"Abstract" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... supply themselves from abroad? The wants of the people ought not to be considered, but an art monopoly, a pulpit monopoly, a monopoly of any kind should be protected." In a style of satirical reasoning, of which the foregoing is an abstract, conviction was brought to the mind of the painter. Changing his tone to one of serious advice, the clergyman counselled him to go to work, to let competition become an incentive to action, instead of paralysing his energy. He then told him how the advent ...
— Free Ships: The Restoration of the American Carrying Trade • John Codman
... RACE. PAGE Natural religions the unaided attempts of man to find out God, modified by peculiarities of race and nation.—The peculiarities of the red race: 1. Its languages unfriendly to abstract ideas. Native modes of writing by means of pictures, symbols, objects, and phonetic signs. These various methods compared in their influence on the intellectual faculties. 2. Its isolation, unique in the history of the world. ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... think that it is possible to conduct a victorious campaign with the single watchword 'Down with Socialism.' Well, I am not fond of mere negatives. I do not like fighting an abstract noun. My objection to Anti-Socialism as a platform is that Socialism means so many different things. On this point I agree with Mr. Asquith. I will wait before I denounce Socialism till I see what form it takes... Socialism is not necessarily synonymous with robbery. ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... was working hard, with clean ambitions, yet he was hungry. He could not understand it. No doubt an empty stomach inclines a man to much logic and the splitting of straws. There comes with an empty stomach less of grossness and more of abstract reason, and an exaltation which may be all impractical, but ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... of sulky grunt was Lockwood's acknowledgment of this piece of abstract wisdom—a sort of knowledge he never listened to with ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... capable of adopting savage methods when it comes to punishing such a fellow as this M'Bongwele," exclaimed Lethbridge, when von Schalckenberg had come to an end. "Mere hanging seems absolutely inadequate; yet what can we do? Our sense of abstract justice may be so keen that, for the moment, we are in full sympathy with the old Mosaic law of 'an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,' but which of us could deliberately set to work to serve the savage as he has served others? We simply could not do it; ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... well-made boy ought of necessity to become a soldier—secretly consoled and encouraged by his mother, who loved him with an almost idolatrous affection, and who approved of his pursuits, not from any abstract love of art, but because she thought the profession of painting might be pursued by her darling without obliging ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... having met (as it seems to me) all the objections of M. Bayle on this matter that I could find in his works. But remembering Laurentius Valla's Dialogue on Free Will, in opposition to Boethius, which I have already mentioned, I thought it would be opportune to quote it in abstract, retaining the dialogue form, and then to continue from where it ends, keeping up the fiction it initiated; and that less with the purpose of enlivening the subject, than in order to explain myself towards the end of my dissertation as clearly as I can, and ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... "though grace gangs no' by generation, yet there is sic a thing as a hawk o' a guid nest." I believe in the homely proverb, though some metaphysicians may dispute it, but whether debatable or not in the abstract, William Douglas had the good fortune, as he deemed it, to grow up in the bosom of a family in which the characteristic of worth was cherished and transmitted ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... ends with earnest advice to all, that they should put their principles into practice. "The deepest knowledge of nature is but a poor and imperfect business", unless it proceeds into action. As justice consists in no abstract theory, but in upholding society among men,—as "greatness of soul itself, if it be isolated from the duties of social life, is but a kind of uncouth churlishness",—so it is each citizen's duty to leave his philosophic seclusion of a cloister, and take his place in public life, if the times ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... line. If we were to observe the flying raven from the moving railway carriage. we should find that the motion of the raven would be one of different velocity and direction, but that it would still be uniform and in a straight line. Expressed in an abstract manner we may say : If a mass m is moving uniformly in a straight line with respect to a co-ordinate system K, then it will also be moving uniformly and in a straight line relative to a second co-ordinate system K1 provided that the latter is executing ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... also, of images is very agreeable to the doctrine of Pythagoras; who conceived of the first principle of being as transcending sense and passion, invisible and incorrupt, and only to be apprehended by abstract intelligence. So Numa forbade the Romans to represent God in the form of man or beast, nor was there any painted or graven image of a deity admitted amongst them for the space of the first hundred and seventy years, all which time ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... of Art and Poetry, in the abstract, holds good as to their various kinds; and we may apply what has been advanced to the subject of tragedy. In this department, it is still necessary to controvert the ordinary notion of the natural, with which poetry is altogether incompatible. A certain ideality ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... conventional sense. Imagine, then, how much more so in the case of a woman like Alice Oke; and if the pencil and brush, imitating each line and tint, can't succeed, how is it possible to give even the vaguest notion with mere wretched words—words possessing only a wretched abstract meaning, an impotent conventional association? To make a long story short, Mrs. Oke of Okehurst was, in my opinion, to the highest degree exquisite and strange,—an exotic creature, whose charm you can no more describe than you could bring home the perfume of some newly discovered ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... exact knowledge, the poetic instinct seeks always to bring them into clear definition and bright concrete imagery, so that it might seem for the moment as if painting also could deal with them. Every abstract conception, as it passes into the light of the creative imagination, acquires structure and firmness and colour, as flowers do in the light of the sun. Life and Death, Love and Youth, Hope and Time, become persons in poetry, not that they may wear the tawdry habiliments ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... pondering over the apparition that had so fascinated him. Oddly enough the imputation of cheekiness rankled in his mind in a most unusual fashion—not that Wikkey entertained the faintest objection to "cheek" in the abstract, and there were occasions on which any backwardness in its use would betray a certain meanness of spirit: for instance to the natural enemy of the race—the Bobby—it was only right to exhibit as much of the article as was compatible with ...
— Wikkey - A Scrap • YAM
... certain offices who contended for the legality of taking tithes: the only mode of discovering that fervid love of decimation which I know you to possess would be to tender you an oath "against that damnable doctrine, that it is lawful for a spiritual man to take, abstract, appropriate, subduct, or lead away the tenth calf, sheep, lamb, ox, pigeon, duck," etc., etc., etc., and every other animal that ever existed, which of course the lawyers would take care to enumerate. Now this oath I am sure you would rather die than take; and so the Catholic is excluded from ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... birth, the precise date of which is very unlikely ever to be ascertained. A better fortune has attended the anxious enquiries which in his case, as in those of other great men have been directed to the very secondary question of ancestry and descent,—a question to which, in the abstract at all events, no man ever attached less importance than he. Although the name "Chaucer" is (according to Thynne), to be found on the lists of Battle Abbey, this no more proves that the poet himself came of "high parage," than the reverse is to be concluded from the ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... Be it known to you that your letter, dated 12th Shawal, reached me at Tashkent on the 16th October, i.e., 3rd Zekada, and I understood its contents. I have telegraphed an abstract of your letter to the address of the Emperor, and have sent the letter itself, as also that addressed to General Stolietoff, by post to Livadia, where the Emperor now is. I am informed on good authority that the English ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... a God who was somehow the speculative postulate of the spiritual nature in man. Aristotle began a real observation of nature. But the ancient and, still more, the mediaeval study of nature was dominated by abstract and theological assumptions. These prevented any real study of that nature in the midst of which man lives, in reaction against which he develops his powers, and to which, on one whole side of his nature, he belongs. Even in respect of that which men reverently took to be thought concerning ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... don't believe there is a healthy, normal man living who has not his dream. I have no hesitation whatever in admitting that I have mine. This house must be two things. It has got to be a concrete workshop for me, and it has got to be an abstract abiding place for a dream. It's rather difficult to build a dream house for a dream lady, so I don't know what kind of a fist I am going to ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... cry out upon the red harvest it is reaping? Perhaps we have been too abstract in conducting our business. Let us now be concrete. Miss Adelaide Laidlaw is a talented young woman, as good, we understand, as she is beautiful. She is the daughter of your old friend, Judge Laidlaw, and we happen to know that ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... shortcomings forbade the utterance of the word which should make Henry Webster the happiest of men. Had he written his proposal he would have stood a better chance, though I doubt that in any event he could have succeeded. Then he could have stood at least as an abstract mentality, but the intrusion of his physical self destroyed all. She refused him, and he went back to his books, oppressed by an overwhelming sense of loneliness, from which he did not recover ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... lightly disposed of, the powers of argument that had been thought fairly able to compete with Norman, and which had taxed him so severely. She did not know how differently abstract questions appear to a mature mind, confirmed in principle by practice; and to one young, struggling in self- formation, and more used to theories ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... [Footnote 1: Abstract from the presidential address delivered before the Association of Municipal and Sanitary Engineers and Surveyors, at the annual meeting in Leicester, July ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... and him, were this Radewitz once over. And as for his consultations with Guy Dickens, the result of them is: Captain Dickens, on the 16th of June, with eyes brisk enough, and lips well shut, sets out from Radewitz express for London. This is what I read as abstract of HOTHAM'S DESPATCH, 16th June, 1730, which Dickens is to deliver with all caution at St. James's: "Crown-Prince has communicated to Dickens his plan of escape; 'could no longer bear the outrages of his Father.' Is to attend his Father ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... five-and-twenty years of age; besides, the spirit of the times did not tend to melancholy, that is a modern sentiment, springing from the overthrow of fortunes and the weakness of man. In the eighteenth century it was rare to dream of abstract things, or aspire to the unknown: men went straight to pleasure, glory, or fortune, and all who were handsome, brave or intriguing could attain them. That was the time when people were not ashamed to be happy. Now mind governs matter so much ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... landscapes. But I knew nothing about them. Without previous instruction I should probably have placed something worthless on the same level with them, and I could not fix my attention on them long. A water-colour by Turner, on which all his power had been expended, an abstract of years and years of toil and observation, was unable to detain me for more than five minutes, and in those five minutes I very likely did not detect one of its really distinguishing qualities. As to the early religious pictures of the Italian school, ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... (as if horrified at lying under such an imputation, but showing no disposition to rise with the occasion). Oh! My Jo! (appealing to abstract justice in the bed-curtains.) Good-ness knows (he pronounces it 'Good-ness-knows') ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... and visitors. Adventibus certae sedes, hospitiis preregrinationes significantur. Guen. Both abstract for concrete. Doed. compares ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... would probably begin getting his wine direct from the merchant instead of from the Common Room cellar, which would be a reductio ad absurdum of the tariff. Yet I have heard this course advocated, repeatedly, as an abstract principle. "You ought to consider the original value only," I have been told. "You ought to regard the Port-drinker as a private individual, who has laid the wine in for himself, and who ought to have all the advantages of its enhanced value. You cannot ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... dreams. She was La Belle Isoude, Elaine, Beatrice, Constance; it all depended upon what book he had previously been reading. It is when we men are confronted with the living picture of some one of our dreams of them that women cease to dwell in the abstract and become issues, to be met with more or less trepidation. Back among some of his idle dreams there had been a Kitty, blue-eyed, black-haired, slender ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... much in need of sound guidance. Though Scharnhorst had pointed out the way of salvation, a strategic tempter was soon at hand in the person of General von Phull, an uncompromising theorist who planned campaigns with an unquestioning devotion to abstract principles. Untaught by the catastrophes of the past, Alexander once more let his enthusiasm for theories and principles lead him to the brink of the abyss. Phull captivated him by setting forth the true plan of a defensive campaign which he had evolved from patient study of the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... They were signed Pierre Firmin,—supposed to be a nom de plume, as, that name was utterly unknown in the world of letters. They affected the tone of an impartial observer; they neither espoused nor attacked any particular party; they laid down no abstract doctrines of government. But somehow or other, in language terse yet familiar, sometimes careless yet never vulgar, they expressed a prevailing sentiment of uneasy discontent, a foreboding of some destined change in things established, without defining the ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the question remains,—which is most likely to conform, a husband or a wife," said Nancy, shying back to the abstract again, with pretty positiveness. And then she called gaily, as she touched Gyp with her whip and started both horses off on a brisk canter, leaving the wood for the road, "Please let me know if you solve the problem, so I may be relieved in ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... abstract from the treasury report on the finances of the United States, up to the 1st January, ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... had nothing else to do, Jacob went on with his man-shooting, in which Mr. Clifford joined him, though with less effect. Soon it became evident that the Matabele were very much annoyed by the fatal accuracy of this fire. Loss of life they did not mind in the abstract, but when none of them knew but that their own turn might come next to perish beneath these downward plunging bullets, the matter wore a different face to them. To leave their camp was not easy, since they had made a thorn boma round it, to protect them in case the Makalanga should ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... minute, "look abroad into universality." Keep him to the last edition of a new or old play, the burning of the two theatres, or an anecdote of John Kemble, and our Actor sparkles amazingly. Put to him an unprofessional question, and you strike him dumb; an abstract truth locks his jaws. On the contrary, listen to the stock-joke; lend an attentive ear to the witticism clubbed by the whole green-room—for there is rarely more than one at a time in circulation—and no man talks faster—none with a deeper delight to himself—none ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various
... great love of truth in the abstract, but, at least, he never deceived himself. He saw through his own unscrupulousness, and rather despised it just as he despised his own work as a painter. He had grown really fond of Van Buren for the simple, sincere qualities in which Harry knew himself to be deficient; and the American's whole-hearted ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... papers which show what were the habitual subjects of conversation in this salon. Theology, of course, was a chief topic; but physics and metaphysics had their turn, and still more frequently morals, taken in their widest sense. There were "Conferences on Calvinism," of which an abstract is preserved. When Rohault invented his glass tubes to serve for the barometrical experiments in which Pascal had roused a strong interest, the Marquis de Sourdis entertained the society with a paper entitled "Why Water Mounts in a Glass Tube." Cartesianism was an exciting topic here, as ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... into the top of Minnie Peter's package. She drew out a heavy folded document and followed it with others. "There! that's the abstract; and here are the leases, and here is the insurance." She threw out a sheaf of policies; the one on top was for ten thousand dollars. "I didn't know just what you would need; I brought everything connected with the whole building—here's the receipt ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... the parent of civil wars. It shakes the foundations of states. Jansenism can excite only theological quarrels and wars of the pen. The Reformation attacked the power of the Church; Jansenism was concerned exclusively with abstract questions. The Jansenist disputes sprang from problems of grace and predestination, fate and free-will—that labyrinth in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... larger measure of independence than formerly. A quorum of the Council consists of four members, and no member may absent himself from a session without excuse. Except in elections, voting is viva voce, and an abstract of proceedings is published regularly in the official gazette of ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... such responsive sensibilities. But we of the highly educated classes (so-called) have most of us got far, far away from Nature. We are trained to seek the choice, the rare, the exquisite exclusively and to overlook the common. We are stuffed with abstract conceptions, and glib with verbalities and verbosities; and in the culture of these higher functions the peculiar sources of joy connected with our simpler functions often dry up, and we grow stone-blind and insensible to life's more elementary and ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... wards. The war moved her in simple ways; for she was patriotic in the direct fashion of her class. Her father had been a sailor, her husbands an official and a soldier; the issue for her was uncomplicated by any abstract meditation. The Country before everything! And though she had tended during those two years so many young wrecked bodies, she had taken it as all in the a day's work, lavishing her sympathy on the individual, without much general sense of pity and waste. Yes, she had worked really hard, had ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... phantom. Magician or witch, voluptuous, destroying Venus or cold and ungrasped Helen, what was the antique to the art born of the Middle Ages and developed during the Renaissance? Was the relation between them that of tuition, cool and abstract, or of fruitful lore, or of deluding ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... first sympathetic, then thoughtful, as he looked. In a dim, abstract way he had been conscious that Darsie Garnett was what he would have described as "a pretty kid," but the charm of her personality had never appealed to him until this moment. Now, as he looked at the dark eyelashes resting on the white cheek, the droop ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Stark regretting that he could not open it so as to abstract the bonds and leave the box in the safe. In that case, he said, it might be some time before the robbery ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... they came into my hands. Your sister is, no doubt, aware that in her poem she has trodden the same ground as Gray, in his 'Ode upon a distant Prospect of Eton College.' What he has been contented to treat in the abstract, she has represented in particular, and with admirable spirit. But again, my dear Sir, let me exhort you (and do you exhort your sister) to deal little with modern writers, but fix your attention almost exclusively ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... these tokens are written on a sky broad enough to cover the whole English-speaking race, others of them are visible chiefly within our own national horizon. With respect to the English book, Cardwell [3] writing in 1840 and Freeman[4] in 1855, considered revision, however desirable in the abstract, to be a thing utterly out of reach, not within the circle, as the parliamentary phrase now runs, ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... with no diminution of his affection for her, was beginning to realise that his mind would be relieved when she ended her visit and went home. He feared her influence over Pandora. For Gertrude he had no fears. He knew, and so did the priest, that Gertrude was not the sort of girl to indulge in abstract speculations, religious or otherwise. So long as her new gown was not made in last year's fashion, and her mantua-maker did not put her off with Venice ribbon when she wanted Tours, it mattered nothing at ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... likely that what you, the abstract male, really mean is that you must have some woman as ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... to the intelligence of an older race before us, the question naturally arises: What was the degree of civilization attained at a time when the Deity worshipped was an abstract principle involving the actual creative processes throughout Nature? and, notwithstanding our prejudices, we are constrained to acknowledge that these earlier conceptions are scarcely compatible with the barbarism which we have been taught to regard as the condition of all the ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... of a capacity high, if not quite first rate, which enables them, granted fair chances, to rise quickly into positions where they can effectively serve the community. These men, whatever occupation they follow, be it that of abstract thinking, or literary production, or scientific research, or the conduct of affairs, whether commercial or political or administrative, are the dynamic strength of the country when they enter manhood, and its realised wealth when they ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... place Stanley says: "Livingstone followed the dictates of duty. Never was such a willing slave to that abstract virtue. His inclinations impel him home, the fascinations of which it requires the sternest resolution to resist. With every foot of new ground he travelled over he forged a chain of sympathy which should hereafter bind the Christian nations in bonds ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... Miss Ponsonby only thought so. I did not believe she would think so, but I was mistaken. Her thorough course in Libbey heroines and their marvellous escapades had quite prepared her to contemplate such an adventure calmly—in the abstract at least. But another obstacle ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... streets are clear; make verses by the way." There goes a builder's gang, all haste and steam; Yon crane lifts granite, or perhaps a beam; Waggons and funerals jostle; a mad dog Ran by just now; that splash was from a hog: Go now, abstract yourself from outward things, And "hearken what the inner spirit sings." Bards fly from town and haunt the wood and glade; Bacchus, their chief, likes sleeping in the shade; And how should I, with noises all about, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... a substantive speech, but an abstract of many speeches, the impression left upon my mind after a great deal of talk; and very youthful, pleasant, natural, and patriotic it seems to me to be—'We have gained all races, except those where we were cheated by ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I believe she has not diagnosed the case with sufficient care. Did she look like a person who was theorizing, or did she look like one who has fallen off precipices herself and brings to the aid of abstract science the confirmations of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... attempting to give any correct idea of a lecture by Artemus Ward. No report could fairly convey an idea of the entertainment; and being fully aware of this, Artemus would instruct his agent to beg of the papers not to attempt giving any abstract of that which he said. The following is the way in which the reporter of the Golden Era, at San Francisco, California, endeavoured to inform the San Franciscan public of the character of "The Babes in the Wood" lecture. It is, as the reader will perceive, a burlesque on ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... in the right way: you reject abstract theories; abundance, cheapness, concerns you little. You are entirely occupied with the interest of the producer, whom you are anxious to free from foreign competition. In a word, you wish to secure the national market ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... my explorations here and there. Either I missed some subtle point or their language was excessively simple—almost exclusively composed of concrete substantives and verbs. There seemed to be few, if any, abstract terms, or little use of figurative language. Their sentences were usually simple and of two words, and I failed to convey or understand any but the simplest propositions. I determined to put the thought of my Time Machine and the mystery of the bronze doors under the sphinx as much as possible ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... foreign stock in the United States, the last general census, compiled in 1910, shows that 25.7 per cent was German, 14 per cent was Irish, 8.5 per cent was Russian or Finnish, 7.2 was English, 6.5 per cent Italian and 6.2 per cent Austrian. The Abstract of the same census points out several significant facts. The Western European strains in this country are represented by a majority of native-born children of foreign-born or mixed parentage. This is because the immigration ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... nor mine, but yours and mine, be known, loved, honoured, emancipated, mitred, crowned, adored—who loses anything, that does not find it.' 'And what matters it,' says the philosophic wisdom, speaking in the abstract, 'what name it is proclaimed in, and what letters of the alphabet we know it by?—what matter is it, so that they spell the name that is good for ALL, and good for each,'—for that ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... it pain, but a chilliness of soul which proceeded from the gloomy and severe task that I had undertaken—a task which, when I considered the danger and the advantages annexed to its performance, was sufficient to abstract me from every other object. It was really the first exercise of that jealous spirit of mistaken devotion which keeps the soul in perpetual sickness, and invests the innocent enjoyments of life with a character of sin and severity. It was this gloomy feeling that could alone have strangled ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... application of the law again showing how interest may be developed in a specific college subject. Let us choose one that is generally regarded as so "difficult" and "abstract" that not many people are interested in it—philology, the study of language as a science. Let us imagine that we are trying to interest a student of law in this. As a first step we shall select some legal term and show what philology can tell about it. A term frequently encountered ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... barbarous tongue which was the official language till 1362, and with which our legal jargon is saturated. We find in Anglo-French many words which are unrecorded in continental Old French, among them one which we like to think of as essentially English, viz., duete, duty, an abstract formed from the past participle of Fr. devoir. This verb has also given us endeavour, due to the phrase se mettre ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... upon religious matters at the time this dispute with the Italian occurred. To speak candidly, I had been far less shocked with his opposition to me upon matters of doctrinal faith than with that upon matters of abstract reasoning. Bred a Roman Catholic, though pride, consistency, custom, made me externally adhere to the Papal Church, I inly perceived its errors and smiled at its superstitions. And in the busy world, where ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... understand where the difficulty lies, or to detect any lurking obscurity, as these critics found themselves to unravel my logic. Possibly I may not be an indifferent and neutral judge in such a case. I will therefore sketch a brief abstract of the little paper according to my original design, and then leave the reader to judge how far this design is kept in sight through ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... woman, hurling her abstract justice recklessly in the face of the evidence. "If the place is worth more, you've made it so workin' when you wasn't able. If they take it now, I'll feel like burnin' down the house and choppin' ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... be a fool not to honour you and your brother; besides, it may make you more at ease to hear that my father was an apparitor, and I went to Oxford as a servitor, so that in birth you have the advantage of us. Of course, I do not mean that every one does not in the abstract prefer prosperous matches, but John has a fair independent competence, and can afford to do as he pleases; and, for my part, I should be very sorry if this ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Vologonov irritably. "Are we not, then, to respect ANYONE or ANYTHING? Only he is worthy of respect who does not harm his fellows; and of those who do not harm their fellows there are but few. To this point you must pay attention—you must teach him words of variable import, words more abstract, as ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... Commencement exercises dramatize education. They enable plain men and women to visualize in the concrete that vague word which means so little to them in the abstract. More properly they dramatize the identity between real education and actual life. On the platform before the audience is a miniature engine to which steam has been piped, a miniature frame house in course of construction, and a piece of brick wall in process of erection. ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... great body of us Fremonters, being ardently attached to liberty, in the abstract, were duped by a few wicked and designing men. There is a slight difference of opinion on this. We think he, being ardently attached to the hope of a second term, in the concrete, was duped by men who had liberty every way. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... to express in their exact limits the abstract evolutions of the brain. The inconvenience of words is that they are more marked in form than ideas. All ideas have indistinct boundary lines, words have not. A certain diffused phase of the soul ever escapes words. Expression has ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... reared on the Mission-station of Kuruman, he does not pretend to have mastered it fully even yet. However copious it may be in terms of which we do not feel the necessity, it is poor in others, as in abstract terms, and words ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... answered, "can be determined on mathematical lines. Bravery is a delightful quality in the abstract, but brave men are killed as easily as cowards. Tell me, have you spoken ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... "Why, yes, in the abstract; newspapers. But we do not have any news nowadays. It is not news to know a thing before it's happened, nor is it news to know what might happen, or why it might happen, or why it might not happen. To be told that it doesn't make any difference whether it happens ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Hope's, thou Thought's eternal King, Who gav'st them power to charm, and me to sing - Chief to thy praise my willing numbers soar, And in my happier transports I adore; Mercy! thy softest attribute proclaim, Thyself in abstract, thy more lovely name; That flings o'er all my grief a cheering ray, As the full moon-beam gilds the watery way. And then too, Love, my soul's resistless lord, Shall many a gentle, generous strain afford, To all the ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... was anxious that my translation should be submitted in the proof-sheets to a philosophical friend of his in Petersburg, who read English, in order that the latter might see if I had caught the sense of the somewhat abstract and complicated propositions. It became a problem how those proof-sheets were to reach me safely and promptly. The problem was solved by having them directed outright to the censor's office, whence they were delivered ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... be worshipped." This faith and this worship were already manifested "in their incomparable splendor by the ceremonies attending the opening of the Etats Generaux in 1614, dominated, not, as in 1789, by the august and abstract idea of the nation, but by the pale and melancholy figure of a boy of thirteen." For the tremendous and elaborate pomp of his court, the ceremonial ostentation which hedged around his own redoubtable figure, the tedious and suffocating etiquette which attended ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... which requires but little of the element thus removed, it may again produce an abundant crop. On this principle also, attempts have been made to explain the rotation of crops, which has been supposed to depend on the cultivation in successive years of plants which abstract from the soil preponderating quantities of different mineral matters. But though this has unquestionably a certain influence, we shall afterwards see reason to doubt whether it affords a sufficient explanation ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... against him. One half of her letter was a mere guide-book to the Roman antiquities, and was broken off short for some carnival gaiety. Lord Erymanth clearly liked his letters as little as we did. In the abstract, in spite of the first cousinship, I am afraid he would rather have given Viola to Pigou St. Glear than to Harold Alison, but he had thought better of his niece than to think she could forget such a man ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... preferred indicating in this table the culminant points of each system to the mean height of the line of elevation; the culminant points are the results of direct measures, while the mean height is an abstract idea somewhat vague, particularly when there is only one group of mountains, as in Brazil, Parime and the West Indies, and not a continued chain. Although it cannot be doubted that, among the five systems of mountains on the east of the Andes, of which one only ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... appeal and attractiveness of truth. When Pilate heard about "truth" he thought he had a sophist before him, one more builder of metaphysical systems, and expressed the skepticism of the man on the street: "What is truth?" But Jesus was not a teacher of abstract doctrine, whatever his expounders have made of him. His mind was bent on realities. If we substitute "reality" for "truth" in his saying here, we shall get near ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... leaned on him and grew about him, and he supported her tenderly. She wasn't going to give him up for the sake of some abstract tradition— ...
— The Putnam Tradition • Sonya Hess Dorman
... a woman, full of the stormy impulse to personal devotion, and to have to be impersonal, abstract, exact, ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... individualisation. In its homogeneous self what else can it be but pure life—Essence-of-Life, if you like so to call it? Then realise that as Essence-of-Life it exists in the innermost of every one of its forms of manifestation in as perfect simplicity as any we can attribute to it in our most abstract conceptions. In this light we see it to be the eternally self-generating power which, to express ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... position of being more free from crimes against the person than the most highly civilised countries of Europe. In proof of this fact we have only to look at the official documents annually issued respecting the condition of British India. According to the returns contained in the Statistical Abstract relating to British India and the Parliamentary paper exhibiting its moral and material progress, the number of murders reported to the police of India is smaller than the number reported in any European State. ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... of poetry is generally concrete. The artist may wish to give expression to a general truth, or philosophical principle, or ethereal fancy. These appear very abstract, but the artist embodies in material forms the idea he wishes to convey. The poet expresses his thought by the suggestion of material imagery, and emotion is most ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... "In the abstract I agree with you: but I am not aware that Rowley's death is required. Say rather that he is ower young to turn King's evidence." I stepped back from the door. "Mrs. McRankine," I said, "I believe you to be soft-hearted. I know ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ignorant men, who had an intense hatred for the mere accomplishments of life. Each had two daughters, who, with the natural tastes of the sex, were not averse to the graces of education, in the abstract, but could not bear to see them displayed by their "stuck-up, pauper cousin," as they often termed that hapless young lady in private conversation. A kind offer, which she was imprudent enough, to make, to teach them all she knew, had set them ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... condition. Similarly in attempting to remedy a local or special evil, we must avoid the injustice of unduly sacrificing the general welfare. By extreme measures planned to accomplish what may be good in the abstract but is still not practical, we can ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... the existence of Deity and must therefore have an abstract idea of spirit, you must have some notions on the subject, and should be able to tell me how it ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... it, even in its quarrels, with any of the mere collisions of separate institutions. You could compare it with the emancipation of negroes from planters—if it were true that a white man in early youth always dreamed of the abstract beauty of a black man. You could compare it with the revolt of tenants against a landlord—if it were true that young landlords wrote sonnets to invisible tenants. You could compare it to the fighting policy of the Fenians—if ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... Secretary of State for India, Viscount Cranbrook, and the Under-Secretary of State for India, the Hon. E. Stanhope. In the Parliamentary records of February, 1880, can be seen my reply to the accusations, as well as an abstract statement of the executions carried out at Kabul in accordance with the findings ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... of them, so far from being essential, are the principal cause of the difficulty which we meet with in the formation of a perfect and durable ink. I endeavoured to prove this point by a series of experiments, of which the following is a brief abstract:—Having prepared a cold infusion of galls, I allowed a portion of it to remain exposed to the atmosphere, in a shallow capsule, until it was covered with a thick stratum of mould; the mould was removed by filtration, and the proper proportion ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various
... herewith the abstract of a supplementary arrangement which has been made by me, pursuant to the acts of the 3d day of March, 1791, and the 8th day of May, 1792, for raising a revenue upon foreign and domestic distilled spirits, in respect to the subdivisions and officers ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... refused other forms of Reconstruction, and had wilfully drawn upon themselves all that was unwelcome in the one now about to be enforced. It was to be noted moreover that the feature which was most unwelcome —impartial suffrage—was the one especially founded upon justice, abstract as well ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... 'Applied Mechanics' is a great illustration of your power to grasp, to connect, and to apply the definite principles of exact science with the less definite known elements of practical problems. Abstract principles are valueless, except in application to the wants of man, and this work occupies that field with great eminence. Your work on the 'Steam Engine and other Prime Movers' deals with the principles involved in that important subject in a masterly ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... doctor," said he, kindly, "pray accept my apologies. Viewing the matter as an abstract problem, I had forgotten how personal and painful a thing it might be to you. I assure you, however, that I never even knew that you had a brother until you handed ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... so sure. Perhaps not with art in the abstract. You must commercialize it. Don't shy at that word. Believe me, all art is pretty well commercialized in these times. Our literary men are writing advertisements instead of poetry and getting more for it. And if you, on the one hand, can make a picture of the Rockies, which you can't sell, ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... in such quiet and simple words came with more force than a tragic declamation, and had somewhat the effect of setting the distorted images in each mind present into proper focus. Oak, almost before he had comprehended anything beyond the briefest abstract of the event, hurried out of the room, saddled a horse and rode away. Not till he had ridden more than a mile did it occur to him that he would have done better by sending some other man on this errand, remaining himself in the house. What had become of Boldwood? ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... describe without duly heeding abstract terms, those who make rain and hail fall on the cleanliness of the window panes, may throw stones at the simplicity of their brothers of the pen. The stones may indeed hit their brothers, who have a body, but will never ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... its consideration might be postponed, in order to give him opportunity to discuss resolutions on the prospective annexation of Mexico. Cass was disposed to yield for courtesy's sake; but Douglas resented the interruption. He failed to see why public business should be suspended in order to discuss abstract propositions. He believed that this doctrine of courtesy was being carried to great lengths.[241] Evidently the young Senator, fresh from the brisk atmosphere of the House, was restive under the conventional restraints of the more sedate Senate. He ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson |
