"Absolute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that was almost debauched, Dionis had taken Goupil into his office when a career in Paris—where the clerk had wasted all the money he inherited from his father, a well-to-do farmer, who educated him for a notary—was brought to a close by his absolute pauperism. The mere sight of Goupil told an observer that he had made haste to enjoy life, and had paid dear for his enjoyments. Though very short, his chest and shoulders were developed at twenty-seven years of age like those of a man of forty. Legs small ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... the man come? Keep-sakes? Haggerty dearly wanted to believe that the intruder was the one man he desired in his net; but he refused to listen to the insidious whisperings; he must have proof, positive, absolute, incontestable. If it was Crawford's man Mason, it was almost too good to be true; and he did not care to court ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... what the absolute personality of God or man is? Who living hath seen God or a perfect man? In presence of such thoughts take off thy shoes and tread lightly, for this is holy ground. Surely the probation of mortals must go on after the change ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... only say that, if such wickedness had entered into my heart, though I might conceal it from men, I could not hide it from God, from whom I never have asked forgiveness for it, nor ever shall I." D'Andelot proceeded to show that the movement in question had been caused by absolute necessity, and that this was rendered evident to all men by that which was now occurring in every part of France. He told her that it was sufficiently manifest that this universal oppression was only designed to provoke "those of the religion" ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... think that I had done the man no injury. At the moment I knew that I could hurt him if I would, and what is more I had the desire to do so. It came to me, I suppose, with that breath of the past when I was so great and absolute. Perhaps I, or that part of me then incarnate, was a tyrant in those days, and this is why now I must be so humble. Fate is turning my pride to its hammer and beating it ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... had this fault in common: their categories were susceptible of gradation—extremes fused one into the other. What thinking person has not felt the need of some definite, final, absolute classification? We speak of "my kind" and "the other sort," of Those who Understand, of Impossibles, and Outsiders. Some of these categories have attained considerable vogue. There is the Bohemian versus the Philistine, the Radical ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess
... my exalted rank: certainly it had no adequate reference to the services offered. The fellow asked enough to buy the whole concern outright—cart and four horses! They were the smallest horses I almost ever saw, and were further reduced by the nearest shave of being absolute skeletons; the narrow line between sustaining life and actual starvation must have ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... fee—three guineas for absolute tomfoolery! 'Item 2. To diagnosing Aunt Maria and failing to find anything wrong and recommending appendicitis.... ' Shall we say a guinea for Aunt Maria's put-up job? I ought to get my money back since nothing was found in Aunt ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... of the Supreme Soul is not lost (the opposite theory would be destructive of that superiority). The favourite analogy of the thinkers of this school for explaining the connection of the Supreme Soul with the universe is derived from the connection of Akasa with Ghatakasa, i.e., space absolute and unconditioned and space as confined by the limits of a vessel. The latter has a name, is moved when the vessel is moved, and is limited in space; while space itself, of which the vessel's space forms a part, is absolute ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... never made a failure. Absolute strangers told me facts about myself which not even my own wife knew: whether they spoke with the tongues of devils, or whether, by some unknown laws of magnetism, they simply read my thoughts, ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... whether that order is or is not governed by a law of association; neither need his inferences from experience be the less sound in consequence of his never having enquired how or why they are deduced. But although the most absolute ignorance and corresponding indifference about these and kindred topics may not tend in the least to disqualify him for performance of the whole duty of man, it is not the less important that, if he do care to know aught about them, his knowledge should be exact, for there is no knowing ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... pleases me immensely," she declared. "It is a splendid opportunity for us, and will enable us to live here quietly and forget the big outside world. New York has had a bad influence on both you and me, Thursday, and here we can begin a new life of absolute respectability." ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... apartment. In the deaconess houses that are so rapidly springing up in different parts of the United States this provision ought to be guarded with care, for a life that is so constantly drawn out in ministrations to others should have some moments of absolute privacy upon which no one ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... laughed. "There is but one girl in my friend's house,—his niece; she is very plain, and only thirteen. But to me the society of women, whether ugly or pretty, is an absolute necessity; and I have been trudging without it for so many days that I can scarcely tell you how my thoughts seemed to shake off the dust of travel when I found myself ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... flutters to the fence, and from the fence to the garden path, and so to the door and into the kitchen. If you will give him decent encouragement he will come on to your hand and take his meal with absolute confidence in your good faith. Then he will trip away and resume his song on ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... koennt euer Ohr, Gar wunderbare Dinge kommen hier vor. Gott Vater identifieirt sich mit der Kreatur, Denn er will anschauen die absolute Natur; Aber zum Bewustseyn kann er nicht gedeihen, Drum muss er sich mit ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... governmental scheme of extreme complexity. As with animal organisms so with political systems, the higher they rise in the scale of development the more complicated they tend to become. An absolute monarchy is simplicity itself compared with our dual system. To maintain the proper adjustment of such a machine requires intelligence of a high order. The machine will not run itself and male tinkers have abundantly demonstrated that it is not fool-proof. But ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson
... years of the sixteenth century, European trade with the Far East was an absolute monopoly in the hands of Spain and Portugal. Incredible as it may seem, the two Iberian nations alone possessed the secret of the routes to the East, which they guarded with jealous care. In 1492, Columbus, bearing a letter from the King of Spain to the Khan of Tartary, whose power ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... was nothing in the measure that was not founded on the principles of English government, nothing that was not perfectly consistent with the ancient practices of the Constitution, and nothing that might not be adopted with absolute safety to the rights and privileges of all orders of the State. He made a scathing allusion to the 'gross and scandalous corruption practised without disguise' at elections, and he declared that the sale of ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... of activity which made one's brain whirl, there came to me the most absolute repose in an isolated retreat where I passed another interval of fifteen years after leaving the Emperor. But what a contrast! To those who have lived, like myself, amid the conquests and wonders of the ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... say anything about traveling into either future or past, which I have just demonstrated to you to be impossible—a practical impossibility in the one case and an absolute ...
— The Worlds of If • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... being of a painful access, and a little remote, as well upon the account of Exercise, as being also there more retir'd from the Crowd. 'Tis there that I am in my Kingdom, as we say, and there I endeavour to make myself an absolute Monarch, and so sequester this one Corner from all Society both ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... her father, Francois Darbois, so I have become a friend of the family. They asked me to dinner once, and I was early enough to hear Mlle. Esperance play. After dinner we played a very difficult duet together. She had absolute command of ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... side, and haue serued for a diversion of all the wars in these parts. To which I aunswere, that some of our sea-commaunders, and especiallie my colleague, did not onelie oppose themselues to that designe, (whose oppositions mine instructions made an absolute barre,) but when we came to see how the forces that should be left there might be victualed till succours came, the victualls were for the most part hidden and embeazled, and euery ship began at that instant to ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... FOR SCIENTIFICALLY.—Scientific Management provides and prescribes rest for overcoming fatigue of the worker more scientifically and economically than he could possibly provide it for himself. Weber's law is that "our power of detecting differences between sensations does not depend on the absolute amount of difference in the stimuli, but on the relative amount."[11] The additional fatigue from handling additional weights causes fatigue to increase with the weight, but not in direct proportion to the extra weight handled. When the ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... by the Turk, plus the closing of the Baltic by the German fleet in the North Sea, would also accomplish another extremely important result, the absolute and complete isolation of Russia from contact with all parts of the world except Germany, Austria, and Turkey. The question has often arisen as to the ability of Germany to prolong the war in the ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... us all, with the sorely wounded admiral lying bleeding in his cot on her deck, our gallant chief persisting in watching the battle to its bitter end, in spite of being compelled from absolute exhaustion to give up the immediate command of the squadron to his senior officer, Captain Shadwell; though it was as much as the gunboat could do to keep her prominent position, in face of the terrible fire on ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... looked her very best, was that Clarence Copperhead fell a hopeless victim to her fascinations, and scarcely could be induced to leave her side all night. The ball was about as remarkable a ball as could have been seen in London. The son of the house had contemplated with absolute despair the list of invitations. He had deprecated the entertainment altogether. He had said, "We know nobody," with a despairing impertinence which called forth one of his father's roars of laughter. And though Mr. Copperhead had done all he could to assume the position of that typical ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... between two human beings is almost as rare as absolute likeness between two pebbles on a beach, yet it occurs, as in the case of M. de Joinville and others well known and confirmed, and when I say absolute likeness, I mean likeness so complete that a close acquaintance cannot distinguish the difference between the duplicates. ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... a sudden gesture of hope. She had unbounded confidence in Victor Dorn, and his tone was the tone of absolute confidence. ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... assistance. Perhaps the children had had next to nothing to eat, and would have been in rags if the mother had not worked like a slave washing and mending their clothes. But these were not the sort of cases that the visiting ladies assisted; they only gave to those who were in a state of absolute squalor and destitution, and then only on condition that they whined ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... them still in expectation," said Telemachus, "which she never means to fulfil, that she will accept the hand of some one of them in second nuptials. For she fears to displease them by an absolute refusal. So from day to day she lingers them on with hope, which they are content to bear the deferring of, while they have entertainment at ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... modern times of a considerable one, iii. 396. an absolute one, not to be reckoned among the legitimate forms of government, iii. 396. Aristotle's observation on the resemblance between a democracy and a tyranny; iii. 397. the vice of the ancient democracies, what, iii. 508. the foodful nurse of ambition, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... profited by his misfortune, in succeeding to the command of the army. Other grounds of offence the haughty Surry had also conceived against him; and choosing rather to fall, than cling for support to an enemy at once despised and hated, he braved the utmost displeasure of his father, by an absolute refusal to lend himself to such a scheme of alliance. Of this circumstance his enemies availed themselves to instil into the mind of the king a suspicion that the earl of Surry aspired to the hand of the princess Mary; they also commented with industrious malice on his ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... wonderfully beautiful now. When the moon was at the full, a few nights ago, its light was an absolute glory, such as I seem only to have dreamed of heretofore, and that only in my younger days. At its rising I have fancied that the orb of the moon has a kind of purple brightness, and that this tinge is communicated to its radiance until it has climbed ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... strains of "Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser," the finest of all national anthems, and a sudden hush fell on the crowd. A silence absolute and unbroken that continued till the unhappy man, who sat motionless and erect, his face as blanched as a corpse, drove out of the further gate of the town. Then the crowd burst into one huge laugh. So complete was the demonstration that it ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... a monstrous state of things! Enjoyment the most absolute, that bodily ease, intellectual excitement, or the more innocent pleasures of sense can supply to man's craving, brought in close contact with the most unmitigated misery! Wealth, from its bright saloons, laughing—an insolently heedless laugh—at the unknown ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... deeper and more hypocritical than they appeared. Under the specious pretext of securing the independence of the Grecian cities, her only object was to break up the confederacies under Athens and Thebes, and, with the assistance of Persia, to pave the way for her own absolute dominion in Greece. ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... so absolute a silence in the captain's cabin, that we all heard distinctly a piteous sigh from that which Mr ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... Anything approaching to the absolute likeness of this imitation of Johnnyboy's accents it is impossible to conceive. Possibly Johnnyboy felt it. But he simply lifted his lovely lashes, and said with ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... with the ladies of her household; and a reproach never came from those lips which seemed formed to say only pleasant things; and if any of her ladies gave her cause of dissatisfaction, the only punishment she inflicted was an absolute silence on her part, which lasted one, two, three, or even eight days, the time being longer or shorter according to the gravity of the fault. And indeed this penalty, apparently so mild, was really very cruel to many, so well did the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... me, Philip," she said, with absolute sincerity; "and I do want you to know how much I appreciate what you have said,—and ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... full supply of clear spring water can be counted on at that season more than at any other? The brooks are not so liable to be suddenly muddied by heavy showers, and defiled with the washings of the roads and fields, as they are in spring and summer. The artificial breeder finds that absolute purity of water is necessary to hatch the spawn; also that shade and a low temperature ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... hangman, in presence of the lord mayor and the two sheriffs of London and Middlesex. The lords likewise voted that the executioner should commit to the same fire the famous decree passed in the convocation of the university of Oxford, asserting the absolute authority and indefeasible right of princes. A like sentence was denounced by the commons upon a book intituled, "Collections of Passages referred to by Dr. Sacheverel, in his Answer to the Articles of Impeachment." These he had selected from impious ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... unpleasant for me, that he wished me to put myself on a par with him in his position; and, with absolute honesty, I assured him that I was very fond of cards and wine, and gossip about campaigns, and that I did not care to have any better comrades than those with whom I was associated. But ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... There was absolute quiet in the room while the girls waited miserably for Billie's answer. They knew her well enough to know what it would be, ...
— Billie Bradley at Three Towers Hall - or, Leading a Needed Rebellion • Janet D. Wheeler
... for darkness, and made a hearty meal of biscuit. It was a night out of ten thousand for my purpose. The fog had now buried all heaven. As the last rays of daylight dwindled and disappeared, absolute blackness settled down on Treasure Island. And when, at last, I shouldered the coracle, and groped my way stumblingly out of the hollow where I had supped, there were but two points ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... absolute confidence the death of Chateau-Renard. The challenge was accepted, the same seconds acted, and on the morrow we assembled in the fatal glade. Chateau-Renard was obviously uneasy. The signal was given, both men fired, and, sure enough, Chateau-Renard fell, shot through ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... may even assume that he permitted himself to express his feelings in some indiscreet way, and his break with the Tribunal followed, for, at the end of 1781, his commission was withdrawn. Certainly, Casanova's almost absolute dependence on his salary, influenced the letter he wrote the Inquisitors ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... you my word, we had completely forgotten so trivial a matter. To Hamilton's we accordingly went on the 15th of April, 1885. Remember that—whatever my doctor may say to the contrary—I was then in perfect health, enjoying a well- balanced mind and an absolute tranquil spirit. Kitty and I entered Hamilton's shop together, and there, regardless of the order of affairs, I measured Kitty for the ring in the presence of the amused assistant. The ring was a sapphire with two diamonds. We then rode out down the slope that ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... simple too, though simple in a different way, to be so eager touching that same theatre, of which John said, when tea was done, he had the absolute command, so far as taking parties in without the payment of a sixpence was concerned; and simpler yet, perhaps, never to suspect that when he went in first, alone, he paid the money! Simple in thee, dear Tom, to laugh and ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... their religious creed. Lord Chancellor Somers, whose able treatise upon the Rights of Kings brought to bear against the Nonjurors a vast array of arguments from Reason, Scripture, History, and Law, remarked in it that there were some divines of the Church of England who instilled notions of absolute power, passive obedience, and non-resistance, as essential points of religion, doctrines necessary to salvation.[95] Put in this extreme form, the belief might have been repudiated; but undoubtedly passages may be quoted in great abundance ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... eloquently upon every subject which people care to talk about. In this new and animated society Lesbia seemed like an enchanted princess suddenly awakened from a spell-bound slumber. Molly looked at her sister with absolute astonishment. Never had she seen her so bright, so beautiful—no longer a picture or a statue, but a woman warm with the ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... 'Tis true, the sum and import, Questenberg, Of your instructions. I have weighed them well, And formed my final, absolute resolve; Yet it seems fitting that the generals Should hear the will of the emperor from your mouth. May it please you then to open your ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... unacquainted with, or to have lost sight of,) is here stated with a full appreciation of its practical bearings; and is pronounced to be "the best law which the English ever made for the government of the people, by imposing a check on the absolute will of the sovereign; resembling the similar restraint on the power of our monarchs which prevails in Islam, though with us the check is still more powerful and effectual, as the judge is empowered by the Koran to demand satisfaction from the sovereign himself!" The details of the British ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... the fundamental liberties of person, property, press, and association completely under bureaucratic control. All those laws which give to the irresponsible officers of the Executive Government of India absolute powers to override the popular will, are still unrepealed. In spite of the tragic price paid in the Punjab for demonstrating the danger of unrestrained power in the hands of a foreign bureaucracy and the inhumanity of spirit by which tyranny in a panic ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... delusion of which the vogue may be partly traced to the lack of psychological solidity in the ordinary presentment of Shakspere by his admirers. The heresy, of course, merely leaps over the difficulty, into absolute irrelevance. Emerson was intellectually to blame in that, seeing as he did the hiatus between the poet's life and the prevailing conception of his verse, he did not try to conceive it all anew, but rather resigned himself to the solution that Shakspere's mind was out of human ken. "A good reader ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... of a person repulsive, not necessarily to our senses, but to our instincts,—which in this case are notes of warning from the remote depths of the soul,—as if our entire being intrenched itself behind a vitally repellent barrier, in absolute security that no power in the universe can break through it, in opposition to our will. For the will does not seem to create the barrier, but to guard it; and, thus defended, material contact with the individual affects ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... refer to deficiencies of boron, copper, manganese, or zinc, it is not a question of absolute deficiency in total quantity of the element present in the soil, but rather a physiological deficiency arising from the insufficient availability of the element in the plant; in other words, not enough of the element can be absorbed and distributed ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... look at him without disgust," murmured Cinthia; "if he had but the appearance of something human! Satan must certainly have appeared to his mother, and thence came her child into the world with such a frightful countenance. Ugh! it's an absolute mask, only that I never saw a mask ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... form two conclusions. First conclusion, that time and absence had not produced the slightest change in the love which the poor fellow bore to Lucilla. Second conclusion, that nothing but absolute proof would induce him to agree in my unfavorable opinion of his brother's character. It was in vain I declared that Nugent had quitted England pledged to find him, and had left it to me (as the event now proved) to make the discovery. He owned readily that he had seen nothing, and heard nothing, ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... Dwarf had three servants whom he employed to attend to his most important business. These were a Gryphoness, a Water Sprite, and an Absolute Fool. This last one was very valuable; for there were some things he would do which no one else would think of attempting. The Dwarf called to him the Gryphoness, the oldest and most discreet of the three, and told her of ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... past days, he would have now had Hsi Jen and her companions with him, and with all their good cheer and laughter, he would have been enjoying himself. But here was he, on this occasion, dull and forlorn, a solitary being, gazing at the lamp with an absolute lack of pleasure. By and by he felt a certain wish to go after them, but dreading that if they carried their point, they would, in the future, come and tender advice still more immoderate, and that, were he to put on the airs of a superior to intimidate them, he would ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... reign, that of Hwei-ti, we have the first instance in Chinese history of a woman seizing the reins of government. The Empress Lu made herself supreme, and such were her talents that she held the Empire in absolute subjection for eight years. Like Jezebel she "destroyed all the seed royal," and filled the various offices with her kindred and favourites. At her death they were butchered without [Page 107] mercy, and a male heir to the throne was proclaimed. His ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... haven't got anything," Jenny said. And after a painful pause: "Oh, well: I shall have to be going home." She wearily moved, in absolute despair, perhaps even with the notion of rising, though her ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... Serbians announced that they were prepared to withdraw from Albanian territory, and gave orders to their troops to retire beyond the boundary. Let us recognise that this decision having been come to, it was carried out with absolute loyalty and completeness. The troops withdrew. The territory was restored to Albania without a hitch. No ill-feeling remains behind, and the next thing we hear is that a commercial treaty is entered into between the two States, so that ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... written; and beginning at the beginning, she gave rapidly an account of her childhood, accentuating the religious and severe manner in which she had been brought up, until the time she and her mother made the acquaintance of the Edes. There it was necessary to hesitate. She did not wish to tell an absolute lie, but was yet desirous to convey the impression that her marriage with Mr. Ede had been forced upon her; but Montgomery had already accepted it as a foregone conclusion. With his fingers twisted through ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... this body of death?[352] if there be no deliverer. It must be he that said to Jeremiah, Before I formed thee I knew thee, and before thou camest out of the womb I sanctified thee. We are not sure that there was no kind of ship nor boat to fish in, nor to pass by, till God prescribed Noah that absolute form of the ark.[353] That word which the Holy Ghost, by Moses, useth for the ark, is common to all kind of boats, thebah; and is the same word that Moses useth for the boat that he was exposed in, that his mother laid him in an ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... Genevieve—or the Pantheon. My present business is with the old establishment: or rather with the LIBRARY, hard by the old church of Ste. Genevieve. Of all interiors of libraries, this is probably the most beautiful and striking; and it is an absolute reproach to the taste of antiquarian art at Paris, that so beautiful an interior has not been adequately represented by the burin. There is surely spirit and taste enough in this magnificent capital to prevent such a reproach from being of a much longer ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... two hours of absolute seclusion and need not hurry. He began to slowly pile the coins in little stacks and count them. There was no reason for haste and he counted carefully. He enjoyed this beyond all else in his vile life, and desired to prolong the pleasure. The money was all his, and he gloated over it. ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... and I were visited that night by dreams of terrible complications with the authorities at Bush House. It was a curious relief to us to wake to clear consciences and the absolute control of our ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... have free post-horses, as his late Majesty was wont?" asks the Prussian Official person. "If he write to request them, yes," answers Friedrich Wilhelm; "if he don't write, no." George does not write; pays for his post-horses;—flourishes along to Hanover, in absolute silence towards his clownish Brother-in-Law. You would say he looks over the head of him, as if there were no such clown in existence;—he has never yet so much as notified his arrival. "What is this? There exists no Prussia, then, for little ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... to the standard of a gentleman; but I assure you, that, if I were in a state of utter and absolute starvation, I would not part with one of the notes you so generously gave me, scarcely to ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... think so," said Alvarez thoughtfully. "As you perhaps surmise, I am going to stay here indefinitely, Wyatt. This place of mine, Beaulieu, I call it, is at a suitable distance from New Orleans and I am an absolute monarch while I remain. Here, on the border, I am as a military commander, practically lord of life and death, and on one excuse or another I can hold the troops ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... that gold which would give him position among the men of the south. If he carried off poor whites, and sold them into slavery, he saw no enormity in the performance; the law invested him with power he made absolute. Society was chargeable with all his wrongs, with all his crimes, all his enormities. He had repeatedly told it so, pointing for proof to that literal observance of the rule by which man is made mere merchandise. Society had continued in its pedantic ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... the sylphs, gnomes, undines, and salamanders, he acknowledged various ranks and orders of demons. He pretended to invisibility and absolute chastity. He also said that, if it pleased him, he could abstain for years from meat and drink, and all the necessities of the body. It is needless, however, to pursue his follies any further. He was reprimanded for writing ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... Mrs. Hornblower turned on Justin furiously. "What do you mean by letting her run on in this crazy fashion and never wagging your tongue?" Underneath her anger sounded a note of despair. No one who knew Persis Dale ever doubted her absolute truth. And unless she had lied the ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... your absolute wisdom," said Mustapha in a low voice, "would it not he better to count down to this avaricious old hag the twenty pieces of gold which she demands? When her story is ended, it will be easy to take them from her, and her head from her shoulders. Thus will ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... at the rectory. In answer to my inquiries after his patient, he gravely acknowledged that he was anxious about Lucilla. The varying and violent emotions which had shaken her (acting through her nervous system) might produce results which would imperil the recovery of her sight. Absolute repose was not simply necessary—it was now the only chance for her. For the next four-and-twenty hours, he must keep watch over her eyes. At the end of that time—no earlier—he might be able to say whether the mischief done would be fatal to her sight or ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... and of the ravaging of Acadian fishing towns set Massachusetts in flame. To Boston, above all New England towns, was Louisburg a constant danger. The thing seemed absolute stark madness,—the thoughtless daring of foolhardy enthusiasts,—but it is ever enthusiasm which accomplishes the impossible; and April 30, 1745, after only seven weeks of preparation, an English fleet of sixty-eight ships—some accounts say ninety, including the whalers ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... minister of defense and commander-in-chief of the armed forces head of government: Prime Minister ABDALLAH bin Khalifa Al Thani, brother of the amir (since 30 October 1996) cabinet: Council of Ministers appointed by the amir elections: none; the amir is an absolute monarch ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Odal was a soldier, and Kanus was the duly-elected leader of the government. Once elected, though, he had dissolved the government and solidified his powers as absolute ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... courage undaunted, may I face the last day, And when I am gone may the better sort say,— In the morning when sober, in the evening when mellow, He has gone and not left behind him his fellow, For he governed his passions with absolute sway." ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... could be made enormously massive, the towers raised to a great height, and the defenders so completely sheltered by battlements that they could not easily be injured and could take aim from the top of their turrets, or from their loophole windows. The gates had absolute little castles of their own, a moat flowed round the walls full of water, and only capable of being crossed by a drawbridge, behind which the portcullis, a grating armed beneath with spikes, was always ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... great alacrity for battle. The advanced parties had met, and were beginning to skirmish, when they were separated by a heavy rain, which, becoming more and more violent, rendered the retreat of the Americans a measure of absolute necessity. The inferiority of their arms never brought them into such imminent peril as on this occasion. Their gun-locks not being well secured, their muskets soon became unfit for use. Their cartridge-boxes had been so badly constructed as not to protect ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... to exercise her best skill, and only eluded the pursuer by a step or two. Janey, with all her senses about her, hearing everything, seeing everything, neutralized all effort on the part of the lovers, and reduced the condition of Ursula and Phoebe to one of absolute safety. They were all kept on the curb, in the leash, by the presence of this youthful observer; and the evening, though full of a certain excitement and mixture of happiness and misery, glided on but slowly, each of the young men outdoing ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... hypnotic suggestion, one introduces a new idea from outside in exchange for the morbid idea; if psychoanalysis is applied, then one simply eliminates the morbid idea. Within certain limits the modus agendi of the two methods is in absolute opposition. ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... laws. But you are a self-conscious being, and not as the animals. God keeps the keys of their nature in His own hands. They are shut up to certain ends which are in His purpose rather than in their minds. They are locked within limits of their nature, which are absolute, and cannot, therefore, be transgressed. But man, in virtue of his self-consciousness, is emphatically "he who hath the keys, who openeth and no man shutteth, and who shutteth and no man openeth." All the secret recesses of your being lie open ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... evidently expecting just such a question as I had asked. What a picture he was as he stood there in flowing robes and huge turban, with his jet black moustache and bronze-brown complexion, one small hand placed over the heart in token of his absolute devotion to the foreign sahibs, and his lithe, supple form leaning forward in the most obsequious attitude imaginable! His ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... uneasy, even startled, by his friend's actions, feeling that there was a certain amount of mental aberration. He had felt, too, that it was quite possible that in some sudden paroxysm, when galled by his dictation, Stratton might strike at him, but until now he had never known absolute fear. ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... his writings a certain petulance of remark in reference to churches or churchmen, he was a person of a rare, tender, and absolute religion, a person incapable of any profanation, by act or by thought. Of course, the same isolation which belonged to his original thinking and living detached him from the social religious forms. This is neither to be censured nor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... fourteen girls out on the porch and told them by signs and gestures to follow me. Then I picked up my skirts, and whistling a coon-song, started off. You never saw anything to equal their look of absolute astonishment! They even got down on their hands and knees to watch my feet. But they were game, and in spite of their tight kimonos and sandalled feet they made a brave effort to follow. The first attempt was disastrous, some fell on their faces, some ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... now, and Langford sat silent while Dakota gazed into the distance that reached toward the nester's cabin. Langford watched Dakota closely, but there was an absolute lack of expression in ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... all our expectations, I am, by the Governor, desired to tell you that you may depend upon: 1stly. Fifty four tons for the present. 2dly, Fifteen tons to be made up in the course of August, by the three Connecticut Mills. 3dly, Twenty tons, which in case of an absolute necessity, will be found out in this State; the whole amounting to eighty-five tons, which he would try to encrease, if possible, to ninety. How far that may fulfil your expectations, I don't know, but his Excellency will wait for a letter from ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... overwhelming majority masturbate occasionally. The only point in dispute is whether there are any exceptions. For my own part, I am confident that exceptions exist. I have received direct information on the point from leading men of science, and from others whose absolute veracity I have never had any reason to doubt. Healthy men, endowed with a normal sexual impulse, are occasionally to be found who have never masturbated at all. I go further, and believe that such persons are by no means so rare ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... Notes, and Bibliography By Morgan Callaway, Jr., Ph.D. Associate Professor of English Philology in the University of Texas, Formerly Fellow of the Johns Hopkins University; Author of "The Absolute Participle in Anglo-Saxon" ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... facts like these that a writer like Professor Fowler baldly claims, in support of the same presupposed theory as that of Lecky, that "it is probably owing mainly to the development of commerce, and to the consequent necessity, in many cases, of absolute truthfulness, that veracity has come to take the prominent position which it now occupies among the virtues; though the keen sense of honor, engendered by chivalry, may have had something to do in ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... enter on a larger range of work and responsibility. But let her not be blind to the truth, that her foremost, weightiest need is a more thorough intellectual possession and moral fulfilment of herself, leading to a closer union with friends and an absolute surrender to God. The just formula for the aims of woman, as it seems to me, is neither, on the one hand, limitation to domestic life; nor, on the other hand, devotion to public life as an end; but, dedication ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... workman and paid him his own price. These bond people were therefore virtually free. They acquired and accumulated wealth, lived happily, and needed but two other things to make them like other human beings, viz., absolute freedom ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... not concern us here to examine the defects of Comte's view of the course of European history. But it interests us to observe that his synthesis of human Progress is, like Hegel's, what I have called a closed system. Just as his own absolute philosophy marked for Hegel the highest and ultimate term of human development, so for Comte the coming society whose organisation he adumbrated was the final state of humanity beyond which there would be no further movement. ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... have nobody to control me; I would be absolute: and who but I? Now, he that is absolute can do what he likes; he that can do what he likes can take his pleasure; he that can take his pleasure can be content; and he that can be content has no more to desire. So the matter's over; and come what ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... influence of their friend and benefactor, both of these men determined to leave all and follow the new light. Visionary as the object yet was, the firm will, fervent confidence, and saintly life of Loyola inspired them with absolute trust. That the Christian faith, as they understood it, remained exposed to grievous dangers from without and form within, that millions of souls were perishing through ignorance, that tens of thousands were falling away through incredulity and heresy, was certain. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... paltry obstacle. Oh, if you are too proud, say so, and there's an end of it. You know me well enough to feel the absolute truth of what I say, when I assure you that you will remain just as independent of me as you ever were. I shall be spending my money in a way that gives me pleasure; the matter will never appear to me in any other light. Why, call it an additional loan, if it will ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... great deal of dependence on the Bible. The Bible is aginst the idee. The Bible teaches man's supremacy, man's absolute power and might ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... although they too are related in the main, adding only another variation of character to the great mass of human ideality. As in nature, there is nothing absolutely pure - nothing that can exist totally unrelated to the whole - so it is in art. Its works should be judged, not by their absolute adherence to any so-called standard, but finally by the appeal they make to the receptive and ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... place both bride and platter in the scale that it might weigh the heavier. Then they piled up into the other scale as many of the sacks of ducats sealed with the seal of Onucz as were necessary to establish an absolute equipoise between the two scales, and then while both the girl and the gold, balancing each other were floating in the air, old Onucz, his face beaming with triumph, poked Fatia Negra in the side with his elbows and said: "And now all ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... be rationally required of the student of philosophy is not a preliminary and absolute, but a gradual and progressive, abrogation of prejudices.—SIR W. HAMILTON, Lectures, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... necessary for a clergyman, and macerating his body with the privations which were necessary in seeking food for his mind, his grand-dame became daily less able to struggle with her little farm, and was at length obliged to throw it up to the new Laird of Dumbiedikes. That great personage was no absolute Jew, and did not cheat her in making the bargain more than was tolerable. He even gave her permission to tenant the house in which she had lived with her husband, as long as it should be "tenantable;" only he protested ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... enough apart from their studies; it is their misfortune." They have not only the burden of having to learn nearly several thousand ideographs,[209] three scripts and Japanese and Chinese pronunciation. They have to acquire Western languages, which, owing to their absolute dissimilarity from Oriental tongues—for example, the word for "I" is watakushi—must be learnt entirely from memory. It is not that the Japanese student does not begin early as well as leave off late. A professor once said to me, "For ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... to the last hour, the ladies continued, if words might have been trusted, in absolute despair; and in truth, when one examined into the resources at their command, the case seemed desperate enough. To be sure, Baltimore was near, and was soon under contribution; even Philadelphia and New York ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... what," lady Feng interposed with a smile. "Who of us can pit herself against you, dear ancestor, who have ever ready at hand whatever you want to say? With the little use we are in this line, won't there be an absolute lack of fun in our contributions? My idea is that it would be nicer were something said that could be appreciated both by the refined as well as the unrefined. So won't it be preferable that the person, in ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Artevelde had calculated upon his eloquence and influence carrying them away, but his power had diminished, and many of his hearers had already been gained to the cause of France. The burgher councils had for a long time had absolute power in their own towns, and the prospect of a powerful prince at their head foredoomed a curtailment of those powers. When Artevelde ceased, therefore, instead of the enthusiastic shouts with which he hoped his oration would be greeted, a confused murmur arose. At last several ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... painful anxiety which is raised in my mind when I read such a statement as this. I think I see my poor Elizabeth, the wife or slave to some wild savage; her children, merciful Heaven! my grandchildren, growing up as the brutes of the field, in ignorance and idolatry. It is torture, my dear Alexander—absolute torture, and requires long prayer and meditation to restore my mind to its usual tone, and to enable me to bow to the dispensations ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... has had losses in life, losses not so bad as to cause absolute want, or inflict upon him or her the bodily injury of starvation, let him confess that the evils of this poverty are by no means so great as his timorous fancy depicted. Say your money has been invested in West Diddlesex bonds, or other luckless speculations—the ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray |
