"Generalize" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to generalize from the above to the effect, that, previously to the age of the early kings, proper names compounded with El were prevalent; and in the regal and prophetic age, those compounded with Jah; again, after the ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... and clear to the distant view which below on the plain a thousand things would come between to intercept. But there was some morbidness about it too. Disappointment in two or three instances where he had given his full confidence and been obliged to take it back had quickened him to generalize unfavourably upon human character, both in the mass and in individuals. And a restless dissatisfaction with himself and the world did not tend to a healthy view of things. Yet truth was at the bottom; truth ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... observer might-and often does-say that all bears are cowardly, all bucks are easily killed, or the reverse, according as the god of chance has treated him to one spectacle or the other. As well try to generalize on the human race-as is a certain ecclesiastical habit-that all men are vile or noble, dishonest or upright, wise ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... my own broken memories of moss {17} and this unbroken, though unfinished, gift of the noble labour of other people, the Flora Danica, I can generalize the idea of the precious little plant, for myself, and for ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... master; small and great expediencies and elaborations, permeated with the musty odour of old family medicines and old-wife wisdom; all of them grotesque and absurd in their form—because they address themselves to "all," because they generalize where generalization is not authorized; all of them speaking unconditionally, and taking themselves unconditionally; all of them flavoured not merely with one grain of salt, but rather endurable only, and ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... of her right to engage in a punitive expedition against Servia, guaranteed that she would do nothing to generalize the conflict by her assurances to Russia and to the world that there would be no annexation of Servian territory or annihilation of the Servian Kingdom. Whether these assurances were genuine or not is impossible of determination. We have no right to constitute ourselves ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... of the physical history of the universe, for in the present day these are too well understood to be contested, but likewise to prove how, without detriment to the stability of special studies, we may be enabled to generalize our ideas by concentrating them in one common focus, and thus arrive at a point of view from which all the organisms and forces of nature may be seen as one living active whole, animated by one sole impulse. ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... tales from which they had been derived, had been originally believed as true, and, having ceased to be thus received, had continued to be repeated, in a shape more or less altered, for mere amusement. If we may venture to affirm this and to generalize from such cases, this is the way in ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... if Tis-sa-ack himself were but one of the atoms in a grand organism where we could see only by monads at a time,—if he and the sun and the sea were but cells or organs of some one small being in the fenceless vivarium of the Universe? Let not the ephemeron that lights on a baby's hand generalize too rashly upon the non-growing of organisms! As we thought on these things, we bared our heads to the barer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... unsatisfactory. She repeated phrases of Mrs. Goopes's: "Advanced people," she said, with an air of great elucidation, "tend to GENERALIZE love. 'He prayeth best who loveth best—all things both great and small.' For my own part I go ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... are—the proneness to suppose in nature greater order and regularity than there actually is; the tendency to support a preconceived opinion by affirmative instances, neglecting all negative or opposed cases; and the tendency to generalize from few observations, or to give reality to mere abstractions, figments of the mind. Manifold errors also result from the weakness of the senses, which affords scope for mere conjecture; from the influence ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... head. "Men have changed. Nowadays they are all selfish and sordid. But—I shouldn't generalize, for I'm a ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... that this would be attributable to the peculiarity of his temperament, and that he had no call to generalize and go beyond that. But I will lend a hand to the public prosecutor in this perplexity. I will bring the charge against myself in a more telling form than he has been able to do. I will formulate it as the facts of the case require ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... joker. Some tinge of ethical knowledge should have withheld Max Muller from finding the grand distinctive mark of humanity in the power of speech. The merest theorist needs some range of reality for the framework of his theories, and the man of broad principles must have facts to generalize. Indeed, a good memory is the indispensable servant of large thought, and however deficient in certain directions, the great thinkers have had large stores. 'The best heads that have ever existed,' says an idealist,—'Pericles, ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... society, is there the least reason to accuse him of culpable misrepresentation of actual facts. He has selected the material most suited to his peculiar genius: we may complain of his principle of selection, and of his tendency to generalize. ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... reason for the belief that farmers' wives as a class look and dress like this, only that people love to generalize; to fit cases to their theory, they love to find ministers' sons wild; mothers-in-law disagreeable; women who believe in suffrage neglecting their children, and farmers' ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... to generalize about this, and develop a new and sincerer streak of socialism in his ideas. "The church has been very remiss," he said, as he and Lady Ella stared at the basement "breakfast room" of their twenty-seventh dismal possibility. "It should have insisted far more ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... subject ought to be possible. Ignorance is the best of law reformers. People are glad to discuss a question on general principles, when they have forgotten the special knowledge necessary for technical reasoning. But the present willingness to generalize is founded on more than merely negative grounds. The philosophical habit of the day, the frequency of legislation, and the ease with which the law may be changed to meet the opinions and wishes of the public, all make it natural and unavoidable that judges as well as others ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... in the mores. The tendency of the mores of a period to consistency has been noticed (sec. 5). No doubt this tendency is greatly strengthened when people are able to generalize "principles" from acts. This explains the modern belief that principles are causative. The passion for equality, the universal use of contract, and the sentiments of humanitarianism are informing elements in modern society. Whence did they come? Undoubtedly they ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... not admit that it should be the proximate end. The Expediency-Philosophy having concluded that happiness is a thing to be achieved, assumes that Morality has no other business than empirically to generalize the results of conduct, and to supply for the guidance of conduct nothing more than its ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... they are the expressions of that "yearning after the gods" which the earliest of poets discerned in the hearts of all men. Studied in this sense they are rich in teachings. Would we estimate the intellectual and aesthetic culture of a people, would we generalize the laws of progress, would we appreciate the sublimity of Christianity, and read the seals of its authenticity: the natural conceptions of divinity reveal them. No mythologies are so crude, therefore, none so barbarous, but deserve the attention of the philosophic ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... by the poet's work. But while the schools and fashions of criticism shift their ground and alter their verdicts as succeeding generations change in taste, the great poets continue as before to particularize and also to generalize, to be "romantic" and "classic" by turns, or even in the same poem. They defy critical augury, in their unending quest of beauty and truth. That they succeed, now and then, in giving a permanently lovely embodiment to their vision is surely a more important ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... with more of imagination than good sense, teach distinctions which do not exist, generalizations which do not generalize, and do incalculable mischief ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... English race has largely peopled, we can measure the amount of homesickness that would be engendered on the way. In fact, one doubts whether the sufferer would even need to be of English strain to attach the vision of home to the essentially lovable places that Mr. Parsons depicts. They seem to generalize and typify the idea, so that every one may feel, in every case, that he has a sentimental property in the scene. The very sweetness of its reality only helps to give it that story-book quality which persuades us we ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... to-day might have represented to my mind a mere spectacle, the hecatomb of its inhabitants extorting little more than a conventional sigh. So it is. The human heart has been constructed on somewhat ungenerous lines. Moralists, if any still exist on earth, may generalize with eloquence from the masses, but our poets have long ago succumbed to the pathos of single happenings; the very angels of Heaven, they say, take more joy in one sinner that repenteth than in a hundred righteous, which, duly apprehended, is only an application ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... of falling prices may also be considered as direct and indirect. The direct results are somewhat of the opposite character to those just related for a period of rising prices. It is difficult to generalize about them. If the period of falling prices follows closely upon a period of sharply rising prices, during which latter period wage increases lagged greatly behind price increases, the tendency for wages to rise may continue to manifest itself ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... gained so much. At the beginning it was a process belonging to the sovereign and used solely for his business, or employed for the business of others only by his permission in the special case. What Henry seems to have done was to generalize this use, to establish certain classes of cases in which it might always be employed by his subjects, but in his courts only. In essence it was a process for getting local knowledge to bear on a doubtful question ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... painfully struck by the undeniable evidences of German Kultur that instead of taking them to England he returned them to the United States, to be included eventually in our exhibition. It would be very wrong to generalize upon the standard of German art from this small display, but a number of these pictures can well afford to go entirely upon their ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... Generalize as to the similarity of the places in which the pupils have seen the sparrow singing, and as to the times of day in ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... this civilization, I aim to generalize the most important facts, leaving the reader to examine at his leisure recondite authorities, in which, too often, the argument is obscured by minute details, and ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... to reflect, analyze, and generalize, has an advantage over uncultured minds even of double experience. Poor as your cook is, she now knows more of her business than you do. After a very brief period of attention and experiment, you will not only know more ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... book "from the ground up." It gives complete directions for growing all vegetables cultivatable in the climate of the northern United States. It represents a departure in vegetable-garden literature. It does not generalize. The illustrations, numbering about 150, are ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... two or three bears each has happened to see or kill, often reach diametrically opposite conclusions as to the fighting temper and capacity of the quarry. Even old hunters—who indeed, as a class, are very narrow-minded and opinionated—often generalize just as rashly as beginners. One will portray all bears as very dangerous; another will speak and act as if he deemed them of no more consequence than so many rabbits. I knew one old hunter who had killed a score without ever seeing one show ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... difficult to generalize about England's treatment of Irish political offenders. From the earliest nationalist activities she has treated them practically all as common criminals, or worse, if such a thing is possible. She has either filled ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... Aristotle, since he maintained that experience furnishes the principles of every science; but while his conception was just, there was not at that time a sufficient amount of experience from which to generalize with effect. It is only a most extensive and exhaustive examination of the accuracy of a proposition which will warrant secure reasoning upon it. Aristotle reasoned without sufficient certainty of the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... chain of motives. B. is the end to A.; but it is itself a mean to C., and in like manner C. is a mean to D., and so on. Thus words are the means by which we reduce appearances, or things presented through the senses, to their several kinds, or 'genera'; that is, we generalize, and thus think and judge. Hence the understanding, considered specially as an intellective power, is the source and faculty of words;—and on this account the understanding is justly defined, both by Archbishop Leighton, and by Immanuel Kant, the faculty ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to add to our collection of horns or to get food for the porters. Sometimes the whole party went out, either photographing charging rhinos or shooting, but this part of the daily program was usually too varied to generalize as part of the daily doings. Several porters went with each of us to bring in the game, which there is ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... now in a position to sit down and generalize about the wind. It is a tiresome thing to have it as the recurring insistent theme of our story, but to have had it as the continual obstacle to our activity, the opposing barrier to the simplest task, ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... a good map of a newly explored region, has been driven to despair by the inadequacy of the route surveys in his hands. Not a few of these surveys have been unworthy of reproduction in the books of the explorers who made them, and the best that could be done was to generalize their information on maps of comparatively small scale. But Donaldson Smith's route-maps appear in his book on the comparatively large scale of 1:1,000,000 (about sixteen statute miles to the inch), and they are worthy ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... for the reckless prediction that Theology is doomed, and must fall before the onward march of Positive Science? If man was able from the beginning to observe, to compare, to abstract, and to generalize, and if the fundamental laws of human thought have been ever the same, it follows that there must have been a tendency, coeval with the origin of the race, towards Theological, Metaphysical, and Inductive Speculation, and that the same tendency must continue as long as his powers remain unchanged. ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... to judge the habitability of a planet such as Venus we must first, as far as possible, generalize the conditions that govern life and ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... call attention to the fact that in the literature of the ancient Greeks and Romans love is depicted only as a transient gratification of the senses, or a consuming heat of the blood, and not as a romantic, sentimental affection of the soul. He does not generalize, says nothing about other ancient nations,[1] and certainly never dreamt of such a thing as asserting that love had been gradually and slowly developed from the coarse and selfish passions of our ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Ballads. Much of the matter of these essays, received at the time with contemptuous aversion, is now accepted as truth; and few compositions of equal length contain so much of vigorous criticism and sound reflection. It is only when they generalize too confidently that they are in danger of misleading us; for all expositions of the art and practice of poetry must necessarily be incomplete. Poetry, like all the arts, is essentially a "mystery." Its charm depends upon qualities ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... which I cannot conceive, our new grammarians began to extend their ideas, and generalize their words, the ignorance of the inventors must have confined this method to very narrow bounds; and as they had at first too much multiplied the names of individuals for want of being acquainted with ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... divorce-court judge writing a treatise on marriage we should smile. But it is equally absurd for the physician, so long as his knowledge is confined to disease, to write regarding sex at large; valuable as the facts he brings forward may be, he can never be in a position to generalize concerning them. And to me, at all events, it seems that we have had more than enough pictures of gross sexual perversity, whether furnished by the asylum or the brothel. They are only really instructive when they are seen in their ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates the cornice has dentels, and this was always the case, so far as we know, where the Corinthian capital was used. In Corinthian buildings the anta, where met with, has a capital like that of the column. But there is very little material to generalize from until we descend ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... to determine their true character. Such is the wise economy of all revealed laws, that generally avoiding abstractions, they select as a standard one special case of the most interesting, and leave it to thy care of the human understanding to generalize, and deduce from it universal theories.[2] Consequently, on analysing the ten emanations of the Divine Will, we must transfer mentally each of them to the class of duties to which it belongs, and consider it as intended to represent ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... words of Zarathustra and in the theology of Christianity, we frequently meet with the distinct recognition of the fundamental unity of all power. At core, all religions have seeds of monotheism. When we generalize the current concepts of motion or force beyond individual displays and relative measures of quantity, we recognize their qualitative identity, and appreciate the logical unity under which we must give ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... symmetry shows us how unwise it were to generalize from the conclusions to which the Three-pronged Osmia leads us. Whereas some Bees, such as the Anthidium and the Chalicodoma, share the Osmia's talent for using the twofold exit, others, such as the Solenius and the Leaf-cutter, behave like a flock of sheep and follow the first that ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... our senses a variety of material objects; some more, some less calculated to arrest our attention. Among these, the sun, moon and stars,—earth and sea, mountains and rivers, occupy prominent places. To facilitate our knowledge of these, and prompt reference to any part of them, we generalize or throw them into groups. Thus we speak familiarly of the "solar system," the "animal, vegetable or mineral kingdom." Now, just transfer these systematized objects from the material and physical, ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... impossible. Other Indians might have known as much of the wisdom of the trail as he did; but he alone knew the white man's wisdom, the honor of the trail, and the law. But these things had not come to him in a day. The aboriginal mind is slow to generalize, and many facts, repeated often, are required to compass an understanding. Sitka Charley, from boyhood, had been thrown continually with white men, and as a man he had elected to cast his fortunes with them, expatriating himself, once and ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... dangerous than the grizzly. As it happened, however, the only narrow escape I personally ever had was from a grizzly, and in Africa the animal killed closest to me as it was charging was a rhinoceros—all of which goes to show that a man must not generalize too broadly from his own personal experiences. On the whole, I think the lion the most dangerous of all these five animals; that is, I think that, if fairly hunted, there is a larger percentage of hunters killed or mauled for a given number of lions killed than for a given number ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... to change the face of society. It is not because the French have changed their former opinions, and altered their former manners, that they have convulsed the world; but because they were the first to generalize and bring to light a philosophical method, by the assistance of which it became easy to attack all that was old, and to open a path ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... generalize regarding nations, except in vague or very guarded terms; but possibly it would not be unjust to say that the Italians, apart from those of northern provinces and of Sardinia, have too much imagination to make first-class soldiers. And they are too sensitive, as you could see ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... you shall have it hot-shot, but I'll have to generalize the story for you. The most decisive of all the tests have been made during the last eighteen months, and the final and most convincing of all within the year, under the direction of Lombroso, Morselli, and Bottazzi. It is safe to say that ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... modes of thought. As Zeller says, speaking of the myths: "From the first, in the act of producing his work he thinks in images. They mark the point where it becomes evident that he cannot be wholly a philosopher because he is still too much of a poet." And this is true of all Philo's writings, and to generalize somewhat widely, of most Jewish philosophy. In "The Timaeus," particularly, Plato, throughout, is the poet-philosopher, writing imaginative myths, which present pictorially an idealistic scheme of the universe; and "The Timaeus" is for Philo, after the Bible, the most authoritative ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... went smoothly on, continuing to rise in the estimation of his party, and commanding a certain respect from the neutral public, by acknowledged and eminent talents in the details of business; for his quickness of penetration, and a logical habit of mind, enabled him to grapple with and generalize the minutiae of official labour or of legislative enactments with a masterly success. But as the road became clearer to his steps, his ambition became more evident and daring. Naturally dictatorial and presumptuous, his early suppleness to superiors was now exchanged for a self-willed pertinacity, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... consist of concrete examples and specific instances are popular for expository articles. Sometimes several instances are related in the introduction before the writer proceeds to generalize from them. The advantage of this inductive method of explanation grows out of the fact that, after a general idea has been illustrated by an example or two, most persons can grasp it with much less effort and with much greater interest than ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... world of fact, and that the uniqueness of individuals is the objective truth. As the number of units taken diminishes, the amount of variety and inexactness of generalization increases, because individuality tells for more and more. Could you take men by the thousand billion, you could generalize about them as you do about atoms; could you take atoms singly, it may be that you would find them as individual as your aunts and cousins. That concisely is the ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... a scientific school, except just so far as medicine itself is a science. On the natural history side, medicine is a science; on the curative side, chiefly an art. This is implied in Hufeland's aphorism: "The physician must generalize the disease ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... would say—what like is it? Does it give any signs of qualities, physical or mental, tending to distinguish it from Britons, Australians, or North Americans? The answer is not easy. Nothing is more tempting, and at the same time more risky, than to thus generalize and speculate too soon. As was said at the outset, New Zealand has taken an almost perverse delight in upsetting expectations. Nevertheless, certain points are worth noting which may, at any rate, help readers to draw conclusions ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... esteem. As a Parisian, Dinah was superior to the most fascinating courtesan; she could be as amusing and as witty as Malaga; but her extensive information, her habits of mind, her vast reading enabled her to generalize her wit, while the Florines and the Schontzes exerted theirs over ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... You generalize this by saying that any opinion, however satisfactory, can count positively and absolutely as true only so far as it agrees with a standard beyond itself; and if you then forget that this standard perpetually grows up endogenously inside the web of the experiences, ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... cannot formulate any theory of friendship which will cover all the conditions. I know a few things that friendship is not, and a few things that it is, but when I come to generalize upon the abstract quality I am quite at a ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... one well-endowed professorship. It were as well to be educated in the shadow of a mountain as in more classical shades. Some will remember, no doubt, not only that they went to the college, but that they went to the mountain. Every visit to its summit would, as it were, generalize the particular information gained below, and subject it to more ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... review of great value in strengthening the student's ability to generalize and analyze, consists of what might be called "problems in history." They are given out in much the same way as original problems in geometry, assuming that the student is acquainted with the facts from which to deduce the answers to the question. The object ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell
... college smoked cigars in his room, and we (the Balliol fellows) generally condemned it, I remember, in reply to my remark that a man who smoked made himself a nuisance, one of them said, 'It would not do to generalize; for in Germany the man who objects to smoking is the nuisance.' ... If anyone calls on me I must offer him a pipe and smoke one myself; and, conversely, when I call on anyone, I must not refuse the pipe.... The pipe fills up gaps of time, and 'breaks the ice' ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... as they possibly could. The women were doing menial work, such as scrubbing, which the men refused to do. The men were properly fed at noon; the women satisfied themselves with cake and pickles. Why was this? It is of course impossible to generalize on a single factory. I can only relate the conclusions I drew from what I saw myself. The wages paid by employers, economists tell us, are fixed at the level of bare subsistence. This level and its accompanying conditions ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... the French and English schools, in this department of the Art, well proves that mind has scope for its powers in portrait, and that genius alone can so generalize the details "as to identify the individual man with the dignity of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... the proper study of man, and his only business, have been periods of spiritual abasement and poverty." Certainly no one will be inclined to claim for the eighteenth century the spiritual idealism of the seventeenth, though Law and Bishop Wilson and the Wesleyan revival will make us generalize with caution. But the truth was that theological ethics had become empty and inadequate, and the problem was therefore urgent. That is why Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume and Adam Smith—to take only men of the first eminence—were thinking not less for politics than for ethics when they ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... not particularize among so many schools and churches as were in the path of my visitation, and one must generalize if he will keep within limits. For ten years now it has been my privilege to study the South as a personal observer, not only in schools and churches and not only on the regular routes of travel, but in the bypaths of rural life and in talks with ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 49, No. 3, March, 1895 • Various
... sets of personal pronouns are not used indiscriminately, but the examples of their use which I collected are too few to generalize upon. However, ngatu and the three next under it, appear to be used only with a certain class of verbs of which an example is afforded by the sentence ngatu nudu matumina I struck him; and the use of the second set of these pronouns is illustrated ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... four, or wings or fins, lack reason just in proportion to their idiocy. Lor'! why I have seen human creatures at the Idiot Asylum with less intellect than cats. And I have seen some horses with more intelligence than some legislators. You can't generalize on these subjects, grandpa," said Miss Electra, ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... early religion is referred to The Soul of Abraham Lincoln, by William Eleazer Barton. It is to be observed that the present study is never dogmatic about Lincoln's religion in its early phases. And when Herndon and Lamon generalize about his religious life, it must be remembered that they are thinking of him as they knew him in Illinois. Herndon had no familiarity with him after he went to Washington. Lamon could not have seen very much of him—no one but ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... comes to our succor, elastic, not to be surrounded. Man helps himself by larger generalizations. The lesson of life is practically to generalize; to believe what the years and the centuries say against the hours; to resist the usurpation of particulars; to penetrate to their catholic sense. Things seem to say one thing, and say the reverse. The appearance is immoral; the result is moral. Things seem to tend downward, to justify despondency, ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... easier to prove than that in this world nobody ever invented anything. So it may be proved that, Johnson having written 'Great thoughts are always general', Blake had countered him by affirming (long before Hazlitt) that 'To generalize is to be an idiot. To particularize is the great distinction of merit': even as it may be demonstrable that Charles Lamb, in his charming personal chat about the Elizabethan dramatists and his predilections among them, was already putting into ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... mistake is a special one for the conditions in which one works. When you are here and he understands really what you want, he can answer you for everything that concerns the center of France, and the general geology of the planet, if there is any opportunity to generalize. His reasoning has been this: not to make innovations, but to push to its greatest development what exists, in making use always of the method established by experience. Experience can never deceive, it ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... Freddie Drummond, in the role of his other self, came to experience genuine outrage, and it was only when he returned to the classic atmosphere of the university that he was able, sanely and conservatively, to generalize upon his underworld experiences and put them down on paper as a trained sociologist should. That Bill Totts lacked the perspective to raise him above class-consciousness Freddie Drummond clearly saw. But Bill Totts ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... emphasized by Dugas that Goblet was forced to repudiate many facts in order to generalize his theory. There are, moreover, dreams from which we do not awaken, e.g., some dreams in which we dream that we dream. From our knowledge of the dream-work, we can by no means admit that it extends only over the period of ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... were a few others who did. But some 550 of the group, though they had inherited the potentiality of reaching the average age of 90, actually died somewhere around 60; they failed by at least one-third to live up to the promise of their inheritance. If we were to generalize from this single case, we would have to say that five-sixths of the population does not make the most of ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... the argument is weak just where it seeks to generalize. We are compelled to put the insane under restraint for social reasons apart from their own benefit. But their own benefit would be a fully sufficient reason if no other existed. To them, by their misfortune, liberty, as we understand the term, has no application, because they are incapable ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... immaterial and constant, neither dependent on, nor developed by exertion. Generally, it is well to conceal anatomical development as far as may be; even Michael Angelo's anatomy interferes with his divinity; in the hands of lower men the angel becomes a preparation. How far it is possible to subdue or generalize the naked form I venture not to affirm, but I believe that it is best to conceal it as far as may be, not with draperies light and undulating, that fall in with, and exhibit its principal lines, but with ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... distinction on which he had fixed his steadfast heart. Patiently he plodded on through the formal drudgeries of his new profession, lighting up dulness by his own acute comprehension, weaving complexities into simple system by the grasp of an intellect inured to generalize, and learning to love even what was most distasteful, by the sense of difficulty overcome, and the clearer vision which every step through the mists and up the hill gave of the land beyond. Of what the superficial are ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... generalize and clearly state: That is masculine which belongs to the male—to any or all males, irrespective of species. That is feminine which belongs to the female, to any or all females, irrespective of species. That is ovine, bovine, feline, ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... which surrounds Monna Vanna, Jean, Thais, Salome, or Sapho. She becomes, indeed, so much a part of the character she assumes that the spectator finds great difficulty in dissociating her from that character, and I have found those who, having seen Mary Garden in only one part, were quite ready to generalize about her own personality from the impression they ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... rather more veracious. But he plainly had not the scholar's training and methods which we now demand of the historian; nor had he the larger view of men and events in their perspective. Generalization was beyond him. Fortunately to generalize is only a part of the business of the historian. To catch some dim historic figure, and give it life and color,—this power he had. And it was evidently this which gave him the praise of such men as Prescott and Bancroft and Motley. Washington had begun to loom vaguely ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... growth and decay of language, we must not shut our eyes to the fact that our field of observation has been thus far extremely limited, and that we should act in defiance of the simplest rules of sound induction, were we to generalize on such scanty evidence. Let us but clearly see what place these two so-called families, the Aryan and Semitic, occupy in the great kingdom of speech. They are in reality but two centres, two small ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... uncertain quantity, the relations of parents, or of one of the parents, to the children afforded the opportunity most frequently used for their instruction in tribal religious ideals and customs. We cannot generalize as to the practices of savage man in regard to family life, for those practices range from common promiscuous relationships, without apparent care for offspring, to a family unity and purity approaching the best we know; but this much is certain, that there was a common sense of responsibility for ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... usurers: they won the battle against socialism; and from this legitimation of usury society gained some immense and unquestionable advantages. Under these circumstances socialism, which had tried to generalize the law enacted by Moses for the Israelites alone, Non foeneraberis proximo tuo, sed alieno, was beaten by an idea which it had accepted from the economic routine,— namely, farm-rent,—elevated into the theory ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... opportunity for definiteness. Facts and events are its one concern; theories and abstractions are beyond its range. Hence the more definite and concrete its presentation of facts, the better will be its effect. The reporter should never generalize or present his statements hazily and uncertainly—a fact is a fact and must be presented as such. He must try to avoid such expressions as "several," "many," "a few"—it is usually possible to give the exact number. He must continually ask himself ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... Mind your own business. It is nothing but the doctrine of liberty. Let every man be happy in his own way. If his sphere of action and interest impinges on that of any other man, there will have to be compromise and adjustment. Wait for the occasion. Do not attempt to generalize those interferences or to plan for them a priori. We have a body of laws and institutions which have grown up as occasion has occurred for adjusting rights. Let the same process go on. Practise the utmost reserve possible in your interferences even of this ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... principle by the analysis of a single concrete fact. As an illustration we may instance "the principle of causality." To enable us to affirm "that every event must have a cause," we do not need to compare and generalize a great number of events. "The principle which compels us to pronounce the judgment is already complete in the first as in the last event; it can change in regard to its object, it can not change in itself; it neither increases nor decreases with the greater ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... some interest for the reply, but it did not come. Possibly Sam did not wish to generalize on ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... of indignant hatred and contempt with which he regarded the mass of humanity; his quiet and powerful perception of their failings, errors, and crimes; his zeal for liberty and freedom of thought, tended at once to generalize, while it embittered, his satire, and to change traits of personal severity for that deep shade of censure which Gulliver's Travels throw upon mankind universally." Most of the sentiments which impressed Swift, seem also to have been ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... physical speculations of the Greek philosophers to have been, 'that though they had in their possession Facts and Ideas, the Ideas were not distinct and appropriate to the Facts.' The main cause of defect in the mental process here employed is the tendency of the human mind to generalize at too early a stage of the investigation, and consequently upon a too ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... We may generalize the whole position thus. When we first observe the working of the Law under the conditions spontaneously provided by Nature, it appears to limit us; but by seeking the reason of the action exhibited under these limited conditions, we discover ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... regular theater I did not see nearly enough to be able to generalize even for my own private satisfaction. I observed, and expected to observe, that the most reactionary quarters were the most respected. It is the same everywhere. When a manager, having discovered that two real clocks in one real room never strike simultaneously, ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... in any respect alike. After learning to use the hands, for example, for a certain act, the same hand movements are afterward used for other similar acts which the child finds it well to perform. He thus tends, as psychologists say, to "generalize," that is, to take up certain general attitudes which will answer for a great many details of experience. On the side of the reception of his items of knowledge this was called Assimilation, as will be remembered. This saves him enormous trouble and risk; for as ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... by an indisposition to generalize," said Bernard, laughing. "On this point permit me not to generalize. I am interested in the particular case—in ascertaining whether Mrs. Vivian thinks very often of Gordon ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... who has studied public sentiment in this country for any period knows how easy it is to generalize from a few facts, and yet, if the subject be more thoroughly investigated, it becomes apparent how unsatisfactory such generalizations are apt to be; not that they are essentially untrue, but rather because they express only a part of the truth. If a ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... particular line of truth and motive the Lord had in mind when he said, "I am the way." By thus pointing out the way, and showing that eternal life and happiness are the blessed reward of walking in it, I hope to induce some here to-night to enter it. I might here generalize somewhat by calling your attention to the fact that it is natural for us all, when going anywhere, to feel best satisfied when we know the way we are on is the right way to where we want to go. It is true, however, one may tramp along through life over public roads, ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... nature of a reverence for tradition and authority: but such phrases are nets which, while they do indeed capture the main tendency of ideas, allow to escape the subtle reservations and qualifications wherein the life of ideas truly resides. On such a point we can at best generalize: and this generalization will most easily be made clear, perhaps, by ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... thing has or has not an actual existence; or that the antitheses, parallels, conjugates, correlatives of language have anything corresponding to them in nature. There are too many words as well as too few; and they generalize the objects or ideas which they represent. The greatest lesson which the philosophical analysis of language teaches us is, that we should be above language, making words our servants, and not allowing ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... of such diverse usage that it is difficult to generalize regarding it. The tendency seems at present to be in the direction of using the slur (in instrumental music) as a phrase-mark exclusively, it being understood that unless there is some direction to the contrary, the tones are to be performed ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... Tarantula is therefore dangerous to other animals than insects: it is fatal to the Sparrow, it is fatal to the Mole. Up to what point are we to generalize? I do not know, because my enquiries extended no further. Nevertheless, judging from the little that I saw, it appears to me that the bite of this Spider is not an accident which man can afford to treat lightly. This is all that I have ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre |
