"Theoretical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dispute might easily have been compromised, by enacting that, the King should have no power to keep a standing army on foot without the consent of Parliament. He reasons as if the question had been merely theoretical, and as if at that time no army had been wanted. "The kingdom," he says, "might have well dispensed, in that age, with any military organisation" Now, we think that Mr. Hallam overlooks the most important circumstance in the whole case. Ireland was actually ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... has the honour to be placed in it. He must be sensible how much will depend upon his conduct in the infancy of a study, which is now first adopted by public academical authority; which has generally been reputed (however unjustly) of a dry and unfruitful nature; and of which the theoretical, elementary parts have hitherto received a very moderate share of cultivation. He cannot but reflect that, if either his plan of instruction be crude and injudicious, or the execution of it lame and superficial, it ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... special branch of the science of fortification reckoned more than one Vauban and Gribeauval among its numbers. "Professor of barricading," was a title honored at the Cafe de Seville, and one that they would willingly have had engraved upon their visiting-cards. Observe that the instruction was only theoretical; doubtless out of respect for the policemen, they could not give entirely practical lessons to the future rioters who formed the ground-work of the business. The master or doctor of civil war could not go ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... well versed in rural administration, in farming and sporting, with all the integrity of L15,000 a year in possession and L50,000 in reversion, is all of a sudden made leader in the House of Commons without being able to speak, and Chancellor of the Exchequer without any knowledge, theoretical or practical, of finance. By way of being discreet, and that his plan may be a secret, he consults nobody; and then he closets himself with his familiar Poulett Thomson, who puts this notable scheme into his head, and out he blurts it in the House of Commons, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... sent to the army of Italy, always devoted to Bonaparte. Berthier remained at Paris in the capacity of minister of war. Fouche was placed at the police, and Talleyrand undertook foreign affairs. By a bent of theoretical fancy, which was not borne out by experience in government, the illustrious mathematician Laplace was called to the ministry of the interior. Gaudin became minister of finances; he replaced immediately the forced loans with an increase of direct taxes, ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... against the claims of his elder brother Robert, and Henry I followed his example for similar reasons. Each had to make election promises in the form of a charter; and election promises, although they were seldom kept, had some value as reminders to kings of their duties and theoretical dependence upon the electors. Gradually, too, the kings began to look for support outside their Norman baronage, and to realize that even the submerged English might serve as a makeweight in a balance of opposing forces. Henry I bid for London's support by the grant of a notable ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... Commission; Formerly Instructor in Practical and Theoretical Nursing, Training School for Nurses, Presbyterian ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... expected. Furthermore, some of the caffein of the coffee may pass into the mother's milk, thus reaching the child, so that the use of coffee during the nursing period is undesirable on this ground also. Naturally, the question arises as to whether this arraignment is purely theoretical or based upon ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... attempt to bring the theoretical part of our training into contact with the practical that we begin to experience the full effect of what Faraday has called "mental inertia"—not only the difficulty of recognising, among the concrete objects before us, the abstract relation which we ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... found a scientist whose whole creed lay in observation and experiment, who, in dealing with nature, evinced the most cautious logic; while on the other side was a social dreamer, haunted by ideas of fraternity, equality and justice, and eager for universal happiness. Thence had first come the theoretical anarchist that he had been, one in whom science and chimeras were mingled, who dreamt of human society returning to the harmonious law of the spheres, each man free, in a free association, regulated ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... increased, in proportion as the rest of the community had suffered privations; the nearer the mechanic and the labourer had approached to starvation and beggary, the higher were the profits and the more efficient the means of the landholder. This was no theoretical proposition, hastily introduced, it was a practical truism, the result of careful and recent inquiry. He would read to the meeting an account of the population of the parish of Enford, a large parish in the centre of the county of Wilts, with the comparative statement of the rise ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... this, he would certainly—and the more sensible the man was the more surely—be of opinion that my good Examen Artium [Artium—an examination to be passed before admittance to the University is granted.] must clearly have come about by some mistake. But if life depends on theoretical reasoning and knowledge, I have, thank God, as good abilities as most men. And I know that in them I have a pair of pliant oars, with which, as long as I require to do so, I shall be able to row my boat through practical life without running aground. The load which I have in the boat, at times ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... ecclesiastical history may convince one, that before the commencement of the fourth century, Christianity had extensively degenerated from its original purity as a religion of the heart, into a mere profession of theoretical dogmas, and the observance of external rites. Such, it is natural to suspect, was the form of it to which the Armenians were at that period converted; and the circumstances of the event, if national tradition has correctly preserved them, confirm the suspicion, that they have ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... in so far dependent upon him. Nevertheless, with him as with others, personal interest had a weight which qualified his argument. The premature[73] and disastrous promotion of his stepson, at his request, by St. Vincent, was a practical abuse which in most minds would outweigh theoretical advantages. Writing to Sir Peter Parker about this time, he said, "You may be assured I will lose no time in making your grandson a postcaptain. It is the only opportunity ever offered me, of showing that my feelings of gratitude ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... that's what he always waited for. Of course it was dangerous, here in the tunnel system under the garage, but Harry always got a thrill out of speed. The Pax could do thirty-five or even forty, probably, on a theoretical open road. Still, twenty-two ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... were phenomena so unknown in this commonwealth, that even to find the words by which they were designated one would have had to search throughout an obsolete literature composed thousands of years before. They who have been students of theoretical philosophies above ground, know that all these strange departures from civilised life do but realise ideas which have been broached, canvassed, ridiculed, contested for; sometimes partially tried, and still put forth in fantastic books, but have never come ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of judgment, prepossession, emotional interest, excitement, or an abnormal mental condition. It is the author's view that the judge should understand these relations not merely in their narrower practical bearings, but in their larger and more theoretical aspects which the study of psychology as a comprehensive science sets forth. There is the allied problem of testimony and belief, which concerns the peculiarly judicial qualities. To ease the step from ideas to their expression, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... of Sophisms too theoretical, scientific, and metaphysical. Very well. Let us try a trivial, commonplace, and, if necessary, coarse style. Convinced that the public is duped in the matter of protection, I have desired to prove it. But the public wishes to be shouted ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... doctrine of evolution, at the present time, rests upon exactly as secure a foundation as the Copernican theory of the motions of the heavenly bodies did at the time of its promulgation. Its logical basis is precisely of the same character—the coincidence of the observed facts with theoretical requirements. ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... in their published report, was adverse to the expediency of such a measure at that time, and under the then existing conditions; but they proceeded to indicate the circumstances in which a dissolution of the Union might become expedient, and the mode in which it should be effected; and their theoretical plan of separation corresponds very nearly with that actually adopted by the Southern States nearly fifty years ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... details of a project that may possibly never be carried out after any fashion. I paid heed, nevertheless, to your observations, of which I admit the force, and am so far from having determined to abide by any theoretical convictions of my own upon the subject that I shall be guided entirely by Mr. Mitchell's opinion about the best manner of giving my readings; for, as I do it for money, I shall do it in the way most likely to ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... me?" questioned the Lay Reader. It was astonishing how almost instantaneously a man as purely theoretical as the Lay Reader was supposed to be, thought of a perfectly practical solution to the difficulty. "Why—why we might tie my big handkerchief across your eyes," he suggested. "Just till we get this mystery straightened out.—Surely there is nothing more or ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... College with advanced standing at the age of eighteen. Many stories are told of his precocity and ability, all of which tend to forecast the later man of catholic tastes, omnivorous interest, and extensive but superficial knowledge; he was a strange combination of natural aristocrat and theoretical democrat, of philosopher and practical politician. After having been a student in the law office of George Wythe, and being a friend of Patrick Henry, Jefferson early espoused the cause of the Revolution, and it was his hand that drafted the Declaration ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... and the two together constitute the aggregate resistance which makes it necessary that the power for increasing a vessel's speed shall increase as the cube of the velocity. But whatever the rationale, the law itself is an admitted fact by all theoretical engineers, and is proven in practice by all steamships. In evidence of this, I will give the ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... boast of superior infallibility to the French or British. In computing the experiments which were made at Lowell (for a new turbine wheel), it was found that when the gate was fully open, the quantity of water discharged through the guides was seventy per cent. of the theoretical discharge. (An error of thirty per cent.) The effect of the wheel during these experiments was eighty-one and a half per cent. of the power expended; but when the gate was half open the effect was sixty-seven per ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... reputation, in whatever paths of life they trod. Few of them, perhaps, have been deep and finished scholars; but the college has supplied—what the emergencies of the country demanded—a set of men more useful in its present state, and whose deficiency in theoretical knowledge has not been found to imply a want of ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... theoretical and sentimental advantages of separate cooling and dressing-rooms, a combined frigidarium and apodyterium seems to ...
— The Turkish Bath - Its Design and Construction • Robert Owen Allsop
... a First-class Railway Carriage. Theoretical Passenger and Practical Passenger discussing the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... each functionary is important in exact proportion to his nominal insignificance; and why? Because the greater his nominal unimportance the more he comes in actual contact with the patient. The theoretical scale runs thus: 1st. The presiding physician. 2d. The medical subordinates. 3d. The keepers and nurses. The practical scale runs thus: 1st. The keepers and nurses. 2d. The medical ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... time two enemies. And besides it would be impossible to do it with equality: the same things, the like number of troops, the like quantity of arms and munitions furnished under different circumstances are no longer equivalent succors." Assistance is not a theoretical idea; it is a plain, practical, unmistakable fact. When the United States had, at vast cost and by incredible effort, shut the Southern Confederacy from the sea and blockaded its ports against the entry of supplies, when that government had no resources within its territory ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... into the house gratuitously, and accept its regulations while they remain. They have to pass through all practical duties of house-work, and care of the sick and children. They also pursue practical and theoretical courses in hygiene, and receive lessons in singing and pedagogics. The chaplains of the institution give them courses of religious instruction, and lectures on Church history. Some (the larger number) ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... the individual of himself and his environment are at their maximum in him. The ante-pituitary personality is educable for intelligence, and even intellect, provided the proper educational stimulus is supplied. Men of brains, practical and theoretical, philosophers, thinkers, creators of new thoughts and new goods, belong to this group. The distinction between men of theoretical genius, whose minds which could embrace a universe, and yet fail to manage successfully ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... garrison contained only six thousand, men. This personal temerity, and the applause of Field-marshal Laudon, procured him then a kind of reputation, which he has not since been able to support. Some theoretical knowledge of the art of war, and a great facility of conversing on military topics, made even the Emperor Joseph conceive a high opinion of this officer; but it has long been proved, and experience confirms it every day, that the difference is immense between the speculator ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... world is governed enough. It is certain that it has in its ranks young men of vigor and intellect who would draw salary and serve the public in a manner hitherto never approached. It boasts that it is "the better element." It does not know the alphabet of politics. It is virtuously theoretical and practically impotent. It cannot be brought to understand that successful politics demands a "machine." Each of its individual members is a boss. They have been derisively termed "goo-goos," which is a contraction of "goody-goods." They are youthful, sanguine, ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... In actual money she expended little. She was a theoretical philanthropist. She lent her influence, her time, and her advice, but seldom her bank balance. Arrange an entertainment for the delectation of the poor, and you would find her on the platform, but her name would not be on the list of subscribers to the funds. She would deliver a lecture on thrift ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... there appeared also, at Frankfort-on-Maine the work of Marx and Engels, "Die heilige Familie, oder Kritik der Kritischen Kritik, gegen Bruno Bauer und Consorten."[13] In it Idealist speculation was attacked and beaten by Materialist dialectic, the theoretical basis of modern Socialism. "Der Einzige" ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... Hippolitus Salvianus, &c. [3326]Arcana coeli, naturae secreta, ordinem universi scire majoris felicitatis et dulcedinis est, quam cogitatione quis assequi possit, aut mortalis sperare. What more pleasing studies can there be than the mathematics, theoretical or practical parts? as to survey land, make maps, models, dials, &c., with which I was ever much delighted myself. Tails est Mathematum pulchritudo (saith [3327] Plutarch) ut his indignum sit divitiarum phaleras istas et bullas, et puellaria spectacula ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer. They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
... mind in our own day are the theoretical and analytical habits. Dissection, vivisection, analysis—those are the processes to which all things not conclusively historical and all things spiritual are bound to pass. Thus we find the old myths classified into Sun Myths and Dawn Myths, Earth Myths and Moon Myths, Fire ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... against the restraints of family conditions, and as ready to look through obligations into her own fundamental want of feeling for them, as if she had been sustained by the boldest speculations; but she really had no such speculations, and would at once have marked herself off from any sort of theoretical or practically reforming women by satirizing them. She rejoiced to feel herself exceptional; but her horizon was that of the genteel romance where the heroine's soul poured out in her journal is full of vague ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... on "The Velocity of Propagation of Electro-dynamic Action," he gave definite and experimental proof of the hitherto theoretical fact that the velocity of the electric waves in air was exactly the same as that of light, whereas he found that in wires the ratio was not the same, being 4 to 7. This was afterwards found out to be an error by ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... is it marvellous that at that day there should be disputes as to the nature and strength of the supposed bulwark, since, in times the most recent, and among antiquaries the most learned, the greatest discrepancies exist, not only as to theoretical opinion, but plain matter of observation, and simple measurement. The place, however, I need scarcely say, was not as we see it now, with its foundations of gigantic ruin, affording ample space for conjecture; yet, even ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sir, I grant you the thing is not impossible from a theoretical point of view," argued Lewes, "but I think you are theorising on altogether insufficient evidence. I am willing to admit that such a freak is theoretically possible, but I have not yet found the indications of such a ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... the magic haze of time and distance, the scene of her youth assumed a character of tenderness and even of peaceful bliss. She sighed for the days of their cottage and their garden, when the discontent of her father was only theoretical, and their political conclaves were limited to a discussion between him and Morley on the rights of the people or the principles of society. The bright waters of the Mowe and its wooded hills; her matin walks to the convent to ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... more downright and careless. He was growing somewhat bewildered between his analysis of her character and his admiration for her mouth, an admiration that was rather difficult to keep entirely cool and theoretical, and that he felt a strong inclination to show in some more practical manner.... With a sigh he turned to Edith ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... that the Divine Substance, under a myriad-fold variety of appearances, is equally diffused through all creation, like the universal ether of science; and such a conception of the Eternal, whatever else it may be, ceases ipso facto to be religiously helpful. The counterpart of the theoretical allness would be the practical nothingness of God.[2] But having quite definitely declined to place such a construction upon immanence, we are preserved from the absurdities which flow from it. We may and do hold that all the works of the Lord ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... among the narratives. Although into Burke's Conciliation other elements enter, yet everyone will admit it to be argumentative in the highest degree. So while it is well to classify the selections read, yet fine theoretical distinctions should be abandoned. It is not so necessary to classify and name as it ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... the moment sharpening his hunting knife in preparation. Winkleman swore heartily and fluently, then grinned. He was at heart a good soul, Winkleman, with a sense of amusement if not of humour, and a philosophy of life denied most of his inexperienced and theoretical countrymen. And also he realized that he had his work cut out to prevent the program being carried through. The African is slow to come to a definite conclusion, but once it is arrived at it is apt to look to him like a permanent structure. It was a wonderful tribute to ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... given above are, however, to a certain extent merely theoretical; in practice the former admit of numerous licenses and the latter of variations brought about by modification or partial suppression of the feet final in a verse. An Arabic poem (Kasidah, or if numbering less than ten couplets, Kat'ah) consists of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... not significant? Rod was of a contemplative theoretical turn of mind, one of those wide-awake, interesting young fellows who find food for conjecture in almost every incident that occurs, and his suspicions were now aroused to an unusual pitch. A chief fault, however, was that he kept most of his suspicions ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... person has persuaded the other to administer to Eugenia an extract because 'it must be a boy and an Atherton.' That person is a high-class defective, born with a criminal instinct, reacting to it in an artful way. Thank God, the love of a man whom theoretical ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... the theoretical and practical work for which I could make a whole volume of the experiences in the slums of Chicago, where I had to reprove a policeman, whom I found in a saloon drinking in full uniform, while in the back room there was a girl not over fifteen years old, in the company of a most reckless middle-aged ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... consciousness of many European States the historian finds everywhere the shadowy outlines of "nobility" and "aristocracy" delineated on the surface of traditionary pretense and political desire. It forms the inheritance of distributive power in nations ascending from monarchial institutions to theoretical republics or pseudo-democracies, and it imparts a touch of pathos to the lingering hope of Royalty that humanity may some day welcome its return to reverence and power. It forms the superstructure on which the crumbling ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... professor of geometry and mathematics, and possessed of considerable theoretical knowledge of military architecture, Father Griffen had given most excellent advice to the successive governors of Martinique on the ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... part in the active leadership of politics, unless they have other qualifications not necessarily springing from their pursuits in learning; they are naturally more engaged with ideas in a free state, theoretical ideas, than with ideas which are in reality as much a part of life as of thought; and the method of dealing with these vitalized and, as it were, adulterated ideas has a ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... noticed the singular fact, that boys whose aversion to learning was so great that they could not or would not acquire even a knowledge of their 'a, b, abs,' took hold with evident relish of the comparatively difficult study of theoretical music, and in a very short space of time mastered the notes sufficiently to be able to read a tolerably hard score or piece of music. This seemed to him like a phenomenal phase, and he can only account for it on the ground that a love of music is inherent in the average ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... is eight light-years from the earth, even if a space ship traveled at the theoretical maximum—just under 186,00 miles a second—it would take over sixteen years for the round trip. Detailed observation of the planet ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... unable to visualise human life as it is actually or ideally, they surrender themselves to indiscriminate pity, doing a little good thereby and a vast deal of harm. The second class includes the theoretical socialists and other regenerators of society whose imagination has been perverted by crude vapours and false visions. They are ignorant of the real springs of human action; they have wilfully turned their faces away from the truth as it exists, and their punishment ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... the more specific topics of his religious teaching, freedom, immortality, God, Kant is prompt to assert that these cannot be objects of theoretical knowledge. Insoluble contradictions arise whenever a proof of them is attempted. If an object of faith could be demonstrated it would cease to be an object of faith. It would have been brought down out of the transcendental world. Were God to us an ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... arrived from Sir John, regretting that there was no train by which he could reach Dunchester that night, giving the name of another doctor who was to be called in, and adding, incautiously enough, "Dr. Therne's diagnosis is purely theoretical and such as might be expected from an ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... Marxism awaited them, the theory which is the basis of European democratic socialism. This doctrine was nothing new in Russia. But formerly, the proletariat of the cities had been very little developed and the Marxian doctrines had been of theoretical ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... thereby greatly increase our evidence of the fact. In the very case before us, for example, the evidence of evolution as a fact has from the first been largely derived from testing Darwin's theory concerning its method. It was this theoretical explanation of its method which first set him seriously to enquire into the evidences of evolution as a fact; and ever since he published his results, the evidences which he adduced in favour of natural selection as a method have constituted some of the strongest reasons which scientific men have ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... are well known all over the world—their exceptional selfishness, their inhuman cruelty to foreigners, their inherent instinct of exploitation, their theoretical stupidity are mingled with practical shrewdness and ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... influence, of which the following might be a general type: If the statesmen could attain to the requisite knowledge and wisdom, it is conceivable that the State might perform important regulative functions in the production and distribution of wealth, against which no positive and sweeping theoretical objection could be made from the side of economic science; but statesmen never can acquire the requisite knowledge and wisdom.—To me this seems a mere waste of words. The inadequacy of the State to regulative tasks is agreed upon, as a matter ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... builders' representative out of reach before the man who is to operate it fully realizes that he has a new type of prime mover on his hands, with which he has little or no acquaintance, has not been written. There has been much published, both descriptive and theoretical, about the turbine, but so far as the writer knows, there is nothing in print that tells the man on the job about the details of the turbine in plain language, and how to handle these details when they need handling. The operating engineer does not care why the moving buckets are made of a certain ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins
... remained resolute; Reigart acted a most courageous part; my ci-devant host, and proportion of stripes on the complaint of a conscientious master—for, after all, such theoretical protection does the poor ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... history of music, that in the Middle Ages, as late as Luther's time, it took two men to compose the simplest piece of music: one who conceived the melody, and the other who added the harmonic accompaniment. The theoretical writer, Glareanus, deliberately expressed his opinion, in 1547, that it might be possible to unite these two functions in one person, but that one would rarely find the inventor of a melody able to work it out artistically. We have made much progress in music ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... Julia now reviewed the past, she perceived to have been her theoretical attitude toward marriage. It was unconsciously, insidiously, that her ten years of happiness with Westall had developed another conception of the tie; a reversion, rather, to the old instinct of passionate ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... then concerning our faith in the existence of a God, not only as the ground of the universe by his essence, but as its maker and judge by his wisdom and holy will, appeared to stand thus. The sciential reason, the objects of which are purely theoretical, remains neutral, as long as its name and semblance are not usurped by the opponents of the doctrine. But it then becomes an effective ally by exposing the false show of demonstration, or by evincing the equal demonstrability of the contrary from premises equally logical [37]. The ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... fellow-creatures: milk, which is drawn from the cow, that useful animal, that eats the grass of the field, and supplies us with that which made the greatest part of the food of mankind in the age which the poets have agreed to call golden. It is made with an egg, that miracle of nature, which the theoretical Burnet has compared to creation. An egg contains water within its beautiful smooth surface; and an unformed mass, by the incubation of the parent, becomes a regular animal, furnished with bones and sinews, and covered with ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... this philosophical theology, and the one which exhibits most clearly the practical difference between reason and faith, is that, in dealing with theoretical difficulties, it does not appeal to our knowledge, but to our ignorance: it does not profess to offer a definite solution; it only tells us that we might find one if we knew all. It does not profess, for example, to solve the ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... as applied to a screw propeller, is the theoretical distance through which it would travel without slip in one revolution, and as applied to a propeller blade it is the angle at which the blades are set so as to enable them to travel in a spiral path through a fixed distance theoretically ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... constitutional powerlessness of Congress to interfere with slavery in the Southern States. Now Lincoln himself—whether for good reasons or bad must be considered later—thoroughly disapproved of the actual agitation of the Abolitionists; and the resolutions in question, but for one merely theoretical point of law and for an unctuous misuse of the adjective "sacred," contained nothing which he could not literally have accepted. The objection to them lay in the motive which made it worth while to pass them. Lincoln drew up and placed on the records of the House a protest against ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... Grant's army. Troops were concentrated at Cairo for future operations—not yet decided upon. Major-General H. W. Halleck superseded General Fremont in command of the department of Missouri. Halleck was an able man, having a high reputation as theoretical master of the art of war, one of those who put a large part of all their energy into the business of preparing to do some great task, only to find frequently, when they are completely ready, that the occasion has gone by. When he was first approached with a proposition ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... give you intellectual notions which, after all, will be but reflexes of my own peculiar brain, and so add the green of my spectacles to the orange of yours, and make night hideous by fresh monsters. I may help you to think yourself into a theoretical Tritheism, or a theoretical Sabellianism; I cannot make you think yourself into practical and living Catholicism. As you of anthropology, so I say of theology,—Solvitur ambulando. Don't believe Catholic doctrine unless you like; faith is free. But see if you can reclaim either society or ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... question, it is just as well to consider what these education systems have really done for mankind. There is a proverb, as excellent as it is ancient, which says that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. No doubt learned theoretical treatises upon the scope and aim of educational methods are capital things in their way, but they tell us nothing of the effects of this systematic teaching and cramming upon the world at large. If we wish to ascertain them, we must turn to life ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... science of our time, which so often places the origin of a northern form in the south, and vice versa, as the foundation of very wide theoretical conclusions, a knowledge of the types which can live by turns in nearly fresh water of a temperature of 10 deg., and in water cooled to -2.7 deg. and of nearly the same salinity as that of the Mediterranean, must ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... accomplishments demanded that can only be acquired, even by the most gifted, by long study and patient practice! And since learning to speak in public is like learning to swim, or to skate, or to ride a bicycle, in this sense at least, that no amount of previous theoretical instruction will enable one to realise the initial difficulties or find out how to overcome them without actual experiment, it would be arrant folly on the part of the future priest to neglect this subject during his ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... remedies for various diseases are counted quinin, carbolic acid, salicylic acid, antipyrene, mercury, iodin, the empyreumatic oils, tars, resins, aromatics, sulphur, and a host of other drugs, some of which are of known effect and others of which are theoretical in action. Certain remedies, like simple aromatic teas, vegetable acids, such as vinegar, lemon juice, etc., alkalines in the form of salts, sweet spirits of niter, etc., which are household remedies, are always useful, because they act on the excreting organs and ameliorate ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... however, was too much for Martin's delicate nervous organization; the kindly encouragement of his fellow-students failed to induce him to breathe its fetid atmosphere a second time, and he was forced to content himself with a theoretical knowledge of the profession. By diligent study and with the assistance of lectures, anatomical plates, &c., he managed to conquer the difficulty; and he had obtained nearly all the certificates necessary for taking out a medical degree, when he was recalled in 1835 ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... she had sold his pictures to pay for her gown! You people simply run it into the ground. You kill the goose that when taken at the flood leads on to fortune. It advertises you, does the lion no good, and he is expected to be satisfied with confectionery, material and theoretical. If they are getting tired of candy and compliments, it's because you have forced too much of it ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... distinguished himself at cricket, as in boxing, riding, and shooting. Of his skill as a rider there are various accounts. He was an undoubted marksman, and his habit of carrying about pistols, and use of them wherever he went, was often a source of annoyance and alarm. He professed a theoretical objection to duelling, but was as ready to take a challenge as Scott, and more ready ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... But a theoretical adherence of the mind to dogmas that satisfy it, does not suffice to convert it to a new religion. There must be motives of conduct and a basis for hope besides grounds for belief. The Persian dualism was not only a powerful metaphysical conception; it was also the foundation ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... long, silent drives over the country behind the fast horses, but the pottering round the flower-garden with Mrs. Costell. He had been reading up a little on flowers and gardening, and he was glad to swap his theoretical for her practical knowledge. Candor compels the statement that he enjoyed the long hours stretched on the turf, or sitting idly on the veranda, puffing ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... Andral (and I am not referring to his well-known public experiments in his hospital) as to the result of his own trials. This distinguished physician is Professor of Medicine in the School of Paris, and one of the most widely known and valued authors upon practical and theoretical subjects the profession can claim in any country. He is a man of great kindness of character, a most liberal eclectic by nature and habit, of unquestioned integrity, and is called, in the leading ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... South Wales describe as existing there usages nearly identical with those which regulate the proceedings of the natives occupying the west of the continent. And these testimonies cannot be doubted for they are incidentally introduced without any theoretical bias and in ignorance of the conformity they tend to prove. Natives from the country about the Murrumbidgee have described to me Australian customs as being in force there which exhibit the same accordance with those I found in the west; and I have myself ascertained their existence ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... of aiding science is to offer a prize for the best memoir on a specified subject. On theoretical grounds this is extremely objectionable. Since the papers presented are anonymous and confidential, no one but the judges know how great is the effort wasted in duplication. The larger the prize, the greater the injury to science, ...
— The Future of Astronomy • Edward C. Pickering
... or a very partial understanding of our real circumstances and of the conditions of the conflict, and of the relations of parties to it. De Tocqueville is universally regarded among us as the only foreigner who ever divined the theoretical and the practical method of our institutions. Englishmen, English statesmen even, have never penetrated to the mystery of them. Many intelligent British travellers have seemed to wish to do so, and to have tried to do so. But the study bothers them, the secret baffles ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... of the preeminence of Englishwomen in the cosmetic art. By their innate delicacy of touch they will accomplish much, and much, of course, by their swift feminine perception. Yet it were well that they should know something also of the theoretical side of the craft. Modern authorities upon the mysteries of the toilet are, it is true, rather few; but among the ancients many a writer would seem to have been fascinated by them. Archigenes, a man of science at the Court of Cleopatra, ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... thought polygamy less wrong than divorce, on the biblical ground that whereas the former had been practised in the Old Testament times and was not clearly forbidden by the New Testament, divorce was prohibited save for adultery. Luther advanced this thesis as early as 1520, when it was purely theoretical, but he did not shrink from applying it on occasion. It is extraordinary what a large body of reputable opinion was prepared to tolerate polygamy, at least in exceptional cases. Popes, theologians, humanists like Erasmus, and philosophers like Bruno, all thought a plurality ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... almost anything. For instance, you know, Dorgan has just put through a new scheme of city planning—with the able assistance of some theoretical reformers. That will be a big piece of real estate graft, unless I am mistaken. Langhorne and his crowd know it. They don't want to ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... Theoretical and practical information, together with complete directions for performing numerous experiments on wireless telegraphy with simple ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... thirty-nine articles water-tight. "You are a Pacifist, then suppose...," and then follows generally some very remote hypothesis of what would happen if all the Orient composed its differences and were to descend suddenly upon the Western world; or some dogmatic (and very theoretical) proposition about the unchangeability of human nature, and the foolishness of expecting the millenium—an argument which would equally well have told against the union of Scotland and England or would equally justify the political parties in a South American republic in ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... to be plenty, and the quality was excellent. I fear you encourage gluttony, and nothing so interferes with work. We must effect a saving somehow; there is too great a variation between theoretical and ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... fourth edition, I do not know whether it would be well to procure any review or notice of it, and I am not a fair judge of its merits even in comparison with the original form of the work; but my idea is, that it is less defective both in the theoretical and in the historical development, and ought to be worth the notice of those who deemed the earlier editions worth their notice and purchase: that it would really put a reader in possession of the view it was intended to convey, which I fear is more than can with ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... proposals before the National Assembly, vary more or less from the original, either in conciseness or in breadth, in cleverness or in awkwardness of expression. But so far as substantial additions are concerned they present only doctrinaire statements of a purely theoretical nature or elaborations, which belong to the realm of political metaphysics. To enter upon them here is unnecessary. Let us confine ourselves to the completed work, the Declaration as it was finally determined after long debate in the sessions ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek
... could have guessed whether he now believed all or believed nothing. Certainly he was proving himself an astonishingly apt pupil, his years of practical experience with the machines admirably supplementing Constans's theoretical knowledge. It was not until mid-day that he gave the order to shut down the engines, and Constans was ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... are practical, not theoretical. Men must die, old customs embodied in law must be broken, the venal must be bribed and the weak cowed and compelled, in order that civilization may advance. You can't establish a railway or a great industrial system by rose-water morality. But I shall ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... was an inventor—an inventor of genius. Several important discoveries had brought him prominently to the notice of the world. Thanks to him, problems that had previously remained purely theoretical had received practical application. He occupied a conspicuous place in the front rank of the army of science. It will be seen how worry, deceptions, mortification, and the outrages with which he was overwhelmed by the cynical ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... seem to afford an exception to this. The above is, I believe, true as a theoretical action of plants and animals in protoplasmic form. But practically, in all higher developments of either kind, other distinctions come into play; e.g., that plants can make use of inorganic matter, gases, and water, and ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... her; he added her up; he pronounced, with a touch of conventional male patronage (caught possibly from the Liberal Club), that Janet was indubitably a nice girl and a fine girl. He would not admit that he was afraid of her, and that despite all theoretical argufying, he deemed her ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... murder over penalties for other crimes coming before the court. Although therefore for all ordinary purposes a son had no claim on the paternal estate beyond his maintenance, his right of succession might easily grow up in the eye of the law as an available asset capable of forfeiture with the theoretical assumption that the scapegrace was unfit to hold his position in the family.(220) His future portion, thus becoming deprived of a representative, might be wholly or in part confiscated to the State. ...
— On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society: An Essay • Hugh E. Seebohm
... instances cannot make us forget the cruel contempt and barbarity of which the slave was still the victim, and which was to be his lot for many generations yet to run. Therefore the improvement in the condition of the slave, or of his poor plebeian brother, by the theoretical equality in the colleges may be easily exaggerated."[801] The statesmen had feared that the artisans might use their organization to interfere in politics. What happened in the fourth century was that the state used the organizations to reduce the artisans to servitude, and to subject them ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... were invited to a country house in Farnham, to meet Charles Kingsley, who impressed them with his genial and tender kindness, and while they thought some of his social views wild and theoretical, they loved his earnestness and originality, and believed he could not be "otherwise than good and noble." It was during this summer (according to William Michael Rossetti) that Browning and Dante Gabriel Rossetti ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... allowed to drain upright on blotting-paper until all the surface moisture has been absorbed (about half an hour), and then put by until required. The nitrate of zinc, which is still retained on the plate, is sufficient to keep it moist for any length of time, and we see no theoretical or practical reason why its sensitiveness should not be retained as long: experiments on this point are in progress; at present, however, we have only subjected them to the trial of about a week, although at the end of that period they were hardly deteriorated in any appreciable degree. It is not ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 236, May 6, 1854 • Various |
