"Preposition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reflected in language by an increase of words. But an examination of words in common use will show that they are nearly all the names of concepts. Proper names are the principal exception. Every common noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and preposition is the name of a concept; for example, horse, beauty, to steal, running, over, early, yellow, grape, ocean, etc. To understand these concepts there must be somewhere a progress from the individual to the abstract, an induction from ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... syllables, the final syllable being long by position. Pedantic grammarians might argue that natus being a participle ought not to govern a genitive case, but should be followed by a preposition with the ablative case, and that we ought to say "e Bacone nati" or "de Bacone nati." Other pedants have declared that natus is properly, i.e., classically, said of the mother only, although in low Latin, ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... remarks are made quite without prejudice, for personally I have little to complain of. (By the way, this sentence is as open to blame as that of the professor who told his pupils "You must not use a preposition to end a sentence with.") Though I have sat under an army of critics, I have but once been accused of inelegant English, and then it was only by a lady who wrote that ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... a peculiar pace; a boy's name. Down—In pint; a preposition; a snare; a title; a species of deer; ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Tim. iv. 14. That the preposition [Greek: meta] here indicates the instrumental cause, see Acts xiii. 17, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... "Siesta-carpet." Land reads "Kiblah" ("in the direction of the Kiblah") and notes that some Moslems turn the corpse's head towards Meccah and others the right side, including the face. So the old version reads "feet towards Mecca." But the preposition "Ala" ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... of the Christian life. We need no other; at least, all other secrets are involved in this. If we attend to this little preposition "in," we have entry into the infinite. If we are "in Christ," we are in the kingdom of everything that endures, and we are outside ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... that which conceals: it is a fraud, and speaketh not the truth. I am not even certain whether it is a noun or a preposition, but the point is immaterial. Along with other canons of military matters, its virtue lies in its application rather than in its etymology. What the eye doth not see the trench mortars do not trouble is as true to-day as when Noah first mentioned ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... not belong to man to act for an end. For a cause is naturally first. But an end, in its very name, implies something that is last. Therefore an end is not a cause. But that for which a man acts, is the cause of his action; since this preposition "for" indicates a relation of causality. Therefore it does not belong to man to act ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... means 'burst into,' the preposition is nevertheless required with the noun to express the place into ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.
... distinctly, that great act of self-surrendering love which culminates on the Cross is regarded as being for man in a special and peculiar sense. I know, of course, that from the mere wording of my text we cannot argue the atoning and substitutionary character of the death of Christ, for the preposition here does not necessarily mean 'instead of,' but 'for the behoof of.' But admitting that, I have another question. If Christ's death is for 'the behoof of' men, in what conceivable sense does it benefit them, unless it is in ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... tent, would immediately have been clothed with a spiritual body and have ascended to heaven. That is to say, Christ "was delivered because of our offences and was raised again because of our justification." In Romans viii. 10 the preposition occurs twice in exactly the same construction as in the text just quoted. In the latter case the authors of the common version have rendered it "because of." They should have done so in the other instance, in accordance with the natural force and established usage of the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... interested to see, in the January Gazette, a short article by Esperantisto 8105 on the Esperanto rendering of the preposition "of," and I am sure that many of us found the information therein very useful. The gifted author of our language has told us that "cxiu prepozicio havas difinitan kaj konstantan signifon"; it is of the utmost importance, therefore, that we should endeavour to find out what prepositions in ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 4 • Various
... defect when a sentence is constructed with many loosely and not obviously dependent clauses, each of which requires for its interpretation a preposition that is kept suspended till the close; and this defect is exaggerated when each clause contains an important meaning, or a concrete image which, like a boulder in a shallow stream, disturbs the equable current of thought: the ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... elements which are not pronounced for themselves, but only serve as determinatives. (Such a use of determinatives is not limited to hieroglyphic writing, but is possessed also by alphabetic; the second o in the word too is strictly a determinative, to distinguish the adverb too from the preposition to, both pronounced alike. Tibetan has an elaborate system of silent letters used as grammatical determinatives.) And then Egyptian writing finally has pure ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... use of the substantive after the preposition de, similar to the ordinary participial or adjectival use, as in the expression: Il n'y a que vous de serieux. Compare "Je n'ai qu'elle de fille" (Moliere, le Medecin malgre lui, II, 4). These, and similar expressions, are an outgrowth of the partitive ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... and the graphs or grams is a wedding of equals. Some families of words, however, are of inferior social standing to other families, and may seek but not hope to be sought in marriage. Compare the ex's with the ports. An ex, as a preposition, belongs to a prolific family but not one of established and unimpeachable dignity. Hence the ex's, though they marry right and left, lead the other words to the altar and are never led thither themselves. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... be heard, and wished to be allowed to address the assembly as a member of the Council, and for that purpose resigned the Presidentship to Chasal. He begged that the General might be introduced again and heard with calmness. But this preposition was furiously opposed. Exclamations of "Outlaw Bonaparte! outlaw him!" rang through the assembly, and were the only reply given to the President. Lucien, who had reassumed the President's chair, left ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... allow more than thirty or forty. The question must be settled entirely upon internal evidence, as the superscriptions, definite as they often are, are never demonstrably reliable, while some of them are plainly impossible. To begin with, doubt attaches to the meaning of the Hebrew preposition in the phrase, "Psalm of David." It is the same preposition as that rendered by for in the phrase, "For the chief musician," and as in this phrase authorship is out of the question, it may be seriously doubted whether it is implied in the phrase rendered "Psalm of David." This doubt ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... Monty talked it over. The penitence of both was beautiful to behold. Each denied the other the privilege of assuming all the blame and both were so happy that Mohammed was little more than a preposition in their conversation so far as prominence was concerned. But all day long the harbor was full of fisher boats, and at nightfall they still were lolling about, sinister, restless, mysterious like purposeless buzzards. And the dark ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... with a comma before the final s, suggests, in English, another secondary idea of something appertaining to the stag, as a stag's horn; which is, however, in our language, as frequently expressed by the preposition of, as the horn ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... prepositions or adverbs, have been considered synonymous from an early period of our literature, and have been freely interchanged by our best writers. There is, however, a tendency in present usage to make the following distinction between them: 1. That beside be used only and always as a preposition, with the original meaning by the side of; as, to sit beside a fountain; or with the closely allied meaning aside from, or out of; as, this is beside our present purpose: 'Paul, thou art beside thyself.' The adverbial sense to be wholly transferred to the cognate word. ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... in his kingdom. We might reason this point at large, but deem it unnecessary till some one proves how those, who never heard of a Saviour, could be said to die in Christ, or to be dead in him. I would, however, remark that the Greek preposition en may be rendered, on account of. The phrase would then read thus—the dead on account of Christ. Wakefield renders it thus—"they who have died in the cause of Christ." That this is its true sense, ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... must have seen as well as Y and Z, it was impossible to translate the sentence which results,—[Greek: epi ges eirene anthropois eudokia]. Reference would have been made to any other copy of the third Gospel, and together with the omitted preposition ([Greek: en]) sense would have been restored to the passage. But unhappily one of the two supposed Copyists being a learned grammarian who had no other copy at hand to refer to, undertook, good man that ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... passage which I have just given is not the only one in which the unwary reader will be entirely misled by this juggle between two meanings of the preposition 'about'. Thus our author has in several instances [184:2] tacitly altered the form of expression in his last edition; but the alteration is made in such a way as, while satisfying the letter of my distinction, ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... Lessons, the little words that were placed before nouns, thus forming phrases, belong to a, class of words called Prepositions. You noticed that these words, which you have now learned to call prepositions, served to introduce phrases. The preposition shows the relation of the idea expressed by the principal word of the phrase to that of the word which the phrase modifies. It serves also to connect ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... et la joue ruisselante: note the absence of a preposition corresponding to the English 'with.' It is ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... an enforcement officer in the great war that was being waged against prohibition. This seemed to make such a hit with the jury that Smilk's lawyer shrewdly decided not to press her to alter the preposition. ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... fact? Have you run nothing? conveyed nothing, moved nothing from one place to another? no change, no effect, nothing moved? Look at it and decide. It is said that a neuter or intransitive verb may be known from the fact that it takes after it a preposition. Try it by this rule. "A man run against a post in a dark night, and broke his neck;" that is, he run nothing against a post—no object to run—and yet he broke his neck. ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... magnificent study of the character of Mary Stuart. The characters in Mrs. Aitken's sketch are weak and thin, and the verse intolerable. She divides the most inseparable phrases to make out her measure, and constantly ends the lines with a preposition. No torturing of the voice can make verse of such sentences ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... very significant, phrase—"Out of"—not into, but "out of." All the difference in the lives of men lies in the difference between these two expressions. "Into" is the world's preposition. Every stream turns in; and that means a dead sea. Many a man's life is simply the coast line of a dead sea. "Out of" is the Master's word. His thought is of others. The stream must flow in, and must flow through, if it is to flow out, ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... words having a close syntactical relation, particularly if the initial vowel of the second word is in a constituent syllable. It may occur between the article and its substantive, the possessive adjective and its substantive, a preposition and its object, the negatives no and ni and a following vowel; and after the conjunctions y, que, si, and other words having a weak accent such as desde, coma, ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... learned through things. Properly interpreted, and under due limitations, this principle will, we presume, be now generally accepted. We say, under due limitations, because it is manifest that the converse preposition, that "things are learned through words," is easily capable of proof, and is indeed, in our opinion, the stronghold of humanistic teaching in its earlier or ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... tomb or burying-place; and in Armorican, which generally follows the same phonetic changes as the Cornish, we actually find kleuz and kloz for tomb or inclosure. (See Le Gonidec, "Dict. Breton-Francais," s. v.) The en might either be the Cornish preposition yn, or it may have been intended for the article in the genitive, an. The old rock in the tomb, i.e. in tumba, or the old rock of the tomb, Cornish carag goz an cloz, would be intelligible and natural renderings of ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... his own authorship, he may have expected the principle of heredity to help the boy; and certainly he did dig the English grammar out of that blessed book, and the Spanish language with it, but after many long years, and much despair over the difference between a preposition and a substantive. ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... is printed from a broadside. The only alterations, in which I have followed Professor Child, are the obvious correction of 'east' for 'west' (8.1), and the insertion of one word in 16.2, where Child says 'perhaps a preposition has been dropped.' ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... gave all of his property." The words are contradictory: an entire thing cannot be of itself. Omit the preposition. ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... riddle feels the sap stirring in its limbs again, and the amusing spilikin completes the mental ruin of the jaded guest. Then does the Jolly Maiden Aunt propound the query: What is the difference between an elephant and a silk hat? Or declare that her first is a vowel, her second a preposition, and her third an archipelago. It is to crown such a quiet evening, and to give the finishing stroke to those of the visitors who have not escaped early, with a fierce purpose of getting at the saloons before they have time to close, that the ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... gajo, the man. The noun has two numbers, the singular and the plural. It has various cases formed by postpositions, but has, strictly speaking, no genitive. It has prepositions as well as postpositions; sometimes the preposition is used with the noun and sometimes the postposition: for example, cad o gav, from the town; chungale mannochendar, evil men from, i.e. from evil men. The verb has no infinitive; in lieu thereof, the conjunction 'that' is placed before ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... Inherence to the Substance of Being; the Relational kind par excellence, as distinguished from the Qualitative kind; which last is denoted by the proper Adjectives. The Oblique Case of a Noun Substantive, whether formed by an Inflexion or by a Preposition, is therefore nothing else than a special kind of Adjective, destitute of the property of Comparison, because it denotes the Accident instead of the Quality of Being, and because Accidents or Relations between Things do not vary by degrees ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... p. 544.).—While a resident in Devonshire, I frequently met with localisms similar in character to those quoted by J. M. B.; but what at first struck me as most peculiar in common conversation, was the use, or rather abuse, of the little preposition to. When inquiring the whereabouts of an individual, Devonians ask one another, "Where is he to?" The invariable reply is, "To London," "To Plymouth," &c., as the case may be. The Cheshire clowns, on the other hand, murder the word at, in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... what a change in sprightliness of habits is here! Time has worn away his head and limbs to almost unrecognisable blunt excrescences. Bid him move off into the oblique cases, and if he can help it, he will not budge; you must shove him with a verb; you must goad him with a little sharp preposition behind; and then he just lumps backward or forward, and there is no change for the better in him, as you may say. No longer will he declare his meaning of himself; it must depend on where you choose to put him in the sentence.—Among the mountains of Europe, the grand Alps are the parvenus; ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... A.S. geon (pronounced like the modern yon) is actually declined after the regular manner, being duly provided with the suffix -re, which was the special suffix reserved only for the genitive or dative feminine. It is here a dative after the preposition to. ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... near the church of S. Sebastiano was originally called in an indefinite way cimiterium ad catacumbas. The etymology of the name is uncertain. De Rossi suggests the roots cata, a Graeco-Latin preposition of the decadence, signifying "near," and cumba, a resting-place. The word would therefore mean apud accubitoria, "near the resting-places," an allusion to the many tombs which surrounded the old crypt above and below ground. ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... el | mes | e|ra | de | ma|yo cuan|do | ha|ce | la | ca|lor. (p. 7, l. 1-2) page lv Hiatus was common in Old Spanish, except when the first of two words was the definite article, a personal pronoun-object or the preposition de; or when the vowels were ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... The preposition in the end of the sentence; a common fault with him, and which I have but lately observed ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... much ridiculed in America is "different to." As a Scotchman, I dislike it, and would neither use nor defend it. At the same time I cannot but hint to American critics that the use of a particular preposition in a particular context is largely a matter of convention; that when we learn a new language we have simply to get up by rote the conventions that obtain in this regard, reason being little or no guide to us; and that within ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... languages, and in Dak at least is much used as a suffix. The last half of the word Mini-tari is tari, cross over. In Dak, Eu tur is re; represented as accurately as possible by ton possess, accomplish, fulfil, have, give birth, and the preposition tan in composition from equally represents ...
— The Dakotan Languages, and Their Relations to Other Languages • Andrew Woods Williamson
... which knew them not. It is something to learn that grave statesmen, kings, generals, and presidents could negotiate for two years long; and that the only result should be the distinction between a conjunction, a preposition, and an adverb. That the provinces should be held as free States, not for free States—that they should be free in similitude, not in substance—thus much and no more had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to the term by calling it Sault de Ste. Marie, i.e. Leap of Saint Mary, to distinguish it from other Leaps, or Saults. Now as the word Sainte, as here used, is feminine, it must, in its abbreviated form, be written Ste. The preposition de (the) is usually dropped. Use has further now dropped the sound of the letter l from Sault. But as, in the reforms of the French dictionary, the ancient geographical names of places remain unaffected, the true phraseology is ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... them. I am getting to dislike that man so. He is always being held up before us young authors as a model, and I do hate models. There was a model boy at our school, I remember, Henry Summers; and it was just the same there. It was continually, "Look at Henry Summers! he doesn't put the preposition before the verb, and spell business b-i-z!" or, "Why can't you write like Henry Summers? He doesn't get the ink all over the copy-book and half-way up his back!" We got tired of this everlasting "Look at Henry Summers!" after a while, and so, one ...
— Dreams - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome |
