"Adaptation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... being at the same time greatly shortened. The limbs are thus converted into efficient "flippers," adapting the animal for an active existence in the sea. The different joints of the backbone (vertebrae) also show the same adaptation to an aquatic mode of life, being hollowed out at both ends, like the biconcave vertebrae of Fishes. The spinal column in this way was endowed with the flexibility necessary for an animal intended to pass the greater part of its time in ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... ask oneself of this adaptation from the French is "Is it funny enough?" With so much being offered by the newsboy outside the Vaudeville that is not at all funny, it would be pleasant to find inside the doors a little relief ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various
... be complete until the knowledge of man is perfect; but we cannot approach the threshold of understanding without realizing that our national achievement has been the outcome of singular powers of assimilation, of adaptation to changing circumstances, and of elasticity of system. Change has been, and is, the breath of our existence and the condition of ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... virtually, as much an enemy of Ireland as England is. The Firm, comprising Great Britain and all its colonies and dependencies throughout the world, is known as John Bull & Co., and the distinctive sign of the house, in all its ramifications, is the Union Jack or some adaptation of the red cross of St. George to local predilections. As in ordinary mercantile transactions, a debt incurred by any branch of the establishment involves the responsibility of the whole, and can be levied for in London or Hokitika. This is the ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... need only notice that it inspired him to translate Plato's 'Symposium', a dialogue occupied almost entirely with theories about love. He was not, however, well equipped for this task. His version, or rather adaptation (for much is omitted and much is paraphrased), is fluent, but he had not enough Greek to reproduce the finer shades of the original, or, indeed, to avoid ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... reproduce in English the peculiar effects of their melodic artifices. But there is another side to the matter. At their worst, these Latin lyrics, moulded on a tune, degenerate into disjointed verbiage, sound and adaptation to song prevailing over sense and satisfaction to the mind. It must, however, be remembered that such lyrics, sometimes now almost unintelligible, have come down to us with a very mutilated text, after suffering ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... American is apt to wear abroad as well as at home. When he travels, he is wont to be in a hurry, and to examine curious cities as if he were making sharp bargains against time. In spite of the wonderful power of adaptation which makes him of all men the best cosmopolitan, he never is quite perfect in his assumption of another nationality, and he generally falls short of a thorough appreciation of its mirthful principle. If he emigrate ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... the last of the classical styles of antiquity, the Roman,—a style which, however, is rather an adaptation or amalgamation of other styles than an original and independent creation or development. The contrast is very great between the "lively Grecian," imaginative and idealistic in the highest degree—who seemed to have an innate genius for art and beauty, and who was always ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... hot. Think of pulling a person at the rate of five or six miles an hour in the sun of a hundred and twenty or thirty with your head exposed. Most of the coolies who work in the sun have nothing on their heads. It's either survival of the fittest or inheritance of acquired characteristics. Their adaptation to every kind of physical discomfort is certainly one of the wonders of the world. You ought to see the places where they lie down to go to sleep. They have it all over Napoleon. This is also the country of itinerant domesticity. ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... with "owl" because that was the pronunciation used at the time of the giving by the valued friend who acted as spokesman for his fellow-members, and who was himself the only non-American member of the said Cabinet. There is a horseman by Macmonnies, and a big bronze vase by Kemys, an adaptation or development of the pottery vases of the Southwestern Indians. Mixed with all of these are gifts from varied sources, ranging from a brazen Buddha sent me by the Dalai Lama and a wonderful psalter from the Emperor Menelik to a priceless ancient Samurai sword, coming from Japan ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... for in this case—though I'm not sure how close an analogy I can draw, being no gardener—is the gradual process of adaptation to environment, so that the plant takes on a hardier quality, at an unavoidable sacrifice in size of bloom but with a corresponding gain in sturdiness and ability to bear the chilling winds and the beating sunlight of outdoors. Great size in a flower never appealed to me anyhow. I like ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... and tender adaptation to our need in that feature of our Lord's character, which consists in his desiring and appreciating our love. He is not a distant, cold, omnipotence. He lavishes love on the world, but he is disappointed when the world does ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... velocities as that, for instance, of thought. But they were controlled by one still dwelling on Earth, who used material things, and the material that the Professor was using to hurl them upon their journey was light, the adaptation of which to this purpose he had learned at Saragossa. At the pace of light they were travelling towards ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... teachings are direct and effective. She has, besides, historical accuracy and dramatic action; and her twenty books for children have found welcome and entrance into the most exclusive of French homes. The publishers of this American adaptation take pleasure in introducing Madame Foa's work to American boys and girls, and in this Napoleonic renaissance are particularly favored in being able to reproduce her excellent story ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... duty incessantly for the seventy years or so allotted to man, is amazed at the precariousness of our existence. It seems indeed uncanny that so delicate a mechanism should function so regularly for so many years. The mysticism connected with this and other phenomena of adaptation would disappear if we would be certain that all cells are really immortal and that the fact which demands an explanation is not the continued activity but the cessation of activity in death. Thus we see that the idea of the ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... romance, shorter and longer, good, bad, and indifferent, are of immense bulk and doubtless excited imitation: but we cannot possibly deal with them here. A bare list would fill a chapter. But some work of more or less (generally less) originality, in at least adaptation, calls for a little individual notice: and some general characterisation may ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... Society's Journal. A Society Journal of a peculiar character, of which this is the Third Series and Third Volume. It is noticeable for Lord CATHCART's appeal for the wild birds, which, as addressed to farmers and farm-labourers and armed ploughboys, may be summed up by an adaptation of the refrain of the remonstrance—so frequently urged by one of Lieutenant COLE's funny figures—"Can't you let the birds alone?" Then Mr. HASTING "On Vermin," which doesn't sound nice, though better than ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 23, 1892 • Various
... imperfectly rounded at that, I should more nearly approach to accuracy. To make the perfect whole which the Creator had in His idea, the two halves must be united. And so I dignify the oldest of human institutions—marriage. I accord to it the very perfection of wisdom, beauty, utility, adaptation. I am aware that in so speaking I hold to an old-fashioned belief, and tread incontinently, not only on a notion afloat among some of the strong-minded of my sex at the present day, that this institution is nothing more nor less than an engine of selfish and despotic ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Spanish lake The most thriving branch of national industry (Smuggler) The record of our race is essentially unwritten Thirty thousand masses should be said for his soul Those who argue against a foregone conclusion Three or four hundred petty sovereigns (of Germany) Utter want of adaptation of his means to his ends While one's friends urge moderation Whole revenue was pledged to pay the ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... true that a man of Napoleon's truth of adaptation to the mind of the masses around him becomes not merely representative, but actually a monopolizer and usurper of other minds. Thus Mirabeau plagiarized every good thought, every good word, that was spoken in France. Dumont ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... that in no case have I endeavored to repeat the story in its exact original form. To have done so would have defeated the purpose in view; for without proper adaptation such stories are usually neither interesting nor intelligible to children. I have therefore recast and rearranged, using my own words, and adding here a touch of color and here a fanciful idea, as the narrative has seemed to permit or as my audience of school children ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... more harassed, for want of money, than the systematic economist, who supports a family on only six hundred a year. And the inspired command, "Owe no man any thing," can never be conscientiously observed, without a systematic adaptation ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... as though she were the poet herself. Then, quite naturally, this romance recalled to her the romance next door, so deliciously absorbing her waking and dreaming hours—the romance of her own Miss Princess. Miss Princess—Missy's more formal adaptation of Young Doc's soubriquet for Helen Greenleaf in the days of his romance—was the most beautiful heroine imaginable. And the Wedding was next week, and Missy was to walk first of all the six flower-girls, and the Pink Dress ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... Gallicanism, Josephism, and the Inquisition, she came to be reduced to a state of dependence, the more fatal and deplorable that the clergy were often instrumental in maintaining it. All these phenomena were simply an adaptation of Catholicism to a political system incompatible with it in its integrity; an artifice to accommodate the Church to the requirements of absolute government, and to furnish absolute princes with a resource which was elsewhere supplied by Protestantism. ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... friend. I was happy to see him. He may be considered now as the head of the religious party in the House of Commons—a powerful body which Wilberforce long commanded. It is a difficult situation, for the adaptation of religious motives to earthly policy is apt—among the infinite delusions of the human heart—to be a snare."[37] His letters to his eldest son, the young cavalry officer, on his first start in life, are much admired by Mr. Lockhart, but to me they read a little hard, a little worldly, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... from the French designs, which lie scattered on their tables. They are a very intelligent class, possessing considerable originality, and, what is even more important, thoroughly understanding the art of practical adaptation of costly designs to the necessities of the manufacture, without which the ingenious sketches of the French would be valueless. It is proper to add, that their powers of invention are steadily increasing year after year, and that the time is probably not remote when they ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... duties of aircraft increased, the Corps machines engaged in them needed protection and it was realized that the best method of protection was the development of the air offensive. This was rendered possible by the adaptation of the machine gun to the aeroplane. Early in 1915 the invention of the "synchronizing gear" enabled a machine gun to fire through the propeller, and by the end of 1915 fighting in the air became the general rule. The first squadron, No. 24, composed purely of ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... that man, after having satisfied his first longing for facts, wanted something fuller—some grouping, some adaptation to his capacity and experience, of the links of this vast chain of events which his sight could not take in. Thus he hoped to find in the historic recital examples which might support the moral truths of ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... character, as well as in intellectual originality and concentrated force of understanding, some of those who knew both tell us that Mr. Mill was inferior to his father. But who does not feel in the son the serious charm of a power of adaptation and pliableness which we can never associate with the hardy and more rigorous nature of the other? And it was just because he had this sensibility of the intellect, that the history of what it did for him is so edifying a performance for a ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... of this book is but a plaintive refrain wrung from the over-burdened song of my life; while the tides of feeling, winding down the lines, had their sources in as many broken upheavals of my own heart." A book, like an implement, must be judged by its adaptation to its special design, however unfit for any other end. This volume is designed to help Odd-Fellows in their search for the good things in life. There is need of something to break the spell of indifference that oftentimes binds us, and to open glimpses of better, sweeter, grander ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... Master-Smith' and 'Gertrude's Bird', must just remember that these are almost purely heathen traditions, in which the names alone are Christian; and if it be any consolation to any to know the fact, we may as well state at once that this adaptation of new names to old beliefs is not peculiar to the Norsemen, but is found in all the popular tales of Europe. Germany was full of them, and there St Peter often appears in a snappish ludicrous guise, which reminds the reader ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... M. Bayne entered from the Pittsburg districts, Pennsylvania. Mr. Errett was a veteran editor in the anti-slavery cause, and Mr. Bayne was recognized as a young man of superior ability, ready in debate and with special adaptation to parliamentary service.—John I. Mitchell, afterwards chosen senator, entered from the Lycoming district, and Edward Overton from the Bradford district.—General Harry White entered from the Armstrong district. He had been confined in Libby Prison for sixteen months during the war and being a ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... reason, had only known how to ridicule the generous and disinterested enthusiasms of other men, detecting at once their weak points and lack of adaptation to the reality of the moment.... What right had he to laugh at his mate who was a believer, dreaming, with the pure-mindedness of a child, of a free and happy humanity?... Aside from his stupid jeers, what could he oppose ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... as the will of God, nothing so adorable. In that will is bound up for you the noblest life, the fullest and freest expression of your individuality, the best adaptation and use of your talents, the greatest joy, the sweetest pleasures, the quietest rest, the purest delights in this world and pleasures forever at ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... Spain as that of Cateau Cambresis had been to France. He had spent his life in fighting with the spirit of the age—that invincible power of which he had not the faintest conception—while the utter want of adaptation of his means to his ends often bordered, not on the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... however, when there is no alternative; and the British sailor is, with all his faults, an ingenious fellow, not altogether devoid of the inventive faculty, and possessed of a pretty turn for adaptation; give him but the idea and he will generally find the means to ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the statues that adorned their fronts; the painter was still touching the external frescoes; and the scaffold of the architect was not in every instance withdrawn. Everywhere was the hum of art and artists. The Byzantine style of many of these buildings was novel to me in its modern adaptation, yet very effective. The delicate detail of ornament contrasted admirably with the broad fronts and noble facades which they adorned. A church with two very lofty towers of white marble, with their fretted cones relieved with cerulean blue, gleamed in the sun; and near it was ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... wonderful reflection that as we go back in animated nature from man to insects, we find self-conscious Intellect or Reason based on Reflection disappear, and Instinct taking its place. Yet Instinct in its marvelous results, such as ingenuity of adaptation, often far surpasses what semi-civilized man could do. Or it does the same things as man, only in an entirely different way which is not as yet understood. Only from time to time some one tells a wonderful story of a bird, a dog or a cat, ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... and Laura have slight literary value, The Scourge, while failing to score very high as a minor epic, yet has a certain crude, narrative vitality. And Dom Diego, Mirrha, Hiren, and Philos and Licia, by virtue of their charm, inventiveness, or skillful adaptation of minor epic conventions to their expressive needs, form a hierarchy of increasing literary value that raises them as a group well above the level of the ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... church plainly originated in a rude adaptation of the forest trees, with all their boughs, to a festal or solemn arcade; as the bands about the cleft pillars still indicate the green withes that tied them. No one can walk in a road cut through pine woods, without being struck with the architectural appearance of the grove, especially in winter, ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the leading performers were particular respecting the correct pencilling of their eyebrows, the effective corking of their cheeks, and other attributes of an actor's 'make-up.' Whenever an English play is wanted for adaptation to the Spanish stage, the manager—very naturally—'falls back upon' the Anglo-Saxon follower of the divine art of Apelles. Upon one occasion I am required to translate the famous farce of 'Box and Cox'—a farce entirely new to a Cuban audience and, consequently, a great success when ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... is secured that the second generation of the plant shall be as well or even better fitted for the struggle of life than the parent generation are so numerous and complicated that I cannot in this paper do more than allude to them; they are most completely seen in cross fertilization, and the adaptation of plant structures ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... l. 24. Peace begot Plenty. An adaptation of the wellknown saying which Puttenham in his Arte of English Poesie (ed. Arber, p. 217) attributes to Jean de Meung. ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... incorruptibility, are fitted to serve as money in, a degree unapproached by other kinds of merchandise. In short, the economists, instead of replying to the economic question put to them, have set themselves to the examination of a question of art. They have laid great stress on the mechanical adaptation of gold and silver for the purpose of money; but not one of them has seen or understood the economic reason which gave to the precious metals ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... C.J. Woodward, and recently presented to the Physical Society of London, is an adaptation of this experiment to the production of an oscillating motion by alternations in the internal and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... length of your fixed term. As for ministers swept away by a gust of passion, I can only recall the overthrow of Lord Palmerston in 1858 for being thought too subservient to France. For my own part, I have always thought that by its free play, its comparative fluidity, its rapid flexibility of adaptation, our cabinet system has most to say ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... horses, of rhinoceroses, both long and short limbed, of camels in great variety, including the giraffe-like type which was capable of browsing on the higher branches of trees, of small elephants, and of deer, which in adaptation to somewhat arid conditions imitated the antelopes ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... Many of the anti-slavery people turned their attention to India, and were supported by gentlemen of influence, military and mercantile, in efforts to rouse public interest in the resources of India, and the adaptation of these resources to English requirements, rendering the importation of commodities produced by slave labour unnecessary. George Thompson, Esq., who had been returned for the Tower Hamlets, one of the largest and most influential constituencies ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... and yet all done to conciliate English, or modern, Sympathy. This I sha'n't publish: so say (pray!) nothing of it at all—remember—only I shall print some Copies for you and one or two more: and you and Elizabeth will like it a great deal too much. There is really very great Skill in the Adaptation, and Remodelling of it. By the bye, would you translate Demonio, Lucifer, or Satan? One of the two I take. I cut out all the precioso very ingeniously: and give all the Mountain-moving, etc., in the second Act without Stage direction, so as it ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... all things, he would never have set foot within its walls; but circumstances are stronger than men, even though the latter be Russian czars. In one respect Peter set himself against circumstance, and built Russia a capital in a locality seemingly lacking in all natural adaptation ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... worst I do not mean any catastrophe of despair, any cosmic suicide, any world-wide unchaining of the brute that lies pent in man. I mean merely the peaceful, progressive, orderly triumph of l'homme sensuel moyen; the gradual adaptation of hopes and occupations to a purely terrestrial standard; the calculated pleasures of the cynic who is resolved to be ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... physical shelter, as in the case of those animals that carry their eggs attached in some way to their bodies. But, except at this lowest stage, the protection afforded to the young always involves some instinctive adaptation of the parent's behaviour. We may see this even among the fishes, some of which deposit their eggs in rude nests and watch over them, driving away creatures that might prey upon them. From this stage onwards protection ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... certain as that of a dog which finds a stranger in the house. And, finally, although there is in the transition from doubt to certainty a laceration of the heart, it is at least the laceration of a heart prepared. That preparation, that adaptation, so to speak, of her soul to the truth, Maud had been deprived of. The care taken by Madame Steno to strengthen the friendship between her and Alba had suppressed the slightest signs. Boleslas had no need to change his domestic life in order to see his mistress at ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... A great deal of apparent interest in herself, and deference to her opinions; a very little skilful flattery, too delicately administered for its hollowness to be perceived; a quick apprehension of what pleased and amused her, and a ready adaptation to her mood of the moment—these were Mr Welles' tactics with the heiress for whom he was angling. As to Phoebe, he simply let her alone. He soon saw that she was of no account in Rhoda's eyes, ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... all, the sandwort depends upon the service of insects for its fertilization, I do not know, but it certainly has no scarcity of such visitors. "Bees will soar for bloom high as the highest peak of Mansfield;" so runs an entry in my notebook, with a pardonable adaptation of Wordsworth's line; and I was glad to notice that even the splendid black-and-yellow butterfly (Turnus), which was often to be seen sucking honey from the fragrant orchids, did not disdain to sip also from the sandwort's cup. This large and elegant butterfly—our largest—is ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... A monograph upon parodies, a literary form widely cultivated in Hebrew, which was long a desideratum has recently been written by Dr. Israel Davidson ("Parody in Jewish Literature", New York, Columbia University Press, 1908). The Hebrew parody is distinguished particularly for its adaptation of the Talmudic language to modern customs and questions. It was made the vehicle of polemics and of ridicule, as in the case of Perl's pamphlet, or of satire on social conditions, as in the "Treatise of Commercial Men", which ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... fluids taken in at the mouth could trickle out at the neck, the opening being sufficient to admit a thin probe.[2] These slits are utilized in the developing embryo, one of them being devoted to an important duty, that of conversion into the external and middle ear. Thus the opening for hearing is an adaptation of what was once an opening for breathing. Occasionally an ear-like outgrowth appears on the neck, indicative of the attempt of a second slit to develop into an ear. The purpose of the gill slits is made more apparent by the presence in the embryo of gill arches of the blood-vessels, like ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... Are we unstrangulable, I ask you? Think on these things. I am shocked sometimes at the shape of my own fingers,—not for their resemblance to the ape tribe, (which is something,) but for the exquisite adaptation of them to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... period, once past, never returns. Don Quixote and Gulliver's Travels may be also mentioned here. It is true that they were not written for children, but so true and genuine are they, that the child enjoys them thoroughly, while the most mature find them a profitable study. This peculiarity of adaptation to all ages belongs to all the genuine myths of any nation, its best modern master being Hans Christian Andersen. It is the royal sign and seal of authority in stories. Ballad poetry belongs too to the beginning of this stage. Scott comes in later, but Tennyson ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... adaptation of tho old magic square, which amused the philosophers of old. A sketch of it appears in Albert Durer's painting of Melancholia. Sixteen discs or squares, numbered from 1 to 16, are placed indifferently on the table—or they may be in the fifteen box; and the puzzle ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... we even now, and capable of changing overnight, capable of infinite adaptation to circumstance; you live as readily on Pluto as on Mercury or Earth. Any place is a home-world to you. You can adapt yourselves to any condition. And—most dangerous to them—you can do it instantly. You are their most deadly enemies, and they realize it. They have no intelligent machines; ...
— The Last Evolution • John Wood Campbell
... primary notions, which it represents and excites us to combine,—even so I believe, that the notion of God is essential to the human mind; that it is called forth into distinct consciousness principally by the conscience, and auxiliarly by the manifest adaptation of means to ends in the outward creation. It is, therefore, evident to my reason, that the existence of God is absolutely and necessarily insusceptible of a scientific demonstration, and that Scripture has so ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... Lowland civilization, and methods of agriculture. While these changes at first were neither great nor extensive, yet they were sufficient to keep the country in a ferment or uproar. The change was largely in the manner of an experiment in order to find out the most profitable way of adaptation to the new regime. These experiments resulted in the unsettling of old manners, customs, and ideas, which caused discontent and misery among the people. The actual change was slow; the innovations, as a rule, began in those districts ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... demonstration of the adjustment of its inner terrestrial forces to those that are purely external; and much more does it show the adjustment of its internal to its external relations. There is a continuous adaptation of means to ends, of causes to effects, of adjustments to re-adjustments, in respect to the characteristics of the earth's surface—its physical configuration, the distribution of its fluids and solids, its fauna and flora, its hygrometric and thermometric conditions, its ocean, wind, and electro-magnetic ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... no criticism of his manner toward her," Stephen replied. "I'll say for him that he's a pastmaster at adaptation. I'll wager he's enjoying himself, too. It's a new experience ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... emblem of England itself. What seems new in it is chiefly a skilful and fortunate adaptation of what such a people as ourselves would destroy. The new things are based and supported on sturdy old things, and derive a massive strength from their deep and immemorial foundations, though with such limitations and impediments as only an Englishman could ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... Derivation: French, adaptation of the Iroquois word hiro, used to conclude a speech, and kou, an exclamation (Charlevoix). Hale gives as possible derivations ierokwa, the indeterminate form of the verb to smoke, signifying "they who smoke;" also the Cayuga form of bear, iakwai.[39] Mr. Hewitt[39] ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... —this adaptation of FitzGerald's lines ran through my mind as we passed from room to room and tower to tower of Fatehpur-Sikri. There is nothing to compare with it, except perhaps Pompeii. And in that comparison one realises how impossible ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... the lieutenant, "from the Arkansas to the Colorado, a distance of over 1200 miles, in its adaptation to agriculture, has peculiarities which must for ever stamp itself upon the population which inhabits it. All North Mexico, embracing New Mexico, Chihuahua, Sonora, and the Californias, as far north as the Sacramento, is, as far as the best information ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... you call a free and easy translation," said Peterson, laughing. "Mrs. Rolleston ought to give you something for your new and original adaptation of Virgil." ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... officially stated yesterday that Dr. Herbert William Moxon, the son of a former prominent Unionist in West Derbyshire, had consented to address a meeting of Liberals with a view to his adaptation as Liberal candidate ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... narration delivered by an evangelist, solo parts for the principal characters, arias, choruses, double choruses, and chorales, the congregation joining in the latter, in which the composer not only reveals an astonishing dramatic power in the expression of sentiment and the adaptation of his music to the feeling and situation of the characters, but also a depth and accuracy of musical skill and invention which have been the despair of composers from ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... of Anglo-Saxon prose, nearly all of it translation or adaptation of Latin works, has come down to us under the name of King Alfred. A peculiar interest attaches to these works. They belong to a period when the history of England depended more than at any other time upon the ability and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... of primary-school age points the way for both teacher and mother by her adaptation and imitation of home activities in her play. In primary grades girls are approaching the height of the doll interest, which Hall and others place at eight or nine years. A doll's house, therefore, may be made ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... some of the muscular movements involved in the instincts—such, for example, as the bird's nest-building—are so complex and so finely adjusted to an end, that it is straining belief to suppose that they could have arisen gradually by reflex adaptation alone. There is also a further difficulty with the reflex theory which has seemed insurmountable to many of the ablest psychologists of animal life; the difficulty, namely, that many of the instincts require the action of a great many muscles at the same time, so acting in "correlation" with ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... by which doubtless were intended the wolds. A writer in the Archaeological Journal (June, 1846) says "the whole country of the Coritani (i.e. Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, &c.) was then, and long after, a dense forest." The name "Coritani," or more properly Coitani, is the Roman adaptation of the British "Coed," a wood, which still survives in Wales in such place-names as "Coed Coch," the red wood, "Bettws y Coed," the chapel in the wood, &c. This was their distinguishing characteristic to the Roman, they ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... you really deserve—Since Mr George Combe has clearly shown in his admirable work "On the Constitution of Man, and its adaptation to the world around him," that ignorance is a statutable crime before Nature, and punishable, and punished by the laws of Providence,—you deserve, I say, unless you contrive to make Mr H. your substitute, which I think would be just, yourself to be the subject of the nocturnal visit of a vampyr. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... master of the central idea of the "Origin" was, "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!" I suppose that Columbus' companions said much the same when he made the egg stand on end. The facts of variability, of the struggle for existence, of adaptation to conditions, were notorious enough; but none of us had suspected that the road to the heart of the species problem lay through them, until Darwin and Wallace dispelled the darkness, and the beacon-fire of the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... Population" in the autumn of 1838. The necessary result of unrestricted multiplication is competition for the means of existence. The success of one competitor involves the failure of the rest, that is, their extinction; and this "selection" is dependent on the better adaptation of the successful competitor to the conditions of the competition. Variation occurs under natural, no less than under artificial, conditions. Unrestricted multiplication implies the competition of varieties and the selection of those which are relatively best ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... crab here, too, that could teach even the wisest, sun-employing pig some tricks in economics. He is the last word in adaptation to environment, with an uncanny knowledge that makes the uninformed look askance at the tale-teller. These crabs climb cocoanut-trees to procure their favorite food. They dote on cocoanuts, the ripe, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... back by the Duke of Edinburgh from China and Japan is of the usual character imported, and the remarks hereafter made on Indian or Bombay furniture apply equally to this adaptation of Chinese detail ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... achievement was to show the utter insignificance in amount of these changes produced by direct adaptation, the immensely greater mass of changes being produced by internal molecular accidents, of which we know nothing. His next achievement was to define the true problem with which we have to deal when we study the effects of the visible environment on the animal. That ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... through a daily routine that included household cares, production or service work, the conduct of neighborhood affairs, the maintenance of normal livelihood activities, the upbringing of the new generation and perhaps most important of all, adaptation to a ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... device which had accompanied the seeming miracle was an adaptation of the cathode tube, whose rays are identical with the beta rays of the atom and consist of a stream of negatively charged particles moving at the velocity of light—186,000 miles a second. These rays, in theory, have the power to combine with the positively ...
— Spawn of the Comet • Harold Thompson Rich
... mistake the true nature and function of life, which is Will to Power...Life is ESSENTIALLY appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of its own forms, incorporation and at least, putting it mildest, exploitation." Adaptation is merely a secondary activity, a mere re-activity ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... suggested this system, an adaptation, he says, from the usual one of numbering stones for a bit of masonry. It will prevent confusion, for the perspective will be different when the leaves have fallen, and as we lift the bushes, each one will go to its place, and we shall not lose a year's growth, ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... the material world, carried put in a great variety of ways; in the infinite variety, and yet extensive and convenient classification, of objects; human languages; moral agency of intelligent beings, &c. (3.) The wisdom of God, as exhibited in his Word; First, its perfect adaptation to the wants of the world; its variety of authorship, style, matter, manner, &c.; Second, the truths revealed; particularly the ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... frontispiece of the edition of 1731, here reproduced, is from the pencil of Hogarth; and is the first trace of a connexion between Fielding and the painter who was to be honoured so frequently in his pages. An adaptation from Moliere, produced in 1733, under the title of the Miser, won from Voltaire the praise of having added to the original "quelques beautes de dialogue particulieres a sa [Fielding's] nation." ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... that the only encouragement given to the twelve, who might well be appalled at the prospect of standing before Gentile kings. Jesus seems to discern how they shrank as they listened, at the thought of having to bear 'testimony' before exalted personages, and, with beautiful adaptation to their weakness, He interjects a great promise, which, for the first time, presents the divine Spirit as dwelling in the disciples' spirits. The occasion of the dawning of that great Christian thought is very noteworthy, and not less so is the designation of the Spirit ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the foregoing, and especially incumbent on the finest and highest women, is to improve the common standard of good manners. This is a region of influence of momentous importance, and for which the most honored and beloved women have a pre-eminent adaptation by their beauty, grace, docility, and sympathetic ease of self-sacrifice. To associate with a quick-witted woman is an education. The last words of Madame Pompadour, addressed to her withdrawing confessor, just before her final breath, ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... campaigns had been mastered by our navy by the time of the Trafalgar campaign. The effect of those lessons showed itself in our ship-building policy, and has been placed on permanent record in the history of maritime achievement and of the adaptation of ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... know her. Possibly you may not yourself feel that you altogether understand your mother? She has had many demands upon her powers of adaptation. I should imagine her not one who would adapt herself easily, yet, once she had recognized a necessity of that sort, I believe she would fit herself to its conditions with an exacting thoroughness which in time would become almost, one might say, a second, an external self. ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... Walk. In man and his allies, the vertebrates, the process of walking is a most difficult and apparently dangerous feat. To describe the mechanics of walking, the wonderful adaptation of the muscles and bones for the performance of this most ordinary action of life, would require a volume. The process is scarcely less complex in insects. Lyonnet found 3,993 muscles in a caterpillar, and while a large proportion ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... assimilation is one of their most remarkable gifts. As M. Leroy-Beaulieu shows by many illustrations, they are apt in most Western nations even to exaggerate the national characteristics, though they usually combine with them a certain flexibility of adaptation and a certain cosmopolitanism of view which is ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... spiritual vision. Christianity is the great sum resulting from the antagonism of the finite and the infinite, the human and divine. The fall and redemption, separation and reunion, are the great elements from which we behold Christianity arise. Of all kinds of religion this alone can claim universal adaptation and rightful supremacy. Christ was the revelator of a system more advanced than Polytheism or Judaism. Only by viewing his religion in the simple light in which he places it can the mind find safety ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... the most extraordinary artfulness, cunning and ingenuity in the discovery, adaptation and invention of "cover." The great desideratum, of course, was to hide where we could see without being seen, to shoot from where there was least danger of ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey
... belonged to the British Association they would have said—No! No! dear friends; it is not in the itinerary: if you want nuts, you must climb, as we do. The public has referred the question to Time: the procedure of this great king I venture to describe, from precedents, by an adaptation of some smart anapaestic tetrameters—your anapaest is the foot for satire to halt on, both in Greek and English—which I read about twenty years ago, and with the point of which I was much tickled. Poetasters were laughed at; but Mr. Slum, whom I employed—Mr. Charles Dickens obliged me with his ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... to manhood, they were inseparable. Mutual adaptation overcame the great differences which originally marked their characters, until at last their idiosyncrasies fitted into each other like the artfully-carved pieces of wood which compose the picture-puzzles ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... embarrassed Butler, provided that he could detect the sincerity; for where sincerity is incompetence may be forgiven; but the incompetence must not be so great as to obscure the artist's meaning. At Rossura the sincerity is obvious, and the building is so perfect an adaptation of the means to the end that there is no ...
— The Samuel Butler Collection - at Saint John's College Cambridge • Henry Festing Jones
... secretion. One reason for this must be evident, i.e., that being cellular elements, they could not pass through the vessel walls and be absorbed into the blood current, and if they could, by some special adaptation, get into the blood current, there is no conceivable action which they could perform in the body. We must then look upon the internal secretion as composed of the liquid elements of ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... at Oxford in 1848. Among his most popular operas are Guy Mannering and The Kniqht of Snowdon] happens to find the notes, or some lark teaches Stephens [Catherine (1794-1882): a vocalist and actress who created Susanna in the Marriage of Figaro, and various parts in adaptation of Scott.] to warble the air—we will risk our credit, and the taste of the Lady of the Lute, by preserving the verses, simple and even rude as ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... of labour is of course always determined within certain limits, but much may and could be done by pursuing from the beginning a right method in educating the child to develop its power of self-adaptation to the needs ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... usually in the form of a parallelogram, with a seat for the judges at one end, and in their adaptation of this form of building, the early Christians devoted this place to the purposes of an altar. This, by an easy and natural transition, is thought to have given rise to the formation of the semi-circular recess at one ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... treatment may not be prescribed for all. In our case, therefore, it remains to consider how best to adapt this country and ourselves to the unforeseeable,—the navigation of uncharted waters; and this adaptation cannot be considered hi any correct and helpful, because scientific, spirit, unless the cause of change is located. Surface manifestations are, in and of themselves, merely deceptive. A physician, diagnosing the chances of ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams
... the evening, also,—the leisure hour of the day. But, alas! our houses are not built with an adaptation to this subject. They are seldom made to look toward the sunset. A careful inquiry and close observation, such as have been called for in preparation of this paper, have developed the fact that not a single house in this town faces the sunset! There ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various |
