"Elaboration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is brief, and I have left it until last, for no particular elaboration is needed. From most painful study I have come to the conclusion that nearly all of our degraded men come to ruin through idleness in the first instance; drink, gambling, and other forms of debauch follow, but idleness is the root-evil. The man who begins by saying, "It's a poor heart that never ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... character. Shakuntala is a Hindu maid, Madhava is a Hindu hero; but Sansthanaka and Maitreya and Madanika are citizens of the world. In some of the more striking characteristics of Sanskrit literature—in its fondness for system, its elaboration of style, its love of epigram—Kalidasa and Bhavabhuti are far truer to their native land than is Shudraka. In Shudraka we find few of those splendid phrases in which, as the Chinese[6] say, "it is only the words which stop, the ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... masques than all his competitors together, and they are of an extraordinary variety and poetic excellence. Jonson did not invent the masque; for such premeditated devices to set and frame, so to speak, a court ball had been known and practised in varying degrees of elaboration long before his time. But Jonson gave dramatic value to the masque, especially in his invention of the antimasque, a comedy or farcical element of relief, entrusted to professional players or dancers. He enhanced, as well, the beauty and dignity of ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... history, which has been not inaptly termed the 'Efflorescence,' is still, to a large extent, with us. The majority of our population consists of artists, and the bulk of activity in the world lies no longer with necessities but with their elaboration, decoration, and refinement. There has been an evident change in the quality of this making during recent years. It becomes more purposeful than it was, losing something of its first elegance and prettiness and gaining in intensity; but that is a ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... and its whole exterior appearance ought to be in accordance with, and convey the idea of, the manner and principle on which it is constructed. The most important portions of the interior must be shown as such externally by the greater elaboration and emphasis of their architectural treatment. If the general arrangement of the plan is symmetrical, on either side of a center (which, however, it cannot often be except in the largest type of monumental ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... world at the time knew the story; but for the benefit of those who have forgotten I shall repeat it. I am merely giving it as I have taken it from the papers with no elaboration and no opinion—a mere statement of facts. It was a celebrated case at the time and stirred the world to wonder. Indeed, it still is celebrated, though to the ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... an elaboration of the description of her aunt's coldness as found in F of F—B. There is only one sentence ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... hall a purpose common to the life of the family, and, while it admits of much more variety and elaboration, that which is true of the hall is equally true of the dining-room, that it should be treated with materials which are durable and have surface quality, although its decoration should be preferably with china rather than with pictures. It is important that the colour of a dining-room ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... then I put forward my suspicions with extreme reserve—all that I am permitted to surmise is reduced to this: the substance of the sleeping larva as yet has no very definite static existence; it is like the raw materials collected for a building; it is waiting for the elaboration that is to make a bee of it. To mould those shapeless lumps of the future insect, the air, that prime adjuster of living things, circulates among them, passing through a network of ducts. To organize them, to direct ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... show the consequences of each, and reflect the character and influence of all. We have a wide field before us. The domain we enter upon is unexplored. Our streets, with their mid-day bustle and midnight sin; our public buildings, with their outside elaboration and inside mysteries; our places of amusement, with their gilded fascinations and shallow delusions; our clubs, bar parlours, prisons, cellars, and workhouses, with their amenities, frivolities, and severities, have all been commented upon; but the most important of our institutions, the ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... themselves the place and the fame of the ancients with new works which are neither better nor worse than those already existing, and spend their life in considering how to turn wheat into tares,[M] and find the work of their life in the elaboration of those studies which are suited for children and are generally profitable to no one, not ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... the German scheme of law and order the major premise is the dynastic State, whereas the major premise of the modern civilised scheme of civic life is the absence of such an organ. So, the development and elaboration of these modern principles of civic liberty—and this elaboration has taken on formidable dimensions—under the hand of the German Intellectuals has uniformly run out into Pickwickian convolutions, greatly suggestive of a lost soul seeking a place to rest. With unquestionably serious purpose ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... associated with the Ptolemaic theory adopted without doubt or hesitation by the numerous authors whose works he perused. His knowledge of Italian enabled him to become familiar with Dante—one of his favourite authors, whose poetical writings were deeply read by him, and who, in the elaboration of his poem, the 'Divina Commedia,' ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... have seen, was composed in Ireland, in the solitude of a colonists' plantation, and the author was shut off from his fellows while he wrote. The influence of his surroundings is visible in the writing. The elaboration of the theme would have been impossible or at least very unlikely if its author had not been thrown in on himself during its composition. Its intricacy and involution is the product of an over-concentration born of empty surroundings. It lacks vigour and rapidity; it winds ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... rare for the rulers to interfere or to interest themselves in any of the operations. This was the beginning of the evil days. The members of the dominant class who had previously given all their time to the state duties began to think about making their own lives more pleasant. The elaboration of luxury was ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... The further elaboration of these ideas, however, must be left to Chapter VII., and we must return to Paris. I have described the entanglements which Mr. Lloyd George took with him. The position of the Finance Ministers of the other Allies ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... Boy's Mountain Song. But the contrast between Uhland's hardy, active, public-spirited youth and Heine's sleepy, amorous individualist is no more striking than the difference between Uhland's rhetorical and Heine's tropical method. Heine's poem is an elaboration of the single metaphor with which it begins: "Kingly is the herd-boy's calling." The poem Pine and Palm, in which Heine expresses his hopeless separation from the maiden of whom he dreams—incidentally attributing to Amalie a feeling of sadness ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... of intelligence lies in comprehending together in a unitary, meaningful whole, impressions and associations which are more or less independent, heterogeneous, or even partly contradictory. "Intellectual ability consists in the elaboration of a whole into its worth and meaning by means of many-sided combination, correction, and completion of numerous kindred associations.... It ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... a bit if you can, Mrs. Charmian, for over-elaboration. Don't let him work it to death, I mean, till all the spontaneity is gone. I believe that's a danger with him. Somehow I think he lacks complete confidence ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... composer, Browning finds his inspiration not in the sentiment but in the structure of the composition; he competes, as it were, in language with the art or science of the contrapuntist, and evolves an idea of his own from its complexity and elaboration. The poem of Italian music, A Toccata of Galuppi's, wholly subordinates the science to the sentiment of the piece. It is steeped in the melancholy of pleasure; Venice of the eighteenth century lives ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... and most important, is the primary intellectual process, the elaboration, criticism, discussion, enrichment and enlargement of the project of Socialism. This includes all sorts of sociological and economic research, the critical literature of Socialism, and every possible way—the drama, poetry, painting, music—of expressing and refining its spirit, ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... principles that guided them in their attitude toward the subject of public worship. What this spirit and those principles were it is not difficult to discover. The facts themselves are plain; not only did the Church in its regularly constituted courts oppose the introduction of new forms and the elaboration of the Church service, but the people resisted by every means in their power, and at last went the length of resisting by force of arms, the attempt to impose upon them the new ...
— Presbyterian Worship - Its Spirit, Method and History • Robert Johnston
... the formalities of social respect, and would no doubt, like Mr. Gladstone, have repudiated with horror the idea of being placed at dinner above the obscurest of peers. His bow to an Archbishop is described as a studied elaboration of temporal and spiritual homage, and he once went so far as to imply that nothing would induce him to contradict a Bishop. There no doubt he promised more than the presence of a stupid Bishop or a Whig Bishop would have allowed him to ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... In elaboration of this last point Wirt launched forth upon that famous passage in which he contrasted Burr and the pathetic victim of ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... cover for troops subjected to fire, but not actually firing. When it is probable that time will permit elaboration, the simple trench should be planned with a view to developing it ultimately into a more complete form. (Figs. 2 and 3.) Devices should be added to increase the security of the trench and the ...
— Infantry Drill Regulations, United States Army, 1911 - Corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes Nos. 1 to 19) • United States War Department
... there being no demand for casting, there was no practice either in its cognate preliminary art of moulding clay. Hence, such bronze work as originated was very unsatisfactory; the lack of skill in casting, and the consequent elaboration of bronze-work with the file, lasting late into the Renaissance. But the men of the Middle Ages were marvellously skilful carvers of stone. Architecture, ever since the Roman time, had given more and more importance to sculptured ornament: already exquisite ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... rather than a speaker, he would often end dispute by telling a story and none misunderstood it; and often when he was pressed to give expression on particular subjects, and his always abundant caution was baffled, he many times ended the interview by a story that needed no elaboration. ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... they had to be derived. Each law, barring only the original "traditions," the Halacha le-Moshe mi-Sinai, was promulgated over the supreme signature, as it were, that is, with the authentication of a word from the Holy Scriptures. Or it was inferred from another law so authenticated. The elaboration of every law was thus connected with a very complicated process of thought, requiring both inductive and deductive reasoning, and uniting juridical interpretation with the refinements of casuistry. This legislation ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... blue ribbon for a necktie, and he had on dressy tight boots. His horse and buggy were the finest that the livery stable could furnish. The lap robe was of white linen, it was new, and it had a hand-worked border that could not be rivaled in that region for beauty and elaboration. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... honest man and the earnestness of the moralist waited not for gifts and graces. Everything went down, hard, rough, even uncouth as it stood, of course gaining in truth and in graphic power what it wants in elegance. Still, with no refinement, polish or elaboration, there are many picturesque passages scattered throughout these works which no amount of polishing could have improved. How could a man in a rage be better touched off than ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... German writer, who has examined the subject of the ancient Mysteries with great judgment and elaboration, gives a theory on their nature and design which is ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... was from one of the most stylish sergeants, who approached me with the following little speech, evidently the result of some elaboration:— ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... ideals of the beautiful are so mingled with worship of expense that few of us can see the genuine beauty in any object apart from its expensiveness. For this reason as well as, perhaps, because of a remnant of barbarism in us, we love gold and glitter, and a great deal of elaboration in our vases, and are far from being over-critical of any piece of statuary which costs a ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... economic and social senses altogether, leaving for these the term heritage, material or immaterial alike. This necessary distinction between the inheritance, bodily and mental, and the heritage, economic and social, obviously next requires further elaboration, and with this further precision of language also. For the present, let us leave the term heritage to the economist for the material wealth with which he is primarily concerned, and employ the term tradition for these immaterial and distinctively social elements we are here specially ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... formality of style that suggested the idea that his speeches were anything but the inspiration of the moment, but had been made beforehand, and were being reeled off. Indeed, many of those who knew him well maintained that his speeches were at this time the result of painstaking study, care, and elaboration, and that those who had a nose for oratory might detect in them a strong smell ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... completeness which, as has been pointed out in the last chapter, is almost entirely lacking before. There is, of course, not very much plot, in the martinet sense of that word: there never was in Richardson, despite his immense apparatus and elaboration. The story is not knotted and unknotted; the wheel does not come full circle on itself; it merely runs along pleasantly till it is time for it to stop, and it stops rather abruptly. The siege of Pamela's virtue ends merely because the ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... that this final stage in the liquefaction struggle was not effected through the use of the principle of evaporating liquids which has just been referred to, but by the application of a quite different principle and its elaboration into a perfectly novel method. This principle is the one established long ago by Joule and Thomson (Lord Kelvin), that compressed gases when allowed to expand freely are lowered in temperature. In this well-known principle the means was at hand greatly to simplify and ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... began, "Now, I know, of course, that I am peculiar in many ways"; or, "I am afraid you will not understand me when I say this"; or, "I am afraid I am hopelessly old-fashioned in this." She would explain with painstaking elaboration that she did not know why she was so peculiar, but her manner indicated that she was quite content to be so; indeed, it can only be described as one of boastful resignation. She seemed to glory ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... dress is an adaptation to the necessities of his calling; as a matter of fact, it is an elaboration on that. The broad heavy felt hat he has found by experience to be more effective in turning heat than a lighter straw; he further runs to variety in the shape of the crown and in the nature of ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... had drawn him out, and she thought that in speaking he had kept a fair balance between too crude a mode of colloquial expression and poetic elaboration. There was, she knew, a vein of poetic conception in him, and the struggle he had hinted at could be described fittingly only in heroic language. It was in one sense a pity that those who had the gift of it and cultivated imagination had, for the most part, never been forced ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... its Past and its Future Work," was prepared as a lecture to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. This was done with a care and elaboration which are not always associated with such efforts; and, whether in indicating the object and end of the archaeological student's pursuits,—sketching the past progress of the study,—and specifying the lines of research from which Scottish ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... discussions, and was about giving further elaboration of my favorite idea when the door burst open. Master Billy came tumbling in with a torn jacket, a bloody nose, the trace of a few tears in his eyes, and the mangiest of ...
— A Brace Of Boys - 1867, From "Little Brother" • Fitz Hugh Ludlow
... committee met in a stable-loft on the premises of Mr. McGuffie senior, and devoted their skill—which was greater than they ever showed in their work—to the elaboration of a high-class advertisement which was to be shown round a certain district in Muirtown, and which they hoped would stimulate the custom at Bailie MacConachie's shop. Howieson had provided two large boards such as might be hung one on the breast and one on the back of a man, and ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... possessed by the subject on which he was writing, and never laid down the pen till that subject lived and breathed in the written page.[149] Here and there, indeed, it is easy to note an unusual care and elaboration in the structure of the sentences and the cadence of the sound, and then the style rises to a very high level of ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... not founded on any European model; in its plan and elaboration it is strictly original, and strictly American. Many of the writers employed on the work have enriched it with their personal researches, observations, and discoveries; and every article has been written, or ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... cities from what it has in the rural districts or in small towns; to say nothing of other differences which, though important, are of less moment. How profoundly the whole course of the Prohibition movement has been affected by the desire of the South to keep liquor away from the negroes, needs no elaboration; it would not be going far beyond the truth to say that the people of New York are being deprived of their right to the harmless enjoyment of wine and beer in order that the negroes of Alabama and ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin
... subject and worked his materials, so as to do most justice to his talents, and more easily reach the height attained by Tacitus. When he had apparently thus sketched the plan of his edifice, and set about struggling with the difficulties of the elaboration, he encountered these with such eminent success that the reality of his literary labour is one of the most surprising facts in the history of the human mind. He seems never to have once deviated from his design nor to have ever been perplexed by embarrassments in the course of his ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... roomy dug-out beloved by the armchair artist, very, very rarely offers its cosy hospitality to the warrior dwelling in the Front Line—even if there is anything bearing a faint resemblance to such an elaboration it is immediately seized by Company Headquarters. The inter-connecting series of holes occupied by the Normans and flattered with the term "trenches" had cut here and there into the wet soil a number of side ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... the chronological charts of the future, will, if it needs a symbol, almost inevitably have as that symbol a steam engine running upon a railway. This period covers the first experiments, the first great developments, and the complete elaboration of that mode of transit, and the determination of nearly all the broad features of this century's history may be traced directly or indirectly to that process. And since an interesting light is thrown upon ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... practiced, and from Ionia this method of treatment spread to Athens and elsewhere. When drapery is used, there is a manifest desire on the sculptor's part to reveal what he can, more, in fact, than in reality could appear, of the form underneath. The garments fall in formal folds, sometimes of great elaboration. They look as if they were intended to represent garments of irregular cut, carefully starched and ironed. But one must be cautious about drawing inferences from an imperfect artistic manner as to the actual ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... predestinarianism has never been so grandly painted as in 'Johannes Agricola in Meditation'; the white heat of the persecutor glares on us, like a nightmare spectre, in 'The Heretic's Tragedy'. More subtle forms are drawn with greater elaboration. If 'Bishop Blougram's Apology', in many of its circumstances and touches, suggests the thought of actual portraiture, recalling a form and face once familiar to us, . . .it is also a picture of a class of minds which we meet ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... appropriate. It was nearly twenty years before the introduction of woodcuts into books became general, Gunther Zainer beginning it at Augsburg in 1471-1475. The inception of this movement was naturally followed by a general improvement, or at all events elaboration, of the Printer's Mark, which, moreover, now began to be printed in colours, as is seen in the Fust and Schoeffer mark in red which appears beneath the colophon of Turrecremata's Commentary on the Psalms printed ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... age of printed books, that literature is, after all, only an ineffectual record of speech. The literary man has gone into strange byways through long contemplation of books, and he writes with elaboration what could never be spoken, and he loses that power of the bards on whom tongues of fire had descended, who were masters of the magic of utterance, whose thoughts were not meant to be silently absorbed from the lifeless page. For there never can be, while ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... a natural economy both by accumulation of indirect agents and by elaboration so as to improve their quality.[1] It goes on to-day by the replacement of perishable by durative agents, as in replacing a wooden house by one of stone or concrete, and by producing wealth without consuming it, as in increasing the ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... not they were accidents, mere coincidents, or deep-laid, skilfully worked-out designs of the fun-loving cowboys. Certainly there had been great fun, and at the expense of her guests, particularly Castleton. So Madeline was at a loss to know what to think about Stillwell's latest elaboration. From mere force of habit she sympathized with him and found difficulty in doubting his ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... affords. The number of bearing points which it is desirable to establish on the surface of the work, depends on the use to which the surface is to be applied; but whether it is to be finished with great elaboration, or otherwise, the bearing points should be distributed equally over the surface. Face plates, or planometers, as they are sometimes termed, are supplied by most of the makers of engineering tools. Every factory should be ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... represents the highest form of Hindu architecture, and, like almost all else that is Hindu, its history carries us to the dim distance of the past. But the great Tirumalai Nayak, the king of two and a half centuries ago, spent more in its elaboration than any one else. And it was he who built, half a mile away, the great palace which, though much reduced, still stands as the noblest edifice of its kind south of a line ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... Then it was ready for the small flax wheel of the housewife. Every woman had both wool wheel and flax wheel, the latter of all grades of beauty, from those made for the use of queens and ladies of high degree—royal for elaboration—to the modest ashen wheel, derived from a long line of industrious and careful foremothers, or copied by the clever Pilgrim fathers, from some adventurous wheel which had made the long voyage from civilized ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... man beichten soll of 1519, of which this is a Latin re-elaboration, and, therefore, intended more for the educated man than as a popular presentation, he has advanced so far as to warn against the attempt to make an exhaustive enumeration of sins. He advises that the confession ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... strong. They will be full of sound and fury, but they will signify nothing. What they produce in us will be not interest but a kind of wondering weariness—weariness at the weary fate of men who could 'think so brainsickly of things.' So in like manner will all the emphasis and elaboration in the literature of sensuality become a weariness without meaning, also. Congreve's caustic wit will turn to spasmodic truism; and Theophile Gautier's excess of erotic ardour, into prolix and fantastic affectation. All its sublimity, its ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... to my mind only an elaboration of Descartes' 'I think, therefore I am.' I am, presupposes that I have been, and will be. If you can't destroy one drop of water, you can't destroy me. If you drop the water on red-hot iron, it instantly becomes an imperceptible mist, the mere ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, billions, the nucleus of the nebula of every digit of every series containing succinctly the potentiality of being raised to the utmost kinetic elaboration of any power of ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... substance of excellence and utility, at other times some baneful element, known but too well elsewhere, but unexpected here. But not the watching of the often tragic meeting of these great fatalities of inherited spirit and habit only: for equally fascinating almost has been the watching of the elaboration by this double-natured period of things of little weight, mere trifles of artistic material bequeathed to it by one or by the other of its spiritual parents. The charm for me—a charm sometimes pleasurable, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... stranger to attempt to kiss another's child, no matter on what part of the body. It would be easy to multiply instances of the ways in which syphilis may be spread by the careless or ignorant in the close associations of family life, but little would be accomplished by such elaboration that would not occur to one who took the trouble to acquaint himself with ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... instruments a fourth apart in pitch were in existence. Since no reason is given for the harpsichord being tuned a fourth lower than the two virginals, we may assume that the author considered the matter commonplace enough as to demand no further elaboration and that instruments a fourth apart in pitch were ...
— Italian Harpsichord-Building in the 16th and 17th Centuries • John D. Shortridge
... of the sources of the Jehovistic tradition, but is part of the redaction, and in fact (as is plain from other reasons with regard to the entire section xiii. 1-16) of a Deuteronomic redaction. From this it follows that the elaboration of the historical motive of the passover is not earlier than Deuteronomy, although perhaps a certain inclination to that way of explaining it appears before then, just as in the case of the maccoth (Exodus xii. 34). What has led to it is evidently the coincidence ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... a glimpse of him he is no longer the madcap; he walks with such dignity as his stature permits, for he is now author of the much-talked-of Anatomy of Wit, and one of the most fashionable young men of the Court. What elaboration of toilet, what adjustment and readjustment of ruffles and lace, what bowing and scraping before the glass, preceded that great event of his life—his presentation to the Queen—can only be guessed at. But we can well picture him, following his magnificently over-dressed patron up the long reception-room, ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... articles which he had recently sworn to support, or the solemn treaty which he had signed and sealed at Bordeaux, to furnish any obstacles to his seizure of unlimited power, whenever the design could be cleverly accomplished. He rested not, day or night, in the elaboration ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... speech in favor of the rights of the colonists as men and Englishmen. All that is known of it is contained in some rough notes taken at the time by John Adams ("Works of John Adams," ii., 125). An elaboration of these notes was printed in the "Massachusetts Spy," April 29, 1778, and with corrections by Adams fifty years after the event in William Tudor's "Life of James Otis," chs. 5-7. This is the speech to which Adams, at a later date, attributed the ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... described, and a few isolated passages cited in the Decretals of Gratian, formed as yet almost the only contribution to the study of these sciences. However, this absence of any organised body of knowledge was for them but one more stimulus towards the elaboration of a thorough synthesis of the moral aspect of wealth. A few of the earlier masters made reference, detached and personal, to the subject of dispute, but it was rather in the form of a disorderly comment than the definite ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... stand or fall. And so he got his way. But it is a fact that only a man of his great power and influence and dogged determination could have carried the covenant through that Peace Conference. Others had seen with him the great vision; others had perhaps given more thought to the elaboration of the great plan. But his was the power and the will that carried it through. The covenant is Wilson's souvenir to the future of the world. No one ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... which offers the conditions under which life may arise. Of course this theory does not explain the origin of life. It pushes back that origin a little farther or supposes that life is as old as matter itself. Again we may leave to the scientist the discussion and the elaboration of this or any other theory he may promulgate concerning the origin of life. When he has established clearly the process and can produce life we will accept his explanation; meanwhile, we will always be interested in his attempts to solve the problem, but still our simple formula, "in ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... was carved out of the clay, the dirt being removed by the door-way. In some instances I saw where two rooms were cut out, for a single family, with a door-way in the clay wall separating them. Some of these were carpeted and furnished with considerable elaboration. In these the occupants were fully secure from the shells of the navy, which were dropped into the city ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... already recognised that elaboration and variety in dress are bad form in the present crisis, but there is still a large section of the community, both amongst the rich and amongst the less well to do, who appear to make little or no difference ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... occasions Admiral von Kufner came in as Zimmern sat chatting over cups and incense with Marguerite and me, and the Countess and her son. The doctor dropped quietly out of the conversation, and for a time the youthful Count Ulrich entertained us with a technical elaboration of the importance of the love passion as the dominant appeal of the picture. Then the Countess broke in with a spirited exposition of the relation of ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... the assertion of these historians, we may say with certainty, in the first place, that such movements are never spontaneous, and secondly, that reason takes no part in their elaboration. ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... Ernest Everhard was an exceptionally strong man, but not so exceptional as his wife thought him to be. He was, after all, but one of a large number of heroes who, throughout the world, devoted their lives to the Revolution; though it must be conceded that he did unusual work, especially in his elaboration and interpretation of working-class philosophy. "Proletarian science" and "proletarian philosophy" were his phrases for it, and therein he shows the provincialism of his mind—a defect, however, that was due to the times and that none in that day ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... some of her later novels are not, however, always agreeable: a few of the scenes in the history of the unhappy Judith Fountain in Affinities are painful, and the portrait, in The Brother of the Shadow, of Mrs. Vascher as she lies in the mesmerist's blue-silk-lined room is an unnecessary ghastly elaboration. ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... valley, he heard the store-keeper retailing the story to an awe-stricken group. How the tale had crossed all the wild mountains which lay between in so brief a space no man could say, but first there ran a whisper and then a stir, and then half a dozen men came in at once, each with an elaboration of the theme more horrible than the last. The store-keeper culled the choicest fragments from every version, strung them together with a narrative of his own fertile invention, polished off the tale by a few rehearsals in his home, and then placed his product on the open ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... be contrasted with the statement of M. Bergson who tells us (Evolution creatrice, p. 11): "Plus nous approfondirons la nature du temps plus nous comprendrons que duree signifie invention, creation de formes, elaboration continue ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... not the only means of storing the mind of a child. They should make parts of a sound education, but should not be used to the exclusion of learning through eye, ear, and hand. Spencer pointed out with much elaboration that children acquire in their early years a vast amount of information exclusively through the incessant use of their senses. To-day teachers know this fact, and realise much better than the teachers of fifty years ago did, that all through the school and college period the pupils ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... united to the essentia, we must add the prefix cascan, and thus have runap-cascan-caynin, which strictly means "the essence of being in general, as existent in humanity."[1] I doubt if the dialect of German metaphysics itself, after all its elaboration, could produce in equal compass a term for this conception. In Qquichua, moreover, there is nothing strained and nothing foreign in this example; it is perfectly pure, and in thorough accord with ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... spontaneity to be developed? Certainly not through abstract science; for it, with its formulas, occupied only with contingent and relative ideas, addressing itself solely to the faculties concerned with the elaboration of the relative, that is, to the reflective faculties—how can it avail for the cultivation of spontaneity? It can be cultivated only through the due direction of the emotional nature; but how is that to be approached? In the first place ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... Nature. It is in the Book of Nature, as Campanella put it, that the laws of life and of government are to be read. Or, as Quesnel said two centuries ago, more precisely for our present purpose, "Nature is universal hygiene." All animals are scrupulous in hygiene; the elaboration of hygiene moves pari passu with the rank of a species in intelligence. Even the cockroach, which lives on what we call filth, spends the greater part of its time in the cultivation of personal cleanliness. ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... Charles Alexander Calvert at the Prince's Theatre, Manchester, between 1864 and 1874. Calvert, who was a warm admirer of Phelps, attempted to blend Phelps's method with Charles Kean's, and bestowed great scenic elaboration on the production of at least eight plays of Shakespeare. Financially the speculation saw every vicissitude, and Calvert's experience may be quoted in support of the view that a return to Phelps's method is financially safer than a return to Charles ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... suggestive, too; but the same objection applied. Every country with a maritime frontier has, I suppose, secret plans of mobilization for its defence, but they are not such as could be discovered by passing travellers, not such as would warrant stealthy searches, or require for their elaboration so recondite a meeting-place as Memmert. Dollmann was another weak point; Dollmann in England, spying. All countries, Germany included, have spies in their service, dirty though necessary tools; but Dollmann in such intimate association with ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... were not impossible) the taciturn Englishman who accompanies me; and Huysmans, without looking up, and without taking the trouble to speak very distinctly, picks up the phrase, transforms it, more likely transpierces it, in a perfectly turned sentence, a phrase of impromptu elaboration. Perhaps it is only a stupid book that some one has mentioned, or a stupid woman; as he speaks, the book looms up before one, becomes monstrous in its dulness, a masterpiece and miracle of imbecility; the unimportant little woman grows into a slow ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... should be ideal. This is the reason why Monsieur the Principal has proposed to me the following subject, which has not yet been treated upon, and in which I perceive there is matter for magnificent elaboration-'UTRAQUE MANUS IN ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... matter over in his mind, he came gradually to the conclusion that the elaboration of the pit-prop business was no real argument against its having been designed merely to carry forged notes. As a business, moreover, it would pay or almost pay. It would furnish a secret method of getting the notes across at little or no cost. And ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... and the broad low brow, which the Victorian painters, Lord Leighton, Alma Tadema, and a hundred others, induced the world they lived in to accept as a type of Greek beauty. She seemed to have a great deal of hair: it was arranged with peculiar elaboration and done over the forehead in what she called an Alexandra fringe. She was very anaemic. Her thin lips were pale, and her skin was delicate, of a faint green colour, without a touch of red even in the cheeks. She had very good teeth. ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... be able to explain why they are not seen. In general, all that is described to us in the brain is the molecular vibrations. But we are not conscious of them. Where, then, is that of which we are conscious? (2) It should next be explained to us by what elaboration, transmutation, or metamorphosis a molecular disturbance, which is material, can transform itself into the objects which are ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... 1. Elaboration. Central North-America is to an extraordinary degree worked out everywhere in careful detail, in moderate hill and valley, in undulating prairie and fertile plain,—not tossed into barren mountain-masses and table-lands, like that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... displeasure seemed to fall upon Darsie's unfortunate coiffure. Whatever turn the conversation might take, it returned with relentless certainty to "Your hair, my dear! When I was young, young girls wore their hair neatly braided. I intensely dislike all this purring and elaboration. You would look a different girl ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... He was apparently thirty or thirty-one, tall, very straight, dark, smooth-shaven, his eyes keen, deep-set, and thoughtful, and his high white hat, white satin cravat, and careful collar, were evidence of an elaboration of toilet somewhat unusual in Rouen for the morning; also, he was carrying a pair of white gloves in his hand and dangled a slender ebony cane from his wrist. The flying kitten headed toward the couple, when, with a celerity only to be accounted for ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... (Mishle Sandabar, xiith century) and from the Arabian version into old Castilian, "Libro de los Engannos et los Asayamientos de las Mugeres" (A.D. 1255), whereof a translation is appended to Professor Comparetti's Socitey. The Persion metrical form (an elaboration of one much older) dates from 1375; and gave rise to a host of imitations such as the Turkish Tales of the Forty Wazirs and the Canarese "Katha Manjari," where four persons contend about a purse. See also Gladwin's "Persian Moonshee," No. vi. of "Pleasing Stories;" and Mr. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... of Percival's achievement was not long in going the rounds. It went through the customary process of elaboration. By the time it reached his ears,—through the instrumentality of Mr. Morris Shine, the motion picture magnate,—it had assumed sufficient magnitude to draw from that enterprising gentleman a bona fide offer of quite a large sum for the film rights in case ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... the nature of the songs is itself characteristic of these idle later years; for they are often as polished and elaborate as his earlier works were frank, and headlong, and colloquial; and this sort of verbal elaboration in short flights is, for a man of literary turn, simply the most agreeable of pastimes. The change in manner coincides exactly with the Edinburgh visit. In 1786 he had written the ADDRESS TO A LOUSE, which may be taken as an extreme instance of the first manner; ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... productions of Mr. Moore, the sweetest lyric poet of this or perhaps any age, this national peculiarity is not infrequently perceptible; and we were compelled, in our review of his Lalla Rookh, a subject which justified the introduction of much Eastern splendour and elaboration, to point out the excessive finery, the incessant sparkle and efflorescence by which the attention of the reader was fatigued, and his senses overcome. He rouged his roses, and poured perfume upon his jessamines, until ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... come here?" she asked, pausing in her elaboration of her water-waves, and nodding affably ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... much as he did in reality. The man, the whole man, is there; and the things are there around him; that is all. But that the eye recognises this is the demonstration of the painter's own mastership. It is as much Holbein's peculiar secret as are the cool shadows, the luminous glow, the astounding elaboration, all made to express the dignity of ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... buildings in the city, they will realize that the problem is not without a solution. In almost every case where the architect has refrained from useless decoration and stuck to simple lines, the result, if not beautiful, has at least been inoffensive. It is where inappropriate elaboration is added that taste is offended. Such structures as the Singer building, corner of Liberty Street and Broadway, and the home of Life, in Thirty-first Street, prove that beauty and grace of façade can be ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... demonstrably little more than posings and dressings of this great duality. A large part of his own interests and of the interests of the women he knew best, was the sustained and in some cases recurrent discovery and elaboration of lights and glimpses of Him or Her as the case might be, in various definite individuals; and it was a surprise to him, it perplexed him to find that this lovely person, so beautifully equipped for those mutual researches which constituted, ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... went no further. In the course of twenty minutes, however, there was a slight and somewhat ceremonious bustling in the hall and on the verandah, and Yuba Bill and the Judge re-appeared. The latter was leading, with some elaboration of manner and detail, the shapely figure of Miss Mullins, and Yuba Bill was accompanying her companion to the buggy. We all rushed to the windows to get a good view of the mysterious stranger and probable ex-brigand whose life was now ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... of course delighted with this attention of Reuben's, and made it the occasion of writing him a long letter, (and her letters were very rare, by reason of the elaboration she counted necessary,) in which she set forth the excellence of Adele's character, her "propriety of speech," her "lady-like deportment," her "cheerful observance of duty," and her "eminent moral worth," in such terms as stripped ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... within—such as the development of the ideas of offences arising from intention and from carelessness respectively, and of possession entitled to temporary protection—was not yet in existence at the time of the Twelve Tables, but was so in the age of Cicero, and probably owed its elaboration substantially to the present epoch. The reaction of political relations on the development of law has been already indicated on several occasions; it was not always advantageous. By the institution of the tribunal of the -Centumviri- to deal with inheritance,(38) for instance, there was introduced ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... door with some elaboration, and as she came nearer Karen recognized in her eyes the ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... ou De l'influence des opinions sur les moeurs et sur le bonheur des Hommes. Londres (Amsterdam), 1770, under name of Dumarsais. The book pretended to be an elaboration of Dumarsais' essay on the Philosophe published in the Nouvelles liberts de ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... vegetables and animals than the soil and manure out of which, and by the properties of which, they are raised up! The tendency of all recent speculation is towards the opinion that the development of inferior orders of existence into superior, the substitution of greater elaboration, and higher organisation for lower, is the general rule of nature. Whether this is so or not, there are at least in nature a multitude of facts bearing that character, and this is sufficient for ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... Can departments One and Two, can the facts of nature and the theoretic elaboration of them, ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... it—from the Baron—who says, get it, and read it. A Fleety Show, by W. H. POLLOCK. Those who remember The Green Lady and other Stories, will be delighted with this. A very quaint idea, which would have borne further elaboration. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... (Pamela was a maid-servant), and it won immediate and phenomenal popularity. In 1748 Clarissa Harlow, his masterpiece, was pub., and in 1753 Sir Charles Grandison, in which the author embodies his ideal of a Christian gentleman. All these surfer from an elaboration of detail which often becomes tedious; but in deep acquaintance with the motives of conduct, and especially of the workings of the female heart, they are almost unrivalled; their pathos also is genuine and deep. R. had an unusual faculty as the platonic friend and counsellor ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... proportion. He may distort an object to any extent or leave it as vague as the shadow on a wall in diffused light, or he may make it precise and particular as ever Jan Van Eyck did; so only that its distortion or elaboration is so proportioned to the other objects and intentions of his work as to promote its success in the ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... composers. Some of his latest compositions notably, were so very unconventional that they found no appreciation, even among musicians, until years after his death. Technically, his art of orchestration reached such a perfection of general unity and elaboration of detail that he must stand as the greatest instrumental composer of the nineteenth century. The profound subjective note that pervades his best compositions lifts his music above that of his greatest ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... through the back, mounting forest glades and coronals of precipice. Here, in the strong thorough-draught, Her Majesty received us in a simple gown of print, and with no mark of royalty but the exquisite finish of her tattooed mittens, the elaboration of her manners, and the gentle falsetto in which all the highly refined among Marquesan ladies (and Vaekehu above all others) delight to sing their language. An adopted daughter interpreted, while we gave the news, and rehearsed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... by the fine straight lines of Mary's satin dress, the roundness of her fine figure, the oval of her head and face, and then by the little, vibrating, tempestuous creature beside her, so distinguished, in spite of the billowing flounces and ribbons, so direct and significant, amid all the elaboration. ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... joy of imparting instruction to so interested a listener, Kirby launched forth into an elaboration of his theme; trying to expound something of the capital-and-labour situation to his follower; and secretly wondering at the keen zest wherewith ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... countries. It has been claimed before now by English and French writers alike, that it may have developed from the arts of the Moors of Spain, or that it may have grown up from a primitive style in vogue in the Far East. The comment is given without further elaboration; but here, at least, we see some basis for the claim that Gothic is but a transplanted flower after all, and that it developed so boldly only from the seed's having been blown hither from some other land, and finding a favourable soil in which ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... house with its front entrance, for the doorway is the dominant feature of the facade, the keynote so to speak. Truly utilitarian in purpose, and so lending itself more logically to elaboration for the sake of decorative effect, the doorway became the principal single feature of a Colonial exterior. When designed in complete accord with the house it lends distinction and charm to the building as ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... least from a human point of view. If man chooses to personify and body forth the powers of nature, he creates some monstrous uncouth figure, like the Assyrian and Egyptian idols; but if man makes a study of man, and brings genius and patient elaboration to bear on his work, there emerges the symmetry and perfect proportion of the Greek statue. No people ever made so much of the beauty of the human form as the ancient Greeks: they made it the object of a passion that marked their religion, their institutions, their literature, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... making a great mistake," declared Fairy earnestly. "I don't believe in big showy church weddings. You'd better change it yet. A little home affair with just the family,—that's the way to do it. All this satin-gown, orange-blossom elaboration with curious eyes staring up ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... and silver bas-reliefs of S. Jacopo at Pistoia, where, beside a large number of subjects, the half-length figure of St James, more than a braccia high, is much admired. It is in full relief, and finished with such elaboration, that it seems to have been cast rather than engraved. The figure is placed in the midst of the scenes of the altar table, about which runs a legend ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... of circumstances. There was Tom, manifesting extreme surprise (he had no presence of mind, that Tom, on small occasions); there was John, making as light of it as he could, but explaining at the same time with most unnecessary elaboration; and here was she, coming towards them, with both of them looking at her, conscious of blushing to a terrible extent, but trying to throw up her eyebrows carelessly, and pout her rosy lips, as if she were the coolest and ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... centuries men had written on the "Art of War," but for want of a working theory their labours as a whole had been unscientific, concerned for the most part with the discussion of passing fashions and the elaboration of platitudes. Much good work it is true was done on details, but no broad outlook had been obtained to enable us to determine their relation to the fundamental constants of the subject. No standpoint had been found from ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... still flowing forward. They are like tones of music, commencing and ending with the unpurposed breath that makes them. Nature is a vast congeries of mechanical substances pervaded by mindless forces of vitality. Consciousness is a production which results from the fermentation and elaboration of unconscious materials; and after a time it deceases, its conditions crumbling into their inorganic ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... glanced at her father, wrapped in the pleasant slumber that overtakes healthy, out-of-door men when they are forced for a time into unwonted quiescence, and at her brother, calm and self-satisfied, dressed with a correct elaboration that was only unobtrusive because it was so expensively perfect. The men of the family—everything was done to bring them honour and gratification. They had everything they wanted and did what they would. It was to them that tribute and obedience ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... Precisely the same elaboration of care, which all through his career was dedicated by Charles Dickens to the most delightful labour of his life, that of writing, was accorded by him to the lesser but still eminently intellectual toil of preparing his Readings ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... very few operations in which quickness of performance is a desideratum; the use of anaesthetics has, in most other cases, given time for elaboration of flaps, and careful dissection; here the risk of loss of blood, specially from the posterior flap, renders rapid ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... of his broom between the bars of the gate, and with his utmost power of elaboration, points it out. At length, looking aside to see if he has made himself intelligible, he finds that ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... to the date of 1832 as that of his invention, and, I claim, with perfect justice. While it required much thought and elaboration to bring it to perfection; while he used the published discoveries of others in order to make it operate over long distances; while others labored with him in order to produce a practical working apparatus, and to force its recognition on a skeptical world, ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... of the book, consisting of nearly five hundred pages of "verse" by Mr. Wait, is an ingenious elaboration of the principles and forms of this order, especially as it is found held in the Hebraic Roots, throughout the incomparable system of divine revelation. But, indisputably, the treatise would have been far more forcible ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... glory and pride; how his Phi Beta Kappa oration in 1824 and its apostrophe to Lafayette, who was present, is still the fond tradition of those who heard it; and how as he passed on from triumph to triumph in his art of oratory, the elegance, the skill, the floridity, the elaboration, the unfailing fitness and severe propriety of his art, with all its minor gifts, consoled Boston that it was not Athens or Rome, and had not ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... as she remembered afterwards, to find that the splendors of the house, the elaboration of service, now produced not the slightest impression upon her. She had grown out of her former girlish feeling of insignificance in the presence of powdered footmen and fashionable ladies' maids. The choice flowers, the silver plate, the dainty furniture and hangings, ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... generally embarrassed, although she was obviously enchanted with that gentleman, for whose benefit she was amazingly prodigal of nods and becks and wreathed smiles. It was a pity, he thought, that his mother was at moments so apparently elaborate. He felt her elaboration the more when it was contrasted with the transparent simplicity of Rosamund. Even Robin, he fancied, was at moments rather astonished by it, and perhaps pushed on towards a criticism at present beyond the range of his powers. But Mrs. Leith's complete self-possession, even when immersed in the intricacies ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... apples in the universe might have comforted me; I was wont to sigh like a leaky bellows; to weep like a wench that hath lost her grandam; to lard my speech with the fag-ends of ballads like a man milliner; and did, indeed, indite sonnets, canzonets, and what not of mine own elaboration. ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... society;—he was also in confidential communication with men eminent for wealth, station, and political repute, from whom he obtained the funds necessary for the darker purposes of conspiracy, into the elaboration of which they did not inquire; and these men, though belonging like himself to the Liberal party, were no hot-blooded democrats. Most of them were in favour of constitutional monarchy; all of them for forms of government very different from any republic in which socialists ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... while your continual course of practice is such as to ensure your retaining an accurate judgment and a tender touch. Speed, under such circumstances, is rather fatiguing than tempting; and you will find yourself always beguiled rather into elaboration than negligence. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... in silk and powder, perfectly in his element, and doing his part with eighteenth-century elaboration; Kathleen, tres grande-dame, almost too exquisitely real for counterfeit; Delancy Grandcourt, very red in the face under his mask, wig slightly awry, conscientiously behaving as nearly like a masked gentleman of the period as he knew how; his sister Naida, ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... and a comedy. In the comedies she failed completely; they are pointless tales in dialogue. Her tragedies, however, have great merit, though possessing a singular quality for works of such an aim, in being without the earnestness and abruptness of actual and powerful feeling. By refinement and elaboration she makes the passions sentiments. She fears to distract attention by multiplying incidents; her catastrophes are approached by the most gentle gradations; her dramas are therefore slow in action and deficient in interest. Her characters ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... other at hourly intervals, as beyond that time no one could endure the fatigue. At last, by the fourth proof-sheet, the author too was wearied out, though not contented. "I work ten hours out of the twenty-four," said he, "over the elaboration of my unhappy style, and I am never satisfied, myself, when ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... would be associated with disadvantages too. Long periods of time would have to be given for comparatively small results. The history of science is full of instances in which years were spent in the elaboration of some law, or principle, or theory which the school boy of to-day learns in an hour and recites in a breath. Why does water rise in a pump? Do all bodies, large and small, fall equally fast? The principles which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... the senses (evolution), during which the special adaptations of their motor reactions are gradually developed, is a necessary prerequisite to the formation and elaboration of conscious volition.[29] In the foregoing pages I have very briefly discussed this cultivation of the senses and the development of their motor reactions. I have likewise outlined the origin of volition from sensual perceptions; it now becomes ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... walls, and of green for the mangers; a yellow blur for the mote-filled rays of sunshine streaming through the cows' white-curtained windows, and on the flower-pots adorning their window-sills; a trifle more elaboration for the carpet of sawdust stamped with an ornamental pattern, and the quaint design of the cupboard-beds for the stablemen in the wall opposite; a streak here and there for the cords which loop the cows' tails to nails in the ceiling; gorgeous spots of crimson and ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... now beneath a starry sky, anon by moonlight, and causing him to absorb from every thing all homogeneous to his nature; and thus "Childe Harold" came to light. When Lord Byron took his pen, the mechanical part of the work alone remained to be done. The elaboration and meditation of it had taken place almost unknown to himself, so that his conceptions remained latent, and took their shape by degrees in his brain, before being fixed in his writings. He penned "Childe Harold" at Janina and Athens; but it was on the vessel's deck, in that ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... implicitly. Also, there is nothing that could possibly be called whimsical, nothing critical or self-critical, about him. Bonnard, on the other hand, must be one of the most painstaking artists alive. He comes at beauty by tortuous ways, artful devices, and elaboration. He allows his vision to dawn on you by degrees: no one ever guesses at first sight how serious, how deliberately worked ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... properties.... Again, Professor Thorndike has shown that Roman subjects grew popular, and tragedies of revenge such as Marston's; a little later, Shakspere wrote 'Julius Caesar' and 'Hamlet.' With much more elaboration Professor Thorndike has virtually proved that the romances of Beaumont and Fletcher—different both in motive and in style from any popular plays which had preceded them—were conspicuously successful on the London stage before Shakspere began to write romances. It seems likely, therefore, ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... design and brilliancy of color, and whose genuine merit has survived all vicissitudes of changing taste. He has here a superb Last Supper and a spirited series of pictures illustrating the martyrdom of Stephen. There is perhaps a little too much elaboration of detail, even for the Romans. Stephen's robes are unnecessarily new, and the ground where he is stoned is profusely covered with convenient round missiles the size of Vienna rolls, so exactly suited to the purpose that it looks as if Providence sided with the persecutors. But what a wonderful ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... delay attending this process was over and the handcuffs fell to the ground, the paper rose once more in front of the face of Justice Hide, and Justice Millet continued his charge. He defined the nature and crime of treason with elaboration and circumlocution. He quoted the ancient statute wherein the people, speaking of themselves, say that they recognize no superior under God but only the King's grace. "I do no speak my own words," he said, "but the words of the law, and I ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine |
