"Nature" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Spring! It is your duty to call the gentle rains to fall upon the thirsting ground. Yours is the pleasant task to paint the blades of young grass a delicate green. You call the birds back from the south and rouse all nature from her winter sleep. The winds blow freshly over the earth; the clouds move here and there, bringing the rain; and the bulbs, hidden under the soil, slowly push their leaves into the sunlight. What flowers will you ...
— Dramatic Reader for Lower Grades • Florence Holbrook
... frivolous, Mr. Lennox," he said, "and this is not a time for light talk. I don't know what you mean, but it seems to me you don't appreciate the dire nature of your peril. I liked you and your comrades when I met you in Quebec and I do not wish to see you perish at the hands of the savages. That is why I have climbed up here to make you this offer, which ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... first, with no result but to make matters worse. Then he tried gentleness, and succeeded. The boys stopped their capers and joined his class. Sam, especially, became a distinguished member of that body. He was never a great musician, but with his good nature, his humor, his slow, quaint speech and originality, he had no rival in popularity. He was twenty now, and much with young ladies, yet he was always a beau rather than a suitor, a good comrade to all, full of pranks and pleasantries, ready to stop and be merry ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... flight for the boring, the trivial, the stupid; using genius for a toy, like a child banging an atomic watch on the floor. It happened with all our great discoveries and inventions: the gasoline engine, the telephone, the wireless. We've built civilizations of monumental stupidity on the wonders of nature. One race of the Galactics has a phrase they apply to people like us: 'If there is a God in Heaven He has ...
— The Memory of Mars • Raymond F. Jones
... engaged their wandering steps too far; And envious darkness, ere they could return, Had stole them from me. Else, O thievish Night, Why shouldst thou, but for some felonious end, In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars That Nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps With everlasting oil to give due light To the misled and lonely traveller? 200 This is the place, as well as I may guess, Whence even now the tumult of loud ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... and her short upper lip, which was parted as if to ask a question which she did not put into words. He looked her slowly up and down beneath his heavy eyebrows, his little cunning eyes alight with suspicion. He watched her parted lips, which were tilted at the corners, showing humour and a nature quick to laugh or suffer. Then he jerked his head upwards as if he saw the unasked question quivering there, and bore her some malice for ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... had a long letter from Mary Taylor—interesting but sad, because it contained many allusions to those who are in this world no more. She mentioned you, and seemed impressed with an idea of the lamentable nature of your unoccupied life. She spoke of her ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... familiar fragment that is sung in every drawing-room. Yes, there alone to live my heart doth yearn. Yes, at Nice, in my beloved villa. People may go through the world. They will find sublime landscapes, impressive mountains, frightful gulfs, wild beauties of nature, picturesque towns, great cities; but, on returning to Nice one would say that elsewhere it was beautiful, magnificent! but here it is pleasant, attractive, congenial; here one wants to stay; here ...
— Marie Bashkirtseff (From Childhood to Girlhood) • Marie Bashkirtseff
... little things is a proof at once of self-respect and of respect for one's friends. They soon become easy matters of habit, and of memory. To the well-bred they are second nature. No one who is desirous of pleasing in ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... much for the effect of ignorance and prejudice. One requires the strong evidence of such a careful observer as Captain Cook to be convinced of their existence, in such intense degree, among a set of people, accustomed, from the nature of their profession, to witness the vast variety of different manners and modes of life in different countries; though every notion we could form of their habits and tempers might lead us to infer a priori, the obstinacy with which they would resist any innovation on their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... is not always an original condition, for, under certain circumstances, it may be acquired. A person, for instance, meets with some circumstance in his life which tends to weaken his confidence in human nature. He accordingly shuns mankind, by shutting himself up in his own house and refusing to have any intercourse with the inhabitants of the place in which he resides. In carrying out his purpose he proceeds to the most absurd extremes. He speaks ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... Queen had a malady, which is not described in her Memoirs, but which we suppose to have been a cancer, which she was most anxious to hide from all the world. Walpole discovered it, and the discovery exhibits his skill in human nature. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... chap," explained the Scot. "There's no' a single thing that he canna do (according to the leemitations o' Nature) except speak. And even that he manages to do in his ain way. Noo, come here, Bannock, and lie down while oor freends spin us their yarn. They've no' told us yet who they are, where they come frae, nor ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... capacity, find it exceedingly triste; independently of private society, there is absolutely no amusement—no play, no concert, no public assembly of any kind; nor would it be advisable to attempt to establish an entertainment of this nature, since there would be no chance of its support. There is a fine building, the Town Hall, well adapted for the purpose, but its most spacious saloon is suffered to remain empty and unfurnished; the expense ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... such dramatic force that several of the miners nodded their heads in approval. It was an appeal to the patriotic side of their nature—which ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... rebellion against the order of things. He was such a mere creature of moods, that individual judgments of his character might well have proved irreconcilable. He had not yet begun by the use of his will—constantly indeed mistaking impulse for will—to blend the conflicting elements of his nature into one. He was therefore a man much as the mass of flour and raisins, etc., when first put into the bag, is a plum-pudding; and had to pass through something analogous to boiling to give him a ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... careful. Many have boasted that they can take of what they call the good things of life to their full, without bad effect. We know of such men who have been much esteemed for their joviality and good nature, but who have broken down in what should have been a hearty and useful middle life. There are others who were poorly equipped for the battle of life, with indifferent constitutions, never having had the buoyancy and overflowing ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... with an air of hard toughness, but deep inside he felt small and cheap. He was used to wrangling and boisterous striving for what he wanted. Yet, for all of his roughness, a finer streak of his nature could, on occasion, respond to fair dealing. Squareness—being white—was something he could ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... his wife think him a devil. In some way he depended upon the excitement He could arouse in her hysterical nature. Perhaps he got the feeling of being a rake more from his wife's rage and amazement than from any experiences of his own. His zest in debauchery might wane, but never Mrs. Cutter's belief in it. The reckoning with his wife at the end of an escapade was something he ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... general, Parmenio, who had always given him the wisest counsel, was no longer in favor, because he tried to restrain the king's extravagance. Indeed, Alexander's once generous and noble nature was so changed, that, when his courtiers accused Parmenio of treachery, he listened to them, and actually put the faithful ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... Nature had sown in the heart of this poor girl the seeds of virtue never destined to ripen. The lessons of adversity are not always salutary—sometimes they soften and amend, but as often they indurate and pervert. If we consider ourselves more harshly treated by fate than those around ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... get the ideal itself from nature, and as we follow here the first and natural speculation, we will leave out (for the present) the idea of getting it from God. We must have our own vision. But the attempts of most moderns to express it are ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... increase the wealth of Gershom Holt also. So in course of time he became the rich man of the place. He dealt closely in business matters, he liked the best of a bargain, and, as a rule, got it; but he was of a kindly nature, and was never hard to the poor, and many a man in Gershom was helped to a first start in business through his means, so that he was better liked and more entirely trusted than the one rich man in a rising country place ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... entire age, yea, of men for centuries after, if they failed to see Luther's constitutional baseness. Quite recently a Catholic writer has told the world in one chapter of his book that "the apostate monk of Wittenberg" was possessed of "a violent, despotic, and uncontrolled nature," that he was "depraved in manners and in speech." He speaks of Luther's "ungovernable transports, riotous proceedings, angry conflicts, and intemperate controversies," of Luther's "contempt of all the accepted forms of human right and ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... ladies of the house of Ladeau; and how she had attired them for balls, and had seen them ride away with cavaliers. There was neither splendor nor beauty in Hetty to attract Marie's fancy; but Marie had a religious side to her nature, almost as strong as the worldly and passionate one. She saw in Hetty's labors an exaltation of devotion which reminded her of noble ladies who had done penances and taken pilgrimages in her own country. ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... Latin, used in Theology as the equivalent of the Greek word ousia, meaning "essence," and used in the definition of the nature of the Godhead. Thus we say that God is one in substance (i.e., essence) but in Persons, Three. The word is found in the Creed in the article which speaks of the Son as "Being of one substance ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... this play, has rightly observed that "a kind of dualism has always been perceptible in Ibsen; he pleads the cause of Nature, and he castigates Nature with mystic morality; only sometimes Nature is allowed the first voice, sometimes morality. In The Master Builder and in Ghosts the lover of Nature in Ibsen was predominant; here, as in Brand and The Wild Duck, the castigator is in ...
— Little Eyolf • Henrik Ibsen
... excusable addition to the personal charms and that is where nature has denied the grace of luxuriant locks. This lack can be so cunningly supplied by the hairdresser's art that detection is impossible, and as it ever has been, and ever will be, that a woman's ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... and soul of man Own the light and love of heaven, Nothing yet in vain was given, Nature's is a ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... possible, to the old ways, and for a long time they used this foreign remedy very sparingly. At what date the utterances were collected in "books" and deposited in the Capitoline temple we do not know, nor have we any certain knowledge of their original nature or form. Tradition said that the collection dated from the last king's reign, and that it was placed in the care of duoviri sacris faciundis, as we have seen, who in 367 B.C. gave way to decemviri, five ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... refused to take them. I had a perfect horror of debt, for I knew that when a man was in debt he was in nearly every respect a slave, and that if I got in debt it would worry me and keep my mind from that quiet repose so necessary for contemplating the beauties of nature and communing with the Spirit ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... Kenelm, mildly; "banish your fears. If you will help me I feel sure that I can save your son from such perils, and I only ask you to let me save him. I am convinced that he has a good and a noble nature, and he is worth saving." And as he thus said he took her hand. She resigned it to him and returned the pressure, all her pride softening ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... so on the present occasion. Mention of a fire anywhere near the docks has much the same effect on the Red Brigade as the order to march to the field of Waterloo had on the British army. The extreme danger; the inflammable nature of the goods contained in the huge and densely-packed warehouses; the proximity to the shipping; the probability of a pitched battle with the flames; the awful loss of property, and perhaps of ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne
... Acute Abscesses.—The dictum of John Bell, "Where there is pus, let it out," summarises the treatment of abscess. The extent and situation of the incision and the means taken to drain the cavity, however, vary with the nature, site, and relations of the abscess. In a superficial abscess, for example a bubo, or an abscess in the breast or face where a disfiguring scar is undesirable, a small puncture should be made where the pus threatens to point, and a Klapp's suction bell be applied as ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... succeeded, to the very end of his days, in representing a figure lying down, and at ease. It is one of the most curious points in all his character. Just the thing which he could study from nature without the smallest hindrance, is the thing he never can paint; while subtleties of form and gesture, which depend absolutely on their momentariness, and actions in which no model can stay for an instant ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... the transition from mediaeval to modern attitudes, and one of the most important outgrowths of this was the rise of scientific inquiry which in time followed. This meant the application of human reason to the investigation of the phenomena of nature, with all that this eventually implied. This, slowly to be sure, turned the energies of mankind in a new direction, led to the substitution of inquiry and patient experimentation for assumption and disputation, and in time produced a scientific and industrial ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... forgetting that the University should, from its very name, be as universal as possible in its teachings, comprehending in its list of studies the combined scientific and literary pursuits of the age,—we are apt to look upon foreign schools of learning as similar in nature and purpose to our own, differing not in the quality or specific character of the teaching, but rather in the scope and extent of the branches taught. Yet nothing is farther from the truth. The result is, that many a one starts for Europe full of hope, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... morning of the fourth day he rolled up his sleeves again, waved his hand after the fleeing O'Connor, and signed a fresh contract for himself. Nature, the enemy he had been threshing into submission all his life, was not going to block the beautiful grade he had built. With the effects of the acidulated poison of Mile 127 still in his limbs but clear of his brain he shook ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... Highlanders during the Revolutionary War was not of such a nature as to bring them prominently into view in the cause of freedom. Nor was it the policy of the American statesmen to cater to race distinctions and prejudices. They did not regard their cause to be a race war. They fought ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... than of crowning her head with feathers and adorning her countenance with war-paint. It had totally escaped me that I, a bashful Englishman of twenty-one, nervously sensitive to ridicule and gifted by nature with but little of the spirit of social defiance, must in broad daylight make my appearance in the streets of Paris, accompanied by a bonnetless grisette! What should I do, if I met Dr. Cheron? or Madame de Courcelles? or, worse than all, Madame de Marignan? My ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... you break in upon a scene of purest friendship and nature worship like this with your wretched misses? O, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... said the count, when they next met, speaking in that delightful foreign accent, so pleasant to the ear of the young lady, and with the frankness peculiar to his nature, "I cannot withhold from you the honest expression of my sentiments. It would be unjust to myself, and unjust to you; for those sentiments too nearly involve my own peace, ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... produced by the bustle, novelties, and scenes of the vessel and the ocean. But, now she was once more on the land, diminutive and naked as was the islet that composed her present world, and she found leisure and solitude for reflection and decision. She was not ignorant of the nature of a vessel of war, or of the impropriety of unprotected females placing themselves on board of one; but gentlemen of character, like the officers of the ship in sight, could hardly be wanting in the feelings of their caste; and anything ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... of these processes was not of a nature to make one think with much satisfaction of clayed sugar as an ingredient of food, but the inhabitants of the island are superior to such prejudices, and use it with as little scruple as they who do not know in what manner ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... disenchanted with all things; with a grain of irony devoid of all bitterness, the laugh of a child under a bald head; a Goethe-like intelligence, but free from all prejudice." "A charming and spirituelle Frenchwoman," Miss O'Meara goes on to say, "said of Julius Mohl that Nature in forming his character had skimmed the cream of the three nationalities to which he belonged by birth, by adoption and by marriage, making him deep as a German, spirituel as a Frenchman, and loyal as ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... help feeling that I was witnessing a marvelous instance of automatism, that wonderful power of the mind working through the body to reproduce, apparently without effort or thought, operations which have been repeated so many times that they have become "second nature." More than this, it indicated clearly that while the better part of the man's body was "dead to the world," the faculty he had cultivated to the highest extent still remained alive. Some years later this ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... completely exhausted, a new captain had to be sent to relieve him, and the poor fellow never really regained his normal state afterwards. I have often heard him say "it was death or glory; scud, pump, or sink," which was one of the common phrases used by seamen in describing circumstances of this nature. ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... thing may be relied upon, if Judge Mason should receive and accept the appointment of Commissioner, inventors will not have to complain long of delay in the examination of their cases The Judge is as industrious by nature as he is stern and systematic by education and he will have no drones about him. The work of the office under his administration would be brought up and ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... I mean if it's no secret, for as to a secret, I hold it's what no man has a right to enquire into, being of its own nature it's a thing not to be told. Now as to what I think myself, my doctrine is this; I am quite of the old gentleman's mind about some things, and about others I hold him to be quite wide of the mark. But as to talking in such a whisky frisky manner that nobody can understand him, why its tantamount ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... CHURCH; that is, that as the Lord loves the church, and is desirous that the church should love him, so a husband and a wife mutually love each other. That there is a correspondence herein, is well known in the Christian world: but the nature of that correspondence as yet is not known; therefore we will explain it presently in a particular paragraph. It is here mentioned in order to shew that conjugial love is celestial, spiritual, and holy, because it corresponds to the celestial, spiritual, and holy ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... know nothing but their holy duties,—while men are torturing and denouncing their fellows, and while we can hear day and night the clinking of the hammers that are trying, like the brute forces in the "Prometheus," to rivet their adamantine wedges right through the breast of human nature,—I have been ready to believe that we have even now a new revelation, and the name of its Messiah ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... nature and position of the rock which would afford a shelter, and the means by which they had ascertained that there was plenty of water for ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... Calthea was enabled to marry and start off on her wedding tour before the engaged couples at the inn had returned to the city, or had even fixed the dates for their weddings. Calthea was not a woman who would allow herself to be left behind in matters of this nature. From her general loftiness and serenity of manner, and the perfect ease and satisfaction with which she talked of her plans and prospects with her friends and acquaintances, no one could have imagined that she had ever departed ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... career in Paris; he vehemently upheld the moderns in the famous literary quarrel of Moderns versus Ancients, and brought upon himself the satirical attacks of Boileau and Racine; became Secretary and then President of the Academie des Sciences; died in his hundredth year; his vigorous and versatile nature found vent in a wide variety of writings—literary, scientific, and historical; author of "Dialogues of the Dead," in imitation of Lucian, and "Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds"; is credited with the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the most brilliant intelligence, and her charm seemed only to have grown with his perception of its wilful limitations. He did not want to talk about her so much; he wanted rather to talk about Rose, his health, his education, his nature, and what was best to do for him. The two were on terms of a confidence and affection which perpetually amused Mrs. Kenby, but which left the sympathetic witness nothing to desire in ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... site a circular experimental railway on the Kearney high-speed mono-rail system. It seems strange that what is undoubtedly the most rugged and wildest tract of forest land in London should for so long have been without railway facilities. To nature-lovers, however, the proposal is as distasteful as the idea of a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... not the first that comes along, but the most gifted, the Hymenopteron. I am giving my opponents every advantage. Where will they find a creature more richly endowed with talent? It would seem as though, in creating it, nature had delighted in bestowing the greatest amount of industry upon the smallest body of matter. Can the bird, wonderful architect that it is, compare its work with that masterpiece of higher geometry, the edifice of the Bee? The Hymenopteron rivals ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... he learnt only to carve foliage, yet little by little he became so well practised in his work that it was not long before he set himself to making figures; insomuch that, having a swift and resolute hand, he executed his works in marble rather with a certain judgment and skill derived from nature than with any knowledge of design. Nevertheless, he afterwards gave a little more attention to art, when, in the flower of his youth, he followed Michele Maini, likewise a sculptor of Fiesole; which Michele made the S. Sebastian of marble in the ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... a half-whispered tone, 'is that expression by which we call Earth our Mother! With what a kindly equal love she pours her blessings upon her children! and even to those sterile spots to which Nature has denied beauty, she yet contrives to dispense her smiles: witness the arbutus and the vine, which she wreathes over the arid and burning soil of yon extinct volcano. Ah! in such an hour and scene as this, well might we imagine that ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... enough of intellect to think and act for themselves; and such always is the character of the born leader: these true leaders are almost always forced into the opposition; and thus separating between themselves and the men fitted by nature to render them formidable, they fall under the direction of mere chatterers and stump orators, which is in reality no direction at all. The author of the "Working Man's Way in the World"—evidently a very superior ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... preparation of the soil and for keeping healthy the crops growing on it. Attempts have been made to dismiss these suggestions by calling them 'mysticism' and 'mediaeval magic'. Both terms are titles of honour if we understand by the one the form of insight into the supersensible realm of nature acquired by the higher mode of reading, and by the other a faculty of nature herself, whose magic wand is ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... knew or has forgotten. And there is something about it, about the nature of stated times, as about all things conventional and mechanical and ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... every respect a foreign institution. Not national in its origin, it has not struck its roots into the heart of the people. Only here and there a feeble germ of theatrical literature has made its way through the obstinate barbarism of the Russian nature. The mass have no feeling for dramatic poetry, while the cultivated classes exhibit a ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... law can search into the remote abyss of nature? what evidence can prove the unaccountable disaffections of wedlock? Can a jury sum up the endless aversions that are rooted in our souls, or can a bench give judgment upon ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... He quickly revived. Nature had only given him a warning that he was overdrawing his resources. He was deeply humiliated. He did not conceive the truth, that only a strong man could do all that he had done and live. For thirty-six hours he had not ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... all lay in that, that he was and had been good for the idolised Aymer Aston. He recognised it as she spoke and was content, for the proud generosity of his nature was built on a humility that had no ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... did that on purpose?" he cried in vast good nature. "That I was spying on you? That I waited until you started to climb up here and that then I popped my head up just at the ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... stood thick in Neelie's eyes. Her last angry feeling against Allan died out, and her heart went back to him penitently the moment he left the boat. "How good he is to us all!" she thought, "and what a wretch I am!" She got up with every generous impulse in her nature urging her to make atonement to him. She got up, reckless of appearances and looked after him with eager eyes and flushed checks, as he stood alone on the shore. "Don't be long, Mr. Armadale!" she said, with a desperate disregard of what ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... to learn the nature of such a ring. [Page 172] Laplace mathematically demonstrated that it cannot be uniform and solid, and survive. Professor Peirce showed it could not be fluid, and continue. Then Professor Maxwell showed that it must ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... must do even though Love so transfuse us that we may well deem our nature to be half divine. We shall but speak of honour and duty in vain. The letter dropped within the dark door will lie unregarded, or, if regarded for a brief instant between two unspeakable lapses, left and forgotten again. The telegram will be undelivered, nor will the whistling ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... forbearance, Mrs. Brice had overtaken Virginia on the stairway. Well she knew the girl's nature, and how difficult she must have found repression. Margaret ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... discrimination-segregation from the Armed Services."[8-69] The suggestion was disapproved. General Paul explained that the Army could not make such a policy statement since Circular 124 permitted segregated units and a quota that by its nature discriminated at least in terms of numbers of ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... want governing with a strong hand, like all ignorant, childish creatures. But I am fully convinced that custom and education are the only real differences between one set of men and another, their inner nature is the same ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... that survives only in the splendid cathedrals which have risen upon the ruins of the temples of the Sun, in honor of a milder Pantheon; if, indeed, that can be called a milder one which demands (as we have seen already) human sacrifices, unknown to the gentle nature-worship of the Incas. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... with amusement It makes a charming and complete picture. No part could be wanting without injuring the effect of the whole. It is the very ideal of the education of the Rousseau school—a child of nature, developing, amid the simplest and humblest circumstances of life, the finest gifts and most delicate graces of faith and reverence and purity—brought up by sages whose wisdom he could not in time help outrunning, but whose piety, sweetness, disinterestedness, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... perusal of the list of tenants handed him by Whimple showed him that the job of rent collecting would be no sinecure. He knew his own district very well; the work and conditions, the family life, and many other details of a more or less intimate nature, were matters of knowledge to him. He read the list over again as he turned down a street to make his first call, and then passed the first house on his list, and kept right on until he came to Jimmy Duggan's coal and wood yard. Jimmy was located in his office, a wooden shack with a tin roof, ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... the year 1590 there were, including the garrisons, some eight thousand English infantry and cavalry in Holland, and the year that followed was to see a great change in the nature of the war. The efforts of Prince Maurice to improve his army were to bear effect, and with the assistance of his English allies he was to commence an active offensive war, to astonish his foes by the rapidity with which he manoeuvred the new fighting machine he ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... Laevsky. "The impression is better than any description. The wealth of sights and sounds which every one receives from nature by direct impression is ranted about by authors in a ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... conditions had confined them so largely to trade none felt as they did the hampering influence of State-restrictions. The result has been a great difficulty in making liberal doctrines in England realize, until after 1870, the organic nature of the State. It remains for them almost entirely a police institution which, once it aims at the realization of right, usurps a function far better performed by individuals. There is no sense of the community; all that exists is a ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... on proof being brought before them of any improper conduct in those dangerous and mischievous characters, or of any disobedience of orders, or neglect of such duty as they may be directed to perform, they may be ordered such exemplary punishment, either corporal or otherwise, as the nature of their crime may call for. This measure will appear the more necessary, when it is recollected, that formerly, when such punishments were had recourse to, these women gave much less trouble, and were far more orderly ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... nature of this information had much the same effect on Mr. Crocker as the announcement of his ruin has upon the Good Old Man in melodrama. He sat clutching the arms of his chair and staring into space, saying nothing. Dismay was ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... was by this time a trifle exhilarated. She did not understand the situation very well, being of a sternly practical nature herself, but she caught the enthusiasm of the two women and scrubbed the kitchen floor faithfully every morning in order to remove the stains of years ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... state the nature of the plants mentioned in the above compound, as they are not indigenous to the vicinity of White Earth, Minnesota, but are procured from Indians living in the eastern extremity of the State and in Wisconsin. Poisonous plants are of rare occurrence ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... been made to ascertain it. In one instance, a small mast, forty feet high, was fixed up in the sands, with a piece of granite of considerable weight upon the top of it; but mast, granite, and all, rapidly disappeared, leaving no trace behind. It is across several leagues of a beach of this nature that one has to approach ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... cost us: the view is not to be described;—before us lay the Mer de Glace (sea of ice) extending to the length of four leagues, and being about three quarters of a league in width; which is one of the most sublime spectacles in nature.—Around us were mountains much more elevated than those which cost us so much trouble in ascending, which consisting of granite, dispersed in the most majestic forms, and being the perpetual abode of frosts, storms, and tempests, leave a most awful impression ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... Ladysmith, and Kimberley. But is it avoidable? Or is it one of those misfortunes, like that enteric outbreak which swept away so many British soldiers, which is beyond our present sanitary science and can only be endured with sad resignation? The nature of the disease which is mainly responsible for the high mortality shows that it has no direct connection with the sanitary conditions of the camps, or with anything which it was in our power to alter. Had the deaths come from some ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a sort of private sitting-room that I rarely use, except for business interviews of a very private nature. When I said I never left my office, I did not mean that I never stirred out of the inner office. I was about in one room and another, both the outer and the inner offices, and once I went into the private room for five minutes, but nobody came either in or out of any of the rooms at that time, ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... remuneration, as well as physical and sexual abuse; with the cessation of the North-South conflict and the ongoing peace process, there were no known new abductions of Dinka by Baggara tribes during 2005; however, inter-tribal abductions of a different nature continue in Southern Sudan and warrant further investigation tier rating: Tier 3 - Sudan does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... you very much when we first knew you," Celia went on. "You impressed us as an innocent, simple, genuine young character, full of mother's milk. It was like the smell of early spring in the country to come in contact with you. Your honesty of nature, your sincerity in that absurd religion of yours, your general NAIVETE of mental and spiritual get-up, all pleased us a great deal. We thought you were going ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... no circumstances could he face Reginald in his present state of mind. He was convinced that if in the fleeting vision of a moment the other man's true nature should reveal itself to him, he would be so terribly afraid as to shriek like a maniac. So he dressed particularly slowly in the hope of avoiding an encounter with his host. But fate thwarted this hope. Reginald, too, lingered that morning unusually long over his coffee. He ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... know, do not imply that the land or sea of the disturbed region are rendered uninhabitable by living beings, and by no means indicate a state of things different from that witnessed in the ordinary course of nature. ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... encouragement to a literary man, to a novel writer, in fact, than the reflection that he has an honest and generous tribunal to encounter. If he be a quack or an impostor, they will at once detect him; but if he exhibit human nature and truthful character in his pages, it matters not whether he goes to his bookseller's in a coach, or plods there humbly, and on foot; they will forget everything but the value and merit of what ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... must appeal to the public by its dramatic story alone. The Prodigal Son at the close of the book has learned this great lesson, and the meaning of the parable is revealed to him. Neither success nor fame can ever wipe out the evil of the past. It is not from the unalterable laws of nature and life that forgiveness can ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... which are attracting so much attention and study in these earlier years of the Twentieth Century. Back of and under the teachings of the various cults and schools, remains ever constant the Principle of the Mental Substance of the Universe. If the Universe be Mental in its substantial nature, then it follows that Mental Transmutation must change the conditions and phenomena of the Universe. If the Universe is Mental, then Mind must be the highest power affecting its phenomena. If this be understood then all the ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates
... he said, growing warmer as she grew cold, "that you have resolved to renew your acquaintance with Miss Colwyn. It is what I should have expected from your generous nature, and it shows that what I always—always ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... stanchest friends. The two latter remained in a different apartment, while Skinner dined with the Envoy. During dinner, Skinner jestingly remarked that he felt as if laden with combustibles, being charged with a message from Mahomed Akber to the Envoy of a most portentous nature. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... found to reproduce—though with less intensity—the life history of their leader. Therefore the main characters of that life history, that steady undivided process of sublimation; are normal human characters. We too may heal the discords of our moral nature, learn to judge existence in the universal light, bring into consciousness our latent transcendental sense, and keep ourselves so spiritually supple that alike in times of stress and hours of prayer and silence we are aware of the mysterious ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... see in the account of my examination, together with the pilot, Don Jose Canizares' report of his examination and the map he made of this port, the nature of the work done. I will, notwithstanding in this, give a brief account, that shows the port of San Francisco to be one of the best that I have seen on this coast from ...
— The March of Portola - and, The Log of the San Carlos and Original Documents - Translated and Annotated • Zoeth S. Eldredge and E. J. Molera
... 529: "The lands, therefore, which Columbus had visited were called the West Indies; and as he seemed to have entered upon a vast region of unexplored countries, existing in a state of nature, the whole received the comprehensive appellation of the New World." Irving's Columbus, vol. i. p. 333. These are very grave errors, again involving the projection of our modern knowledge into the past. The lands which Columbus had visited ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... performed; and this, says Blackstone, differs in nothing from a grant. The contract between Georgia and the purchasers was executed by the grant. A contract executed, as well as one which is executory, contains obligations binding on the parties. A grant, in its own nature, amounts to an extinguishment of the right of the grantor, and implies a contract not to reassert that right. If, under a fair construction of the Constitution, grants are comprehended under the term ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... leave the room," said Mrs. Van Vechten, pointing toward Rosamond, who, wholly ignorant of the nature of her offence, retreated hastily, wondering how she ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... (figs. 110 and 111).—This pattern, more of the nature of lace than any of the former, is well adapted for trimming, not only household articles but also church furniture, altar-cloths and the like, which are required to wash, as it can be ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... characteristics of a cycle of actions embodying desire, namely, restless movement until the ground is reached, and then quiescence. Nevertheless, we feel no temptation to say that the animal desired what occurred, partly because of the obviously mechanical nature of the whole occurrence, partly because, when an animal survives a fall, it tends not to repeat ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... latter race. The negro will be fit to cultivate the soil, and will thrive beneath the tropical sun of the Brazils. The enfeebled white man grows more enfeebled and more degenerate with each succeeding generation, and languishes in a clime which nature never designed him to inhabit. The time will come when the debased and suffering negroes shall possess this fertile land, and when some share of justice shall be awarded to their ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... convinced that the insects noted the bearings of their nests and the direction they took in flying from them. The proceeding in this and similar cases (I have read of something analogous having been noticed in hive bees) seems to be a mental act of the same nature as that which takes place in ourselves when recognising a locality. The senses, however, must be immeasurably more keen and the mental operation much more certain in them than it is in man, for to my eye there was absolutely no landmark on the even ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... Mrs. Vanhomrigh. You say they are of no consequence: why, they keep as good female company as I do male; I see all the drabs of quality at this end of the town with them: I saw two Lady Bettys(2) there this afternoon; the beauty of one, the good-breeding and nature of t'other, and the wit of neither, would have made a fine woman. Rare walking in the Park now: why don't you walk in the Green of St. Stephen? The walks there are finer gravelled than the Mall. What beasts the Irish women ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... Nature tells us, that if water stand long, it corrupts; whereas running water keeps sweet and is ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... tended to pass into the mere mechanical repetition of prayers and sacrifices. Even the worship of the Caesars, [11] which did much to hold the empire together, failed to satisfy the spiritual wants of mankind. It made no appeal to the moral nature; it brought no message, either of fear or hope, about a future world and a life beyond ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... innocent and sweet. Good nature radiated from her soft, tired features, and was somehow also entangled in her fluffy grey hair. She ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... description in New Zealand than it would seem to be in any of the other islands of the South Sea; for it is performed here, not merely by means of a sort of fine comb, which merely pricks the skin and draws from it a little serum slightly tinged with blood, but also by an instrument of the nature of a chisel, which at every application makes an incision into the flesh, and causes the blood to start forth in gushes. This chisel is sometimes nearly a quarter of an inch broad, although, for the more minute parts of the figure, a smaller ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... Treaty prohibits any measures of a military nature, such as the establishment of military bases and fortifications, the carrying out of military maneuvers, or the testing of any type of weapon; it permits the use of military personnel or equipment for scientific research or ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... as if the awful nature of the place presses down upon the soul and hushes the beholder into noiseless reverence. We feel that we are surrounded by the congregated bones of the great men of past times, who have filled history with their deeds and the earth with ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... hold its flag, I will never voluntarily lower it. I have no right and no power to dictate to Mr. Watts the course he should pursue, but I have the right and duty to refuse to associate my name with a submission which is utterly repugnant to my nature, and inconsistent ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... of artificial good. No man, therefore, can be born, in the strict acceptation, a lover of money; for he may be born where money does not exist: nor can he be born, in a moral sense, a lover of his country; for society, politically regulated, is a state contradistinguished from a state of nature; and any attention to that coalition of interests which makes the happiness of a country, is possible only to those whom inquiry and reflection have ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... moved. Soon the door opened again, and various voices hailed the new-comer as "Jane," "Jany," and "Jane Huff." She was a decidedly plain- looking country girl; but when she came near, Ellen saw a sober, sensible face, and a look of thorough good-nature, which immediately ranked her next to Jenny Hitchcock in her fancy. Mr. Bill Huff followed, a sturdy young man; quite as plain, and hardly so sensible-looking; he was still more shining with good-nature. He made no pretensions ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... day in June—one of those glorious days when field and wood are like a lofty cathedral, where the birds are the choir, and the wind stirring the censers of the forest perfume, is the organ; while man, in ecstasy with nature's beauty, glances enraptured from heaven to earth—from earth ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... lawyer sees the worst side of human nature. A parson probably sees the best of it; but though I have been a parson for many years and seen many good men and fine deeds, I have seen nothing more splendid, I cannot imagine anything more splendid, than the comradeship, the brotherly love of ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... recalled the imperfect vision of the ocean inhabitants. In spite of their bulging and movable eyes that enable them to see before and behind them, their visual power extends but a short distance. The splendors with which Nature clothes the butterfly cannot be appreciated by them. Absolutely color-blind, they can appreciate only the difference between ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the institution of slavery really looks small to him. He is so put up by nature that a lash upon his back would hurt him, but a lash upon anybody else's back does not hurt him. That is the build of the man, and consequently he looks upon the matter of slavery ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... men, tear and tatter to pieces the rude coarse materia of things, and think we know the nature of an object, because, like a child with a mirror, we break it to find the image. But the life of the thing—the inner, hidden mystic life of sympathies—of this we know nothing, and ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold |
