desideratum here below!" And the tone in which he repeated the last words was ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... inadvisable. The colony is young, but the government is infantine; though, notwithstanding that it is little more than two years old, it has proved itself indefatigable, concise, and beneficial in its workings; and many a local incubus has been removed, and many a long felt desideratum been supplied, during its short period ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... price and in another form. The Publisher believes that its present guise will bring it within the reach of all and sundry, who, while delighting in the marriage of wit with wisdom, cannot complete the trilogy with the third desideratum of wealth. ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... post-classic works upon gesture is that of the venerable Bede (who flourished A.D. 672-735) De Loquela per Gestum Digitorum, sive de Indigitatione. So much discussion had indeed been carried on in reference to the use of signs for the desideratum of a universal mode of communication, which also was designed to be occult and mystic, that Rabelais, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, who, however satirical, never spent his force upon matters of little importance, devotes much attention to it. He makes his English ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... says (of the first act) is very consolatory. 'English, sterling genuine English,' is a desideratum amongst you, and I am glad that I have got so much left; though Heaven knows how I retain it: I hear none but from my Valet, and his is Nottinghamshire; and I see none but in your new publications, and theirs is no language at all, but jargon.... ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... instead of "Classic." From this arose much misunderstanding; for, justly, all poets should work their material plastically, be it Christian or heathen; they should set it forth in clear outlines; in short, plastic form should be the main desideratum in modern Romantic art, quite as much as in the ancient. And are not the figures in the Divina Commedia of Dante or in the pictures of Raphael as plastic as those in Virgil? The difference lies in this, that the plastic forms in ancient art are absolutely identical with the subject ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... be at liberty to do it. The disclosure was almost too magnificent to be repressed. To deny herself so exquisite an indulgence required an effort which nothing on earth could have sustained save the one thing that did sustain it—the knowledge that upon her silence hung the most enormous desideratum in the world, her own marriage. She said no more, and Mrs. Doncastle ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... to be able to give a clear explication and complete enumeration of all the ideas of reason, and of the necessary and universal principles or axioms which are grounded on these ideas. This is still the grand desideratum of metaphysical science. Its achievement will give us a primordial logic, which shall be as exact in its procedure and as certain in its conclusions as the mathematical sciences. Meantime, it may be affirmed that philosophic analysis, in the person of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... as that which you propose to bring out is a desideratum, and cannot fail to be interesting, and increasingly so as years roll on. I am glad that you have been moved to this undertaking, as I feel sure that it will be executed with vigour and thoroughness, in a patriotic spirit, and with a real ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... will produce 30,000 candles. We are perfectly willing to demonstrate that at any time. I am free to admit that the minute subdivision obtained by the Edisonian, Swan, or Fox system—they do not differ materially—is a great desideratum; but this cannot ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... the poet that you might be, even yet? No rational person would dispute that the society and amiable chat of Dame Lisa must naturally be a desideratum—" ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... in harems make complete eunuchs a desideratum. Bisson mentions that on one occasion he saw the chief eunuch of the Grand Cherif of Mecca—a large, finely-proportioned, powerful black—on his way to Stamboul for trial and sentence; he was heavily chained and well guarded. It appears that the eunuch had only ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... incidental to a restoration? To this we have an affirmative reply to give, coupled with some modifications, and point to the Central climatic division of the continent as possessing, in its dry elastic atmosphere and generally equable temperature, the requisite desideratum. ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... determination to inflict summary and extra-judicial punishment upon the offenders. In San Francisco a prison is in course of erection by the labor of felons condemned to the chain-gang. The amount of gold produced in the course of the current year is expected to be very large. The great desideratum at present is to find some cheap and effective method of disengaging the microscopic gold contained in the auriferous quartz. The methods now in use fail to extricate more than one-fifth of the amount contained in many of the richest veins. A treaty has been negotiated with six Indian ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... numerous, a thoroughly unexceptionable white is still a desideratum—one combining the perfect opacity or body of white lead with the perfect permanency of zinc white. The nearest approach to it that has yet been made, is Chinese white, which possesses in a great measure the property ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... Montesquieu's a work of much merit; but saw in it, with every thinking man, so much of paradox, of false principle, and misapplied fact, as to render its value equivocal on the whole. Williams and others had nibbled only at its errors. A radical correction of them, therefore, was a great desideratum. This want is now supplied, and with a depth of thought, precision; of idea, of language, and of logic, which will force conviction into every mind. I declare to you, Sir, in the spirit of truth ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... last lingering old ones to find themselves among the men of the new, intelligent and shrewd generation, who gently smiled at them, deeming their romanticism quite out of fashion! All crumbled since the ideal of liberty collapsed, since liberty was no longer the one desideratum, the very basis of the Republic whose existence had been so dearly purchased ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Edinburgh, at the request of the Association, to compose a series of psalms, one of which was sung by the pupils. Music for the Psalms, adapted to the varying meaning of each verse, has hitherto been a desideratum in the musical world; now being supplied in Chevalier Neukomm's work, and already subscribed for by no mean judges—the Queen and Prince Albert, the king of Prussia, &c. It was touching, and yet gratifying, to see one of Dr Mainzer's oft-cherished hopes realised for the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... concerned in an agricultural magazine—reads no poetry but Shakspeare, very intimate with Southey, but never reads his poetry: relishes George Dyer, thoroughly penetrates into the ridiculous wherever found, understands the first time (a great desideratum in common minds)—you need never twice speak to him; does not want explanations, translations, limitations, as Professor Godwin does when you make an assertion: up to anything, down to everything—whatever sapit ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... despair than of actual preference; my father and mother were weary of house-hunting, and the attractive points about the place thus seemed to them to counterbalance its somewhat more obvious faults. It had at least one desideratum, namely quietness. Indeed it would have been difficult to find a more retired place so near to London. In 1842 a coach drive of some twenty miles was the only means of access to Down; and even now that railways have ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... are, knife-like sharpness of the cut-water and bow, and exceeding correctness of cut in the sails, so that these may be drawn as tight and flat as possible. Too much bulge in a sail is a disadvantage in the way of sailing. Indeed, flatness is so important a desideratum, that experimentalists have more than once applied sails made of thin planks of wood to their clippers; but we do not know that this has turned out to be much of an improvement. The masts of all clippers, ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... sir, conceive my happiness upon hearing this—upon at length getting into my possession precisely the sort of work which you so long since had looked upon as a desideratum in the history of mankind, and which I had utterly despaired of ever ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... comparatively small part of the road. An economical method of working the coal trains, instead of by horses,—the keep of which was at that time very costly, from the high price of corn,—was still a great desideratum; and the best practical minds in the collieries were actively engaged in the attempt ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... has now become a desideratum so great with England, that all her cunning and genius are brought to bear upon the subject. So long as Ireland was dependent solely upon her own resources, and the spirit of revolution confined strictly within her borders, England felt herself competent ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... This grand desideratum has always been monopolized by men as far as possible. What intercourse was allowed to women has been rigidly hemmed its by man-made conventions. Women accept these conventions, repeat them, enforce them upon their daughters; but ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... slave-owner; the higher or human qualities are left out. The breeder of animals aims chiefly at size or speed or strength; in a few cases at courage or temper; most often the fitness of the animal for food is the great desideratum. But mankind are not bred to be eaten, nor yet for their superiority in fighting or in running or in drawing carts. Neither does the improvement of the human race consist merely in the increase of the bones and flesh, but in the growth and enlightenment of the mind. Hence ...
— The Republic • Plato
... at the same instant, the last lever moving at the same moment with the first. This simultaneous movement of a succession of parallel levers, acting the one upon the other, with a force successively increasing and in geometrical proportion, is the grand desideratum, the ne plus ultra, in the science of mechanics, which the inventor professes to have achieved. To place this multiplied ad infinitum power in its plainest light, we may observe that a given power—say that of one horse—will impart to a lever of a given dimension a sixteenfold power; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... of geographical and historical information, judiciously blended, has been heretofore a great desideratum. Mr. Pinnock's name has for many years been a standard warranty to school books; and this, his last labor, fully sustains his established reputation. It is a very comprehensive condensation of ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... would prove to the demagogue, out of his own mouth, that everything cannot be reduced to "bread and shoes all round," as the grand desideratum. Give these to men, it will not suffice. The eloquent orator instinctively seeks besides to impart "hallowed emotions and mystic enthusiasm to those who toil and sweat—he teaches them to hope, to dream of God, to take courage and lift themselves above ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... short-sighted. To philosophers, however, this horizon, like every other, is a mere misunderstanding, a sort of slamming of the door in the face of the real beginning of their world,—their danger, their ideal, their desideratum.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} In more polite language: La philosophie ne suffit pas au grand nombre. Il lui ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche. |
