"Negative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... asking him the cause, he answered: "There is nothing more to be said; no one need ever praise the work of Mr. Cornell again.'' On my asking the professor what he meant, he asked me if I had not heard the last speech. I answered in the negative—that my mind was occupied with other things. He then quoted it substantially as follows: "Fellow-citizens, when Mr. Cornell found himself rich beyond the dreams of avarice, did he give himself up to a life of inglorious ease? No, fellow- citizens; ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... two first it may be answered, that the negative authority of Scripture is not prevalent in those things which are not the ...
— The Discovery of a World in the Moone • John Wilkins
... quite chubby again. Then, this thing has been retouched." My uncle peered into the photograph. "It seems to me it is pretty nearly all retouching. For instance, if you look at the eye, that high light is not perfectly even; that was touched in on the negative with a pencil. Then about the neck of our Minnie I have observed certain bones, just the slightest indication of her collar-bone, George, but that has disappeared under the retoucher's pencil. Then the infantile smoothness of her cheek, and ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... os sublevi) we recognize specimens of Latin slang, because all of the metaphors involved are in current use to-day. When one of the freedmen in Petronius remarks: "You ought not to do a good turn to nobody" (neminem nihil boni facere oportet) we see the same use of the double negative to which we are accustomed in illiterate English. The rapid survey which we have just made of the evidence bearing on the subject establishes beyond doubt the existence of a form of speech among the Romans which ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... greatest of possible truths. And if this is the case—if there is no motion without mind, no being without knowing—shall we infer, with Clifford, that universal being is mindless, or answer with a dogmatic negative that most stupendous of questions—Is there knowledge with the Most High? If there is no motion without mind, no being without knowing, may we not rather infer, with Bruno, that it is in the medium of ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... assumptions and slippery arguments on which such daring hypotheses must be based, can be refuted, for the most part, only by reasoning in kind,—by arguments nearly as uncertain, it may be, as those which they are brought to answer. We cannot prove a negative; we can only show the insufficiency of the ground on which the opposite assumption is made to rest; and enough is done for this end, when it is made to appear, that the whole scheme is ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... to prison, where he remained a long time, suffering divers torments. At the second time of examination, the governor, after having pressed him to sacrifice, asked him if he had a wife, parents, or children, alive. The saint answered all these questions in the negative. "Who then were those that wept for you at your first examination?" Irenaeus made answer: "Our Lord Jesus Christ hath said: He that loveth father or mother, wife or children, brothers or relations more than me, is not worthy of {652} me. So, when I lift up my eyes ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... of his translation of the last two negative phrases. "You mean the application of ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... "I don't think she'd mind my repeating to her own sister that she told me so, or that there's only this one copy, and she gave orders to have the negative destroyed." ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... ordinarily seems natural and in no need of explanation. Nowhere does it become apparent that the abolition of the Bamoth and Asherim and memorial stones is the real object contemplated; these institutions are now almost unknown, and what is really only intelligible as a negative and polemical ordinance is regarded as full of ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... is a matter of precept. We must observe, however, that while the negative precepts of the Law forbid sinful acts, the positive precepts inculcate acts of virtue. Now sinful acts are evil in themselves, and cannot become good, no matter how, or when, or where, they are done, because of their very nature they ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... Venetian Period. Deserving mention only for its notably negative character. None of the great Venetian painters, Tintoret, Titian, Veronese, Bellini, Giorgione, Bonifazio, ever introduce a ship if they can help it. They delight in ponderous architecture, in grass, flowers, blue mountains, skies, clouds, and gay ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... maintained in the world, whether they can be maintained spiritually—that is, thoroughly and egotistically, or not. If my enemy who lives under the hill will continue to not-murder me, I desire him to continue whether he enjoys not-murdering me or not. But it is no credit to him. Except in some baldly negative fashion as this, however, it is literally true that a man's virtues are of little account to others except as they are of account to him, and except he enjoys them as much as his vices. The first really important shock that comes to a young man's religious ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... we beheld that of the enemy forming their line off Cabrita, about five miles to leeward, waiting for the Hannibal, which was the last ship to leave Algeziras. Sir James now made the interrogatory signal to know if all the ships were ready for battle, which was most properly answered in the negative, as all had much to do. The time which the combined squadron took to get into the order of battle and sailing was invaluable to all of us, by enabling us to complete the arrangements so necessary upon so momentous an occasion. ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... highly prepossessing in itself, but to me, who had not been over and above pleased with him in our first interview, admirable and surprising. Lacking, as I have said, any distinctive quality of face or form agreeable or otherwise—being what you might call in appearance a negative sort of person, his pale, regular features, dark, well-smoothed hair and simple whiskers, all belonging to a recognized type and very commonplace—there was still visible, on this occasion at least, a certain self-possession in his carriage, which went ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... the reader who is impatient of much praise, and at the same time perform the negative part of ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... unprecedented in its narrowness. A native was seriously injured; and, finally, it was ascertained that a Malay canteen had been invaded, the sequel to which was the destruction of an army of—empty bottles! There was a negative satisfaction in the fact that they were empty which the hapless Malay was not ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... exposed in the camera for the proper time and developed in the ordinary way. After development, the plate is fixed and strongly intensified, in order to render the white portions of the drawings as opaque as possible. On looking through a properly treated negative of this kind, it will be seen that the parts representing the lines and black portions of the drawing are clear glass, and the whites representing the paper ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... Church—these were the problems over which the young Hegel pondered. Through an intense study of these problems, he discovered that evil, sin, longing, and suffering are woven into the very tissue of religious and historical processes, and that these negative elements determine the very meaning and progress of history and religion. Thereupon he began a systematic sketch of a philosophy in which a negative factor was to be recognized as the positive vehicle in the development of the whole world. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... prohibition as an expression of ideals has passed. Emphasis must be placed upon what we should do, and must be removed from a trivial and legalized code of "Don'ts." Here and there in the country we find a firmly entrenched negative interpretation of moral obligation. Nothing is so dangerous morally as this. Nothing can so certainly drive out of the community the broad-minded, fine-spirited youth. The family must interpret morality with good ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... Noble Path, Noble Truth, is ariya, which also means Aryan.[5] The negative, un-Aryan, is used of each of the two low aims. It is possible that this rendering should have been introduced into the translation; but the ethical meaning, though still associated with the tribal meaning, had probably already become ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... the Chinese to direct the course of their caravans across the desert. For this purpose a figure, placed in a waggon which led the caravan, was so constructed that the arm and hand moved with perfect freedom, the magnetic needle being attached to it; the hand, however, pointed to the south, the negative end being fixed in it. The Chinese also used a needle which was freely suspended in the air, attached to a silken thread, and by this means they were able to determine the amount of the western variation of the needle. It is possible that both the Chinese and Arabs discovered ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... asked Belding, waving his hand toward the corrals. The Indian's beautiful name for Nell meant "shower of gold," and Belding used it in asking Yaqui if he had seen her. He received a negative reply. ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... of our literature was extensive is indisputable. But, unfortunately, he had altogether neglected that very part of our literature with which it is especially desirable that an editor of Shakspeare should be conversant. It is dangerous to assert a negative. Yet little will be risked by the assertion, that in the two folio volumes of the English Dictionary there is not a single passage quoted from any dramatist of the Elizabethan age, except Shakspeare ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... occupations; therefore, it is scarcely, perhaps, to be wondered that on the day after Lady Audley's departure, the two young men (one of whom was disabled by that heart wound which he bore so quietly, from really taking pleasure in anything, and the other of whom looked upon almost all pleasure as a negative kind of trouble) began to grow weary of the shade of the willows overhanging the ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... his party. Sometimes he must support a measure which he knows to be bad, because its rejection would involve a change of government, which he believes would be a still greater evil than its acceptance, and in order to prevent this evil he may have to vote a direct negative to some resolution containing a statement which he believes ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... negative of the doctor, who repeated that "it was lying on the top of the papers ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... far from desirable to meet a censure by anything but a direct negative, but I think that such an expedient is, on the whole, preferable to the chance of defeat either ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... property of bodies by virtue of which it cannot change its own condition of rest or motion. In other words it is the negative quality of passiveness either in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... possible through the freedom of the pupil, through special circumstances, or through the errors of the educator himself. And for this very reason any theory of Education must take into account in the beginning this negative possibility. It must consider beforehand the dangers which threaten the pupil in all possible ways even before they surround him, and fortify him against them. Intentionally to expose him to temptation in order to prove his strength, is devilish; and, on the other hand, to guard him against ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... all in that immense middle empire where Europe as it were flows back to Asia—namely, in Russia There the power to will has been long stored up and accumulated, there the will—uncertain whether to be negative or affirmative—waits threateningly to be discharged (to borrow their pet phrase from our physicists) Perhaps not only Indian wars and complications in Asia would be necessary to free Europe from its greatest danger, but also internal subversion, the shattering of ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... First, negative individuality. Second, the imperfect form of a verb. Third, the ablative form of a noun signifying a portion of the body. Fourth, ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... wild fancies with Werter and The Robbers, announced his desire, which sounded very like a demand, of going to Gottingen instead of to Oxford. Never were Mr. Maltravers's notions of a proper and gentlemanlike finish to education more completely and rudely assaulted. He stammered out a negative, and hurried to his study to write a long letter to Cleveland, who, himself an Oxford prize-man, would, he was persuaded, see the matter in the same light. Cleveland answered the letter in person: listened in silence to all the father had to ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "That is a very negative sort of goodness," returned May, smiling. "However, if you must go to see some one, Jamieson is better than Smithers; but why not come home and ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... asceticism, no longer the mystical trance, no longer the "fussiness," with which the early Christian reproached the Jew, which still haunts all the religions of taboo and merit, and even Christianity in some forms. Where men think of holiness as freedom from sin, the negative conception reacts on life. They begin at the wrong end. Solomon Schechter, the great Jewish scholar, once said of Oxford, that "they practice fastidiousness there, and call it holiness." Unfortunately Oxford has no monopoly of that type of holiness. But with Jesus ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... old. I abandoned my waist-line to Nature's will and my face settled into the expression of a good negative that has been blurred by too long exposure to a strong light. Toward the end William looked like the skin-and-bones remnant of a saint. His face was sunken and hollowed out till the very Wesley in him showed through. His beard was long and had whitened until it gave ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... in the negative, qualifying it a moment afterward by a perplexed "Well, I shouldn't ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had culminated on the evening before the party in question. Col. Baker, despite the persistent and patient efforts on Flossy's part to show him the folly of his course, had insisted on obliging her to speak a decided negative to his earnestly pressed question. The result was, an unusually unpleasant domestic scene, and a general air of gloom ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... Club were, as their name implies, human, however glorified and transformed: the meal, however, consisted principally of tea and coffee, for the Humans were total abstainers, not with the virulent assertion of a negative formula, but as an enlightened ratification of a profound social effort (hear, hear), not as the meaningless idolatry (cheers) of an isolated nostrum (renewed cheers), but as a chivalrous sacrifice for the triumph of a civic ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... priests. I communicated to him my wish to pass the custom-house without giving the officers the trouble of examining my luggage. He inquired whether I had any dutiable articles, and wrote for my signature a declaration in the negative; and then he lifted a sand-box, beneath which was a little heap of silver coins. On this delicate hint I asked what was the usual fee, and was told that fifteen pauls was the proper sum. I presume it was entirely an illegal charge, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to which I can give no distinct information, or, at least, only information of a negative kind. I once sent out a small quantity of the muriate of potash, but my manager could perceive no effects from it whatever, and I have been informed of an instance of its having been applied to an estate in Coorg at the rate of one quarter of a pound a tree, or at the rate of between 3 and 4 ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... appearance—not one of these ridiculous and dowdy Philistines who thought it incumbent on them to blight the gaming-table with a sour look of protest as they passed by it. The general conviction that we are admirable does not easily give way before a single negative; rather when any of Vanity's large family, male or female, find their performance received coldly, they are apt to believe that a little more of it will win over the unaccountable dissident. In Gwendolen's habits of mind it had been taken for ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... Bench which is to serve as Bench of First Instance shall investigate the matter with regard to the question whether the case is more political than legal in nature. If the Court decides the question in the negative, then the same Court shall give judgment on the dispute; but, if the Court decides the question in the affirmative, then the case shall be referred by the Court to the International Council of Conciliation. Whatever ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim
... concerned with historical so much as practical Christianity. Its object was to point a moral: and it did this in two ways; either as an affirmative, constructive inculcator of what life should be,—as the portrayer of the ideal; or as a negative, critical describer of the types of life actually existing,—as the portrayer of the real. It approached more nearly to comedy in its latter function, but in both aspects it really prepared the way for the comic muse. The natural prey of ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... could now search for a law that would negative this provision in its effect upon social equality, he would fail to find it. But he would find it in the unwritten law of the natural aversion of the races. He would find it in public opinion, which is the vital force in every law in a free government. This ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... pursuit was one to which I would never have devoted laborious years—theology on the negative side. His idea was that the liberation of thought could only be accomplished by going painfully over the whole theological ground and explaining every belief and phase of belief historically and rationally. My opinion was, and is, that ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... headquarters again, he found telegrams in great number awaiting him. They were from all the hospitals and insane asylums in the entire district. But in none of them had there been a patient fitting the description of the vanished girl. Neither the commissioner nor Muller was surprised at this negative result. They were also not surprised at all that the other branches of the police department had been able to discover so little about the disappearance of the young lady. They were aware that they had to deal with a criminal of great ability who would be careful ...
— The Case of The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... my cautious friends say that one would only get something a great deal worse. That I deny. I maintain that it is impossible to have anything worse, and that the majority of the boys we turn out are intellectually in so negative a condition that any change would be ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... nod my head twice—once in the negative, meaning thereby that I would prefer not taking the other bottle at present—and once in the affirmative, intending thus to imply that I was sober and had positively come to my senses. By these means I somewhat ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... remarkable obeisances, gave us to know that there were flags hoisted on the signalmast, at the mountain settlement, of which he could make nothing, the uppermost was neither the interrogative, the affirmative, nor the negative, nor in fact any thing that with the book he could ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... given him possibly in the hope that he might live up to its adventurous tradition, but he limited himself strictly to the home industry of adventurer, preferring to exploit the assured rather than to explore the unknown. Lulu's intercourse with him had been restricted of recent years to the negative processes of being out of town when he called on her, and short of money when he wrote to her. Now, however, she bethought herself of his eminent suitability for the direction of a treasure-seeking experiment; if anyone could extract ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... what station of life she had been brought up. She certainly adapted herself well to whatever society she happened to be with; neither patricians nor plebeians found any thing to criticise; but, whether this were the result of tact, or owing merely to the adoption of a negative standard, no one could say. In language she was uniformly correct, without seeming at all scholastic; she occasionally used the idioms and dialectic peculiarities of those around her, though never with the air of being heedlessly betrayed ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... friends had come North to welcome the explorer home. Battle was quite a gay place; but it was living up to its name, for Peary not only claimed that he had found the Pole, but also that Cook had not; and he was realizing what a hard thing it is to prove a negative. We had a very delightful time with the party, and greatly enjoyed meeting all the members of the expedition. Among them was the ill-fated Borup, destined shortly to be drowned on a simple canoe trip, and the indomitable and athletic Macmillan who subsequently led the Crocker Land expedition, ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... last paper I wrote,—"So far as quantity is concerned, to eat a crocodile would be no more than to eat an ox." You have omitted the negative. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 73, March 22, 1851 • Various
... The absence of her whom at that moment he valued above all else was so sad to him that he ventured one last attempt, and after the meal he sent little Luc to see if his mother would receive him. The child returned with a reply in the negative. "Mamma is resting.... She does not wish to be disturbed." So the matter was irremissible. She would not see her husband until the morrow—if he lived. For vainly did Boleslas convince himself that afternoon that he had lost none of his skill ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... imbibe its delights yet bring no contribution to the common stock. There are men who seek the reputation of wisdom by dint of never affording a glimpse of their capabilities, and impose upon the world by silent gravity; negative philosophers, who never commit themselves beyond the utterance of a self-evident proposition, or hazard their position by a feat of greater boldness than is to be found in the avowal of the safe truth which has been granted for a thousand years. There is a deception ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... resistance due to internal friction in the vehicle. f{p} resistance due to impact of the road surface. f{a} resistance due to air. f{g} resistance due to grade, which is positive when ascending and negative when descending. ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg
... Gabriel," said Rebecca to Nietzel, who stood at the wagon door, looking at her with wistful, melancholy air. She shook her head as a negative answer to the dumb questioning of his eyes, and only repeated, "Get ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... earnest wish was to remember it as little as possible. He felt that even if Mrs. Draper hadn't told him she was unhappy he would have guessed it, and yet that he couldn't have pointed to his proof. The evidence was chiefly negative—she never alluded to her husband. Beyond this it seemed to him simply that her whole being was pitched in a lower key than harmonious Nature had designed; she was like a powerful singer who had lost her high notes. ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... of being invited to an evening party at the Tuileries in the winter of 1816, and was in conversation with the Countess de l'Espinasse, when the Duchess did me the honour to ask me if I intended going to St. Germain to hunt. I replied in the negative, not having received an invitation; upon which the Duchess graciously observed that if I would attend mass the following morning in the Royal Chapel, she would manage it. Accordingly I presented myself ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... their observation and judgment, that he was not a man labouring under any infirmity, or morbid state of mind, that ought, by any legal restraint, to disqualify him from the management of himself and his affairs. With such opinions I have no concern; they can only be regarded as negative evidence, and cannot operate against manifold ...
— A Letter to the Right Honorable the Lord Chancellor, on the Nature and Interpretation of Unsoundness of Mind, and Imbecility of Intellect • John Haslam
... powers of governing still remaining in the hands of the king, he will have a negative over the whole legislation of this continent. And as he hath shewn himself such an inveterate enemy to liberty, and discovered such a thirst for arbitrary power; is he, or is he not, a proper man to say ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine
... in the middle of the night, and when I entered his room I found he had rolled his iron bed to the window, and was lying there, looking out upon the heavens. 'Have you seen nothing in the sky?' asked he; and when I answered in the negative, he bade me run to the guard-house, and ask the man on duty if he had seen nothing. I went there; the guard said he had seen nothing, and I returned with this answer to my master, who was still in the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... which a traveller hither has to enter! Do we possess anything here more essentially ours (though we share it with our sister Germany) than our particle "un"? Poor are those living languages that have not our use of so rich a negative. The French equivalent in adjectives reaches no further than the adjective itself—or hardly; it does not attain the participle; so that no French or Italian poet has the words "unloved", "unforgiven." None such, therefore, has the opportunity of the gravest and the most majestic ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... within her. He loved her still, then, or why was he here? And then the thought that she had done something for him too warmed her heart still more toward him. And there was nothing for her to repel now, for he lay motionless; there was nothing for her to escape—he did not pursue her; nothing to negative—he did not propose anything to her. Her instinct of defense had nothing to lay hold of; so, womanlike, she had a strong impulse to wake him and be kind to him—as kind as she could be without committing herself. ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... phantom, "I am thy evil genius—thou shalt see me again at Philippi."[9] "Well, then," replied Brutus, without being discomposed, "we shall meet again." Upon this the phantom vanished; when Brutus, calling to his servants, asked if they had seen anything; to which they answering in the negative, he resumed his studies. 24. Struck with so strange an occurrence, he mentioned it to Cassius, who rightly considered it as the effect of an imagination disordered by vigilance and anxiety. 25. Brutus appeared satisfied with this solution; and as Antony and Augustus ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... thanks to our artificial light. Not even sunshine could have been better for our purposes. With the thrust of its propeller curbed by the slant of its fins, the Nautilus stood still. The camera was aimed at the scenery on the ocean floor, and in a few seconds we had a perfect negative. ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... for should they presume in any respect to betray their trust, it gives the people more frequent opportunities than even in Britain, of chusing others in their stead. The Governor convenes, prorogues, and dissolves these Assemblies, and has a negative on the bills of both houses. After bills have received his assent, they are sent to Great Britain for the royal approbation, in consequence of which they have the force of laws in the province. This is a general sketch of the royal governments, ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... various schemes is thus completed, none of them gets the full advantage of the profusion of life which he commands. At any moment great masses of that life are being wasted, turned to no account; and the result is not merely negative, for at any moment the wasted life, the stuff that is not being used, is dividing and weakening the effect of the picture created out of the rest. That so much remains, in spite of everything, gives the measure of Tolstoy's genius; ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... lake yielded no evidence to substantiate the legend connected with it, because I found no Dayaks left "to tell the tale," still, satisfaction is derived even from a negative result. Having accomplished what was possible I returned to Sampit, arriving almost at the same time a sailing ship came in from Madura, the island close to northeastern Java. It was of the usual solid type, painted white, red, ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... at once in reading these divine predictions. They must be answered in the negative. The Lord Jesus Christ has not even begun His work as King. The Kingdom promised unto Him, He has not yet received. There is now no such Kingdom of ...
— The Work Of Christ - Past, Present and Future • A. C. Gaebelein
... beauty which is born of difficulty, permitting nothing but an Olympian, though perhaps somewhat wearisome calm. In effect, such a conception of Greek art and poetry leaves in the central expressions of Greek culture none but negative qualities; and the legend of Demeter and Persephone, perhaps the most popular of all Greek legends, is sufficient to show that the "worship of sorrow" was not without its function in Greek religion; their legend is ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... for centuries the pretensions of Elizabeth to the title, "The Virgin Queen," and it is utterly impossible to dispose of the issue in a note. However, the weight of opinion appears to be in the negative. Many and great were the difficulties attending the marriage of a Protestant princess in those troublous times, and Elizabeth finally announced that she would become wedded to the English nation, and she wore a ring ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a good clear photograph of some wild bird, the bird image to be over one half inch in length on the negative. ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... form of the 2nd line is a negative interrogative, implying,—'I hope the Kurus did ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Sir George, and myself," observed Mr. Dodge, glancing obliquely and pointedly at the rest of the party, as if he thought they were in a decided minority; "but in this instance, I feel constrained to record my vote in the negative. I believe America has as good a climate, and as good general digestion as commonly falls to the lot of mortals: more than this I do not claim for the country, and less than this I should be reluctant to maintain. I have travelled a little, gentlemen, not as much, perhaps, as the ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... conceived by the mind," but as both father and mother are necessary in the generation of a child, so also there must be both idea and mind before a thought can be conceived. As semen germinated in the positive male organ is projected into the negative uterus at conception, so ideas are generated by a positive Human Ego in the spirit-substance of the Region of abstract Thought. This idea is projected upon the receptive mind, and a conception takes place. Then, as the spermatozoic nucleus draws upon the maternal body for material to shape a ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... Glen felt at this particular moment gave her a temporary reassurance as to some questions which had agitated her—how much she cared, after all, for Lieutenant Rhett Sempland, and did she like him better than Major Harry Lacy? Both questions were instantly decided in the negative—for the time being. She hated Rhett Sempland; per contra, at that moment, she loved Harry Lacy. For Harry Lacy was he about whom the difference began. Rhett Sempland, confident of his own affection and ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... dream. For many minutes she was perfectly quiet, dumbly contemplating the stranger who sat guard over her in that wretched place. In her mind there was quickly developed, as one brings the picture from the film of a negative the truth of the situation. She had escaped from one set of captors only to give herself into the clutches of others a thousand times more detestable, ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... naturally graceful of movement, she had not undergone years of arduous tutelage, she had not the instinct for sheer joyous energy of action that is stored in some natures; out of these unpromising negative qualities she had produced a style of dancing that might best be labelled a conscientious departure from accepted methods. The highly imaginative titles that she had bestowed on her dances, the "Life of a fern," the "Soul-dream ...
— When William Came • Saki
... the direct current feeders which supply it from sub-stations Nos. 11 and 12, are electrically insulated from all other circuits. Of each pair of track rails one is used for the automatic block signaling system, and, therefore, is not used as a part of the negative or return side of the direct current system. The other four track rails, however, are bonded, and together with the negative feeders constitute the track return or negative side of ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... the negative—Miss Valery saying, with attempted gaiety, "You know, one might as well question a stone wall as Nathanael. He can be ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... have used the word in its technical sense, as that which keeps together and makes one thing of many parts—there is a simplicity which is best known by its opposite, affectation; upon this Sir Joshua enlarges. "Simplicity, being a negative virtue, cannot be described or defined." But it is possible, even in avoiding affectation, to convert simplicity into the very thing we strive to avoid. N. Poussin—whom, with regard to this virtue, he contrasts with others of the French ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... intellectual, divine principle penetrates matter as the positive element, which under definite conditions steadily works upon the negative element of the original substance and forces the same under constant changing of form and combining parts, to realize definite, universally similar ideas, and to attain definite aims; and wherever matter in the process ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... Senegal is working toward greater regional integration with a unified external tariff. Senegal also realized full Internet connectivity in 1996, creating a miniboom in information technology-based services. Private activity now accounts for 82% of GDP. On the negative side, Senegal faces deep-seated urban problems of chronic unemployment, juvenile delinquency, and drug addiction. Real GDP growth is expected to rise above 6%, while inflation is likely to hold at ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... interviewer, and says, "These are my brightest jewels;" or whether, when she tells her children to shake hands, the interviewer says, "No doubt these are your brightest jewels?" A mother is hardly in a position to return an indignant negative to such a question, and if she utters an idiotic affirmative, she is probably credited with the original remark in all ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... rejected contributions in our waste-basket we could daily furnish the inside and outside of a dozen Balls. It is saddening, it is pathetic; it has gone on so long now, and must still continue for so many ages; but we can just bear it as a negative quality. It is only when such rubbish is put forward as proof that its author has a claim to the name and fame of a poet, that we lose patience. The verses given in this pamphlet would invalidate Mr. Ball's claim to the authorship of Mrs. Akers's poem, even though the Seven Sleepers swore ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... for her not having her lessons. The second, 11 years old, said that her mother was dying; she came bringing this news to the teachers at two different periods of her school life. She was a calm, thoughtful, analytical child with no reason for lying. Family history negative. The third, 13 years old, told of an imaginary uncle who was going to collect funds for needy children; she kept up the deceit for two months. She was an anemic, nervous, hysterical child with a nervous ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... just right there. The sun was in an indulgent mood and winked at the signs of advancing age. The bald patch was out of sight, and the smile would have softened the heart of an income-tax assessor. I acquired the negative from the amateur performer, and had it vignetted, which made it better still, as there was a space between the cashmere sock and the spring trousering in the original that I did not want attention drawn to. I had a large number of prints made, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... brush rotates in a definite direction in a permanent magnetic field seems to show that in alternating currents of very high frequency the positive and negative impulses are not equal, but that one always preponderates ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla
... to her that she could not bear, something clayey and ugly. His intelligence was self-absorbed. How unnatural it was to sit with a self-absorbed creature, like something negative ensconced opposite one. Nothing could touch him—he could only absorb ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... down my violin,' he continued, 'and play them a few tunes, which gives me an opportunity of seeing that they get no more liquor than necessary for refreshment; and if the young people propose a dance, I seldom answer in the negative; nevertheless, when I announce time for return, they are ever ready to obey my commands.' The Archdeacon appears to have been a broad-minded man, for he did not reprimand Mr. Carter at all; and as there seems to have been no mention of ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... composed. The Polish officer had confided certain secrets to him, saying: "You are a disciple of Lavoisier; you are wealthy, you are free; I will give you my idea. The Primitive Element must be common to oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon. Force must be the common principle of positive and negative electricity. Demonstrate these two hypotheses, and you will hold in your hands the First Cause, the solution of the great ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... Womankind peremptorily refuse Weissenfels, and take to a bed of sickness; inexpugnable there, for the moment. Baireuth is but a weak middle term; and there are disagreements on it. Answer from England, affirmative or even negative, we have yet none. Promptly affirmative, that might still avail, and be an honorable outcome. Perhaps better pause till that arrive, and declare itself?—Friedrich Wilhelm knows nothing of the Villa mission, of the urgencies that have been used in ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... frowned at this proposal. How could the good young gentleman be so inconsiderate, she thought, as to propose to his visitor for lunch what was by and by to come up for dinner? She was quite relieved, however, by Cecil's eager negative, and went off to her kitchen well satisfied; while Mr. Yorke, after saying grace, proceeded to do the honours of ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... and Holy Spirit," though the same, are not identical. This point deserves a moment's consideration. When they ask "Is the Father the same as the Son?" Catholics answer "No." "Is the One the same as the Other?" The answer is in the negative. There is not, therefore, complete indifference between Them; and so number does come in—number which we explained was the result of diversity of substrates. We will briefly debate this point when we ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... them a long time, under the shade of certain black carts, a considerable number of them on horseback surrounded us. Their first question was, whether we had ever before been among them; and being answered in the negative, they began impudently to beg some of our victuals; and we gave them some of the biscuits and wine, which we had brought with us from Constantinople. Having drank one flaggon of our wine they demanded more, saying, that a man does not enter a house with one foot only. But we excused ourselves, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... delinquent of late, Mr. Lawson. I ask the women folks, and the answer invariably is in the negative. Now, if it were not that this little country girl is here I would carry you ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... in reply to a negative on Crevel's part, "I have fouled my life, till now so pure, by a degrading thought; and I am inexcusable!—I know it!—I deserve every insult you can offer me! God's will be done! If, indeed, He desires the death of two creatures worthy to ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... negative ne, not, which always precedes its verb, contracts with all the forms of habban. The negative loses its e, habban its h. Ne habban nabban; Ic ne hbbe Ic nbbe; Ic ne hfde Ic nfde, etc. The negative forms may be got, therefore, by simply substituting in ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... imaginations, presents itself as inclining largely to the side of the passive and the negative. It is abstinence from evil quite as much as eager realization of good. On this view, an air of cloistered sanctity hangs about it: it is full of prayers and mystic raptures: its eye is fixed within, or, if not within, only upon God. It is sweet rather than strong: more ...
— Strong Souls - A Sermon • Charles Beard
... as he traced out something on the queer negative. On it, it was easily possible, following his guidance, to read the words inscribed on the sheet of paper inside. So admirably defined were all the details that even the gum on the envelope and the edges of the sheet of paper inside ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... delicate question of culture, I do not think that any other than negative rules can be laid down. For positive rules, for suggestion, nature alone inspires it. Who dare assume to guide a youth, a maid, to perfect manners?—the golden mean is so delicate, difficult,—say frankly unattainable. What finest ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... Florence, Genoa, and Great Britain, and contending that the subject ought to be deferred until North Carolina should be represented, moved that the committee should rise. This question being decided in the negative, Mr. Scott declared the opinion that the United States were not bound to pay the domestic creditors the sums specified in the certificates of debts in their possession. He supported this opinion by urging, not that the public had received ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... in India. Yet he did not magnify their importance unduly, and remembered that he must not grieve the loving heart which probably ached with just as keen a longing as his own. This was heroism of a negative kind, I fancy. ...
— A Little Hero • Mrs. H. Musgrave
... of inquiry has been received. A United States Senator may have one vote only at one time on any question. On questions like the ratification of a treaty, where two-thirds are required for affirmative action, one vote in the negative counts for as much as two in the affirmative. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 31, June 10, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... University of Baltimore, has asserted that he has 'every reason for believing that fecundation or impregnation is always an electrical phenomenon; ... it results from the completion of an electric circle,—the union of positive and negative electricities.' This, however, is not accepted by all as the dictum of modern science. Physiology has clearly established that the new being is the result of contact between the male element, an independent, living animal, on the one part, and the female ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... their furs behind the screens arranged for that purpose in an adjoining room, a messenger came to inform us that all was ready. The question had been agitated, whether the King should dine meanwhile, and I had it carried in the negative, fearing lest coming immediately after to the Bed of justice, and having eaten before his usual hour, he might be ill, which would have been a grievous inconvenience. As soon as it was announced to the Regent that we could set out, his ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... any man would answer that question in the negative," he replied. "Frankly, I could use more money, ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... direction as the train-arm, and the lower in the contrary direction. And the appearance is accepted, too, as a reality; being explained, agreeably to the analysis just given, by saying that H has no absolute rotation about its axis, while the other wheels have; that of F being positive and that of K negative. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... restraint is, however, a merely negative thing; it is a "being let alone." Some great writers, John Stuart Mill for example, treat it as though it had only this negative character, and as though to be let alone were necessarily and in itself a good thing. But others have truly and forcefully shown, first, that ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... made their report, followed by the electronic engineers, followed by the physicist—all negative. But each group had a suspicion that another had overlooked something. Before it regressed to a high-school debate, the general ...
— A Fine Fix • R. C. Noll
... important error. He was praised by Daines Barrington, for whose edition he gave the notes afterwards reproduced in his Northern Voyages of Discovery; but still with certain reservations. The honourable translator found some negative evidences which seemed to militate against the idea that the voyage could have extended into the arctic circle; for, in such a case, Othere would hardly have refrained from mentioning the perpetual day of those regions; the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 42, Saturday, August 17, 1850 • Various
... in them because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, gave themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness." The age, as Emerson says, had no live, distinct, actuating convictions. It was in even worse than a negative condition. As represented by its drama and poetry, it may almost be said to have repudiated the moral sentiment. A spiritual disease affected the upper classes, which continued down into the reign of the Georges. There ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... when he tells many a man, if you do no servile work on the Sabbath-day, and if you don't Rob God of his evening, you'll never subsist in the world. All the denials of God, in the world, use to be from this Fallacy impos'd upon us. It never can be necessary for us to violate any Negative Commandment in the Law of our God; where God says, thou shalt not, we cannot upon any pretence reply, I must. But the Devil will put a most formidable and astonishing face of necessity upon many of those Abominable things, which are hateful to the soul of God. He'll say nothing to us about, ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... Stone River and Chickamauga would not necessarily have been fought; Burnside would not have been besieged in Knoxville without the power of helping himself or escaping; the battle of Chattanooga would not have been fought. These are the negative advantages, if the term negative is applicable, which would probably have resulted from prompt movements after Corinth fell into the possession of the National forces. The positive results might have been: a bloodless advance to ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... absentees on Saturday night, and she did so after the hands had been paid off and gone home. The book-keeper noted the absence in his pages, asked if work was so pressing as to make the appointment of a substitute necessary or advisable, and being answered in the negative quite forgot to inform his ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... negative, but before she could say more Polly and another girl came walking down the aisle. Even Peggy looked in surprise at the newcomer, then she gave a little gasp. The girl was much taller than Polly, and ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... is that of the absence, in geological deposits, of vestiges of the intermediate forms which the theory requires to have existed. Here all that Mr. Darwin can do is to insist upon the extreme imperfection of the geological record and the uncertainty of negative evidence. But, withal, he allows the force of the objection almost as much as his opponents urge it,—so much so, indeed, that two of his English critics turn the concession unfairly upon him, and charge him with actually ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the question doubtingly; indeed, from the expression of Santander's face, almost sure of receiving a negative answer. Negative it was— ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... said Hazel. 'Nobody can teach me anything about complications!Push him off, sir. Just give him a negative and do ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... question is asked, not for the purpose of obtaining information but in order to make speech more effective, it is called the figure of interrogation. An affirmative question denies and a negative question affirms. ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... stated ministry, and that thus men in every corner of the land might attain some knowledge of the truths of our holy religion, as well as some feeling of godliness. (4) Finally, the bishop in all episcopal churches, so far as my knowledge extends, is allowed to claim a negative voice in synods of his clergy, and can in no case be taken under discipline and judged by them, but only by a synod of his own order; while the superintendent in the Scottish Church was merely the permanent ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... which I stood not only promised the negative success of keeping America out of the war, but it also offered the only prospect there was of obtaining, with neutral help, a Peace by arrangement. My belief that such a peace could have been obtained through Dr. Wilson is, of course, no longer susceptible of proof to-day. ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... argument," he went on. "You know, of course, that the force of magnetic attraction is inversely proportional to the square of the distances separating the magnet and the attracted particles, and also that each magnetized particle had two poles, a positive and a negative pole, or a north pole and a south pole, as they ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... girl laughed a quick negative. "Not me," she returned, ungrammatical and emphatic. "I can't croak a note and my fingers never would make melody if I tried till I were a hundred. I'm doing the other ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... were meditating the new and extraordinary maritime system by which alone they might hope to counteract the Continental system that now threatened to become truly coextensive with Europe. But to the writer the significance of the "Chesapeake" business is more negative than positive; it suggests rather what might have been under different treatment by the Portland ministry. The danger to Great Britain was imminent and stupendous, and her measures of counteraction needed to correspond. These were confessedly illegal in ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... compelled to fall in with the general movement towards what became known as the "spheres of influence" policy, and claimed the Yangtsze valley as her particular sphere. This she did by the somewhat negative method of obtaining from the Chinese government a declaration that no part of the Yangtsze valley should be alienated to any foreign power. A more formal recognition of the claim, as far as railway enterprise was ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... meant to give him his answer without delay; it were kinder. But she found it impossible; the negative stuck stubbornly in her throat. She knew it would stab him deep. He wasn't the man to take love lightly; his emotions were anything but on the surface; their wounds would ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... himself as "a candle of the Lord," remarked, "Then you are a dipped, but I hope not a wick-ed candle." It is said that upon another occasion, after the return of Mr. Slidell from a foreign trip, he was asked by Miss Fairlie whether he had been to Greece. He replied in the negative and asked the reason for her query. "Oh, nothing," she said, "only it would have been very natural for you to visit Greece in order to renew early associations!" Many years thereafter Priscilla Cooper, the wife of Robert Tyler and the daughter-in-law of President John Tyler, a daughter ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... times, or (2) from traditional systems of scientific teaching, as the Ptolemaic theory of astronomy, or the Cartesian of vortices. The absence too of such attempts in the stagnation of Eastern life is an instructive negative instance for study. ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... in a letter which preceded it, that she only desired to be seen and be heard by her Majesty. There was no necessity, she said, for the Queen to answer. The Queen, in fact, had answered so many of her tormentor's letters in the negative, that the Duchess, not foreseeing what would be the consequence of this general preclusion of response in her Majesty's favour, was resolved to prevent further epistolary acknowledgment by following up her last letter ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... then, is in the main negative. But in dealing with the problem thus it is not negative in its tendency, for it carries the reader to the verge of the only possible solution. For pure reason, as enlightened by modern knowledge, human freedom is unthinkable, and yet for any religion by ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... here was an undoubted testimony that there was scarce any condition in the world so miserable but there was something negative or something positive to be thankful for in it; and let this stand as a direction from the experience of the most miserable of all conditions in this world: that we may always find in it something to comfort ourselves from, and to set, ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... was one of the many books in which Professor Ainslie Grey had enforced the negative ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Panchatmakeshu. Hence, he properly points out that bhava and abhava and kala are included by the speaker within bhutas or primary elements. Bhava implies the four entities called karma, samanya, visesha and samavaya. By abhava is meant a negative state with respect to attributes not possessed by a thing. We cannot think of a thing without thinking of it as uninvested with certain attributes whatever other attributes it ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... asked the Superior's permission to receive it on the following day. She inquired of each nun who necessarily asked her permission, whether she, naming her as Saint somebody, had concealed any sin that should hinder her from receiving it; and if the answer was in the negative, she granted her permission. ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... am here is called an affirmative statement. A denial of that, I am not here, is called a negative statement. The words, not, neither, never, none, nothing, etc., are all negative words; that is, they serve to ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... appears to be, to read with such reference to system as to render it profitable. History, novels, voyages and travels, and various specific treatises of fancy or fact, invite perusal, and like a common acquaintance, it requires some moral effort to negative their claims. "Judgment," says a celebrated critic, "is forced upon us by experience. He that reads many books must compare one opinion, or one style with another, and when he compares ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... quite technical: all about rings and edges, and heel and toe,—what skates are best, and who best use them. There is an immense amount of sympathy to be exchanged on such topics, and it was somewhat significant that they avoided other themes where they might not sympathize so thoroughly. The negative part of a conversation is often as important as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... faces, you miss character, you miss fire, you miss that spice of the devil which is worth all the prettiness in the world; and what is worst of all, you miss sex. His young ladies are not womanly to nearly the same degree as his men are masculine; they are so in a negative sense; in short, they are the typical young ladies ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... connected and distinct view of the relative attitude of the different countries of Europe. The conferences and diplomatic protocolling had resulted in nothing positive; but it is very necessary for the reader to understand the negative effects of all this dissimulation and palace-politics upon the destiny of the new commonwealth, and upon Christendom at large. The League had now achieved a great triumph; the King of France had virtually abdicated, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... on ahead and interviewed a sentry, returning with a negative reply, and the information that Coulommiers was in a pretty mess ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... aggressive Mrs. Billman, perhaps because she went out of her way to be nice to the artist's wife. Milly had not yet convinced the wife of the Responsible Editor that she was important, and she never wasted time over "negative" people. The dark little Hazel Fredericks, with her muddy eyes and rather thick lips, was a more subtle woman than Mrs. Billman and took the pains to cultivate "possibilities." She had Milly at lunch one day and listened attentively to all her dubitations ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... I was again compelled to answer in the negative. I could not call to mind a single individual of my acquaintance who acted on the principle of returning ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... slices[980]! The worst of Warburton is, that he has a rage for saying something, when there's nothing to be said." Mr. Burney then asked him whether he had seen the letter which Warburton had written in answer to a pamphlet addressed "To the most impudent Man alive[981]." He answered in the negative. Mr. Burney told him it was supposed to be written by Mallet. The controversy now raged between the friends of Pope and Bolingbroke; and Warburton and Mallet were the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... These indispensable cares despatched, the young man from the baths brought up the tub after a short gossip with the kitchen-maid, who was going out to market. He asked her if there were a stable attached where he could put up the horse during the taking of the bath: being answered in the negative, he then, with an almost painful inconsequence of argument, chucked the girl under the chin. He next inquired if she had any soap-fat. At length he consented to lumber up the steps with one of his little kegs: the tenacity of the bung was so exemplary ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... of this effect as a positive afterimage, because it is a real continuation of the first impression and stands in contrast to the so-called negative afterimage in which the aftereffect is opposite to the original stimulus. In the case of a negative afterimage the light impression leaves a dark spot, the dark impression gives a light afterimage. Black becomes white and white becomes ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... out into a June heaven. The blood ran close to the skin, and his complexion had the rich transparency of light. There was nothing gross or heavy in his expression or texture; his soul seemed to have mastered his body. But he had strong passions, for his delicacy was positive, not negative: it ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... his exchequer, imagined himself already on shipboard, on his way to Botany Bay. Old Mr. Quirk asked him if he had no friends who would raise a trifle for a "chum in trouble,"—and on Mr. Steggars answering in the negative, he observed the enthusiasm of the respectable old gentleman visibly and ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... "It is a little negative in quality," the other answered, after a moment's hesitation. "I am summoned to Downing Street again ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a polite interest. I knew the answer would be an indignant negative. You're an Englishwoman, and you're nice. Oh, one can see with half an eye that you're nice. But that a nice Englishwoman should have a lover is as inconceivable as that she should have side-whiskers. It's only the reg'lar bad-uns in England who have lovers. There's nothing ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... laid on the silence of Marco Polo, Rubruquis,—the two Mahomedans, Drake, Cavendish, and Pigafelta; also of the Arabian Nights, on the subject of smoking,—and with reason; but, after all, it is negative evidence: for we have examples of the same kind the other way. Sir Henry Blount, who was in Turkey in 1634, describes manners and customs very minutely without a single allusion to smoking, though we know {156} that twenty years previously to that date the Turks were inveterate ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 40, Saturday, August 3, 1850 - A Medium Of Inter-Communication For Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, • Various
... expedition through the hot streets, and was laughed at in some instances for even imagining that employment could be obtained at the dullest season of the year. As soon as their errand was made known they were met by a brief and often a curt negative. Mrs. Jocelyn would soon have been discouraged, but Belle's black eyes only snapped with irritation at their poor success. "Give up?" she cried. "No, not if I have to work for nothing to get a chance. Giving up isn't my style, at least not till I'm ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... with the sovereign; and every individual, in his separate capacity, in some measure, deliberates for his country. In whatever does not derogate from his rank, he has an arm ready to serve the community; in whatever alarms his sense of honour, he has aversions and dislikes, which amount to a negative on ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... hours I do not know. It is confidently said, [Retzow, ii. 415.] Friedrich had the thought of forcibly disarming Czernichef and his 20,000:—in which case he must have given up the Daun Enterprise; for without Czernichef as a positive quantity, much more with Czernichef as a negative, it is impossible. But, at any rate, most luckily for himself, he came upon a milder thought: "Stay with us yet three days, merely in the semblance of Allies, no service required of you, but keeping the matter ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... know where our carts had gone, but some one said if we went in "that" direction we should find them. On we went uphill, losing our way in a maize field. In front of us were hundreds of camp fires. At the first we asked if they had seen the English. They shrugged their shoulders in negative. We asked at the next; same result. We had the awful thought that we should have to search every camp fire before we found our people, but luckily almost fell over Mawson, who had been fetching water. We were going in quite the ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... comes to shame, is made a laughing-stock, and 'cheats himself,' as he complains at last, 'by that same foolish vice of honesty': while in all the rest what have we but every form of human baseness? Lovell, the master, if he is to be considered a negative character as doing no wrong, has, at all events, no more recorded of him than the noble act of marrying by deceit a young widow for the sake of her money, the philosopher's stone, by the bye, and highest object of most of the seventeenth ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... looked at twice before giving. It was said that they were married, and certain circumstances seemed to justify this rumour. As for instance, during the illness of Monseigneur, the King, as I have said, asked Madame de Maintenon if she had seen Mademoiselle Choin, and upon receiving negative reply, was displeased. Instead of driving her away from the chateau he inquired particularly after her! This, to say the least, looked as though Mademoiselle Choin was Monseigneur's Maintenon—but the matter remained incomprehensible to the last. Mademoiselle Choin ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... in that to worry mother, and soon I shall have good news for her." (If he had seen its reception, he would have learned his mistake. The intuitions of love are keen, and this formal negative note in the constrained hand told more of his disappointment than any words could have done. While he knew it not, his mother was suffering with him. In reply she wrote a letter full of general sympathy, intending to be more specific when he ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... and unmolested in its methods of cruel greed. From the shadows and gloom of these threatening conditions, existing so manifestly in direct violation of all progressive law, came a demand that the negative belief in the immortality of the soul, be speedily replaced by a positive knowledge of it. A knowledge sustained and supported by practical demonstrations, through the action of natural law, whose manifestations and demonstrations should be so direct and indisputable as to appeal ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... little dubious about trying to make a vice out of music, which would be all reliable for our purposes," remarked Lucifer, with a negative shake of the head. "I fear it might prove a sword which would cut both ways. It may, it is true, be doing a pretty fair business just now in some localities; but methinks I already see, in the dim vista of the earth's future, a cunning Wesley springing up, and exhorting his brethren 'Not ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... follow maybe passed rapidly over. They were years of absolute tranquillity in Ireland, but beyond that rather negative praise little of good can be reported of them. Public opinion was to all practical purposes dead, and the functions of Parliament were little more than nominal. Unlike the English one, the Irish Parliament had by the nature ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... my inquiries," he pronounced, "have been on the whole of a negative nature. If this mission on which the Baron von Blitzenberg professes to be employed is in fact of an unusually delicate nature, it is just conceivable that the answer I received from Prince Gommell-Kinchen, when ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... him that she did not love him was impossible to her. But how was she to refuse him without telling him either a lie, or the truth? Some answer she must give him; and as to that matter of marrying him, the answer must be a negative. Her education had been of that nature which teaches girls to believe that it is a crime to marry a man without an assured income. Assured morality in a husband is a great thing. Assured good temper is very excellent. Assured talent, religion, amiability, truth, honesty, are ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... existence, unity, and incorporeity of God divide the Arabic philosophers into two schools. Maimonides naturally espoused the view permitting the most exalted conception of God, that is, the conception of God free from human attributes. He recognizes none but negative attributes; in other words, he defines God by means of negations only. For instance, asserting that the Supreme Being is omniscient or omnipotent, is not investing Him with a positive attribute, it is simply denying imperfection. The student knows that ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... whether he had anything to ask or observe, and on his reply in the negative, proceeded to sum up the evidence for the consideration ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... improve below. As expressed by the French-Canadian prospector in the Cobalt district, the "vein calcite can't go up, she must go down." While the scientist may have grounds to doubt this reasoning, he is not often in a position to offer definite negative evidence. ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith |
