"Facility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... like all others, possess many amiable qualities, and are remarkable for the facility with which they learn several amusing tricks, and for their extraordinary sagacity. This latter quality has frequently made them a great source of profit to their masters, so that it may be said of them, "c'est encore une des plus profitables manieres ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... favourite personages reappear one by one in larger proportions, but without losing that original grace and sentiment with which his smaller works are imbued. Indeed these show that he had studied from the life with independence and sincerity of purpose, and could render it with greater facility and decision. ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... afforded every facility to a seaman to get rid of his hard-earned gains. In a few weeks I had but a few shillings left. I had not the satisfaction of feeling that I had done any good with it. How it all went I don't know. I believe that ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... of his love for the subject-matter of his poem, and the facility, surprising even to himself, with which he spun his rhymes, Byron could not persuade himself that a succession of fragments would sort themselves and grow into a complete and connected whole. If his thrice-repeated depreciation of the Giaour is not entirely genuine, it is plain that he misdoubted ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... nitrogen by weight; and (B) any mixture containing a percentage of ammonium nitrate that is equal to or greater than the percentage determined by the Secretary under section 899B(b). (2) Ammonium nitrate facility.—The term "ammonium nitrate facility'' means any entity that produces, sells or otherwise transfers ownership of, or provides application services for ammonium nitrate. (3) Ammonium nitrate purchaser.—The term "ammonium nitrate purchaser'' means any ...
— Homeland Security Act of 2002 - Updated Through October 14, 2008 • Committee on Homeland Security, U.S. House of Representatives
... closet of good old English reading, and browsed at will on that fair and wholesome pasturage." This, however, could not have lasted long, for it was the destiny of Charles Lamb to be compelled to labor almost from, his boyhood. He was able to read Greek, and had acquired great facility in Latin composition, when he left the Hospital; but an unconquerable impediment in his speech deprived him of an "exhibition" in the school, and, as a consequence, of the benefit ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... into the house every night did not afford me the facility I wished. For I wanted to see Lady Alice during the day, or at least in the evening before she went to sleep; as otherwise I could not thoroughly judge of her condition. So I got Wood to pack up a small stock of provisions ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... Talking is natural, writing is artificial; to speak is instinctive, to write is an art of difficult attainment. In the first place, a child must be taught to form strange characters with his hand. After he acquires facility in that, he must think, put this thoughts into words in his mind, and then laboriously transfer his words, letter by letter, to the paper before him. Many a child who talks well cannot write a respectable letter. His thoughts outrun his hand, and by the time the first labored sentence is written ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... other hand, a library be regarded as a Museum—and I use the word in its original sense as a temple or haunt of the Muses—very different ideas are evoked. Such a place is as useful as the other—every facility for study is given—but what I may call the personal element as affecting the treasures there assembled is brought prominently forward. The development of printing, as the result of individual effort; the art of bookbinding, as practised by different persons in different countries; ...
— Libraries in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods - The Rede Lecture Delivered June 13, 1894 • J. W. Clark
... long stay at Genoa. In such a palace—where the travellers hired twenty gilded rooms for the most insignificant sum—a remarkably fine boy came into the world. Nothing could have been more successful and comfortable than this transaction. Mrs. Portico was almost appalled at the facility and felicity of it. She was by this time in a pretty bad way, and—what had never happened to her before in her life—she suffered from chronic depression of spirits. She hated to have to lie, and now she was lying all the time. Everything she wrote ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... stimulus, his treatise shows a deplorable falling off from the standard set a hundred years before in Fux's Gradus ad Panassum with its delightful dialogues between master and pupil and its continual appeal to artistic experience. Whatever may have been Cherubini's success in imparting facility and certainty to his light-hearted pupils who established 19th-century French opera as a refuge from the terrors of serious art, there can be no doubt that his career as a teacher did more harm than good. In it the punishment drill of an incompetent schoolmaster ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... compliments of the crowd—"What a glaring thing!" "I declare I can't look at it!" "Don't it hurt your eyes?"—expressed as if they were in the constant habit of looking the sun full in the face, with the most perfect comfort and entire facility of vision. It is curious after hearing people malign some of Turner's noble passages of light, to pass to some really ungrammatical and false picture of the old masters, in which we have color given without light. ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... a pity that in concluding the review of an expedition, fraught with so much benefit to the colony, and carried out with so much courage, hardihood, and facility of resource, that it cannot also be said, and marked with the same cheerful spirit that pervaded those of Oxley's, but unfortunately, the evil feeling of jealously that would arise from the presence of two leaders, showed plainly throughout in petty and undignified squabbles, which, in after ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... he sent an army into Kent, commanded by Ethelwolf, his eldest son [k], and expelling Baldred, the tributary king, soon made himself master of that country. The kingdom of Essex was conquered with equal facility, and the East Angles, from their hatred to the Mercian government, which had been established over them by treachery and violence, and probably exercised with tyranny, immediately rose in arms, and craved the ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... wish to influence an individual, they have but to turn to this book, and they know immediately his life, his character, his parts, his faults, his projects, his family, his friends, his most sacred ties. Conceive, what a superior facility of action this immense police-register, which includes the whole world, must give to any one society! It is not lightly that I speak of these registers; I have my facts from a person who has seen this collection, and who is perfectly well acquainted with the Jesuits. Here then, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... they pay no rent or taxes to the State, the principal objection to them lies in the mode of operation, and an overstrained recommendation of their goods, which are always, according to their account, of the most superior quality; and they have a peculiar facility of discovering the novice or the silly, to whom walking up with a serious countenance and interesting air, they broach the pleasing intelligence, that they have on sale an excellent article well worth their attention, giving a caution at the same time, that honour and secrecy must be implicitly ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... with what facility they build these occasional places of abode. I have seen above twenty of them erected on a spot of ground, that, not an hour before, was covered with shrubs and plants. They generally bring some part of the materials with them; the rest they find upon ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... bewildering the child with a multitude of vain words of which it understands nothing but her tone of voice. I would have the first words he hears few in number, distinctly and often repeated, while the words themselves should be related to things which can first be shown to the child. That fatal facility in the use of words we do not understand begins earlier than we think. In the schoolroom the scholar listens to the verbiage of his master as he listened in the cradle to the babble of his nurse. ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... steam 110 deg. C.; juice steam 100 deg. C. Second evaporator: juice steam 83 deg. C. Third evaporator: juice steam 62 deg. C. As regards facility of operating the apparatus, the experiment has proved so conclusive that the plant will be considerably enlarged in view of the coming crop, in order that a larger quantity of juice may be treated by the new process. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... bestowed upon Lady Mary Wortley Montagu instead of the Lady Elizabeth Hastings. We might mention other thwarted attempts, which give much the same jar to our sensibilities as when some one thinks to afford us pleasure by singing a favorite air out of tune. The facility with which the characters are transported from the ends of the earth to meet at a place called Plum Island surpasses any trick in legerdemain. Unless we had read it here we should never have believed that life on the coast of Maine could be so exciting, so cosmopolitan in its scope, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... into this circle all that possessed life and youth, was the wife. Beautiful one could by no means call her, but, enchanted by her natural loveliness, her mind, and her unaffectedness, you forgot this in a few moments. A rare facility in appreciating the comic of every-day life, and a good-humored originality in its representation, always afforded her rich material for conversation. It was as if Nature, in a moment of thoughtlessness, ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... all our despatches ought to be thoroughly considered, but that Her Majesty should give every facility to the transaction of business by attending to the drafts as soon as ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... employment, no doubt materially tended to his improvement in the manipulation of his art; for whatever may be the native force of talent, it is impossible that the possessor can attain excellence by any other means than practice. Facility to express the conceptions of the mind must be acquired before the pen or the pencil can embody them appropriately, and the author who does not execute much, however little he may exhibit, can never expect to do justice to the truth and beauty of his own ideas. West ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... Malta did not confine their achievements to structures above ground, they could also work with equal facility below. In the village of Casal Paula, which lies about a mile from the head of the Grand Harbour of Valletta, is a wonderful complex of subterranean chambers known as the Hypogeum of Halsaflieni, which may justly be considered as one of the ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... was Lapchev and who was Minister of War. Until 1868 there was at Resan only a Greek school, so that the elder brother's education left him merely a Macedonian Slav, who could have become with equal facility a Serb or a Bulgar; the younger brother had the advantage of a Bulgarian school, but the disadvantage of having his Slav nationality narrowed down into that of Bulgaria. These two brothers should set an example, renounce the name of Serb and Bulgar, and call themselves simply Yugoslav. ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... a rhythm heard has become relatively easy, the pupil is taught to concentrate, by listening to, and forming a mental image of, a fresh rhythm while still performing the old one. In this manner he obtains facility in rendering automatic, groups of movements rhythmically arranged, and in keeping the mind free to take a fresh impression which in its turn ...
— The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze • Emile Jaques-Dalcroze
... large for a half-rigged brig of only two hundred tons, but, as her spars were very square, and all her gear as well as her mould seemed constructed for speed, it was probable more hands than common were necessary to work her with facility and expedition. After all, there were not many persons to be enumerated among the "people of the Molly Swash," as they called themselves; not more than a dozen, including those aft, as well as those forward. A peculiar feature of this crew, ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... more expected to see a Radical come into the world from a good family than a radish. But I discern you, my dear boy. Our reigning Families must now be active; they require the discipline I have undergone; and I also dine at aldermen's tables, and lay a foundation-stone—as Jorian says—with the facility of a hen-mother: that should not suffice them. 'Tis not sufficient for me. I lay my stone, eat my dinner, make my complimentary speech—and that is all that is expected of us; but I am fully aware we should do more. We must lead, or we are lost. Ay, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... gathered his knowledge from books, is unlearned and unskilled. But this is not the case with intellects prompt and expert in every branch of knowledge and suitable for the consideration of natural objects, as it is necessary that our Hoh should be. Besides in our State the sciences are taught with a facility (as you have seen) by which more scholars are turned out by us in one year than by you in ten, or even fifteen. Make trial, I pray you, ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... was just an ordinary family; two or three of the children were handsome and the rest plain, three of them rather clever, two industrious, and two commonplace and dull. Rebecca had her father's facility and had been his aptest pupil. She "carried" the alto by ear, danced without being taught, played the melodeon without knowing the notes. Her love of books she inherited chiefly from her mother, who found it hard to sweep or cook or sew when there was a novel in the ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... virtues thus predominated over his talents. The most remarkable foible of the late King was his passion for speechifying, and I have recorded some of his curious exhibitions in this way. He had considerable facility in expressing himself, but what he said was generally useless or improper. He never received the homage of a Bishop without giving him a lecture; and the custom he introduced of giving toasts and making speeches at all his dinners was more suitable to a tavern than to a palace. ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... the door, but it was as dark within as without. Esperance heard the door close; he spoke, but there was no answer. He stretched out his arms and felt the wall, and instantly his eyes regained their peculiar facility of sight. He was alone in a small, square room without door or window. He uttered a cry ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... looking toward the novel-writer. But now we learn that from the age of fifteen to twenty-six Anthony kept a journal, which, he says, "convicted me of folly, ignorance, indiscretion, idleness, and conceit, but habituated me to the rapid use of pen and ink, and taught me how to express myself with facility." In addition to this, and more to the purpose, he had formed an odd habit. Living, as he was forced to do, so much to himself, if not by himself, he had to play, not with other boys, but with himself; and his favorite play was ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... book to those, who, without aiming to become professional gardeners, wish, nevertheless, to acquire so much of the art of Gardening as shall enable them to conduct its more common and essential operations with facility ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... engaged in the ordinary pursuits of business, whose attention had not been particularly drawn to the subject, to foresee all the consequences of a currency exclusively of paper, and we ought not on that account to be surprised at the facility with which laws were obtained to carry into effect the paper system. Honest and even enlightened men are sometimes misled by the specious and plausible statements of the designing. But experience has now ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... second table, with a percolator on it, at which Arthur, who was a light sleeper and willingly an early riser, might indulge his knack for coffee-making to the advantage of them both. And Arthur had the same blessed facility with toast. ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... — N. skill, skillfulness, address; dexterity, dexterousness; adroitness, expertness &c. adj.; proficiency, competence, technical competence, craft, callidity[obs3], facility, knack, trick, sleight; mastery, mastership, excellence, panurgy[obs3]; ambidexterity, ambidextrousness[obs3]; sleight of hand &c. (deception) 545. seamanship, airmanship, marksmanship, horsemanship; rope-dancing. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... summer days were simply perfect. His morning hours were devoted to his literary work, and the essays were taking shape and form under his hand. Never had his brain been clearer; he worked with a facility that surprised himself. "I am inspired," he would whisper; "I have a patron saint of my own now," and he would tell himself that no name could be so sweet to him as Elizabeth. He would murmur it ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... in January. It is here necessary to observe, that this is the most preferable season for those which are not required so very early; as the increasing temperature of the weather in the course of their growth, affords facility for their being matured with a greater degree ...
— The art of promoting the growth of the cucumber and melon • Thomas Watkins
... or a part for the whole."—Ib., 215. "Apostrophe is turning off from the regular course of the subject to address some person or thing."—Ib., 215. "Even young pupils will perform such exercises with surprising interest and facility, and will unconsciously gain, in a little time, more knowledge of the structure of Language than he can acquire by a drilling of several years in the usual routine of parsing."—Ib., Preface, p. iv. "A ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... that is, in learning something that has a proper interest, there is greater ease and pleasure in the acquisition, and occupation with the object satisfies an inner need. "When interest has been fully developed, it must always combine pleasure, facility, and the satisfaction of a need. We see again that in all exertions, power and pleasure are secured to interest. It does not feel the burden of difficulties but often seems ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... one so fancy-free as Herrick; to whom the curb, in the old phrase, was more needful than the spur, and whose invention, more fertile and varied than Jonson's, was ready at once to fill up the moulds of form provided. He does this with a lively facility, contrasting much with the evidence of labour in his master's work. Slowness and deliberation are the last qualities suggested by Herrick. Yet it may be doubted whether the volatile ease, the effortless grace, the wild bird-like ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... dropped. It was the preconcerted signal, and as the fatal gun boomed out in response to it he thrust his hands into his pockets with great rapidity and jumped into mid-air, meeting his death without a tremor and with scarce a convulsion. Thanks to the clearness of the atmosphere and the facility with which the semaphores did their work that morning, the Admiralty learnt the news within seven minutes. [Footnote: Trial and Life of Richard Parker, Manchester, 1797.] Now comes the woman's part in the drama on which the curtain rose with the pressing of Parker ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... inches. To handle modern battleships and the increasing size of cargo steamers, both depth and width are to be increased. Having no sharp curvatures, and excavated at a level from sea to sea, ships proceed by night assisted by electric lights with the same facility as by day. The time consumed in transit is from fourteen to eighteen hours. Not for a decade has a sailing vessel used the canal, and the widest craft ever traversing the canal was the dry-dock Dewey, sent under tow by the government ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... that have what is called prehensile tails; that is, tails by which they can hang themselves to the limb of a tree, and which they use with nearly as much ease as they can their hands. The facility which this affords them for moving about quickly among the branches of trees is astonishing. The firmness of the grasp which it makes is very surprising; for if it winds a single coil around a branch, it is quite sufficient, not only to support its weight, but to ...
— Minnie's Pet Monkey • Madeline Leslie
... his slipper with astonishing facility and splendor, but I have been a long time pulling through with mine. You see, it was my very first attempt at art, and I couldn't rightly get the hang of it along at first. And then I was so busy that I couldn't get a chance to work at it at home, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... between the separate States, at least for the purposes of foreign intercourse. Our minister has been instructed to use his good offices, whenever they shall be desired, to produce the reunion so much to be wished for, the domestic tranquillity of the parties, and the security and facility of foreign commerce. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... of law, and pursued it with marked constancy and success. While at the university he also took up the German and French languages and mastered them, and he perfected his scholarship in Latin and Greek. Until his death he read all these languages with great facility and accuracy, and he always kept his Greek Testament lying on ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... times with that facility which some foreigners acquire, but always smiled in a self-satisfied way when he had employed a ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... modern life, with its boldness, its freedom, its love of improvement, its love of truth. It is no common grasp which can embrace both so easily and so firmly. He is one of those writers whose strong hold on their ideas is shown by the facility with which they can afford to make large admissions, which are at first sight startling. Nowhere are more tremendous passages written than in this book about the corruptions of that Christianity which yet the ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... of his theories was working. For it must be remembered that L—— was very new to New York, very young, and never having had much of anything he was no doubt slightly envious of the man's material facility, the sense of all-sufficiency, exclusiveness and even a kind of petty trade grandeur with which he ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... to say, that if the works of the four artists above mentioned show one thing more clearly than another, it is that neither power over line, nor knowledge of form, nor fine sense of colour, nor facility of invention, nor any of the marvellous gifts which three out of the four undoubtedly possessed, will make any man's work live permanently in our affections unless it is rooted in sincerity of faith and in love towards God and man. More briefly, it is [Greek text which ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... periodically and followed by long periods of rest, produce continued stability for the development and migration of forms of life, the grading of rivers, the development of varied characteristic land forms, the migration and settlement of human beings, the facility or difficulty of intelligent intercourse between races and communities, with finally the commercial interchange of those commodities produced by varying climatic conditions upon different parts of the continental surface; in short, for those geographical ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... any internal concretion that may impair its transparency; and the construction of the sockets in which the tube is inserted should be such, that, even when there is steam in the boiler, a broken tube may be replaced with facility. ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... method. The aspirants stood in a long line, en cue, as we are told by Carlyle that the bread-seekers used to approach the bakers' shops at Paris during the Revolution. This "cue" would sometimes project out into the street. The work inside was done very slowly. The clerk had no facility, by use of a desk or otherwise, for running through the letters under the initials denominated, but turned letter by letter through his hand. To one questioner out of ten would a letter be given. It no doubt may be said in excuse for this that the presence of the army round Washington caused, at ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... a general community benefit derived from the construction of good roads in that the actual cost of marketing farm products is lessened with a resulting lowering of the price to the consumer. The benefit also accrues from the greater facility with which all community business may be conducted. The introduction of better opportunities for social, religious and educational activities in the rural districts which results from improved highways is also a community benefit of no mean importance. A part of the cost of road improvement ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg
... insensible growth in families, which trammel nearly every mind in densely peopled countries, and more especially in places where commerce is languidly carried on. Perhaps also in some measure it may be owing to the greater facility the poorer classes have in all colonies of earning a livelihood, which, by freeing their minds from anxiety on that score, leaves some room for their ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... to find that in Scripture, genius as displayed in literary insight and facility, in ingenuity and inventiveness as to the various arts, and even in the conception of instruments of husbandry, is attributed to Divine inspiration. It may not be the same order of inspiration by which "men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Ghost"; ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... her promise. She took a private opportunity, when she was alone with Darius, to propose that he should engage in some plans of foreign conquest. She reminded him of the vastness of the military power which was at his disposal, and of the facility with which, by means of it, he might extend his dominions. She extolled, too, his genius and energy, and endeavored to inspire in his mind some ambitious desires to distinguish himself in the estimation of mankind by bringing his capacities ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... with large families. To meet this and other difficulties that may arise, I recommend that at least five thousand acres of land be confiscated in every parish, and an opportunity given the freedmen to rent or purchase the land, and that every facility be afforded planters in the lower part of the State to obtain laborers from western Louisiana. Another remedy has been suggested, and as it meets with my approval I quote the recommendations of the officer in his own words: "Let ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... contemporaries. (See Letters and Life, i. 268.) Raleigh and Jonson have both recorded their opinions of it, but no one has characterized it more happily than his friend, Sir Tobie Matthews, "A man so rare in knowledge, of so many several kinds, endued with the facility and felicity of expressing it all in so elegant, significant, so abundant, and yet so choice and ravishing a way of words, of metaphors, of allusions, as perhaps the world hath not seen since it was a world."—"Address to the Reader" ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... DEVIL can convey himself to the Ear of a sleeping Person, and it is granted then that he may have Power to make us dream what he pleases: But this is not all, for if he can so forcibly, by his invisible Application, cause us to dream, what he pleases, why can he not with the same Facility prompt our Thoughts, whether sleeping or waking? To dream, is nothing else but to think sleeping; and we have abundance of deep-headed Gentlemen among us, who give us ample Testimony that they ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... greater measure by the gradual and awkward method of shifting and ever freer divorce laws. The slow disintegration of State-regulated marriage from the latter cause may be observed now throughout the United States, where there is, on the whole, a developing tendency to frequency and facility of divorce. It is clear, however, that on this line marriage will not cease to be a concern to the State, and it may be as well to point out at once the important distinction between State-regulated and ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... sufficiently beforehand with Sarah, whenever subjects went deep or far. If she pronounced like a native, and knew what was idiomatic, Sarah, with her clumsy pronunciation, had further insight into grammar, and asked perplexing questions; if she played admirably and with facility, Sarah could puzzle her with the science of music; if her drawing were ever so effective and graceful, Sarah's less sightly productions had correct details that put hers to shame, and, for mere honesty's sake, and to keep up her dignity, she was obliged to work ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... any deficiency in this regard, or in the matter of the stranger's features, which, while not unpleasing, leaned toward the broad mulatto type, was more than compensated in her eyes by very straight black hair, and, as soon appeared, a great facility of complimentary speech. On his introduction Mr. Wain bowed low, assumed an air of great admiration, and expressed his extreme delight in making the acquaintance of so ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... subject. The great practical mischief, however, resulting from their admission under our present form of government, is that the towns and populous villages gain an unfair advantage over the country, by the greater facility they enjoy over the latter in drawing out their women to the elections. Many important election contests have been terminated at last by these auxiliaries in favor of candidates supported ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory; a tale in verse on the Conquest of Ireland, with the title 'Dermot MacMorrogh'; an account of Travels in Silesia; and a volume of 'Poems of Religion and Society.' He had some facility in rhyme, but his judgment was not at fault in informing him that he was not a poet. Mr. Morse says that "No man can have been more utterly void of a sense of humor or an appreciation of wit"; and yet he very fairly anticipated Holmes in his poem on 'The Wants of Man,' and hits rather neatly ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... yourself? I wish very much you'd play something for me; papa has the idea that I should hear good music. Madame Merle has played for me several times; that's what I like best about Madame Merle; she has great facility. I shall never have facility. And I've no voice—just a small sound like the squeak ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... if a letter is expected to pull business through the mails it must place before the recipient every facility for making it easy and agreeable to reply and reply NOW. How this can best be done will be taken up more fully in a separate chapter on "Making It Easy ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... is modelled, whilst the former is flat. This was the form given to the Violono by Gasparo da Salo, and which has been changed in the upper portion of the body of the instrument, to permit of modern passages being executed with greater facility. The original finger-board was short, and generally fretted. The number of strings was five or more, and not as we now string them with three or four. It will be seen that this form of instrument gives us what Mr. Charles Reade describes as the invention of Italy, namely "the four corners."[20] ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... of dividing this long-continued dialogue into chapters, for the greater facility of reference, and as periods in the history, where the reader may conveniently rest in his progress through this deeply ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... pressing physical wants. Again, our numerous religious sects requiring each a nursery of its own children, and the great extent of our country, have called, or seemed to call (in spite of continually increasing facility of intercourse) for some one hundred and twenty colleges within our borders. Add to this a demand not peculiar but general—the increased claim of the sciences and of modern languages upon our regard—and the accompanying ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... low fellow like that..." and here Kenrick lost some words, for, as they passed, Jones lowered his voice; but he heard, only too plainly, the words "father" and "dishonest parson"—the rest he could supply with fatal facility. ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... favorable accompaniment of this first thoughtful effort to reach home. The valley-like depression that had caught his eye upon rising ran precisely in the direction to be desired—due east and west—so that he had the best facility in the world for getting through the mountains. Still another favorable augury was that the general direction pursued by the Apaches was the same, and the fact was, there was very little still intervening between him and the open prairie beyond. Should his progress remain uninterrupted through ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... animal behavior experimentally is at the foundation of much that we know of human psychology and the grounds of human behavior. Even in an elementary class it is quite possible so to study animal responses and the results of response as to give guidance and facility to the individual in interpreting the efficiency of his own responses, and in adding to his own controls. As has been said, practice of some kind is necessary to determine whether our estimate of values is good. Even vicarious ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... doctrine) do not differ much from the conclusions of our Aryan philosophy, though our mode of stating the arguments may differ in form. I shall now discuss the question from my own standpoint, though, following, for facility of comparison and convenience of discussion, the sequence of classification of the sevenfold entities or principles constituting man which is adopted in the "Fragments." The questions raised for discussion are (1) ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... had much to do with his frequent visits to Cressingham. Mrs Dorothy Jennings quickly noticed that Mr Welles was quite clever enough to discover what pleased different persons, and to adapt himself accordingly with surprising facility; and she soon perceived that the attraction was Rhoda, or rather Rhoda's prospects as the understood heiress of White-Ladies. Mr Welles accommodated himself skilfully to the prejudices of Madam; his ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... death," Satan repeated, "and he who plays upon it dies at once. But," he added cheerfully, "that need not worry you. I noticed a marvelous facility in your arm work. Your staccato and spiccato are wonderful. Every form of bowing appears child's play to you. It will be easy for you to ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... whether the Government was taking any steps to prevent the destruction of British property and received from Layard an evasive reply. Merely a "confident hope" had been expressed to the United States that "every facility will be given" to British subjects to prove ownership of property[1307]. Evidently the Government was not eager to raise irritating questions at a moment when all eyes were strained to observe the concluding events of ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... Another purpose is, on all light soils, to place the soil close around the seeds after they have been covered. When this is not done, seeds will vegetate very unevenly, and, in dry weather, some of them not at all. Another advantage of rolling a field-crop is the greater facility and economy with which it can be harvested. It makes a level, smooth surface, sinking small stones out of the way of the scythe or reaper. Rolling makes grass-seed catch, when sown with a spring-crop. All beds of small seeds—as onions, beets, carrots, parsnips, &c.—should ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... of the day had passed, and time hung heavy on my hands. I ought, perhaps, to blush at recollecting what has been often objected to me by the dear friend to whom this letter is addressed, viz. the facility with which I have, in moments of indolence, suffered my motions to be, directed by any person who chanced to be near me, instead of taking the labour of thinking or deciding for myself. I had employed for some time, as a sort of guide ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... third proposition. So long as we get most of the men of exceptional mental gifts in the community under the best conditions for their work, it scarcely matters if, for each one of them, we get four or five shams or mere respectabilities upon our hands. Respectabilities and shams have a fatal facility for living on the community anyhow, and there is no more reason in not doing these things on their account than there would be in burning a house down to get rid of cockroaches and rats. The rat poison of sound criticism—to ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... by a new ambition, and set himself to imitate one of Juvenal's Satires. Encouraged by his unexpected facility, he projected and composed an original poem. Its success, when published, surpassed that of any work previously written in the Danish language. Judicious critics heartily commended it, and some even looked upon it as introducing a new era in the national literature. It was also published in ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... regulate the variations of sound are (a) double or differing analogies, which lead sometimes to one form, sometimes to another (b) euphony, by which is meant chiefly the greater pleasure to the ear and the greater facility to the organs of speech which is given by a new formation or pronunciation of a word (c) the necessity of finding new expressions for new classes or processes of things. We are told that changes of sound take place ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... uneasiness when he thought of this, and would gladly have shared the perils if he could have shared the convictions of those who had striven to make him their friend. Cuthbert was a little in advance of his times in the facility with which he set aside matters of opinion in the choosing of his friends. Those were days in which men were seldom able to do this. They still divided themselves into opposing camps, and hated not only the opinions embraced by their ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... in a book as having 'a great facility' for illusions, a blind benevolence of judgment, a tenderness of heart ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... old Manning family mansion; and she remembered no son, though a vague image came back to her of a strong and graceful boy's form dancing across the garden, at play, years before. Her mind therefore fastened upon one of the sisters, who, she knew, had shown great facility in writing: indeed, Hawthorne used at one time to say that it was she who should have been the follower of literature. Full of this conception, she went to carry her burden of gratitude to the author, and after delays and difficulties, made her way into the retired and little-visited ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... text of this work are only reproductions of this chart affected by such or such a particular organ. A knowledge of this criterion gives to our studies not only simplicity, clearness and facility, but also mathematical precision. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... the most surprising things in the history of American art is the facility with which men of all trades turned to portrait painting, apparently as a last resort, and managed to make a living at it. During the first half of the last century, the country seems to have been overrun ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... various ranges terminated upon them. The sun was setting when I left Mount Byng but I depended on one of our natives, Tommy Came-last, who was then with me, for finding our way to the camp; and who on such occasions could trace my steps backwards with wonderful facility by ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... Horse.—How to get supplied with a proper shoe, that will enable him to keep on his legs with equal facility on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... came in whenever he had a spare half-hour. He used to bring Archer Butler's sermons to read with us, and I well remember the pleasant talks that ensued. The two minds were drawn together by common tasks and habits of thought. Both had great facility in acquiring languages, and interest in all questions of philology. Both were also readers of German writers on Church history and of critical interpretation of the New Testament, and I think it was a help to the younger man to be able to discuss these and kindred subjects ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The free, expansive facility of the whole chest is the measure of the health, strength, grace and normal actions of a human being. It ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... having left Philadelphia at six in the morning. We have just terminated a second engagement there very successfully. If the roads and carriages are bad, and the land-traveling altogether detestable, the speed, facility, and convenience of the steamboats, by which one may really be conveyed from one end to another of this world of vast waters, are very admirable. Vast waters indeed they are! We came down the Delaware on Monday, and (open your Irish eyes!) sometimes ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... the auditorium and read out of a railroad tract, which undertook to show that a party that undertook to ride over a rival road, must do so because life was a burden to him, and facility, and comfort, and safety, and such things no object whatever. But still I was very lonely, and felt as if I was ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... into each helmet of a pair of small but powerful microphones of his own design, with the result that wearers of the dress could hear as distinctly as when they were in the open-air, and could converse together with perfect facility. Hence they were now able to discuss the difficulty that thus unexpectedly confronted them, and arrange a plan ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... next epic poet, left us the unfinished Faerie Queene, an allegorical epic which shows the influence of Ariosto and other Italian poets, and contains exquisitely beautiful passages descriptive of nature, etc. His allegorical plot affords every facility for the display of his graceful verse, and is outlined ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... his time. Can it have been that at this time "the Great Idea" first arose in his mind? It may well have been so. He was following assiduously the discussions relative to the western routes, and the facility of communication by the west, between Europe and Asia. His correspondence proves that he shared the opinion of Aristotle as to the relatively short distance separating the extreme shores of the old Continent. He wrote frequently to the most ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... prosperity is due to the liberality and excellent arrangements of the Canada Company, who have afforded every facility to their settlers in regard to the payments for their land: I particularly refer to their system of leasing, which affords the best chance ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... half contemptuous. Calf love, of course! And he had been a precious fool to write such things. Then, presently, the headlong passion of them began to affect him, to set his pulses swinging. He fell to wondering at his own bygone facility, his own powers of expression. How did he ever write such a style! He, who could hardly get through a note now without blots and labour. Self-pity grew upon him, and self-admiration. By heaven! How could ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with slavish obedience to him when he was all-powerful; but now that he was himself a slave, her submission had been transferred with perfect facility to the chief of the band who had ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... was the book already mentioned: he reviews nearly three hundred volumes of the historians and orators, the philosophers and theologians, the travellers and the writers of romance, and with an even facility 'abridges their narrative or doctrine and appreciates their ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... bludgeon blows rather than home thrusts. Of the lighter graces and social gifts he had scant store. Indeed, his private life displayed no redeeming feature. Everyone disliked him, but very many feared him, mainly, perhaps, because of his facility for intrigue, his power of bullying, and his great influence at Court. As we have seen, the conciliatory efforts of the monarch had hitherto averted a rupture between Pitt and Thurlow. But not even the favour of George III could render the crabbed ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... advise treatment in our Institution, where we have every facility in the way of electrical appliances and many other aids that can only be employed by the personal attention of a skillful physician. These aids are more fully described under the head of nervous exhaustion and a reference is also suggested to what we have to say under the heads ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... felt—and my conviction on the subject has led to some painful discussions between myself and some of my mahatma brothers—that the extreme facility with which I was enabled to perceive at a glance "the complex anatomy of the planetary system," and the rapid development of my "dormant sixth sense," was due mainly to the fact that I was nothing more nor less than what spiritualists call a highly sensitive medium. Meantime this premature ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... possibility of persevering, but perseverance itself. Wherefore the first man whom no man threatened, of his own free-will rebelling against a threatening God, forfeited so great a happiness and so great a facility of avoiding sin: whereas these, although the world rage against their constancy, have persevered ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... bent over the page eagerly, while Roy, in a low voice, read the facts about No. 131. He had been in jail twice, it seemed, his last term having expired, as Roy figured, some four months previous. He was noted for his suave manners and the facility with which ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... already written. His power in this respect has been often mentioned. He is understood to have said that, if he reads anything once, he can repeat it correctly; but if he has written it out, he can repeat it exactly and always. This unusual facility secures to all his addresses a completeness and finish which very few orators command. He can say exactly what he means, and nothing more, being never betrayed by confusion or sudden emotion to say, as so many speakers say, more than they ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... was nearing the Psalmist's age-term of man, he agreed to "collaborate." The Frenchman used to take the pen at midnight when returning from "social pleasures," and work till 4-5 a.m. As he had prodigious facility and spontaneity he finished his part of the task in two winters. Some of the tales in the suite, especially that of "Maugraby," are attributed wholly to his invention; and, as a rule, his aim and object were to diffuse his spiritual ideas and to write treatises ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... the Thames, in that day of ineffective police, sheltered many who either lived upon plunder, or sought abodes that proffered, at alarm, the facility of flight. Here, sauntering in twos or threes, or lazily reclined by the threshold of plaster huts, might be seen that refuse population which is the unholy offspring of civil war,—disbanded soldiers of either ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... These departments being governed according to the latest bibliographical methods are of merely supplemental value as reference. The Simplification and National Unification of Federal and State statutes has, of course, added greatly to the facility of this branch ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... eating, and their jovial freedom of demeanour, were really quite refreshing. Their dress was quite representative of Tibet, for the men wore a great variety of coats and hats, probably owing to the facility with which they obtained them, and no two individuals were dressed alike, though certain leading characteristics of dress were conserved in each case. One man wore a gaudy coat trimmed with leopard skin, another had a long grey woollen robe like a dressing-gown, ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... other languages, his testimonials in 1842 record that he reads French with facility, and has a fair knowledge of Latin. Thus he took the Suites a Buffon with him on the Rattlesnake as a reference book in zoology. As to Latin, he was not content with a knowledge of its use in natural science. Beyond the minimum knowledge needful to interpret, ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... of Spanish literature in popular ballads is partially explained by the facility with which such things were composed. The Spanish ballad, or romance, was a stanza (redondilla, roundel) of four eight-syllable lines with a prevailing trachaic movement—just the metre, in short, of "Locksley Hall." Only the second and fourth lines rimed, and the rime was merely assonant ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... intersected at right angles by others, which are known by the names of various trees; Mulberry (more commonly called Arch-street), Chesnut, and Walnut, appear the most fashionable: in each of these there is a theatre. This mode of distinguishing the streets is commodious to strangers, from the facility it gives of finding out whereabouts you are; if you ask for the United States Bank, you are told it is in Chesnut, between Third and Fourth, and as the streets are all divided from each other by equal ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... few months, and practise portrait-painting. At fifteen guineas a head, he got plenty of employment among his friends and relations, though he owns that his portraits were execrable; but as soon as he had obtained some facility in painting heads, he was anxious to return to town to finish his large picture. Mrs. Haydon was now in declining health, and desiring to consult a famous surgeon in London, she decided to travel thither with her son and daughter. ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... Danse Macabre as the most original, profound and essentially beautiful of all. It is free from certain lacks that one feels in other works, with all their charm,—a shallowness and almost frivolity; a facility of theme approaching ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... machinery connected therewith, and to measure the ventilating current. If the owner, lessee or agent so desires, he may accompany such committee or appoint two or more persons for that purpose. The owner, lessee or agent shall afford every necessary facility for making such inspection and measurement, but the committee shall not in any way interrupt or impede the work in the mine at the time of such inspection and measurement. Within ten days after the inspection and measurement, such committee ...
— Mining Laws of Ohio, 1921 • Anonymous
... their thought on their special belief they bring together sophistry, arguments, examples and so-called proof that gives them facility in arguing the case or expounding ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... most great creative epochs who, with peculiar facility, seem to embody the purpose of their age and to yield themselves as ready instruments to its design. When time is ripe they appear, and are able, with perfect ease, to carry out and give voice to the desires and tendencies which have ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... be a matter of great simplicity. Along the northern frontier, in the Carnic Alps, the situation is similar. There is only one pass across these mountains, and this the Austrians could block with the same facility and certainty with which they ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... and the frequent recourse to 'your honour's own pawnbroker,' so often and so honourably familiar to struggling genius. "The farces written by Mr Fielding," says Murphy"... were generally the production of two or three mornings, so great was his facility in writing"; and we have seen Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's assertion that much of his work would have been thrown into the fire had not his dinner gone with it. Of the struggles of these early years [7] (struggles never wholly remitted, for, to quote Lady Mary again, Fielding would ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... placed upon them, and criticism has been merciless. Is not every good institution subject to perversion at any time? We believe Dorner to be correct, and that Spener was the veritable successor of Luther and Melanchthon. A recent author, who has shown a singular facility in grouping historical periods and discovering their great significance, says: "Pietism went back from the cold faith of the seventeenth century to the living faith of the Reformation. But just because this return was vital and produced by the ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... things which troubled me most was your reference to modern criticism," she went on, recovering her facility. "I was brought up to believe that the Bible was true. The governess—Miss Standish, you know, such a fine type of Englishwoman—reads the children Bible stories every Sunday evening. They adore them, and little Wallis can ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the surface, for pumping wells; in the valley of Oil Creek the same stratum was reached at about half that depth. In all these wells, whether successful as oil wells or not, a strong body of salt water was obtained, that added greatly to the facility of separating the oil by its increased gravity. Hitherto the business had been pursued with advantage and profit to those who were engaged. The demand was steady and prices remunerative, and visions of untold wealth were looming up before the minds of thousands. Prospecting was extending far and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... and to dine with them when I had finished my inspection, that they might hear my opinion of the system. Accordingly I passed the whole day in going from cell to cell, and conversing with the prisoners. Every facility was given me, and no constraint whatever imposed upon any man's free speech. If I were to write you a letter of twenty sheets, I could not tell you this one day's work; so I will reserve it until that happy time when ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... indifference, however, that he must take pains to circumvent; it was also, not infrequently, his own; feeling that, since Odette had had every facility for seeing him, she seemed no longer to have very much to say to him when they did meet, he was afraid lest the manner—at once trivial, monotonous, and seemingly unalterable—which she now adopted when they were together should ultimately destroy in him that romantic hope, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... at that time permission to go out from prison occasionally on his parole. This will not surprise anyone acquainted with the ideas which prevailed at that period on the honour of a nobleman, even the greatest criminal. The marquis, profiting by this facility, took the page to see a child of about seven years of age, fair and with ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE COUNTESS DE SAINT-GERAN—1639 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... offer for our seaport towns, their utility toward supporting within our waters the authority of the laws, the promptness with which they will be manned by the seamen and militia of the place in the moment they are wanting, the facility of their assembling from different parts of the coast to any point where they are required in greater force than ordinary, the economy of their maintenance and preservation from decay when not in actual service, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... at the coronation of the Emperor and Empress of Austria, as King and Queen of Hungary. Through the courtesy of Mr. Motley, then Minister to Austria, he received from the Prime Minister of the empire every facility ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... The facility of discounting bills of exchange, it may be thought, indeed, gives the English merchants a conveniency equivalent to the cash accounts of the Scotch merchants. But the Scotch merchants, it must be remembered, can discount their bills of exchange as easily as the English merchants; ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith |
