"Abstract" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... borne. Young Condy, after a fortnight's prostration from typhus fever, was again upon his legs, tottering about, as his father had been, in a state of such helplessness between want of food on the one hand, and illness on the other, as it is distressing even to contemplate. If, however, the abstract consideration of it, even at a distance, be a matter of such painful retrospect to the mind, what must not the actual endurance of that and worse have been to the thousands upon thousands of families who were obliged, by God's mysterious dispensation, to encounter ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... verb bearing the meaning to choose, and to which there would appear no objection, provided that that meaning were reckoned to be secondary to the signification to eat. The idea implied in the verb to choose is essentially abstract. Not so is that included in either the verb to cut, or the verb to eat. From one of these, which may be considered as collateral primary meanings, it must therefore be deduced. And since it cannot be deduced from the one without the other, it must consequently be ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... a "still-life," the decorator creates a color-harmony of abstract or conventional forms, and the costumer produces a color-composition in textiles. The decorator and costumer approach closer to pure color-composition than the artist in his still-life. The latter is a grouping of objects primarily ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... pleasure, and ambitious men Fix all their hopes on riches gained by fraud. The women will be fickle and desert Their beggared husbands, loving them alone Who give them money. Kings, instead of guarding, Will rob their subjects, and abstract the wealth Of merchants, under plea of raising taxes. Then in the world's last age the rights of men Will be confused, no property be safe, No joy and no prosperity ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... people make pets of. "Such men as Schuyler Gurney get the fattest offices. God send us a monarchy soon!" he hissed under his breath, as the gate closed after the politician. By which you will perceive that Dr. Blecker, like most men fighting their way up, was too near-sighted for any abstract theories. Liberty, he thought, was a very poetic, Millennium-like idea for stump-speeches and college-cubs, but he grappled with the time the States were too chaotic, untaught a mass for self-government; he cursed secession ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... of acceptance, with one whose mind was yet untainted with practice; and the young senator rather shut his eyes on their tendency, or, as he felt their influence in every interest which environed him, but that of poor, neglected, abstract virtue, whose rewards were so remote, he was fain to seek out some palliative, or some specious and indirect good as ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... neighbors, even to the dogs and donkeys, may spread not by sentimental effort and reflection, but as a sweet habit of the blood. At five years old, mortals are not prepared to be citizens of the world, to be stimulated by abstract nouns, to soar above preference into impartiality; and that prejudice in favor of milk with which we blindly begin, is a type of the way body and soul must get nourished at least for a time. The best introduction to astronomy is ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... of continental countries. At the same time, we feel inclined to agree with Mr. Farrer that the red berries of the mountain-ash probably singled it out from among trees for worship long before our ancestors had arrived at any idea of abstract divinities. The beauty of its berries, added to their brilliant red colour, would naturally excite feelings of admiration and awe, and hence it would in process of time become invested with a sacred significance. It must be remembered, too, that all over the world there ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... abstract nature of a ratio, and the fact that it is a compound concept, peculiarly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... up to date with regard to recent events, I had better tell you a few facts about my more remote past. I refer to Mary. I have already told you that I found a past necessary. At that time I hoped that something fairly abstract would do. But Desire does not like abstractions. She likes to "know where she is." So I had to tell her about Mary. I'll tell you, too, before I forget details and for heaven's sake get them right! You never can tell when your knowledge may be ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Place." He had read it once, and it bothered him to forget names. Then he was wondering why it was the philosophers had not more to say about the incongruity of people who had never had any trouble of their own sitting in judgment upon people who had known nothing but trouble. He was thinking also that abstract rules did not always fit smoothly over concrete cases, and that it was hard to make life a matter of ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... we soon perceive a few openings in the labyrinth. In the first place, here are several chapters of the legend of Bonaventura which seem to have been put in the van as if to protect the rest of the book. If we abstract them and the whole series of chapters from the Fioretti, we shall have diminished the work ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... 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 ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... that led to its being formed, and that was further cemented by its formation: "Willingly do I recall and linger upon these days and months, extending even to years, in which common studies of this abstract nature bound us together. It was the romance—the poetry—of speculation and friendship. All the vexed questions of the schools were attempted by our united strength, after our higher guide had set the example. The ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... at once abandoned. But knowing that the jurisprudence of Masonry is founded, like all legal science, on abstract principles, which govern and control its entire system, I deemed it to be a better course to present these principles to my readers in an elementary and methodical treatise, and to develop from them those necessary deductions which reason ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... more than mere abstract help and grace, much more even than the Holy Spirit bringing us strength, and peace, and purity. It is personal companionship ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... state, his being a piece of property the good or evil of which is effected by his master's caprices, the binding force of the law that makes him merchandise. Nevertheless, while the negro feels them in all their force, the master values them only in an abstract light. Ask the negro whose master is kind to him, if he would prefer his freedom and go north?-At first he will hesitate, dilate upon his master's goodness, his affection for him, the kindly feeling evinced for him by the family-they often look upon him with a patriarchal tenderness-and, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... to elucidating the letters by full annotations, and have for the same reason—though with some regret—omitted in most cases the beginnings and endings of the letters. For the main facts of Mr. Darwin's life, we refer our readers to the abstract of his private Diary, given in the ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... which is divine, which is the abstract of beauty absolute, gives to the beholder a shock of astonishment and delight,—not unmixed with melancholy. Very few works of art give this, because very few approach perfection. But there are marbles and gems which give it, and certain fine studies of them, such ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... or four houses. The paving would be a ten-thousand-dollar job. As a witty political speaker once said, they paved Herculaneum in the concrete and in the abstract. ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... Commissioners resident in the particular localities were appointed to superintend these public works; and as these commissioners were generally destitute of practical knowledge, these Parliamentary grants were usually expended without producing equivalent results. Nothing in the abstract is more reasonable than that any number of individuals should be allowed to associate themselves for the purpose of effecting some local improvement, which would be beneficial to others as well as to themselves; but nothing of this could be attempted without an Act of Parliament, which, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... an abstract admirer of beauty, perhaps, asked the honour of her hand—to dance; but there the abstraction generally ended. A few, indeed, went farther, and swore that she was a fine girl, prophesied that she would take, and declared they would be d——d if they would not think ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... Governor Hancock gave a dinner to the Fusileers at the Merchants' Club, in Boston, in 1792. As eighty dinners were paid for I infer there were eighty diners. They drank one hundred and thirty-six bowls of punch, besides twenty-one bottles of sherry and a large quantity of cider and brandy. An abstract of an election dinner to the General Court of Massachusetts in 1769, showed two hundred diners, and seventy-two bottles of Madeira, twenty-eight bottles of Lisbon wine, ten of claret, seventeen of port, eighteen of porter, fifteen double bowls of punch and a quantity of cider. The clergy ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... word [Greek: archae] to denote the material out of which all things were formed, as the everlasting and divine. [Footnote: Arist., Phy., iii. 4.] The idea of elevating an abstraction into a great first cause is certainly puerile, nor is it easy to understand his meaning, other than that the abstract has a higher significance than the concrete. The speculations of Thales tended toward discovering the material constitution of the universe, upon an induction from observed facts, and thus made water to be the origin of all things. Anaximander, accustomed ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... scarcely appeared connecting links between himself and human nature, although all had been educated together in perfect equality. His sense and penetration shone through everything. His replies, even in anger, astonished everybody. He amused himself with the most abstract knowledge. The extent and vivacity of his intellect were prodigious, and rendered him incapable of applying himself to one ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... described in a former letter, we were, of course, in duty bound to take a draft from the spring, which its admirers declare is the best water in all California. When it came to my turn, I complacently touched the rusty tin cup, though I never did care much for water, in the abstract, as water. Though I think it very useful to make coffee, tea, chocolate, and other good drinks, I could never detect any other flavor in it than that of cold, and have often wondered whether there was any truth in the remark of a character in some play, that, ever since the world was drowned ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... because he knew nature on closer terms of intimacy; Nature, as he portrays things, is in nearer touch with the Heavenly Father than we should guess from Paul[10], and there is no hint in his recorded words that he held the ground to be under a curse. If we are to use abstract terms and philosophize his thought a little, we may agree that the four facts Jesus notes in Nature are its mystery, its regularity, its impartiality, and its peacefulness[11]. What he finds in Nature is not unlike what Wordsworth ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... investigating any question, profoundly and thoroughly—be it historical, philosophical, philological, physical, literary, or theological; who is trying to make himself master of any abstract subject (except, perhaps, political economy and geology, both of which are intensely Anglican sciences) whether he is not compelled to read half a dozen times as many German, as English, books? And whether, of these English books, more than one in ten is the work of a fellow of a college, or a professor ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... seed by the wind, and strike root in regions where they could never have originated. Few classes of ideas bear so plainly the geographic stamp of their origin as religious ones, yet none have spread more widely. The abstract monotheism sprung from the bare grasslands of western Asia made slow but final headway against the exuberant forest gods of the early Germans. Religious ideas travel far from their seedbeds along established lines of communication. ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... attempt at a solution; and (2) that which not only criticises, but attempts also to correct. In either case, it aims to reform by education; it deals with actual problems of humanity rather than with abstract moral truths; and it seeks to amuse always, and to reform if possible. It must not be confused with the Moral Story of Class II. Octave Thanet writes this style of story almost exclusively, and any of her work selected at random would be a good ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... philosophy. Thus great stress is laid on the dictum that Communism is not a mere party doctrine of the working-class, but a theory compassing the emancipation of society at large, including the capitalist class, from its present narrow conditions. This is true enough in the abstract, but absolutely useless, and sometimes worse, in practice. So long as the wealthy classes not only do not feel the want of any emancipation, but strenuously oppose the self-emancipation of the working-class, so long the social revolution will have to be prepared ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... dining-room not knowing whether she were wanted or not, but feeling quite assured when it was ascertained that neither sugar nor teaspoons had been provided. The little feast looked somewhat meagre, and the doctor spoke irreverently of his housekeeper and proceeded to abstract a jar of her best strawberry jam from the convenient store-closet, and to collect other articles of food which seemed to him to be inviting, however inappropriate to the occasion. The guest would have none of the jam, but Dr. Leslie cut a slice of the loaf of bread for himself and one for Nan, though ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... is out of the span of life of the planner, it becomes quite difficult to say just what it is man seeks. In fact, every man seeks many things, many satisfactions, and whatever it may be that Man in the abstract seeks, individual men differ very decidedly not only as to what they seek but as to what ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... who pushed the French Revolution of 1789 into the excesses of the Reign of Terror were well-intentioned reformers, driven into crime by the fanaticism of mental conceit. This is especially true of Robespierre and St. Just. Their hearts were hardened through their heads. The abstract notions of freedom and philanthropy were imbedded in their brains as truths, without being rooted in their characters as sentiments; and into the form of these inexorable notions they aimed to shape France. They were of course opposed by human nature. Opposition made them personally cruel, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... the Jesuit missionaries penetrated into this most exclusive of all the nations of the earth, they found near the palace at Chang-an the ruins of the Nestorian mission church, with the cross still standing, and, preserved through all the changes of dynasties, an abstract in Syriac characters of the Christian law, and with it the names of seventy-two attendant priests who had served the church ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... 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 ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... multifarious; discordant &c 24. incidental, parenthetical, obiter dicta, episodic. Adv. parenthetically &c adj.; by the way, by the by; en passant [Fr.], incidentally; irrespectively &c adj.; without reference to, without regard to; in the abstract &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... whole process of his reasoning bare before his listener. His speech was picturesque, but not consciously poetic; for the Indian speaks like a child, using figures of speech, not in order to embellish, but because he lacks abstract terms and is compelled to borrow equivalents from comparisons with surrounding nature. Hayoue listened attentively; occasionally, however, he smiled. At last Okoya stopped and looked at his friend in expectation. The latter cast at the boy a humorous ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... of Gentile Christianity. The Greek is neither the flowing Greek of a Greek, nor the rough provincial Greek which St. Paul spoke and wrote. It is slow and careful, with short sentences linked by repetitions. One epithet is piled effectively on another (e.g. iii. 15, 17), and abstract statements are avoided. Galilee was studded with Greek towns, and in Jerusalem Greek was well known. The Epistle might well have been written by a Jew of Palestine who had made a good use of his opportunities. And the introduction of some rare words in the midst of a simple ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... 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 of love and charity to ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 from those sources has been ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... extirpation of the stomach is considered by most surgeons entirely unjustifiable, as there is seldom hope of cure or prospect of amelioration. La Tribune Medicale for January 16, 1895, gives an abstract of Langenbuch's contribution upon total extirpation of the stomach. Three patients were treated, of whom two died. In the first case, on opening the abdominal cavity the stomach was found very much contracted, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... with himself, to force himself to feel the reality of his own belief that all was well; for he had no doubt of it, as an abstract truth. It was the power of getting comfort from it that was wanting. If only his heart could stop thumping and his brain burning, he would have done the rejoicing that Rosalind was there, knowing all ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... to this whole mode of life; and unbelief is most frequently, and in its most typical forms, found where the restraints of religion have proved too irksome to be tolerated. Before arguing in the abstract that morality is independent of religion, and will be advanced by its abandonment, it would perhaps be better to observe the average, concrete case of the man who has cut himself adrift from religious beliefs and influences; then it will be time to decide whether we ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... this will be the case most especially whenever God reveals to us anything concerning himself. Take these few words, for example, "God is a spirit;" take them as a mere abstract truth, and how little can we understand about them! Who will dare to say that he understands all that is contained in the words "God" and "spirit?" We might weary ourselves for ever in attempting so to search out either. But ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... on our dignity. We deny and we are ready to fight. But we will not argue. As an abstract proposition in ethics or economics, Slavery does not admit of argument. It is a curse. It's on us and we can't throw it off at once. My quarrel with the North is that they do not give us their sympathy and their help in our dilemma. Instead they rave and denounce ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... arrangement that may be abrogated at will and taken from any; that it is simply a privilege yielded to you and me and others by society or the Government which represents society; that it is only a gracious boon from some abstract place and abstract body for which we should be proud and thankful; in other words, that it is not a right in any sense, but only a concession. Mr. President, I do not hold my liberties by any such tenure. On the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... thought was that he had got "into a deucedly uncomfortable fix," and when he stretched out his hand from the bedside the need of fresh clothes appeared less easy to be borne than the more abstract wreck of his career. For the first time he clearly grasped some outline of his future—a future in which a change of linen would become a luxury; and it was with smarting eyes and a nervous tightening of the throat that he glanced about the long room, ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... comprehend what is here said, shall peruse the Memoirs of M. de Reaumur on Bees, and those of the Lusace Society; but I must request them to examine the extracts in M. Bonnet's works, tom. 5. 4to edit. and tom. 10. 8vo, where they will find a short and distinct abstract of all that naturalists have ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... evidently arises out of the conflict between the interests of an oligarchy based upon slavery and a democracy in which slavery, if it exists at all, exists as a mere accident that may be dispensed with without any radical social revolution. Slavery, as opposed to divine law or to abstract justice, never has brought, nor ever will bring, two countries into conflict with each other; but slavery made indispensable as a peculiar institution, as an organized fact, as a fundamental social necessity, must come into conflict with the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... felicitous delineation of circumstances and visible scenes that constitutes our principal enjoyment. The faculty of penetrating through obscurity and confusion, to seize the characteristic features of an object, abstract or material; of producing a lively description in the latter case, an accurate and keen scrutiny in the former, is the essential property of intellect, and occupies in its best form a high rank in the scale of mental gifts: but the creative faculty of the poet, and especially ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... auspices, and had soon come to a decision that it would be a good thing and a just to lock up all the Brownbies in the great jail of the colony at Brisbane. He probably knew nothing of law or justice in the abstract, but he greatly valued law when exercised against those he hated. The western fence of which mention has been made ran down to the Mary River, hitting it about four miles west of Medlicot's Mill; so that there was a considerable portion of the Gangoil run having ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... countryman, then? I deem I have half a guess of you; your name is Old Honesty, is it not? So the old gentleman blushed, and said, Not Honesty, in the abstract,[207] but Honest is my name; and I wish that my nature shall agree to what ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Diatrype anomala by Peck of Albany, N. Y., but was afterwards found to belong to another genus. There have been two or three articles published on it, the best one probably by Humphrey in Massachusetts. I have an abstract of that which can be copied in the proceedings, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... it seems to me, philosophy moves toward this reading of existence. The revolt from the last century's materialism is almost complete. In religious language, abstract thought is again finding and feeling God within the world; and finding too in this discovery and realization the meaning, and perhaps—if we may dare to use such a word—the purpose of life. It suggests—and here, more and more, psychology supports ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... amusement, to the disturbance of an invalid who is lying in a critical state in the next room. Do the mere consequences make this otherwise innocent amusement evil? Yes, if you consider the amusement in the abstract: but if you take it as this human act, the act is inordinate and evil in itself, or as it is elicited in the mind of the agent. The volition amounts to this: "I prefer my amusement to my neighbour's recovery," which ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... essential and the most difficult: two were required, both upon paper with the government stamp—one a simple pass for short distances and absences, useless beyond a certain limit and date; the other, the plakatny, or real passport, a document of vital importance. He was able to abstract the paper from the office, and a counterfeiter in the community forged the formula and signatures. His appearance he had gradually changed by allowing his hair and beard to grow, and he had studied the tone of thought and peculiar phraseology of the born Siberian, that he might ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... customs, they participated in the same intellectual faculties, suffered from the same wants, and were alive to the same pleasures; they perceived that there were no conventional fashions, nor national distinctions, in abstract truths and fundamental knowledge. A new spirit seems to bring them nearer to each other: and, as if literary Europe were intent to form but one people out of the populace of mankind, they offer their reciprocal labours; they pledge to each other the same opinions; and that ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... his works abound in concrete ideas, which are more readily grasped than abstract ones. He is not content to write: "The smallest actual good is better than the most magnificent promise of impossibilities:" but he gives the concrete equivalent: "An acre in Middlesex is worth a principality ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... Edward Waterhouse, and Geoffrey Fenton;—daring and brilliant officers, like Sir William Drury, Sir Nicolas Malby, Sir Warham St. Leger, Sir John Norreys, and John Zouch. These papers are the basis of Mr. Froude's terrible chapters on the Desmond rebellion, and their substance in abstract or abridgment is easily accessible in the printed calendars of the Record Office. They show that from first to last, in principle and practice, in council and in act, the Tamerlane system was believed in, and carried out without a ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... soda-water, though a good thing in the abstract, was apt to lie cold upon the stomach unless qualified with ginger, or a small infusion of brandy, which latter article he held to be preferable in all cases, saving for the one consideration of expense. Nobody ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... syphilis is that it is a contagious constitutional disease, due to a germ, running a prolonged course, and at one time or another in that course is capable of affecting nearly every part of the body. One of the most important parts of this rather abstract statement is that which relates to the germ. To be able to put one's finger so definitely on the cause of syphilis is an advantage which cannot be overestimated. More than in almost any other disease the identification of syphilis at its very outset depends upon the seeing ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... any other state of things than that which I have been depicting should obtain. Professors must live; to live they must occupy themselves with practice, and if they occupy themselves with practice, the pursuit of the abstract branches of science must go to the wall. All this is a plain and obvious matter of common-sense reasoning. I believe you will never alter this state of things until, either by consent or by force majeure—and ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Steller had not wintered on Behring Island. What Krascheninnikov says of the sea-cow is wholly borrowed from Steller, and in the same way nearly all the statements of later naturalists as to its occurrence and mode of life. That this is actually the case is shown by the following abstract, complete as far as I know, of what is said of the sea-cow in the only original account of the first hunting voyages of the Russians to the Aleutian Islands, which was published at Hamburg and Leipzig in 1776 with the title, Neue, Nachrichten ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... controversy which was waxing warm between the disputants. Whether the act of Secession was void ab initio and really left the State still a member of the Union, or whether it did, however wrongfully, carry the State out of the Union as claimed by those engaged in the Rebellion, was one of the purely abstract political questions concerning which men will argue without ceasing,—reaching no conclusion because there is no conclusion to be reached. Both propositions were at the time affirmed and denied with all the earnestness, indeed with all the temper, which distinguished the mediaeval theologians ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... unnatural speech which shows a spirit accurately balanced between homicide and hysterics; the tone in which the best of women sometimes utter words worse than death to those most dear to them. If Abstract Bones-and-Sepulchre were to be endowed with the gift of speech, thus, and not otherwise, would it discourse. Leon was a brave man, and I fear he was somewhat sceptically given (he had been educated in a Papistical country), but the habit of childhood prevailed, and he ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thirty-nine. The act of union, he maintained, had not rendered any further change possible. At the same time he contended that there was no great occasion for the change sought by the petitioners. "I will not enter," he said, "into the abstract merits of our articles and liturgy; perhaps there are some things in them which one would wish had not been there; and they are not without the marks and character of human frailty. But," he added, "it is not human frailty and imperfection, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... "I should like to be such 'property,' if I were a black woman. If it were wrong in the abstract," said she, "it might not ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... in others. I'm a buffoon. But excuse an old man's cackle. You, Rodion Romanovitch, you are in your prime, and, like all young people, you appreciate, above all things, human intelligence. Intellectual smartness and abstract rational deductions entice you. But, to return to the special case we were talking about just now. I must tell you that we have to deal with reality, with nature. This is a very important thing, ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... need to give an abstract of the contents of these fascinating volumes, for everybody is reading them. Most are probably wishing for more personal details, especially of the American life; but the editorial work is so deftly ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... positively come as a relief. To say that they are lukewarm is only to fairly indicate a state of feeling which is rapidly degenerating into frigidity. They declare that the Bill is unworkable, and while maintaining their abstract right to demand whatever they choose, believe that, taking one consideration with another, the lot of autonomic Ireland would ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... each of its parts, and double the product of one by the other; though convinced that my multiplication was right, I could not be satisfied till I had made and examined the figure: not but I admire algebra when applied to abstract quantities, but when used to demonstrate dimensions, I wished to see the operation, and unless explained by lines, could not rightly ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... 'he' would be at the wharf; and whether 'he' had got her letter; and whether, if she sent the baby on shore by somebody else, 'he' would know it, meeting it in the street: which, seeing that he had never set eyes upon it in his life, was not very likely in the abstract, but was probable enough to the young mother. She was such an artless little creature; and was in such a sunny, beaming, hopeful state; and let out all this matter, clinging close about her heart, so freely; that ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... melted in his blood, and his blood ran bright for her. His dreams were the flowers of his blood. Hers were more detached and inhuman. For centuries a certain type of woman has been rejecting the 'animal' in humanity, till now her dreams are abstract, and full of fantasy, and her blood runs in bondage, and her ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... morality which he has had polished onto him, he is the same savage that he was ten thousand years ago. Morality is a social fund, an accretion through the painful ages. The new-born child will become a savage unless it is trained, polished, by the abstract morality that has ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... cost, while Garrison was for truth at any cost. These pro-slavery critics were not necessarily wanting in good feelings to the slaves, or lacking in a sense of the justice of their cause. But the feelings and the sense were transitive to an abstract object, intransitive to that terrible reality, the American slave. The indignation of such people exceeded all bounds when contemplating wrongs in the abstract, iniquity in the abstract, while the genuine article in flesh and blood and habited in broadcloth and respectability ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... Elaine, I merely wished to prove to you that your aversion for me was entirely unfounded. You have proved to me that your love for Adolphus, in the abstract, is as baseless and unsubstantial. I am not sorry under the circumstances that it should have been murdered, for it was a poor exotic. Let us not attempt to analyse the mysterious nature of that passion which is too precious a plant to tear up by the roots in order to discover the origin of its ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... lady, of Huguenot descent, and biographers have been fond of tracing in his character the various qualities of his parents. To the shrewdness and persistence, the administrative ability, and the taste for abstract reasoning which we are wont to find associated in the highest type of Scottish mind he joined a truly French vivacity and grace. His earnestness, sincerity, and moral courage were characteristic alike of Puritan and of Huguenot. In the course of his short life he exhibited a remarkable many-sidedness. ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... to abstract the principle involved in some other essays. But I forbear. These specimens are sufficient for the purpose of informing the reader that I do not write without a thoughtful consideration of my subject; and also, that to think reasonably upon any question has never been allowed ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... much about man and woman! It has not been our lot here in the world to scour either a room or a kettle, though, to speak the truth, we do not consider ourselves incapable of so doing). Eva found nothing in her peaceful home which was powerful enough to abstract her from the thoughts and feelings which for so long had been the dearest to her heart. The warm breezes of spring, so full of love, fanned up that glimmering fire; so did also that innocent life of the betrothed, so full of cordiality and happiness; so did also a yet more poisonous ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... of erudition or of antiquarian speculation, or of historical research, we are under a different rule. Here, and in similar cases, it is our business, I conceive with Solon legislating for the Athenians, to contemplate, not what is best in an abstract sense, but what is best under the circumstances of the case. Now the most important circumstances of this case are—that the memory of young ladies must be assumed as a faculty of average power, both as to its apprehensiveness and ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... true from the false as it is to extract a Diana or a Minerva from a rough block of marble. Then as to the analysis of the ancients and the algebra of the moderns, besides that they embrace only matters highly abstract, and, to appearance, of no use, the former is so exclusively restricted to the consideration of figures, that it can exercise the understanding only on condition of greatly fatiguing the imagination; and, in the latter, there is so ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... still, that is not a time to enjoy such calm and composing delights. But he walked about the room in which he was shut up like a wild beast in his cage, sometimes with long strides from wall to wall, sometimes going round, with that abstract trick of his, staring at the pictures, as if he did not know every picture in the place by heart. He forgot that he was to go back to the drawing-room again after Elinor had been taken to bed, and ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... hypocritical; for, while indulging in these pharasaical expressions of love for the Union, they nominate, at the same time, as their candidate for the Vice President, an avowed secessionist and disunionist. We have nothing to do with the abstract opinions or wishes of Mr. Pendleton as regards the Union. Jefferson Davis repeatedly, and up to the very period of secession, expressed quite as much devotion to the old flag and to the Union as Mr. Pendleton. But Mr. Davis soon ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... trucks, who wrote sonnets between directing two-thousand-pound projectiles on their errands of mashing German dugouts. He did not like gunnery where he did not see his target naval fashion, but he had done so well that he was kept at it. His latest sonnet was to an abstract girl somewhere in France which the Socialist, who was a man of critical judgment in everything and of a rollicking disposition, praised very highly and read aloud with the elocution ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... acted as a sort of handmaiden to literature, her mission being to make clear to the casual and the unlettered what the lettered had already understood and enjoyed in a more subtle and more erudite form. But to pass from the abstract to the concrete, and, so far as regards subject, to make my meaning quite clear to every one, I cannot do better than to ask my readers to recall Mr. Luke Fildes' picture of "The Doctor". No better example could be selected of a picture in which the subject is the ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... women of letters. Her favourite pastime as a child, she herself testifies, [Footnote: Preface to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein.] had been to write stories. And a dearer pleasure had been—to use her own characteristic abstract and elongated way of putting it—'the following up trains of thought which had for their subject the formation of a succession of imaginary incidents'. All readers of Shelley's life remember how later on, as a girl of nineteen—and ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... it was rumoured and confirmed that Juliana Bonner had willed all the worldly property she held in her own right, comprising Beckley Court, to Mr. Evan Harrington, of Lymport, tailor. An abstract of the will was forwarded. The lawyer went on to say, that he had conformed to the desire of the testatrix in communicating the existence of the aforesaid will six days subsequent to her death, being the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... frequently by his daughter; when, with a small osier basket to receive plants, and another filled with cold refreshments, such as the cabin of the shepherd did not afford, they wandered away among the most romantic and magnificent scenes, nor suffered the charms of Nature's lowly children to abstract them from the observance of her stupendous works. When weary of sauntering among cliffs that seemed scarcely accessible but to the steps of the enthusiast, and where no track appeared on the vegetation, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... in his justification. But his best apology may be found in the cheerful resolution, with which, about eight years afterwards, he suffered death in the cause of religion. The authentic history of his martyrdom has been recorded with unusual candor and impartiality. A short abstract, therefore, of its most important circumstances, will convey the clearest information of the spirit, and of the forms, of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... acquaintances among the very poorest, those whom she hoped to serve effectively—not with aid of money alone, but by her personal influence. And I think it will be worth while to dwell a little on the story of this same soup-kitchen; it is significant, and shall take the place of abstract comment on Miss ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... mission. Germany is predominant in abstract thought; France in literature, art, and grace. But we and you,—for the English-speakers are all in the same boat, however much the New York Sun may scream over it,—we and you have among our best men a higher conception of moral sense and public duty than is to be found in any ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... complete success. The whole thing is probably an ingenious hoax. A skeptical correspondent of the Literary Gazette proposes an easy method of testing the new telegraph. He says, "If the Presse newspaper will every day for a few weeks give a short abstract of contemporary American news, or indeed mention any points of prominent interest which occur on the other side of the Atlantic; thus anticipating by some weeks the ordinary mails; and if, when these arrive, the news given by the snail telegraph is confirmed, doubts ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... towards the ethical development of mankind. Here again popular belief was his best ally. To the people to whom he talked, virtue (the Greek word is at once both wider and narrower in sense than the English term) was no mere abstract notion; it was a living reality to them, embodied in beings that were like themselves, human beings, but perfect ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... military men do not belong to this category: no one dreads war so much as the man who knows what it means. I am not speaking of individuals, I am speaking of a particular caste, military officials in the abstract, if you like to put it so, who, because their business is war, have not the slightest idea what the pacific social development of a people really means. Militarism is simply a one-sided, partial point of view, ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney
... fallen in with are generally watched until they encamp for the night; when they are buried in sleep, the murderers steal quietly up until they are within a yard or two of their victims, rush suddenly upon and butcher them. On these occasions they always abstract the kidney-fat, and also take off a piece of the skin of the thigh. These are carried home as trophies, as the American Indians take the scalp. The murderers anoint their bodies with the fat of their ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... idea has become as we before observed, confounded with that of magnificence in the abstract—has led us, also, to the exaggerated employment of mirrors. We line our dwellings with great British plates, and then imagine we have done a fine thing. Now the slightest thought will be sufficient to convince any one who has ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... George and Rollo had been holding this conversation, they had been walking along through St. James's Park; and, considering the abstract and unentertaining character of the subject, Rollo had listened quite attentively to what his uncle had said, only his attention had been somewhat distracted once or twice by the gambols of the beautifully irised ducks that he had seen from time to time on the water as he walked along the margin ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott
... from Milan on a visit to his country villa at Vigevano, he stayed for three days in Cardan's house. As a recorder of conversations Tartaglia seems to have had something of Boswell's gift. He gives an abstract of an eventful dialogue with his host on March 25, 1539, which Cardan begins by a gentle reproach anent his guest's reticence in the matter of the rule of the cosa and the cubus equal to the numerus. Tartaglia's reply to this complaint seems reasonable ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... that excellent mathematician, Mr. Thomas Simpson, did not preponderate in favour of the semicircular arch. But he should have known, that however eminent Mr. Simpson was in the higher parts of abstract mathematical science, he was little versed in mixed and practical mechanicks. Mr. Muller, of Woolwich Academy, the scholastick father of all the great engineers which this country has employed for forty years, decided the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... to give the method of determining the latitude of the axis of the vortex, at the time of its passage over any given meridian, and at any given time. And afterwards we will give a brief abstract from the record of the weather, for one sidereal period of the moon, in order to compare the theory ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... rely for their inspiration upon a lover's passion for disembodied, purely ideal beauty. The lyric power of such love has, indeed, been celebrated by a recent poet. George Edward Woodberry, in his sonnet sequence, Ideal Passion, thus exalts his mistress, the abstract idea of beauty, above the ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... histories," and still more anxiously soliciting subscriptions for the same. These histories were mere broadsides or charts, giving the name and rank of each man, with a few other personal facts, compiled from the muster rolls, and in addition an abstract of campaign movements, battles, and so forth; all the information being brought up to date of subscription. Of course as permanent and final records such publications would be failures, there being no "next" in which to "conclude" ...
— History of Company E of the Sixth Minnesota Regiment of Volunteer Infantry • Alfred J. Hill
... Billy was not a big mind; it would no more have taken in an abstract idea than his gunyah would have accommodated a grand piano. He was as simple as sunlight, and to resolve his intellect into seven colours would want the most ingenious spectroscope. But he could make an inference from a positive fact, and, having made it, he did not allow ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... be read by all who believe themselves capable of abstract thought, if they would not fall under the judgment of Turgot, which Emerson quotes: "He that has never doubted the existence of matter may be assured he has no aptitude for metaphysical inquiries." The ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Napoleon upon his graduation read thus:—"This young man is reserved and studious, he prefers study to any amusement, and enjoys reading the best authors, applies himself earnestly to the abstract sciences, cares little for anything else. He is silent, and loves solitude. He is capricious, haughty, and excessively egotisical, talks little, but is quick and energetic in his replies, prompt and severe in his repartees, has great pride ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... and more flippant like Michael Moon. This proposal of a private court of justice, which Moon had thrown off with the detachment of a political humourist, Smith really caught hold of with the eagerness of an abstract philosopher. It was by far the best thing they could do, he declared, to claim sovereign powers ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... we subjoin an abstract of the narrative of a voyage made by Pedro de Cintra, a Portuguese captain, to the coast of Africa, drawn up for Cada Mosto, at Lagos, by a young Portuguese who had been his secretary, and who had accompanied Cintra in his voyage. The exact date of this voyage is nowhere given; but as the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... the jar and bustle of the outward world in the silent and shadowy interior of thought and being. Her poems have the fault of nearly all modern poetry, inasmuch as they are over-informed with thought and sadness. By far the greater number of her themes are abstract and melancholy. It appears to us that her mind moves more naturally and finds readier expression in the picturesque than in the metaphysical; and in saying this we mean to say that she is really a poet, and not a rhymer of thoughts. "Midnight" is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... bring their mental atmosphere along with them. You are compelled to breathe it whether you like or not. The atmosphere Charles Verity brought with him, at this juncture, was too masculine, intellectually too abstract yet too keenly critical, for comfortable absorption by Henrietta's lungs. Her self-complacency shrivelled in it. She felt but a mean and pitiful creature, especially in her recent treatment of Damaris. It was a nasty moment, the more difficult to surmount because of that wretchedly betraying ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... 13. This abstract of the history of the Deccan, or Southern India, is not quite accurate. The Emperor, or Sultan, Muhammad bin Tughlak, after A.D. 1325, reduced the Deccan to a certain extent to submission, but the country revolted in A.D. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... considerations of the graceful or the individual, the great master was peculiarly in his element. They exactly fitted his standard, of art, not always sympathetic, nor comprehensible to the average human mind, of which the grand in form and the abstract in expression were the first and last conditions. In this respect, the sibyls on the Sistine Chapel ceiling are more Michael Angelesque than their companions the prophets. For these, while types of the ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... received from Samuel Medary, governor of the Territory of Minnesota, a copy of the constitution of Minnesota, "together with an abstract of the votes polled for and against said constitution" at the election held in that Territory on the second Tuesday of October last, certified by the governor in due form, which I now lay before Congress in the manner prescribed by ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... freedom of thought. The proposition was regarded by some with horror and by others with contempt. One of the most enlightened statesmen in Spain once said to me, "The provision for freedom of worship in the constitution is a mere abstract proposition,—it can never have any practical value except for foreigners. I cannot conceive of a Spaniard being anything but a Catholic." And so powerful was this impression in the minds of the deputies that the article only accords freedom of worship to foreigners ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... considered dependent on the mother country. The saint, foreseeing the annoyances to which a continuance of this dependence must give rise, advised that it should be henceforth respected as an independent state. The second question was one of less importance in the abstract, but far more difficult to settle satisfactorily. The bards, or more probably persons who wished to enjoy their immunities and privileges without submitting to the ancient laws which obliged them to undergo a long and severe course of study before becoming licentiates, if we may ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... the cleverest wins, it was a matter of reading her opponent's cards and of not showing her own. When she succeeded she tasted the sweets of victory. It mattered little whether she could turn it to any account. It was purely for her pleasure. She had a passion for intelligence: not abstract intelligence, although she had brains enough, if she had liked, to have succeeded in any, branch of knowledge and would have made a much better successor to Lothair Mannheim, the banker, than her brother. But she preferred intelligence in the quick, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... a flood of light upon the movements of concrete industrial factors at many points, the intellectual difficulties involved in simultaneously following the double study, in constantly passing from the more concrete to the more abstract contemplation of industrial phenomena, would tax the mental agility of students too severely, and would greatly diminish the chance of a substantially accurate understanding of either aspect of modern industry. We shall therefore in this study confine ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... had broken out with redoubled fury, and once or twice I detected a stealthy exchange of glances between Captain Courcy and the two travellers. Thus far their plans had worked out beautifully; I was, to all appearance, entirely in their power, and it would be easy for them during the night to abstract the note. The one point in my favour was that they believed I knew nothing of the plot, and I took pains not to undeceive them. I laughed at the captain's jokes, and applauded his stories, though half expecting every moment to hear him say, "And now, M. ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... tut! how excited you are. Your eyes are full of tears. Listen to me. You chose your subject in the realm of abstract thought, and you did quite right. A work of art should invariably embody some lofty idea. Only that which is seriously meant can ever be beautiful. ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov
... the abstract presentment of vice. From pulpits it appears clothed in attractive words and is spoken of as alluring; and, supported by the laughter of the idle and the stern belief of the righteous in its charms, man sees something gallant and forbidden in ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... form and quantity; mathematical reasoning is merely logic applied to observation upon form and quantity. The great error lies in supposing that even the truths of what is called pure algebra are abstract or general truths. And this error is so egregious that I am confounded at the universality with which it has been received. Mathematical axioms are not axioms of general truth. What is true of relation—of form and quantity—is often grossly false in regard to morals, for example. In ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... way—the path of bhakti or devotion to God. If a man loved God not as an abstract spirit but as a loving Person, if he loved with intensity and singleness of heart, adoration itself might obtain for him the same reward as a succession of good lives. Vishnu as protector might reward love with love and confer ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... an aboriginal unity of instincts, you cannot compare 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 it were true that every normal ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... Garth had told. He knew of the cruel, humiliating question: "How old are you?" Jane had confessed to it. He knew how the outward glow of adoring love had faded as the mind was suddenly turned inward to self-contemplation. He had known it all as abstract fact. Now he saw it actually before him. He saw Jane's stricken lover, bowed beside him in his blindness, living again through those sights and sounds which no merciful curtain of oblivion could ever hide ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... work better in practice than might be expected, judging them in the abstract. How bashful Professor Theobald seems suddenly to have become! Why doesn't he join us, I wonder? However, so much the better; I do like ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... Church did not define her doctrine in advance, but bit by bit, pragmatically, according to the questions and doubts raised in the Christian communities. The refused solutions of a raised question were called heresy, the adopted solution by the Church was called orthodoxy. No heresy came merely as an abstract theory, but every one was a dramatic movement, an organisation, a camp, a deed—and not merely a word. That made the struggle against it more difficult. Docetism, Nicolaism, Gnosticism, Chiliasm, Manichaism, Monatism, ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the center of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... anxiety as to the future. He was careful not to violate the rights of his tribesman or to do injury to his feelings, but there is nothing to show that he had any idea whatever of what is called morality in the abstract. ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... emotions, or ideas of which we have been conscious in the past, and by selecting or abstracting from the mental images so compared the points in which they resemble each other. The points of resemblance thus selected or abstracted from a number of particulars compose what we call an abstract or general idea, and from a comparison of such abstract or general ideas with each other we arrive at general conclusions, which define the relations of the ideas to each other. Experience in general consists in the whole body of conclusions thus deduced from a comparison of all the particular ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... March night, this one upon which the extraordinary incident about to be related took place. It was the kind of night that novelists use when they are handling a mystery that in the abstract would amount to nothing, but which in the concrete of a bit of wild, weird, and windy nocturnalism sends the reader into hysterics. It may be—I shall not attempt to deny it—that had it happened upon another kind of an evening—a ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... long account, the monotonous details of which may properly be omitted. It records the sale, to nearly sixty different purchasers, of the goods indicated in the abstract which ensues. In this abstract, the amounts are given in pieces of eight and reals; these were at that time the currency ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... form of religious superstition, and crudest form of ceremony and worship, up to the most refined idealism and beautiful symbolisms, runs the gamut of the Hindu Religions. Many people are unable to conceive of an abstract, ideal Universal Being, such as the Brahman of the Hindu Philosophy, and consequently that Being has been personified as an Anthropomorphic Deity, and human attributes bestowed upon him to suit the popular fancy. In India, as in all other countries, the priesthood have given the people that which ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... matter instead of in terms of spiritual realities. I must try to get the poetic gift of the old Colonel and Monty, whose thoughts did not prison themselves in flesh but travelled easily in the upper air of abstract ideals like glory and beauty and truth. But it was difficult. Only in my exalted moments could I breathe ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... Abstract qualities of character were never clothed in more substantial flesh and blood than these jurymen. Spenser's knights in the 'Fairy Queen' are mere shadows to them. Faithful was, of course, condemned, scourged, buffeted, ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... or less indefinite notion abroad that the Bantu languages, as compared with those of Europe, are but poor and ineffective vehicles for the conveyance of abstract ideas, wherefore the capacity to form and entertain such ideas may be taken to be innately inferior in the Native brain. That the language of a people embodies, so to speak, in objective form the intellectual progress made by it is certainly true, and it will be well, therefore, to state ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... hope to be entirely exempt from such attempts on our peace and safety. The United States are becoming too important in population and resources not to attract the observation of other nations. It therefore may in the progress of time occur that opinions entirely abstract in the States which they may prevail and in no degree affecting their domestic institutions may be artfully but secretly encouraged with a view to undermine the Union. Such opinions may become the foundation ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... it. We have much to teach you in the sphere of abstract thought, as you have much to teach us in those of the practical reason and the knowledge of mankind. I should be glad to see you some day in a German university. I am anxious to encourage a truly spiritual fraternization between the two great branches of the Teutonic stock, by welcoming ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... room was comfortable in a blatantly primitive way. Three or four paintings on the walls which were probably originals, Larry decided, and should have been in museums. Not an abstract among them. A Grant Wood, a Marin, and that over there could only be a Grandma Moses. The sort of things you might keep in your private den, but hardly to be seen ...
— Status Quo • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... painting and art criticism. He strongly advised Bernard to stick to his paint and let the pen alone. The moment an artist begins to explain his work he is done for; painting is concrete, literature deals with the abstract. He loved music, especially Wagner's, which he did not understand, but the sound of Wagner's name was sympathetic, and that had at first attracted him! Pissarro he admired for his indefatigable labours. Suffering from diabetes, which killed ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... abstract on a lecture on the circulation of the blood," he answered, kindly turning it so that she could see. "I don't write romances I'm living one," and he glanced up with the happy, hopeful expression which always made her feel as if he was heaping coals ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... metaphysician. When she asked her mother who made God, a slap in the face demonstrated to her the limits of human inquiry. The natural instinct of the child over-rode the long travail of the race to conceive an abstract Deity, and Esther pictured God as a mammoth cloud. In early years Esther imagined that the "body" that was buried when a person died was the corpse decapitated and she often puzzled herself to think what was done with the isolated ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the door, and to permit the continuation of scholarship. How much more unselfish and ennobling a life than that of the feverish money-getter, with all his appliances of forge and factory, and export and import! I had found an answer to my yearnings and my unrest in this untiring devotion to abstract truth. ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... never cease without concessions upon both sides. We agree to this readily in the abstract, but we seldom do so when any given concession is in question. We are all for concession in the general, but for none in the particular, as people who say that they will retrench when they are living beyond their ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... before the Committee appointed to inquire into the Indian Currency, 1893." "Report of Committee appointed to inquire into the Indian Currency, 1893." "Indian Currency Correspondence between the Government of India and the Secretary of State, 1893." "Abstract of the Proceedings of the Council of the Governor-General of India, the Viceregal Lodge, ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... his letter on the strength of which Mr. Forsyth has condemned Cicero, not without abstract truth in his condemnation: "They, indeed, have consented"—that is the Salaminians—"but what will befall them if some such governor as Paulus should come here? And all this I have done for the sake of Brutus!" AEmilius Paulus was the Consul, ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... 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 of ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... tendency towards centralisation on the part of the Jerusalem priesthood beyond the presumption that the Priestiy Code must chronologically precede, not Deuteronomy merely, but also the prophets. For the sake of this presumption there is constructed a purely abstract (and as such perfectly irrefragable) possibility that furnishes a door of escape from the historical probability, which nevertheless it ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... he smiled in response to them—a smile of civility, but still a smile. It was so much gained for her that he had gone off into abstractions, that he was discoursing upon truth in personal relations, upon duty, the sacredness of love and marriage.... It is well known that these abstract propositions serve admirably as a beginning ... as ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... to rise above them into some more nebulous region in our search for the Absolute. Love, Light, and Spirit are for us names of God Himself. And observe that St. John does not, in applying these semi-abstract words to God, attenuate in the slightest degree His personality. God is Love, but He also exercises love. "God so loved the world." And He is not only the "white radiance" that "for ever shines"; He can "draw" us to Himself, and "send" His Son to ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... primary purpose is to convey an abstract truth, a something bigger and broader than the mere interesting events described, the illustrations add much to the meaning and purpose of the text. Here the artist shows not only the physical attributes of the real animal, but in a subtle way goes a step further and through the features ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... ascertain the oldest name on the list; the first that is really and clearly applicable, and we write all other names down as synonyms. In this volume a list of synonyms often accompanies the description; precedes it, showing, year by year, the history of the case; an abstract in fact of the title, as at last approved. The preparation of such an abstract is very troublesome, but is believed to be worth the trouble; must be made, indeed, if we are ever in our discussions to be sure ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride |
