"Abortive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... see, Deceived thyself, instead of me; For how can heavenly wisdom prove An instrument to earthly love? Know'st thou not yet, that men commence Thy votaries for want of sense? Nor shall Vanessa be the theme To manage thy abortive scheme: She'll prove the greatest of thy foes; And yet I scorn to interpose, But, using neither skill nor force, Leave all things to their natural course. The goddess thus pronounced her doom: When, lo! Vanessa in her bloom Advanced, like Atalanta's ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... distance—for how should a true image of him pass from town to town, by forest and mountain, throughout all that vast empire? The Master's life alone made clear to me what I had failed to gather from his followers. Just as their delirious dancings and shrieks and spasms were abortive attempts to produce his prayer-ecstasy, so in all things did they but caricature him. But now that he is dead, and these extravagances are no longer to be checked by his living example, so monstrous are the deeds ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... is at hand, And to our presence leads Evander. All Thy dark complottings, and thy treach'rous arts, Have prov'd abortive. ...
— The Grecian Daughter • Arthur Murphy
... the special situation of the peasants seems to have led to similar conditions. We know a charming region in Southwest Germany, where, in the garden of every peasant, there stands the so-called "Sevenbaum," whose properties are applied to abortive purposes. In another district of the same country the regular two-child system prevails among the peasants: they do not wish to divide the places. Moreover, striking is the measure in which literature, that treats with and recommends the means of "facultative ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... their own miserable homes, destitute of their well-beloved daughters, the fathers cursing the days and the hours wherein they were married, and the mothers howling and crying that it was not their fortune to have brought forth abortive issues when they happened to be delivered of such unfortunate girls, and in this pitiful plight spend at best the remainder of their time with tears and weeping for those their children, of and from whom they expected, (and, with good ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... in-madness w-will p-pass for w-wit w-with nine-ninet-teen out of t-twenty.' — 'And affected stuttering for humour: replied our landlord, tho', God knows, there is an affinity betwixt them.' It seems, this wag, after having made some abortive attempts in plain speaking, had recourse to this defect, by means of which he frequently extorted the laugh of the company, without the least expence of genius; and that imperfection, which he had at ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... these abortive attempts been crushed before another avenue of hope opened itself to Charles and his adherents. It was one for which Hyde had no great liking, and from which he expected little good result. But obviously it was not ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... so far in the confidence of Queen Henrietta Maria, as to be sent as her envoy to the captive king, beseeching him to save his head by conceding the demands of Parliament. When, the errand proving abortive, the royal head was lost, Davenant returned to Paris, consoled himself by finishing the first two books of his "Gondibert," and then, despairing of a restoration, embarked (in 1650) from France for Virginia, where monarchy and the rights of Charles ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... (Landtage) met at Innsbruck, a proceeding which marks the beginning of an organic unity in the Austrian lands. In these ways Maximilian proved himself a capable and energetic ruler, although his plans for making Austria into a kingdom, or an electorate, were abortive. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... their design had proved abortive, went directly to the place of rendezvous, and told the first of his troops whom he met that they had lost their labour, and must return to their cave. He himself set them the example, and they all ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... smashing blow on his own knuckles. With admirable presence of mind he crushed down an oath and substituted the harmless comment, "Butter fingers!" But the pain was sharp, his nerve was shaken, and after an abortive trial he found he must desist ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dearth; and, as a rule, the crisis ended long before the cumbrous machinery of the law enabled the new lands to come under the plough. It is, however, possible that he hoped to inaugurate a system of enclosures of waste lands by a clause which appeared in his abortive proposals of the year 1797 for the relief of the poor. His Bill on that subject comprised not only very generous plans of relief, but also the grant of cows to the deserving poor, the erection of Schools of Industry in every parish or group of parishes, and facilities ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... supposed the force of the water where it flowed smoothly, would not be as great as where it dashed against the rocks and appeared more boisterous. This was a mistake. Every endeavor to fix a bent where the water was smooth, proved utterly abortive. At length an architect conceived the idea of placing the bridge, down where the water began to be broken in its descent, and of obtaining a foot-hold for his bent, behind some rock against which ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... stricken down with a severe sickness, and they were compelled to lie in camp and attend to the sufferings of their unfortunate comrade. He had a high fever, grew delirious, and as in those days bleeding was considered a panacea for all the ills that flesh is heir to, the captain made several abortive attempts to draw the diseased blood from the poor man, but failed completely. He also dosed his victim with copious draughts of calomel, but the result was far from salutary; the man grew worse, but the party determined ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... chivalrous sincerity and disinterestedness of Hamilton pervaded the assembly with all the power of his fascinating manners. The flashing eloquence of Gouverneur Morris recalled the dangers of anarchy, which must be accepted as the alternative of an abortive experiment. The calm, clear, statesmanlike views of Madison, the searching and profound expositions of King, the prudent influence of Franklin, at ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... of January, 1604, which saw here such magnificent masquings saw also in Hampton Court a gathering of a very different kind—a gathering which, although it proved abortive so far as its particular purpose was concerned, yet had one remarkable consequence. Says Carlyle in his survey of the beginnings of the seventeenth-century prefatory to the ...
— Hampton Court • Walter Jerrold
... time the captain's wrath had been diverted to the mate. He struck out with his right hand, intending to fell him to the ground, but, the mate swerving, he fell from the force of his abortive blow, and, being under the influence of his morning potations, could not ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... neither the king nor their own accomplice, Rutland, had arrived. Suspecting treachery they resolved to proceed at once to Windsor and surprise Henry, but arrived only to find that he had escaped. They afterwards raised the standard of revolt, but their insurrection proved abortive, and the fate of the leaders ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... one of those families who did not now receive her. However, in the drawing-rooms where she still appeared—and what were they but marriage markets?—one or two affairs did spring up—tentative approachments on the part of scions of wealth. They were destined to prove abortive. One of these youths, Pedro Ricer Marcado, a Brazilian, educated at Oxford, promised much for sincerity and feeling until he learned that Berenice was poor in her own right—and what else? Some one had whispered something ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... composer, or when the first tenor at the Argentina theatre has lost his voice on the way, or when the male prima donna[4.1] of the Valle theatre is laid up with a cold,—in brief, when the chief source of recreation which the Romans were hoping to find proves abortive, and then comes Holy Thursday and all at once cuts off all the hopes which might perhaps have been realized It was just after one of these unlucky Carnivals—almost before the strict fast-days were past, when a certain Nicolo Musso opened a theatre ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... was marked by disillusions and failures. Since the war on the nobles had begun in 1789, all their efforts at resistance, disdainful at first, stubborn later on, blundering always, had been pitifully abortive. Their rebuffs could no longer be counted, and there was some justification in that for the scornful hatred on the part of the new order towards a caste which for so many centuries had believed themselves to be possessed of all the talents. Many of them, it is true, had resigned themselves ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... Society do the same effect, and is judged to be the same thing with the poyson both in colour and smell, and effect. I saw also an abortive child preserved fresh in spirits of salt. Thence parted, and to White Hall to the Councilchamber about an order touching the Navy (our being empowered to commit seamen or Masters that do not, being hired ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... asked I. But I knew he meant an abortive sketch of Phillis, which had not been successful enough for him to complete ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... throne is not in itself improbable. Indeed, it is possible that many such plots were entered into by Egyptian patriots during the long ages of their country's bondage. But ancient history tells us little of the abortive ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... the father's speculations was soon seen. Deprived of Laird Lewis's personal and active superintendence, all his undertakings miscarried, and became either abortive or perilous. Without a single spark of energy to meet or repel these misfortunes, Godfrey put his faith in the activity of another. He kept neither hunters, nor hounds, nor any other southern preliminaries to ruin; but, as has been observed of his countrymen, he kept ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... emphasis and significant eyes—as that Bampton preacher not long ago, who assured us, apropos of the resurrection of the body, that 'all attempts to resuscitate the inanimate corpse by natural methods had hitherto been experimentally abortive.' I go into the place where degrees are given—the Convocation, I think—and there one hears a deal of unmeaning Latin for hours, graces, dispensations, and proctors walking up and down for nothing; all in order to keep up a sort of ghost of things passed away ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... last effort. This was hosiery webbing, which could be cut up and made into as-yet-unheard-of garments. Miss Pinnegar kept her thumb on this enterprise, so that it was not much more than abortive. And then James left ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... as the lines of sight of the two observers and B converge at this point. But whether the explosion occurs immediately above the vessel as is desired, it is impossible to say definitely, because it may explode too far behind to be effective. Consequently, if this shell should prove abortive, the practice is to decrease the range gradually with each succeeding round until the explosion occurs at the critical point, when, of course, the balloon is destroyed. An interesting idea of the difficulty of picking up the range of ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... sight of all this helpless though secretly critical womanhood disposed attentively about him invariably, through association of ideas, brought to his mind every similar and abortive attempt he had made in this direction. When he opened the book to read aloud to them, he was always irritated, with that deep-seated irascibility which has its foundation in self-discontent, however externals may ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... recently been written upon the subject of an abortive Renaissance within the Middle Ages. The centre of it was France, and its period of brilliancy may be roughly defined as the middle and end of the twelfth century. Much, again, has been said about the religious movement in England, which spread to Eastern Europe, and ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... tiny fishing village and resort on the coast—an ugly village, robbed of quaintness by its rows of villas owned by summer visitors. The villas are red and yellow brick, built chateau fashion and set at random on the sand. Efforts at lawns have proved abortive. The encroaching dunes gradually cover the grass. Here and there are streets; and there is one main thoroughfare, along which is a tramway that formerly connected ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... operations of 1812 are of quite minor importance. No more than two are worthy of being mentioned between the greater events before and after them. Both were abortive attempts at invasion—one across the upper Niagara, the other across the frontier ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... part of the current, which accident was observed by a part of the family then at the front windows of the house; sudden and dreadful as the alarm was, they had the consolation of seeing the sagacious animal instantaneously follow his companion, when after diving, and making two or three abortive attempts, by laying hold of different parts of his apparel, which as repeatedly gave way or overpowered his exertions, he then, with the most determined and energetic fortitude, seized him by the arm, and brought him to the edge of the bank, where the domestics of ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... coast to be devoured by a monster of the deep) on condition he might make her his wife: but Phineas, her uncle, sought to prevent him, by attempting, with a party, to carry off the bride. The attempt, notwithstanding, was rendered abortive; for the hero, by showing them the head of the Gorgon, at once ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... to as one suffering from oppression and injustice. It was, therefore, distinctly a class movement, and its class-consciousness was sufficiently developed to keep its leaders from wasting their lives in abortive appeals to the master class. The leading exponents of this Communism of the workers were Wilhelm Weitling, in Germany, and Etienne ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... of some alleviation in no long time opened upon me; but this my usual ill fortune rendered abortive. The keeper once more made his appearance, and with his former constitutional and ambiguous humanity. He pretended to be surprised at my want of every accommodation. He reprehended in strong terms ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... they were flocks of wool. But it often happens, too, that a man of might strikes a blow which falls without effect upon a stubborn stone; a short, sharp report is heard, and all is over. History is able to record little or nothing of such abortive efforts. Hence the anxiety which every one must feel who, observing the approach of an event, wonders whether those about to witness it will be worthy of it. This reciprocity between an act and its reception is ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Murray.' But Wolfe knew a good man when he saw one and gave his full confidence to his 'old antagonist' both at Louisbourg and Quebec. Murray was not born under a lucky star. He saw three defeats in three successive wars. He began his service with the abortive attack on pestilential Cartagena, where Wolfe's father was present as adjutant-general. In mid-career he lost the battle of Ste Foy. [Footnote: See The Winning of Canada, chap. viii. See also, for the best account of this battle and other events of the year between Wolfe's victory and ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... a juke box in Manfred's Tavern. He'd been there many times before, and he was sure several of the couples recognized him. But except for a few abortive glances in his direction, it was as if he were a stranger in a city halfway around ...
— The First One • Herbert D. Kastle
... promptings of their long-checked ambition. Soon several hundreds of waggons drawn by long teams of oxen came lumbering into Natal, for the purpose of establishing there the Republic, which had so often been planned out in imagination and never yet found any but an abortive existence. This ideal State was eventually formed and called the Republic of Natalia, and it enjoyed for several ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... and Tunis, there was a recognized medium of negotiation of which the relations took advantage. As will presently be seen, the office of consul in those days carried with it little of the power or dignity that becomes it now, and the efforts of the consul were often abortive. ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... house an embarrass. He gives that pretended lady the small-pox. Other contrivances in his head to bring Clarissa back, if she should get away. Miss Howe's scheme of Mrs. Townsend is, he says, a sword hanging over his head. He must change his measures to render it abortive. He is of the true lady-make. What that is. Another conversation between them. Her apostrophe to her father. He is temporarily moved. Dorcas gives him notice of a paper she has come at, and is transcribing. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... fort was at last cleared of snow. It was now ready, waiting for the elements to render abortive in a few short hours the labour of many days. Julyman and Steve had spent the brief daylight in setting up a snow-break before the open sheds which housed the sleds and canoes. Oolak was at the quarters of the train ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... opening a way to the wound. Out over the flats swung the long skirmish line, picturesque in the variety of its undress, Cutler striding vociferous in its wake, while a bugler ran himself out of breath, far to the eastward front, to puff feeble and abortive breath into unresponsive copper. And still the same flutter of distant, scattering shots came drifting back from the brakes and canons in the rocky wilds beyond the stream. The guard still pursued and the Indians still led, but ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... middle 'fifties coal-boring in Scotland was not the honourable profession that it now is. More than once, speculators procured lying reports that there were no minerals, and after landowners had been ruined by their abortive preliminary experiments, stepped in, bought the land, and boomed it. In one notorious case a family, now great in the public eye, bribed a laird's own borers to conceal the truth, and then buying the Golconda from its impoverished owner, ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... uncurtained couch, and showed to Morton the working of his harsh features, which seemed agitated by some strong internal cause of disturbance. He had not undressed. Both his arms were above the bed-cover, the right hand strongly clenched, and occasionally making that abortive attempt to strike which usually attends dreams of violence; the left was extended, and agitated, from time to time, by a movement as if repulsing some one. The perspiration stood on his brow, "like bubbles in a late disturbed stream," and these marks of emotion ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... they ought to invite the Marquis to supper at their lodgings, and he would take upon himself to provide everything proper for the occasion. Matta desired to know if it was to play at quinze, and assured him that he should take care to render abortive any intention he might have to engage in play, and leave him alone with the greatest blockhead in all Europe. The Chevalier de Grammont did not entertain any such thought, being persuaded that it would be impossible ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic. But a young spirit panting for fame, doubtful of its powers, and certain only of its aspirations, is ill qualified to assign its true value to the sneer of this world. He knows not that such stuff as this is of the abortive and monstrous births which time consumes as fast as it produces. He sees the truth and falsehood, the merits and demerits, of his case inextricably entangled...No personal offence should have drawn from me this public comment upon ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... having always a childish aspect, although the features of his face were those of a man. They were, however, hard and badly cut. He seemed incomplete, abortive, only half finished, and disquieting as a mystery. He was a close impenetrable being, in whom there seemed always to be some active, dangerous mental travail ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... which ministers would have to supply, would, according to the present disbursements and receipts, amount to 11,578,000l. unless that expenditure were reduced, every such attempt as they were at present making would, he was convinced, prove abortive: it was a mere topical application while a mortal distemper was raging within. He had taken no notice in his estimate of the charges for sinecures or the bounties on exports and imports: and yet the returns upon which he went, exclusive of these charges, ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... grim contrast between what the rich man said and what God said. The man's words were empty breath; God's are powers, and what He says is a deed. The divine decree comes crashing into the abortive human plans like a thunder-clap into a wood full of singing birds, and they are all stricken silent. So little does life consist in possessions that all the abundance cannot keep the breath in a man for one moment. His life is 'required of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... this abortive experiment, he proposed to take her portrait by a scientific process of his own invention. It was to be effected by rays of light striking upon a polished plate of metal. Georgiana assented; but, on looking at the result, was affrighted to find the features of ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... unstaid perverseness! Know ye not That we are worms, yet made at last to form The winged insect, imp'd with angel plumes That to heaven's justice unobstructed soars? Why buoy ye up aloft your unfleg'd souls? Abortive then and shapeless ye remain, Like the untimely embryon of a worm! As, to support incumbent floor or roof, For corbel is a figure sometimes seen, That crumples up its knees unto its breast, With the feign'd posture stirring ruth unfeign'd In the beholder's fancy; ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... put, so far? To practically none, save the destruction of life. About five years before the war some of us in England tried to initiate an international movement to ban the use of flying for military purposes. The effort was entirely abortive. The fact is, man never goes in front of events, always insists on disastrously buying his experience. And I am inclined to think we shall continue to advance backwards unless we intern our inventors till ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... terror-haunted days. A shock, a cry Whose echoes ring the globe—the spectre's laid. Hurled o'er the abyss, see the crowned martyr lie Resting in peace—fear, change, and death gone by. Fit end for nightmare—mist of blood and tears, Red climax to the slow, abortive years. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... meeting or quiet Quaker conference, where, for hours perhaps, nobody opens his mouth. It now bore an aspect of a political club meeting. But it was a quiet, peaceful, obedient debating society. It has left the record of its abortive undertakings in the "Kogisho Nishi" or journal of "Parliament." The Kogisho was dissolved in the year of its birth. And the indifference of the public about its dissolution proves how small an influence ...
— The Constitutional Development of Japan 1863-1881 • Toyokichi Iyenaga
... ample warning which the enemy received of what was impending before ever a soldier was landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula that, far more than anything which occurred subsequently, rendered the Dardanelles operations abortive. ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... within the range of probabilities that something might come out, enabling me to use that knowledge to good purpose. The plaintiff and old Mr. Ward were seated in court beside Mr. Barnes, as on the former abortive trial; but Mary Woodley had, fortunately for herself, lost much of the interest which attaches to female comeliness and grace when associated in the mind of the spectator with undeserved calamity and sorrow. The black dress which ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... suppress the increase of crime must take these matters into consideration, and it will unquestionably prove abortive unless a much stricter censorship is exercised over the publication of the gruesome details of crimes and scandals and also over the sale of the type of literature ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... owing to circumstances upon which the impetuous Biron had failed to calculate, proved, however, abortive; and he had no sooner convinced himself of the fact, and comprehended the perilous position in which he had been placed by his imprudence, than he hastened to Lyons, where the King was then sojourning; and having obtained ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... mesa, or table-land, covered with low shrub growths; after some ten or twelve miles of this, they descended among winding ridges, into a narrow valley,—the Poway valley. It was here that the Mexicans made one of their few abortive efforts to ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... disproportioned to the object. Nero, however, who longed to achieve things that exceeded credibility, exerted all his might to perforate the mountains adjoining to Avernus, and to this day there remain traces of his abortive project. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... fell, and the event created little or no excitement; and when Burr saw himself met with universal scorn, he knew it was the eruption of an accumulated hatred toward himself, and that all his ambition for future preferment and power was at an end. Immediately he left for the West, and commenced an abortive effort to break ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... miniature representatives of higher plants in the mycelium or roots, stem, branches, and at length capsules bearing sporidia, which correspond to seeds. It is true that leaves are absent, but these are sometimes compensated by lateral processes or abortive branchlets. A tuft of mould is in miniature a forest of trees. Although such a definition may be deemed more poetic than accurate, more figurative than literal, yet few could believe in the marvellous beauty of a tuft of mould if they never saw it as exhibited ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... to bring the Revolution to a just termination, and finding his efforts rendered abortive by that feeling which former oppression had created, he resolved to return to America, a country he saw thriving by a policy he wished to ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... other refugees, they used every available means to injure the commercial credit of the Medici in that city. Their attempts greatly annoyed Piero; but by his friends' assistance, he was enabled to render them abortive. Diotisalvi Neroni and Niccolo Soderini strenuously urged the Venetian senate to make war upon their country, calculating, that in case of an attack, the government being new and unpopular, would be unable to resist. At this time there ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... copulating with other creatures shall perish as the brute beasts by whom they were begotten, not having a reasonable soul nor any breath of the Almighty infused into them; and such can never be capable of resurrection. And the same is also true of imperfect and abortive births. ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... probably circling round most of the myriads of stars, whose physical constitution, where-ever it has as yet been observed spectroscopically, does not differ much from that of our sun. But we perceive around us a countless number of abortive seeds and germs; we find out of any group of a thousand men selected at random, some who are crippled, insane, idiotic, and otherwise born incurably imperfect in body or mind, and it is possible that this world may rank among other worlds ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... loneliness of her father's house, and her very sharpness and prickly spiritualism were for the child's enduring good. Her attempts, however, to make Leam regard mamma in heaven as in any wise different from mamma on earth were utterly abortive. Leam's imagination could not compass the thaumaturgy tried to be inculcated. Mamma, if mamma at all, was mamma as she had known her; and if as she had known her, then she was unhappy and desolate, seeing what a wicked thing this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... purpose by arms against the force which the United States brought to bear against it. Did they sustain it? Were their arms victorious? If they were, then their secession was an accomplished fact. If not, it was nothing more than an abortive attempt—a purpose unfulfilled. This, then, is simply a question of fact, and we all know what the fact is. They did not succeed. They failed to maintain their ground by force of arms—in other words, they failed ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... Nelly, Rosalie, Juno and Marjorie were invited. Lily Pearl's and Helen's attentions to Peggy and Polly having proved abortive, they contrived ways and means of their own to reach the Land o' Heart's Desire. Helen's old bachelor uncle, a queer, dull old gentleman, whose mind was certainly not active, and whom Helen could, figuratively speaking, turn and twist about her little finger, was persuaded ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... subject, which had suffered interruption through his abortive little act of mercy. "You knew my uncle in Italy. It seems strange, Benjulia, that I should never have heard ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... with infinite tact—a problem of protuberant eyes and paralyzing self-consciousness, of unnatural silences and then unexpected attempts at speech that died in painful rasps and gurgles, of stubbing toes and nudging elbows, of a centipedal supply of arms and legs that interfered with abortive and conscience-stricken attempts at courtesy, and above all an interest in the weave of the carpet that was at once a mania and an epidemic—but by the time supper was well under way, things, in the language of Roger, had begun to hum, and by ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... property of the predecessors of the North British Alizarine Company. These patents expire in about two months, and the lecturer explained that an attempt made by the German manufacturers to further monopolize this industry (even after the expiry of the patent) proved abortive. He also stated that alizarine, 20 per cent. quality, is sold to-day at 2s 6d. per lb., but that if the price were reduced by one-half there will still be a handsome profit to makers, and that the United Kingdom is the largest consumer, absorbing one-third of the entire production, and that England ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... one of her letters to her uncle, the King of the Belgians, wrote thus of the abortive rising of fifty years later ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... mortals with erring mortal mind, instead of resting on the omnipotence of the divine Mind, must prove abortive. Committing the 459:15 bare process of mental healing to frail mor- tals, untaught and unrestrained by Christian Science, is like putting a sharp knife into the hands of a blind 459:18 man or a raging maniac, ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... an abortive attempt to preserve my youth I neither take tea nor drinks between meals. I will have one of your excellent cigarettes and get round to the club. Why, this is Enton over again, ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Although the enemy, in more or less force, had been viewed practically every day, it had always been impossible to bring him to close quarters, and the policy of wearing out infantrymen's hearts, tempers, constitutions, and boots in abortive pursuits of mounted enemies was, and in the light of all that we now know still is, open to question, for a reference to the Times history of the war shows that all our wanderings and meanderings are ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... camp— interesting testimony to the diligence and patience of the deceased occupants was obtained. It was evident that the sea had been largely drawn upon for supplies, if only on account of the many abortive and abandoned attempts at fishhooks in more or less advanced stages of completion. The brittleness of the fabric and the crudeness of the tools employed had evidently put the patience of the makers to severe task, who for one satisfactory hook must have contemplated many ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... stood up with ashen under-lip, to say that such a scheme, it seemed to him, must remain for ever abortive, unless enforced by ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... brought five years ago were stored in the basement box-room; but under the camp bed was her dressing-bag, the only "lock-up" receptacle she possessed. In it she kept a few letters and an abortive diary which in some moods had given her ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... central current rushed: the wind Sighed through the tawny sedge. 'So fleets our life— Like yonder gloomy stream; so sighs our age— Like yonder sapless sedge!' Thus Laurence mused Standing on that sad margin all alone, His twenty years of gladsome English toil Ending at last abortive. 'Stream well-loved, Here on thy margin standing saw I first, My head by chance uplifting from my book, King Ethelbert's strong countenance; he is dead; And, next him, riding through the April gleams, ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... evidence of the soft and yielding nature of the great creature's food. But there were signs that at some period of the development of the whale it had possessed a double row of teeth, because at the bottom of these upper sockets we found in a few cases what seemed to be an abortive tooth, not one that was growing, because they had no roots, but a survival of teeth that had once been perfect and useful, but from disuse, or lack of necessity for them, had gradually ceased to come to maturity. ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... and west, by fugitives, soon announce the failure of this abortive attempt. The golden opportunity of the fall ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... a Richmond paper of Sept. 12 (quoted in the New-York Gazette of Sept. 18) declares that "the plot has been entirely exploded, which was shallow; and, had the attempt been made to carry it into execution, but little resistance would have been required to render the scheme entirely abortive." But it is necessary to remember that this is no more than the Charleston newspapers said at the very crisis of Denmark Vesey's formidable plot. "Last evening," wrote a lady from Charleston in 1822, "twenty-five hundred of our citizens ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... so, my dear friend; I am at Besancon, while you thought I was traveling. I would not tell you anything till success should begin, and now it is dawning. Yes, my dear Leopold, after so many abortive undertakings, over which I have shed the best of my blood, have wasted so many efforts, spent so much courage, I have made up my mind to do as you have done—to start on a beaten path, on the highroad, ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... is impossible to express the abortive attempt at a bow which accompanied this salutation,—"I want to know if the minister ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... of Hawthornden to our own, some of the noblest flights of English poetry have been taken on the wings of this verse; but with ordinary readers it has been more or less discredited by the far greater number of abortive efforts, on the part sometimes of considerable poets, to adapt it to purposes with which it has no expressional correspondence; or to vary it by rhythmical movements which are destructive ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... the Virgin came to an end. With the last stanza the wild singer disappeared; and the sick woman, after several abortive efforts, rose painfully to her feet. The recluse approached her with the solicitude of a shopkeeper concerned for the quality of his wares. Were things going any better? Were the visits to the Virgin doing good?... The unfortunate woman ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... June 6. Latitude 16 degrees 30 minutes, longitude (chron.) 134 degrees. Dry night and wind steady enough to require no change in sail; but this A.M. an attempt to lower it proved abortive. First the third mate tried and got up to the block, and fastened a temporary arrangement to reeve the halyards through, but had to come down, weak and almost fainting, before finishing; then Joe tried, and after twice ascending, fixed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... English fiction is directly or indirectly in his debt for "Romola," "Hypatia," "Henry Esmond," and "The Cloister and the Hearth." In several countries the historical novel had been trying for centuries to get itself born, but all its attempts had been abortive. "Waverley" is not only vastly superior to "Thaddeus of Warsaw" (1803) and "The Scottish Chiefs" (1809); it is something quite different in kind.[34] The Waverley Novels, twenty-nine in number, appeared in the years 1814-31. The earlier numbers of the series, "Waverley," ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Persia should have met them with a fleet three times as large. Had Memnon been given from the first a free hand at sea, instead of satrapial power on land, it is quite conceivable that the invasion of Asia by Alexander might have proved as abortive an enterprise as the contemplated ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... Danglar's power. There was always an alternative. Yes, it was quite as bad as that—death at her own hands was preferable. Balked, outwitted, the plans of the criminal coterie, of which Danglar appeared to be the head, rendered again and again abortive, and believing it all due to the White Moll, all of Danglar's shrewd, unscrupulous cunning would be centered on the task of running her down; and if, added to this, he discovered that she was masquerading as Gypsy Nan, ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... not believe the execution would take place. In the first place, no victim had been struck with death, and it had long been the custom not to punish an abortive crime with the last degree of severity. Then, this crime, however terrible in intention, was disinterested, born of an abstract idea. The man's past, his abandoned childhood, his life of hardship, pleaded also in his favor. In the independent press generous voices were raised ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... from his own government; that they met twice a day; and that their conversation chiefly turned on the vices of Napoleon, on his designs against Spain, and on the best mode of rendering those designs abortive. In truth, Barere's baseness was unfathomable. In the lowest deeps of shame he found out lower deeps. It is bad to be a sycophant; it is bad to be a spy. But even among sycophants and spies there are degrees of meanness. The vilest sycophant is he who privily ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Claverhouse, and gave no indication that he had that interview in mind. Claverhouse had learned one lesson, however—patience—and he would have many more to learn; he had also been taught not to take hasty views, but to wait for the long result. And his heart lifted when, after the abortive siege of Charleroi, he was summoned for a second time to the Prince's presence. On this occasion the Prince said little, but it was to the point; it was the crisis ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... than this was, from the beginning of the world. Finally, they brought the Hebrew nation into contempt, that they might themselves appear comparatively less impious with regard to strangers. They confessed what was true, that they were the slaves, the scum, and the spurious and abortive offspring of our nation, while they overthrew the city themselves, and forced the Romans, whether they would or no, to gain a melancholy reputation, by acting gloriously against them, and did almost draw that fire upon the temple, which they seemed to think came ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... might formerly have been affianced to some woman, who having accidentally discovered his intentions, took this desperate method of rendering them abortive: but this was a short- lived thought, and speedily gave way to her esteem for his general character, and her confidence in the firmness of ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... short. You frightened me with your 'Shepherds-tell-me' air and tone. Lead me to one of your garden-seats: out of hearing to Dr. Middleton, I beg. He mesmerizes me, he makes me talk Latin. I was curiously susceptible last night. I know I shall everlastingly associate him with an abortive entertainment and solos on big instruments. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... important to the comprehension of the changes effected in that period of transition, for which Hawke and Rodney stand, to recognize the distinctive lesson of each of these two abortive actions, which together may be said to fix the zero of the scale by which the progress of the eighteenth century is denoted. They have a relation to the past as well as to the future, standing far ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... things, somehow his enthusiasm for foreign missions ebbed away, and left him desperately tired and worried. He made several abortive attempts to put some fire into his missionary plea, but it was useless; and he was about to give up when he heard Mrs. Betty's gentle voice inquiring from ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... Action of the Colonies. The earlier and largely abortive attempts to form non-intercourse associations generally did not mention slaves specifically, although the Virginia House of Burgesses, May 11, 1769, recommended to merchants and traders, among other things, to agree, "That they will ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... will be remembered, was the one which successfully resisted the Boers under President Burger and Commandant Paul Kruger—a successful resistance which was one of the troubles leading directly to the abortive annexation of the Transvaal. The Secocoeni tribe were afterwards conquered by British troops, and handed over to the tender mercies of the Boer Government upon the ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... hour in which she had nothing whatever to amuse her, and he was a very welcome interruption. And, upon the whole, she liked her grandson. She had paid his gambling-debts twice, she had taken the greatest interest in his various duels, and sided passionately with him in one abortive love-affair. ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr |
