"Negative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a few of these messages to Miss Harding, and thus far none have been returned unopened. As you say, John Henry, they have been very timid ones, and possibly are so vague she does not think them worth even a decided negative. We will send more emphatic ones; not too emphatic, mind you, but couched in symbols which ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... swiftness, and in the negative. Anna approached her mistress, still with that curious look of beaming happiness in her round, fat, plain face, and after she had put down the coffee-jug she held out her work-worn hand. On it was a pink card, and in her excitement ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... al-taakid"—the N of injunction. Here it is the reduplicated form, the Nun al-Sakilah or heavy N. The addition of La (not) e.g. "La yazrabanna"let him certainly not strike answers to the intensive or corroborative negative of the Greek effected by two negations or even more. In Arabic as in Latin and English two negatives make ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... selfish purpose of his own. To the theorist who has sampled them only from a distance, these off-scourings of Middle Europe are downtrodden people with souls; to those who happen to know them personally, all their qualities seem to be conspicuously negative. ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... of the Dead (indeed in almost every Papyrus of the Dead) we meet with a representation of the soul, whose heart is being weighed and judged. The speech made by the soul is called the negative justification, in which she assures the 42 judges of the dead, that she has not committed the 42 deadly sins which she enumerates. This justification is doubly interesting because it contains nearly the entire moral law of Moses, which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... as Mr. Vane had remarked, was Miss Browne's own find. Before the objections of Mr. Shaw—evidently a Negative Influence from the beginning—had caused her to abandon the scheme. Miss Browne had planned to charter a vessel in New York and sail around the Horn to the island. While nursing this project she had formed an extensive acquaintance with persons frequenting the New York water-front, among ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... more than once if I knew of any trouble or worry that preyed upon Sir John's mind. Were there financial difficulties; had he been subjected to any mental shock; had he received any severe fright? To all this I could only reply in the negative. At the same time I told Dr. Frobisher as much of John's history as I considered pertinent to the question. He shook his head gravely, and recommended that Sir John should remain for the present in London, under his own ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... me tremble for fear, and my very heart freezes into ice with astonishment. And yet, who dare oppose St. Augustine, St. Thomas, St. Anselm, St. Gregory the Great? Is there any hope of carrying the negative assertion against such a stream of Doctors, who all maintain the affirmative, and bring so strong ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... supernatural personages are alarmingly natural (as theatre nature goes), and walk about in the stupidest way. Which has occasioned Collins and myself to institute a perquisition whether the French ever have shown any kind of idea of the supernatural; and to decide this rather in the negative. The people are very well dressed, and Eve very modestly. All Paris and the provinces had been ransacked for a woman who had brown hair that would fall to the calves of her legs—and she was found at last at the Odeon. There was nothing attractive until ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... herself, and on each occasion the former had repeated her caution, admonishing Diana to have nothing to do with him. It almost seemed as though she had some personal feeling of dislike towards him. Indeed Diana had accused her of it, only to be met with a quiet negative. ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... only be established by reason." Before Hume, assaults on the miracles recorded in Scripture were numerous and varied. Spinoza and the Pantheistic School had started the question, "Are miracles possible?" and had taken the negative. Hume's question is, "Are miracles credible?" And as they are contrary to human experience, his answer is essentially that it must be always more probable that a miracle is false than that it is true; ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... reflecting—then fell to reflecting seriously; but the negative was ultimately as undisturbed as ever: she could not decide on anything she would like best in the world; it was ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... visitor. A short silence prevailed, during which Mr. Harper was apparently enjoying the change in his situation, when Mr. Wharton again broke it, by inquiring whether smoke was disagreeable to his companion; to which, receiving an answer in the negative, he immediately resumed the pipe which had been laid aside at ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... defenders gained heart when they found that the rockets hit nothing. They even charged the English in the open with long-handled tomahawks, and only fell back before a bayonet charge in regular form. After skirmishing all day and losing fifty-four in killed and wounded with but negative results, the English retreated to Auckland to request artillery. Waka Nene carried on the fighting on his own account, and in a skirmish with him Heke was badly wounded. Guns were fetched from Australia, and Heke's men were brought to bay at their ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... 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 leaders of the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... Electricity manifested by plant life. By means of a galvanometer potential differences are found to exist in different parts of trees or fruits. The roots and interior portions are negative, and the flowers, smaller branches and ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... average annual percent change in the population, resulting from a surplus (or deficit) of births over deaths and the balance of migrants entering and leaving a country. The rate may be positive or negative. The growth rate is a factor in determining how great a burden would be imposed on a country by the changing needs of its people for infrastructure (e.g., schools, hospitals, housing, roads), resources (e.g., food, water, electricity), and jobs. Rapid population growth can be seen ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... novels, in which Indian life and manners were portrayed. Cooper was also the founder of the "sea-novel," a line of fiction in which he was followed by an English writer, Marryat (1792-1848). Richard H. Dana and Fitz-Greene Halleck were poets who had a much higher than the merely negative merit of freedom from tumidity, the bane of the earlier American bards. Not only in verse, but also in his prose tales, Dana manifested genius. Several later poets, acknowledged at home and abroad, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... if they were parts of a 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, infinitely ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... their own for several years. Their ship, a silvery ball, rested on a rock ledge, its pilot and crew having lingered to learn the results of Ashe's search. Four days more and they would have to lift for home even if the Agents still had only negative results to report. ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... learn of English in any reasonable period of time. I was therefore far from desiring to receive from Toolooak an answer in the affirmative, when I to-day plainly put the question to him, whether he would go with me to Kabloona noona (European country). Never was a more decisive negative given than Toolooak gave to this proposal. He eagerly repeated the word na-o (no) half a dozen times, and then told me that if he went away his father would cry. This simple but irresistible appeal to paternal affection, his decisive manner of making it, and the feelings by which ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... another element in the land struggle—that was the soil and climate that would fight inexorably against the settlers; but with them we have little to do, since the Happy Family had nothing to do with them save in a purely negative way. ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... method of procedure, as far as the public was concerned, because it amounted to no more than attacking the credibility of a witness who pretended to describe only what he himself had seen—and there is nothing so hard as to prove a negative. ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... negative evidence from the mound of Nubt. Here Dr. Petrie found on the surface walls of the XVIIIth dynasty, with inscriptions and dated pottery; below them walls of the XIIth dynasty, with pottery again, and lower ...
— El Kab • J.E. Quibell
... people, knowing the love they had for her. She came, and has seen these loyal subjects offer their lives for her and for Graustark, but utterly unable to give what they have not—money. She asked them if she should disband the army, and there was a negative wail from one end of the land to the other. Then the army agreed to serve on half pay until all was tided over. Public officers are giving their services free, and many of our wealthy people have advanced loans on bonds, worthless as they may ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... around, wantin' to steal them. Needn't grin at me that way, Jack; you know I'm a little weak in that quarter. I sure do want to know! Don't suppose you've heard anything new since I talked with you last about it?" and as Jack shook his head in the negative, Bobolink looked disappointed, ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... in a firm negative. "No, sir. 'Tisn't relevant sir. The relevancy of the integrated dress-as-a-whole is quite strong. So is that of the seamstress or tailor who made the garment, and that of the weaver who made the cloth. But, except in certain circumstances, the person who wears or wore the garment ...
— The Eyes Have It • Gordon Randall Garrett
... seemingly of that negative pleasantness that lies in inoffensiveness, but otherwise dull and of an untutored mind—rustic, as might be expected in one the greater part of whose life had been spent in his native province, and of a rusticity ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... different restaurant every day, and at seven or so go to the theatre—sometimes to two theatres, sometimes to three. We get home about twelve, light the fire, and drink lemonade, to which I add rum. We go to bed between one and two. I live in peace, like an elderly gentleman, and regard myself as in a negative state ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... wish to be permitted to return to Lochmarlie, and mentioned that her uncle and aunt had repeatedly offered to come to Bath for her, if she might be allowed to accompany them home; but to this her mother also gave a decided negative, adding that she never should see Lochmarlie again, if she could help it. In short, she must remain where she was till something could be fixed as to her future destination. "It was most excessively tiresome to be clogged with a great ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... to how she came there. She muttered in broken Dutch that she had been turned away. Had she done evil? She shook her head sullenly. Had she had food given her? She grunted a negative, and fanned the flies from her baby. Telling the woman to remain where she was, he turned his horse's head to the road and rode off ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... by Mr. Cosmo Clark's views about lighting. He had dictated answers to seventy-nine letters of complaint from unknown people concerning the supply of free seats for the first night. He had responded in the negative to a request from a newspaper critic who, on the score that he was deaf, wanted a copy of the play. He had replied finally to an official of the County Council about the smoke-trap over the stage. He had replied finally to another ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... or against slavery." Again he said: "I have asked a very large number of the gentlemen who framed the constitution, quite a number of delegates, and still a larger number of persons who are their friends, and I have received the same answer from every one of them. . . . They say if they allowed a negative vote the constitution would have been voted down by an overwhelming majority, and hence the fellows should not be allowed to vote at all." He denounced it as "a trick, a fraud upon the rights ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... in the act of being outspanned. Then, dismounting, I beckoned to 'Mfuni, related what we had seen, and asked him whether he had ever heard of such creatures as those men, or monkeys, that Piet and I had beheld fighting. But 'Mfuni shook his head and replied in the negative; he had never before been anything like so far north, and his knowledge of the Bandokolo country, it appeared, was even less than that which I had ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... an impostor? And yet these were the people to whom he had confidently expected to tell his story, and who would cheerfully assist him with work! He could almost anticipate the hard laugh or brutal hurried negative in their faces. In his foolish heart he thanked God he had not tried it. Then the apathetic recoil which is apt to follow any keen emotion overtook him. He was dazedly conscious of being rudely shoved once or twice, and ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... any existing reason why we, who have so long been so very intimate, should now be placed in a situation of negative hostility. I am sure that we are well calculated to render to each other great services; you are the best judge whether your interests were ever before so well attended to as by me ... The great connexion which I have for ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... classification which I have followed, this cirripede cannot possibly remain in Alepas, and must form a new genus; for some time, indeed, I thought that a new family or sub-family ought to have been instituted for its reception; but when I considered that its highly peculiar characters are all negative, as the non-articular, non-spinose structure of the cirri, and that no new or greatly modified functional organ is present, I concluded that it might properly remain amongst the Lepadidae. We shall, moreover, hereafter see that the male of Ibla, which, of course, must remain in the ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... lyrical music of Falstaff's song ("'Tis she with eyes like stars"), and the Honor monologue, a superb piece of recitative with a characteristic accompaniment in which the clarinets and bassoons fairly talk, as they give the negative to the Knight's sarcastic questions. The most attractive numbers of the second scene are Mistress Ford's reading of Falstaff's letter, which is exquisitely lyrical, a quartet, a capella, for the four women ("He'll surely come courting"), followed by a contrasting male quartet ("He's ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... therefore lost in the rays of the bright star during the years 1887-94. Is it possible that it could have been far enough away to be visible in 1873-74? I need scarcely add that this question must be answered in the negative, yet it may be worthy of consideration, when the exact orbit of the body is worked out twenty ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... expressed in plain language. There, however, not only the intercourse with the idols, but the connection with Jehovah also, appears to be intermitted. The reason why the prophet does not enter into a closer connection with the wife is, that her repentance is more of a negative, than of a positive character. By want and isolation, her hard heart is to be broken, true repentance to be called forth, and the flame of cordial conversion and love to her husband, whose faithful love she had so ill requited, to be enkindled in her. In favour of the ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... immediate arrangements ... to settle all details of the proposed tribunal of arbitration.... If, however, as they most anxiously hope will not be the case, the reply of the South African Republic should be negative or inconclusive, I am to state that Her Majesty's Government must reserve to themselves the right to reconsider the situation de novo, and to formulate their own ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... natural fresh water resources in some areas; the policies of former Communist regimes promoted rapid urbanization and industrial growth that had negative effects on the environment; the burning of soft coal in power plants and the lack of enforcement of environmental laws severely polluted the air in Ulaanbaatar; deforestation, overgrazing, and the converting of virgin land to agricultural production increased soil erosion ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... morning arrives when the inconsistencies which have prevailed in this union rise up like branches of a tree bent down for a moment under a weight which has been gradually lightened. You have mistaken for love the negative attitude of a young girl who was waiting for happiness, who flew in advance of your desires, in the hope that you would go forward in anticipation of hers, and who did not dare to complain of the secret unhappiness, for which she at first accused herself. What man ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... said the partner, "don't you understand that from the negative you get a positive, where all the shade becomes light again? If you would only take such a positive picture of me and try and find out what faults I do not possess, you would not dislike me so much. Only think: I don't drink, and therefore I ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... should be noted. By order of the government of Massachusetts Bay in 1623, it was used as ballots in public voting. At annual elections of the governors' assistants in each town, a kernel of corn was deposited to signify a favorable vote upon the nominee, while a bean signified a negative vote; "and if any free-man shall put in more than one Indian corn or bean he shall forfeit for every such ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... the defence were, indeed, few. It is so hard to prove a negative. There was Jessie's aunt, who bore out the statement of the counsel for the defence. There were the porters who saw him leave Euston by the 7.15 train for Liverpool, and arrive just too late for the 5.15; there was the cabman (2138), who drove him to Euston ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... all things heedlessly, and a clear mind knowing all things heartlessly)—in the case, I say, of all these accidental attributes, there recurs for argument, one analogous to that by which we showed the anterior probability of a self-existence. Things positive must precede things negative. Sight must have been, before blindness is possible; and before we can arrive at a just idea of no sight. Power must be precursor to an abstraction from power, or weakness. The minor-existence of ignorance is ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... enough, but made none of the negative protestations usual on such occasions. He asked me to ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... that the religion which the king is bound to maintain has a positive part in it, as well as a negative,—and that the positive part of it (in which we are in perfect agreement with the Catholics and with the Church of Scotland) is infinitely the most valuable and essential. Such an agreement we had with Protestant Dissenters in England, of those descriptions who came ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... written nothing but the 'Ernest Maltravers' books, you would think perhaps more highly of him. Do you not think it possible now? It is his most impotent struggling into poetry, which sets about proving a negative of genius on him—that, which the Athenaeum praises as 'respectable attainment in various walks of literature'—! like the Athenaeum, isn't it? and worthy praise, to be administered by professed judges of art? What is to ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... have some negative certainties and some positive uncertainties. Columbus did not take the real potato to Genoa in 1492; Hawkins did not bring it to England in 1565. The Spaniards did take it to Spain in or about 1580; but whether Raleigh was the first to ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... came to where the road passed by an old mill in front of the Abbey. The people of the mill were at the door. He paused and inquired whether any visitor had been at the Abbey, but was answered in the negative. ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... an irrepressible talker, and that when he could not conveniently find an audience he created one by his own imagination. This peculiarity of his rendered me good service. Though for some time I understood very little of what he said, and very often misplaced the positive and negative monosyllables which I hazarded occasionally by way of encouragement, he talked vigorously all the same. Like all garrulous people, he was constantly repeating himself; but to this I did not object, for the custom—however disagreeable in ordinary society—was for ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... 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 the will of ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... down marches. As, indeed, I had but a bale left of the quantity of cloth retained for provisioning my party on the road, when outfitting my caravans on the coast, I could unblushingly reply in the negative. ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... hell of a lot, he thought. He'd known that Duckworth had gone to Mendez, and he already had the Hotel Byron address. There was, however, some negative information there. The last address they had was on Mendez, and yet Scholar Duckworth couldn't be found on Mendez. Obviously, he had not filed a change of address there; just as obviously, he had managed to leave the planet without a trace. ...
— Dead Giveaway • Gordon Randall Garrett
... probabilities were that he was hopelessly astray—one usually is on such occasions—but this time, it so happened, he was singularly right. Before one thing only his ready invention stopped every time. This vileness, this notion of unworthiness in Vance, could not be negative merely. A man with that face was no inactive weakling. The motive he was at such pains to conceal, betraying its existence by that very fact, moved, surely, towards aggressive action. Disguised, it never slept. Vance was sharply on the alert. He had a plan ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... believe, now, that Rivers had nothing to do with the pistols you say were stolen from the Fleming collection?" Farnsworth asked. Rand shook his head ambiguously; Farnsworth took that for a negative answer to his question, as he was intended to. "And you say Mr. Gresham has been completely cleared of any suspicion of ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... to discover these forces and comprehend their action? Before the modern development of evolution this question would unhesitatingly have been answered in the negative. To-day, under the influence of the descent theory, stimulated, in the first place, by Darwin, the question will be answered by many with equal promptness in the affirmative. At all events, we have learned in the last forty years to recognize ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... conversation began with some sprightliness. Politics, however, was the subject on which our entertainer chiefly expatiated; for he asserted that liberty was at once his boast and his terror. After the cloth was removed, he asked me if I had seen the last Monitor, to which replying in the negative, 'What, nor the Auditor, I suppose?' cried he. 'Neither, Sir,' returned I. 'That's strange, very strange,' replied my entertainer. 'Now, I read all the politics that come out. The Daily, the Public, the Ledger, the Chronicle, the London Evening, the Whitehall Evening, ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... Bardell's behaviour, his wish to be rid of her, his complaints of her conduct. But no, there was only the foolish question as to Mr. Pickwick's being an elderly man and of fatherly ways, a topic that would by no means negative the presumption of matrimony. But nothing could excuse the rashness of putting a general question as to "Mr. Pickwick's behaviour towards females." No adroit counsel would run the risk of encountering a too conscientious ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... Tocqueville 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. ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... London. But some hope seems to have been entertained of Hume coming up even without Smith's persuasion and escort. John Home, who was in London and was in correspondence with him, thought so, but he at length received a direct negative to the idea in a letter from Hume himself, written on the 12th of April; and then Smith and John Home set out together immediately for the northern capital, but when the coach stopped at Morpeth, whom should they see standing in the door of the inn but Colin, their friend's ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... them from that class; and, second, because they contribute in large measure to provoke and to constitute among the workers of all trades, of all localities, and of all countries the consciousness and the fact itself of solidarity: a double action, the one negative and the other positive, which tends to constitute directly the new world of the proletariat by opposing it, almost ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... any others on the coast, and, internally, exhibit taste in their furniture and ornament. The ladies excite the author's pen into absolute rapture; their sparkling eyes and glossy hair, are, in themselves, sufficient to negative the idea of tameness or insipidity, while their sylph-like figures exhibit fresh graces at every step. This is supported by the more important qualities, of "being by far the more industrious half of the community, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... to eat when food is presented, or if his appetite is perverted so that he prefers candy to meat and vegetables, conscious reference to results is indicated. He needs to be made conscious of consequences as a justification of the positive or negative value of certain objects. Or the state of things may be normal enough, and yet an individual not be moved by some matter because he does not grasp how his attainment of some intrinsic good depends upon active concern with what ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... the national judiciary" were to be associated with the Executive, "with authority to examine every act of the national legislature before it shall operate, and every act of a particular legislature before a negative thereon shall be final" and to impose a qualified ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... almost 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 ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... enemy were, as I have since understood, on the instant for calling for quarter, when the cowardice or treachery of three of my under officers induced them to call to the enemy. The English commodore asked me if I demanded quarter; and I having answered him in the negative, they renewed the battle with double fury. They were unable to stand the deck; but the fury of their cannon, especially the lower battery, which was entirely formed of eighteen-pounders, was incessant. Both ships were set on fire in various places, and the scene was dreadful ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... weep, you fondly imagine yourself innocent Cold silence, that negative force Contrive to use proud disdain as a shield Fool who destroys his own happiness Funeral processions are no longer permitted How much they desire to be loved who say they love no more I can not be near you and separated from you at the same moment Is it not enough to have lived? Make ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger
... become fixed, might say of him,—"Yes, a good fellow, steady, intelligent, but lacks push,—he'll never get there." Such are the trite summaries of man among men. Of all the inner territory of the man's soul, which had resolved him in its history to what he was, had left him this negative unit of life, his fellows were ignorant, as man must be of man. They saw the Result, and in the rough arithmetic of life results are all that count with ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... back with alarm and surprise, and in a moment afterwards her cheek, which had been before pale, almost to European whiteness, was deeply suffused. I respectfully approached her, and inquired if she was one of my cousins. She answered in the negative; said she was on a visit to the family, to whom she was related: added that she had not expected to see any one in the garden; but this was said as if she meant rather to apologise for her undress, than to reproach me for my intrusion. ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... but the tribune did not submit himself to the consul. Thus the tribunician power was a copy of the consular; but it was none the less a contrast to it. The power of the consuls was essentially positive, that of the tribunes essentially negative. The consuls alone were magistrates of the Roman people, not the tribunes; for the former were elected by the whole burgesses, the latter only by the plebeian association. In token of this the consul appeared in public with the apparel ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... ended under the walls of Ivan's house. They asked Ivan if he had not heard the brute. But he had heard nothing, he slept very soundly. Then they inquired of Ivan's sisters and mother, who also replied in the negative; but there was hesitation in their voices, and they looked very frightened and ashamed. And then people began to talk. They looked at Breda curiously, and finally they cut her. One night, when there was a downfall of snow, and the wind howled down the chimneys of Ivan's ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... one when Berry's antagonist rose again to his feet. Shortly he opened his case. Nothing, he said, was more difficult to prove than a negative. But for one thing, it might have gone hard with an innocent man. Everything looked very black, but, as luck would have it, most fortunately for himself, Mr. Bladder could prove incontestably that upon the twenty-second of May his car never left its garage, for the ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... Dictator of Atlamalco. She was a brilliant daughter of the tropics, gifted in mind and person, with the midnight eyes and hair, the dark complexion, classical features, small white teeth and faultless form rarely seen except in the fervid sunlight of the low latitudes. Positive and negative electricity draw together, which perhaps explains why the two most devoted intimates at the seminary were Senorita Estacardo and Warrenia Rowland. The latter was a true product of the North, with blue eyes, pink skin, hair like the floss of the ripening corn, and a figure as perfect as ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... k is negative. Let us call it -c squared, where c will be of the dimensions of a velocity. This case yields the formulae of transformation which Larmor discovered for the transformation of Maxwell's equations of the electromagnetic ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... doctor at home?" she inquired of the servant who was passing the door, and on receiving the negative reply, the ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... negative as well as positive. The comparative rarity of swords is a fact that has been particularly remarked. This too agrees with the poetry in which there are swords of fame, which are known by their own proper names, and which have ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... I live; that if I had any money to spare I would rather add to my property at St. Cloud by the purchase of the land surrounding it; now, mind you enter into all these particulars and impress them well upon him." I asked her whether she wished me to send for him; she replied in the negative, adding that it would be sufficient to avail myself of the first opportunity afforded by meeting him; and that the slightest advance towards such a man ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... The evidence of this negative tradition is certainly more convincing, than Foxes unsupported allegation of a circumstance, as unlikely to have occurred, as it was likely to be concocted by a man of his propensity and unscrupulousness. If, however, there should be any doubt of Foxes ability to concoct such a story, it ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... peculiarity, that the Slavi consider only the first four ordinal numbers as adjectives, and all the following ones as substantives. For this reason, the governed word must stand in the genitive instead of the accusative: osm sot (nom. sto), eight hundred. In all negative phrases they employ likewise the genitive instead of the accusative. A double negation occurs in Slavic frequently, without indicating an affirmation; for even if another negation has already taken place, they are accustomed to prefix to the verb ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... just what happened, and especially in the remote departments, and in the rural assemblies. Moreover, many assemblies, nearer Paris and in the towns, comprehend that if the Convention consults them it is only for form's sake; to give a negative answer is useless and perilous; it is better to keep silent; as soon as the decrees are mentioned they very prudently "unanimously" demand the order of the day.[5118] Hence out of five primary assemblies on the average which vote for or ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... at with undisguised suspicion—to have a door slammed in her face as the negative answer to a civil question, left her at first bewildered, and then enveloped in a blaze of indignation. It was perhaps lucky for her that this happened at the very beginning of her pilgrimage. Because, with that fire once alight within her, Rose could go through anything. The horrible ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... protagonists of the New Reformation—and a well-abused man if ever there was one—a score of years since, in the remarkable book in which he discusses the negative and the positive results of the rigorous application of scientific method to the investigation of the higher problems ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... thing that struck him was a negative emotion—a sense that something external was lacking. He presently perceived what ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... by a bark, which the soldier no doubt understood as a negative, for he continued: "Well, then, come back! Make the round—you will find some door open—you are never ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... are represented with the tatu pigment, whilst with the Bakatans the design is in the natural colour of the skin against a background of pigment, I.E. the Dayak design is the positive of the Bakatan negative. Furness figures two examples of the throat design, one with a transverse row of stars cutting across it; the same authority also figures a design for the ribs known as TALI SABIT, waist chains, consisting of two stars joined by a double zigzag line. The ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... was because he dealt with this common factor of the human and the divine nature that he was too positive and practical. In the spirit it is all yea and amen; there is no negative; in the New Jerusalem there is no night. We can describe this feature of his ministry by words from, one of his own sermons: 'It has always been through men of belief, not unbelief, that power from God has poured into man. It is not ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... to do so through the high esteem in which he held her. Maddalena, his wife, died six days before him, after giving birth to a daughter Catherine.' This is the, no doubt, highly favorable portrait of the man to whom Machiavelli dedicated his Principe. The somewhat negative good qualities of Lorenzo, his prudence and parsimony, his freedom from despotic ambition, and dislike of dangerous service, combined with his deference to the powerful members of his own family, are very unlike Machiavelli's ideal of the founder of a state. Cesare Borgia was almost the exact ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... hold his hand, speak a good loving word to him. This would be privilege to him and to me; and love and gratitude on our parts justified us in asking to be allowed to do it. Twice we have asked. The first time a very kind but decided negative was returned to us on the part of our friend. Yesterday we again asked. Yesterday I wrote to say that it would be consolation to us if Robert might go—if we might say so without 'teasing.' To-morrow, in the case of Miss Bayley sending a consent, even on her own part, Robert ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... gave his answer in the negative. The war was hopeless, but they would not disband their men until they had guarded the President ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... language abounds with adjectives, both primative and derivative. The latter are formed from every part of speech by invariable rules: As, from tue the earth, comes tuetu terrestrial; from quimen to know, quimchi wise; and these, by the interposition of no, become negative, as tuenotu not terrestrial, quimnochi ignorant. The adjectives, participles, and derivative pronouns are unsusceptible of number or gender, in which they resemble the English; yet when it is necessary to distinguish the sexes, alca is used for the masculine, and domo for the feminine. The ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... absent, it is true, work upon the mind. But that which IMMEDIATELY determines the will from time to time, to every voluntary action, is the UNEASINESS OF DESIRE, fixed on some absent good: either negative, as indolence to one in pain; or positive, as enjoyment of pleasure. That it is this uneasiness that determines the will to the successive voluntary actions, whereof the greatest part of our lives is made up, and by which we are conducted through different courses ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... inquiries as those which have been set afoot, into the possible dissociative action of the great heat of the sun upon our elements, are not only legitimate, but are likely to yield results which, whether affirmative or negative, will be of great importance. The idea that atoms are absolutely ingenerable and immutable 'manufactured articles' stands on the same sort of foundation as the idea that biological species are 'manufactured articles' stood thirty years ago; and the supposed constancy of the elementary ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... he slowly said, noting my changing cheek; I only shook my head: I dare not trust myself to speak; But in that wordless negative, the boy had read his doom, And turned about, as best he could, and lay in silent gloom, Watching the summer sunlight make a glory ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Magdalene must run back to the pew for her forgotten prayer-book; and in the brief interval of her search Walther asks breathlessly of Eva: if she be already betrothed! She does not reply by the instantaneous negative he had hoped for, and the passionate wish breaks from his lips that he had never crossed the threshold of her father's house! Magdalene, who has rejoined them, bridles indignantly at such an expression from him. "How now, my lord, ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... that our dreams often present to us, in our own despite, the vivid, photographic pictures struck by sleep from the dim, unconscious negative of our waking judgment, which we refuse to recognize as verities in the light of our open-eyed, daytime responsibility? I, who had declared myself no sophist, knew later that I had deceived my own heart, which spoke out so truthfully in dreams of sleep, and refused to be silenced in the dead ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... an emphatic negative. "Assha knows that Lal is no chief who can stand and look upon the wonders of Lurgha's might and keep his eyes in his head. ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... desired the interpreter to tell M. Berthollet that it was all very fine; "but," said he, "ask him whether he can make me be in Morocco and here at one and the same moment?" M. Berthollet replied in the negative, with a shrug of his shoulders. "Oh! then," said the sheik, "he ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... ideal description of an orator, in Orat. 40. Vid. also de clar. Orat. 93, his negative panegyric ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... almost overnight, and on every hand there are miracles of rapid construction. The business is overshadowing all other activities. A leading merchant of Detroit asked a contractor the other day if he could do some work for him. On receiving a negative reply, he asked the reason, whereupon the man said: "These automobile people keep me so busy that I can't do anything else. I have a year's ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... is made up of involuntary and voluntary error, of a negative right and a positive wrong, the latter 491:9 calling itself right. Man's spiritual individual- ity is never wrong. It is the likeness of man's Maker. Matter cannot connect mortals with the true 491:12 origin and facts of being, in which all must end. It is only by acknowledging ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... be expiated by a pilgrimage to the Ganges, but other criminal offences against the person and property are not taken cognisance of by the caste committee unless the offender is sent to jail. Both in its negative and positive aspects the category of offences affords interesting deductions on the basis of the explanation of the caste system already given. The reason why there is scarcely any punishment for offences against ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... method has, at bottom, two sides. It is, in the first place, achieved by a narrow definition of the purpose of the state. To Locke the State is little more than a negative institution, a kind of gigantic limited liability company; and if we are inclined to cavil at such restraint, we may perhaps remember that even to neo-Hegelians like Green and Bosanquet this negative sense is rarely absent, ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... she expected? She modestly asked but eight pounds a year. The next question was, what work she could do to deserve such wages? to which she answered, she could clean a house, or dress a common family dinner. But cannot you wash, replied my sister, or get up linen? she answered in the negative, and said, she would undertake neither, nor would she go into a family that did not put out their linen to wash, and hire a charwoman to scour. She desired to see the house, and having carefully ...
— Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business • Daniel Defoe
... study" which Spencer has made in Justice—(and, let us say between parentheses, this work, together with his "Positive and Negative Beneficence" furnishes sad evidence of the senile mental retrogression that even Herbert Spencer has been unable to escape; moreover its subjective aridity is in strange contrast with the marvelous wealth of scientific evidence poured forth in his earlier works)—is based ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... to the lowest ebb of its authority; and the king, in a manner, stood single, and yet preserved his negative entire; but if the clergy and nobility had been on his part of the balance, it might reasonably be supposed, that the meeting of those estates at Blois had healed the breaches of the nation, and not forced him to the ratio ultima regum, which is never to be praised, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... bachelor, or at least the town assumed him to be one. True, when he had first bought the practice, thirty years previously, he had made no definite statement on the matter; and, for a time, people had shaken their heads, and, on that purely negative evidence, had done what they called "drawing their own conclusions." His wife had run away from him, and they would hear of her one day, in connection with some scandal, and she would allege, and probably prove, that he ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... the Christian religion shall have faded from the earth, when its memory like that of Polytheism now shall remain, but remain only as the subject of ridicule and wonder'. But as time went on, Shelley's views became less purely negative. Instead of ruling the adversaries back to back out of court, he bethought himself of venturing a plea in favour of the older and weaker one. It may have been in 1817 that he contemplated an 'Essay in favour of polytheism'.[Footnote: Cf. our Shelley's Prose in the Bodleian ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley |
