"Approximation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when I met them on the stage, were a revelation to me. Paint and powder though I knew their appearance to consist of chiefly, yet in that hot atmosphere of the theatre, under that artificial glare, it seemed fit and fascinating. The close approximation to so much bare flesh, its curious, subtle odour was almost intoxicating. Dr. Johnson's excuse to Garrick for the rarity of his visits to the theatre recurred to ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... state of the harbor, and the tide having now ebbed a little way, the boat could not get close either to quay or shore. Six of the crew were on board, seated on the thwarts with their oars shipped, for Peter had insisted on a certain approximation to man-of-war manners and discipline for the evening, or at least until they got to the fishing-ground. The shore itself formed one side of the harbor, and sloped down into it, and on the sand stood Malcolm with a young woman, whom Clementina recognized at once ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... hitherto an unknown man. Better were it that mere earthly historians should lower such pretensions, more suitable for omniscience than for human science, and aiming only at some picture of the things acted, which picture itself will be a poor approximation, leave the inscrutable purport of them an acknowledged secret—or at most, in reverent faith, pause over the mysterious vestiges of Him whose path is in the great deep of Time, whom History indeed reveals, but only all History and in Eternity ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... noted in the position of the great pyramid (as of all the pyramids) is that the sides are carefully oriented. This, like the approximation to a particular latitude, must be regarded as an astronomical rather than a geographical relation. The accuracy with which the orientation has been effected will serve to show how far the builders had ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... far more pleasing and interesting forms of this moral malady than that which I have been depicting: I have spoken of the effect of intellectual culture on proud natures; but it will show to greater advantage, yet with as little approximation to religious faith, in amiable and unaffected minds. Observe, Gentlemen, the heresy, as it may be called, of which I speak, is the substitution of a moral sense or taste for conscience in the true meaning of the word; now this error may be the foundation of a character ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... into higher, and taking precedence of the higher in their appearance in point of time. If such be not the case,—if fish made their first appearance, not in their least perfect, but in their most perfect state,—not in their nearest approximation to the worm, but in their nearest approximation to the reptile,—there is no room for progression, and the argument falls. Now, it is a geological fact, that it is fish of the higher orders that appear first on the stage, and that they ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... the thought was a natural one. And here was a gulf between them as deep and wide as that between Lazarus and Dives. Would it ever be bridged over? This thought took possession of the doctor's mind, and he imagined all sorts of ways of effecting some experimental approximation between Maurice and Euthymia. From this delicate subject he glanced off to certain general considerations suggested by the extraordinary history he had been reading. He began by speculating as to the possibility of the personal presence ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... humour, but it was not his dominant gift, as it was hers. Again, his knowledge of the life and social ways of the class to which he nominally belonged, does not seem to have been intimate. Crabbe could not have written prose fiction with any approximation to the manners of real life. His characters would have certainly thou'ed and thee'ed one another as they do in his verse, and a clergyman would always have ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... the synoptic gospels drew their materials, that it explains all the phenomena of their mutual relation to each other, it is, nevertheless, more satisfactory than any other that has been proposed, and may be regarded as a near approximation to the ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... highly inadequate rendering of the part of the Financier. I am the thin and shadowy approximation to a Capitalist. . . . I could only manage until very lately to keep this paper in existence at all, by earning the money in the open market; and more especially in that busy and happy market where corpses are sold in ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the picture shows us an irresistible approximation to an unwelcome goal: 'Another shall carry thee whither ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... "our children;" but when children ask for bread, we are not to give a stone. Is it because the natural resistance of things, and the various mutations of time, hinders our government, or any scheme of government, from being any more than a sort of approximation to the right, is it therefore that the colonies are to recede from it infinitely? When this child of ours wishes to assimilate to its parent, and to reflect with a true filial resemblance the beauteous countenance of British liberty, are we to turn to them the shameful ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... partial decomposition, but the difficulties which he encountered in making the experiments, on the results of which his opinion rests, were so great that he himself accords to the numbers obtained by him only the value of a rough approximation. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... Society commonly known as the Ku-Klux-Klan, has no such name among its members. That is an approximation in letters and sound to the challenging signal of the Order. For instance, when a Brother approaches the spot where a band is assembled, the sentinels, always concealed, challenge him by bringing their ...
— The Oaths, Signs, Ceremonies and Objects of the Ku-Klux-Klan. - A Full Expose. By A Late Member • Anonymous
... the human: in the case of these the human resemblance had greatly increased: while their owners had sunk towards them, they had risen towards their owners. But the conditions of subterranean life being equally unnatural for both, while the goblins were worse, the creatures had not improved by the approximation, and its result would have appeared far more ludicrous than consoling to the warmest lover of animal nature. I shall now explain how it was that just then these animals began to show themselves ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... cold. In recent years, the theory universally accepted has been that the supply of heat is kept up by the continual contraction of the sun, by mutual gravitation of its parts as it cools off. This theory has the advantage of enabling us to calculate, with some approximation to exactness, at what rate the sun must be contracting in order to keep up the supply of heat which it radiates. On this theory, it must, ten millions of years ago, have had twice its present diameter, while less than ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... near Cowes we are delighted with a variety of striking objects: The chaste and characteristic seat of Norris, the residence of Lord Henry Seymour, massive in its construction, and remarkable for the simplicity of its style and close approximation to the ancient castle. On the brow of the hill the picturesque towers of East Cowes Castle rise from a surrounding grove, and present a very beautiful appearance, which is materially increased upon nearer inspection by the rapid spread of the deep-hued ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... man, for instance, exclusively of what it connotes in common with animal, also connotes rationality, and at least some approximation to that external form which we all know, but which as we have no name for it considered in itself, we are content to call the human. The Differentia, or specific difference, therefore, of man, as referred to the genus animal, is that outward form and the possession of reason. ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... more to the security of the government than an approximation to the divine standard of rewards, and if all then recognized and obeyed the law of stewardship nearly all the complaint that would still exist would be silenced by the volunteer service rendered by the fortunate ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... the bodies, but it also indicates the reference-bodies or systems of coordinates, permissible in mechanics, which can be used in mechanical description. The visible fixed stars are bodies for which the law of inertia certainly holds to a high degree of approximation. Now if we use a system of co-ordinates which is rigidly attached to the earth, then, relative to this system, every fixed star describes a circle of immense radius in the course of an astronomical day, a result which is opposed to the statement ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... result can be obtained with little difficulty in narrow channels, as is done in most of the other works for the defence of New York, the works for Boston, Newport, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans, &c., and an approximation to it is not incompatible with the defence of the broader estuaries, ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... long irregular row, similar to that of Hano (Pl. XVIII). A portion of an L-shaped cluster west of this row, and a small row near it parallel to the main building, form a rude approximation to the inclosed court arrangement. The terracing here, however, is not always on the court side, whereas in ancient examples such arrangement was an essential defensive feature, as the court furnished the only approach to upper terraces. In all of these villages there is a ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... already stated that I kept my longitude, at least, mostly by intuition. A rotator log always towed astern, but so much has to be allowed for currents and for drift, which the log never shows, that it is only an approximation, after all, to be corrected by one's own judgment from data of a thousand voyages; and even then the master of the ship, if he be wise, cries out for ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... goeth.' And even those who themselves possess it know not, nor shall know, through the ages of a progressive approximation to the ever-approached and never-attained perfection. 'This spake He of the Holy Ghost, which they that believe on Him should receive.' Trust Christ, and 'the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus shall make you free from the law of sin ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... could discover that the person with whom Hayraddin was now conversing was one of his own tribe, and at the same time he perceived, to his great disappointment, that no approximation could enable him to comprehend their language, which was totally unknown to him. They laughed much, and as Hayraddin made a sign of skipping about, and ended by rubbing his shoulder with his hand, Durward had no ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... is well known. The simplest physical peculiarity is mostly reproduced. I know a case of a man whose wife has the lobe of one of her ears a little flattened. An ordinary observer might scarcely notice it, and yet every one of her children has an approximation to the same peculiarity to some extent. If you look at the other extreme, too, the gravest diseases, such as gout, scrofula, and consumption, may be handed down with just the same certainty and persistence as we noticed in the perpetuation ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... was visible, besides the village mentioned, was a sandy tract of ground, the maritime plain, which extended in breadth from the sea-shore to some brown-looking hills in the background, from a few hundred yards to one or two miles distant; and hills and plains—for I could, by my close approximation to them, only see the brown folds of the hills near the base—were alike almost destitute of any vegetation; whilst not one animal or any other ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... methods of thinking, but his point of view in general was distinctly Jewish. He gathered together all that was best in the earlier teachings of his race. In many ways he represents an advance beyond all that had gone before and a close approximation to the spirit and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. The God of his faith was omnipotent, majestic, omniscient, just, and merciful. He was the God of all mankind, although it was through Israel that he especially revealed ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... interesting essays we may be permitted to quote a few of Mr. Mill's admissions, which, taken together, almost amount to a confession of faith in the Christian system, and which leave upon the mind the impression that this painful groping of an earnest inquirer after the truth, and the closer approximation he continually made to Christian dogma, would have resulted, had he lived longer, in his adoption of that faith as offering the hypothesis that best explains the perplexing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... taking up his abode in the country, the first thing he had made was a full hunting-suit in the most approved fashion, and this costume he would wear upon all occasions, even when he came up to Paris. He never attained any nearer approximation to a sportsman's character. One day he went out shooting with a friend. A flock of partridges rose ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... business, and showing neither by look nor tone that he had sympathy with the trouble she and her parents were in, by his very reticence revealed it. His manner was the colder that he was studiously avoiding the least approximation to remark on the conduct or character of the youth—an abstinence which, however, had a chilling and hopeless effect upon the ardent mind of the sister. At last, when she had given him her father's ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... and inviting the nasturtium flowers creeping over the porch and low-thatched roof to lift up their flame-coloured heads once more. The rooks were cawing with many-voiced monotony, apparently—by a remarkable approximation to human intelligence—finding great conversational resources in the change of weather. The mossy turf, studded with the broad blades of marsh-loving plants, told that Mr. Bates's nest was rather damp in the best of weather; ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... higher female deities. The new moon behind her head, an old helmet upon it, a diadem of accidental dewdrops round her brow, would have been adjuncts sufficient to strike the note of Artemis, Athena, or Hera respectively, with as close an approximation to the antique as that which passes muster on many ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... considerably by working in the lighter shades in silk: any representation of water or of painted glass, should be worked in the same material. The intention of the fair worker should be to give to her performance as near an approximation to oil ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous
... Africa, while the United States grew as we have seen. The race is still, in a sense, neck-and-neck, and the English-speakers together possess nearly half the globe. The world's recent rate of progress would have been impossible without this approximation to a universal language. The causes that checkmated the Continental powers have ceased to exist. Many millions of men whose principal thought had been to destroy other members of the race became ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... its proper place will be shown how you may easily calculate and measure degrees in work of this kind. Fig. 12 shows an approximation to the right angle. B, B (Fig. 11) should be a pair of wooden pegs, driven into the wooden block on each side of the metal piece. The teeth of the saw rest against the pegs so that they serve as a guide or a gage, and the teeth of the saw, therefore, project over the inclined ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... for the total loss to Japanese trade, various authorities have settled upon $50,000,000, which we may accept as a close approximation. At any rate the pressure was great enough to impel the Japanese merchants of Peking and Tientsin, with apparent ruin staring them in the face, to appeal to their home government for protection. They insisted that the boycott should be made ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... left to infer the date of Papias entirely from the notices of his friends and contemporaries; but these will assist us to a very fair approximation. (1) He was a hearer of at least two personal disciples of Christ, Aristion and the Presbyter John. If we suppose that they were among the youngest disciples of our Lord, and lived to old age, we shall be doing ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... his various new designs, and in it he anticipated many advances in electrical science and in mechanical devices, which have made the civilization of our day so remarkable. I recall distinctly as a boy his ingenious approximation to the telephone, and even the recent advances in wireless telegraphy, which has been the instrumentality by which my own researches in the field of interplanetary telegraphy have been prosecuted, had ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... rough count—the first ever made—of the elk in and around the Yellowstone Park, revealed the real number of that largest contingent. By taking those results, and Mr. Seton's figures for elk outside the United States, we obtain the following very close approximation of the wild elk alive in ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... irregular pieces of land only approximately. He never fully grasped the idea of the perpendicular as the true index of measurement for the triangle, but based his calculations upon measurements of the actual side of that figure. Nevertheless, he had learned to square the circle with a close approximation to the truth, and, in general, his measurement sufficed for all his practical needs. Just how much of the geometrical knowledge which added to the fame of Thales was borrowed directly from the Egyptians, and how much he actually created we cannot ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Prussia. A Customs-Parliament was established for the whole of Germany, which, it was hoped, would be the precursor of a National Assembly uniting the North and the South of the Main. But in spite of this military and commercial approximation, the progress towards union was neither so rapid nor so smooth as the patriots of the North could desire. There was much in the harshness and self-assertion of the Prussian character that repelled the less disciplined communities of the South. Ultramontanism was strong in Bavaria; and throughout ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... studying the girls for their individual peculiarities of style. Each one of the costumes she made was going to be for a particular girl, suited, without losing its place in the general plan, to the enhancement of her special approximation to beauty. ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... knowledge was an important contribution towards fixing the time of the departure. It told the day. The hour was of less importance to our plans; though to that, by a further process of reasoning, we were enabled to make a very near approximation. Holt must have killed the horse before going off; and the act, as both of us believed, could not have been accomplished at a very early hour. As far as the sign enabled us to tell, not more than four hours ago; and perhaps about two, before the time of my first arrival in the clearing. ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... is no doubt the motive for the proceeding, may it not arise from the helplessness of their state in such rigorous seasons; as men crowd together, when under great calamities, though they know not why. Perhaps approximation may dispel some degree of cold, and a crowd may make each individual appear safer from the ravages of birds of prey ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... kings themselves they leave on us, ill-known as their characters and actions are, a clear impression of approximation to the traditional type of the Greek of the Roman age and since. As a dynasty they seem to have been quickly spoilt by power, to have been ambitious but easily contented with the show and surface of success, to have been incapable and contemptuous of thorough organization, and to ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... tropics, or limits widely separated. This intertropical region may, and generally does, cover a number of years; and, therefore, it is hard to say, even for an assigned case, by any tolerable approximation, at what precise era it would be reasonable to describe the individual as having ceased to be a boy, and as having attained his inauguration as a man. Physically, we know that there is a very large latitude of differences, in the periods of human maturity, not merely between individual and individual, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... generative system. The lowest of the mammalia—the Monotremata—in common with birds, have oviducts which towards their lower extremities are dilated into cavities severally performing in an imperfect way the function of a uterus. "In the Marsupialia, there is a closer approximation of the two lateral sets of organs on the median line; for the oviducts converge towards one another and meet (without coalescing) on the median line; so that their uterine dilatations are in contact with each other, forming a true 'double ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... book, each text page contained several types of secondary material printed in all four margins. The HTML version of this e-text offers a closer approximation ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... astronomical observations made with a view to fixing the length of the year. The King tells one man to go to the east and another to the west, to observe the culmination and transit of certain stars. As a result he says they will find that the year consists of 366 days, a close approximation for that epoch. The absurdity of this style, which attributes omniscience to the prince and leaves to his agents nothing but the task of verification, should not be allowed to detract from the credit due to their observations. The result ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... nowhere else in the world is so abrupt and great an uplift from so low a base. The marshes and forests of the upper Kuskokwim, from which these mountains rise, cannot be more than one thousand five hundred feet above the sea. The rough approximation by the author's aneroid in the journey from the Tanana to the Kuskokwim would indicate a still lower level—would make this wide plain little more than one thousand feet high. And they rise sheer, ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... statement really gives the mind no definite resting-place and no sure conclusion. A true discussion of synonyms is definition by comparison, and for this there must be something definite with which to compare. When the standard is settled, approximation or differentiation can be determined with clearness and certainty. It is not enough to tell something about each word. The thing to tell is how each word is related to others of that particular group. When a word has more than one prominent meaning, the synonyms for one signification ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... should taper a little farther than the middle of the trunk, and be marked, especially in the back and loins, by the approximation of the hips. ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... description of the several species of the genus Galathea, a peculiar difficulty appears to arise, originating in the affinity which they bear to each other. So close, in fact, is the approximation, that the descriptions of the best writers will scarcely avail for the distinction of the individual species without the assistance of figures. This arises from the fact that the general characters, upon which the descriptions are based, ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... Sundays, of something less lugubrious. Certain congregations hate hymns: they consider them carnal and uninspired. As for organ-music in a church, that would be praising God by machinery, a preposterous and intolerable approximation to Popery. Not long ago, a poor crofter in a Hebridean township, came to his minister, requesting that good man's offices for the christening of a child. The crofter in question was the possessor of an asthmatic old concertina, and the clergyman, before the rite of admission to the ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... condition prevails we have freedom of tone, and the inflation of all other cavities. And not only this; it also enables us to remove all restraint or interference from the parts above the larynx, and especially from the intrinsic and extrinsic muscles of the throat. This automatic adjustment, approximation of the breath bands and inflation of the ventricles, gives us a yet more important condition, namely, automatic breath control; this is beyond question the most important of all problems solved for the singer through this system ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer
... prodigiously successful. Nothing could be worse in point of tactics than renewing this contest, neither party having, in fact, a good case. Parliament is going to separate soon, and the cholera will accelerate the prorogation; not a step has been made towards an approximation between the rival parties, who appear to be animated against each other with unabated virulence. The moderate Tories talk of their desire to see the Government discard their Radical friends, but the great body give them no encouragement to do so by evincing any diminished hostility to ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... moiety of the representative number, and where such moiety exceeds 30,000—a question on which a diversity of opinion has existed from the foundation of the Government. The provision recommends itself from its nearer approximation to equality than would be found in the application of a common and simple divisor to the entire population of each State, and corrects in a great degree those inequalities which are destined at the recurrence of each succeeding census so ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... and perhaps his nature; and such light we may hope to obtain when the philosophy of zoology shall have been studied as it deserves. Perhaps some such diagram as the one given on the next page will be found to be an approximation to the expression of the merely natural or secular grade of man in comparison with ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... included the present Morocco and Algeria). We also find them wandering eastwards, and both the east and west coasts of the central Asian sea were peopled by them. Bands of them ultimately moved still further east, and the nearest approximation to the type of this race is to-day to be found in the inland Chinese. A curious freak of destiny must be recorded about one of their western offshoots. Dominated all through the centuries by their more powerful Toltec neighbours, it ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... This question has been answered by the well known experiments of Jacobi, Dub, Mueller, Weber, and others. To get an absolutely constant magnetic moment, is not possible, but between certain limits we can get a very near approximation ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... derived from observation of the manifested action of God and the Soul, and from a wise analogy. It is the intellectual guide which the religious sentiment needs. The true religious philosophy of an imperfect being, is not a system of creed, but, as SOCRATES thought, an infinite search or approximation. Philosophy is that intellectual and moral progress, which the religious sentiment ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... success.(509) And so, too, the christian care of the poor, even were it carried to the height of the Gospel counsels (Luke, 3:11), would be no direct obstacle in the way of the development of a nation's public economy, provided it were given, and accepted, only as christian benevolence. Every approximation towards a community of goods should be effected by the love of the rich for the poor, not by the hatred of the poor for the rich. If all men were true Christians, a community of goods might exist without danger. But then, also, the institution of private property would have no ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... that vile market; but the greater number of the slaves go to Kilwa. We did not see much evidence of a wish to barter. Some ivory was offered for sale; but the chief traffic was in human chattels. Would that we could give a comprehensive account of the horrors of the slave-trade, with an approximation to the number of lives it yearly destroys! for we feel sure that were even half the truth told and recognized, the feelings of men would be so thoroughly roused, that this devilish traffic in human flesh ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... profound, the heart-moving significance of this wonderful picture. It is, in truth, a fearful approximation of the most opposite things; the mournful helplessness, suffering, and degradation of human nature, the unavailing pity, are placed in immediate contrast with spiritual light, life, hope—nay, the very ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... perceptible to the Eugenic eye even a generation before. But who would perform that illegal operation: the stopping of Stevenson? Intercepting a letter bursting with good news, confiscating a hamper full of presents and prizes, pouring torrents of intoxicating wine into the sea, all this is a faint approximation for the Eugenic inaction of the ancestors of Stevenson. This, however, is not the essential point; with Stevenson it is not merely a case of the pleasure we get, but of the pleasure he got. If he ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... been made to understand the nature of a general definition, he answers in the spirit of a Greek gentleman, and in the words of a poet, 'that virtue is to delight in things honourable, and to have the power of getting them.' This is a nearer approximation than he has yet made to a complete definition, and, regarded as a piece of proverbial or popular morality, is not far from the truth. But the objection is urged, 'that the honourable is the good,' and as every one equally desires the good, the point of the definition ...
— Meno • Plato
... supervision of the directors of the New Mausoleum movement, that prove that the conditions of desiccation can be controlled and that decomposition can be prevented, that where it has begun it can be stayed, and that prolonged preservation, with a fair approximation to the appearance in life, can be made sure for the recognition of absent friends, for transportation or the furtherance ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... some quarrels with its publisher and virtual editor. But he could not fail to be introduced to a man whose tastes and principles were so closely allied to his own. A year after the appearance of Peter's Letters, Lockhart married, on 29th April 1820 (a perilous approximation to the unlucky month of May), Sophia Scott, the Duke of Buccleuch's "Little Jacobite," the most like her father of all his children. Every reader of the Life knows the delightful pictures, enough for interest and ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... 'with his costive countenances, to wry a sorrowing soul out of her anguish, or by defacing the divine denotement of destinate dignity (daignely described in the face humane and no other) to reinstamp the Paradice-plotted similitude with a novel and naughty approximation (not in the first intention) to those abhorred and ugly God-forbidden correspondences, with flouting Apes' jeering gibberings, and Babion babbling-like, to hoot out of countenance all modest measure, as if our sins were not sufficing to stoop our backs without He wresting and crooking ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... capacity. "All culture begins with private men and spreads outward from them. Simply through the efforts of persons of enlarged inclinations, who are capable of grasping the ideal of a future better condition, is the gradual approximation of human nature to its end possible. Rulers are simply interested in such training as will make their subjects better tools for their own intentions." Even the subsidy by rulers of privately conducted schools must be carefully safeguarded. For the rulers' interest in the ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... the ruins enabled him to produce a restoration, which is given in his report, and of whose plate Fig. 37 is a copy. It is an interesting work, considered as a restoration, which can only claim to be an approximation. It will be noticed that three passage-ways were left open into the court, although the ground plan shows but one. In the Yucatan edifices, as the House of the Nuns at Uxmal, there is usually an arched ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... been surprised that all this time we have had so little to say of the time-honored "parts of speech." The reason for this is not far to seek. Our conventional classification of words into parts of speech is only a vague, wavering approximation to a consistently worked out inventory of experience. We imagine, to begin with, that all "verbs" are inherently concerned with action as such, that a "noun" is the name of some definite object or personality ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... numerical results are embodied in a table which appears in the Census Enumeration Abstract for 1841 (Preface, pp. 36, 37.), and it is stated that there is reason for supposing the estimate arrived at to be an approximation to the truth. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various
... every child be instructed in those general views of the phaenomena of nature for which we have no exact English name. The nearest approximation to a name for what I mean which we possess is physical geography; the Germans have a better, 'Erdkunde' (earth knowledge or geology in its etymological sense), that is to say, a general knowledge of the earth, and what ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... relation, bearing, reference, connection, concern, cognation; correlation &c 12; analogy; similarity &c 17; affinity, homology, alliance, homogeneity, association; approximation &c (nearness) 197; filiation &c (consanguinity) 11; interest; relevancy &c 23; dependency, relationship, relative position. comparison &c 464; ratio, proportion. link, tie, bond of union. V. be related &c adj.; have a relation &c n.; relate to, refer ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the life of a savage; no intercourse with society, no consolation from books; my mind locked up, every source dried of intellectual delight, and no enjoyment in my power but from sleep and from food. Weary of an existence which thus levelled me with a brute, I grew ashamed of the approximation, and listening to the remonstrance of my understanding, I gave up the precipitate plan, to pursue one more consonant to reason. I came to town, hired a room, and sent for pen, ink and paper: what I have written are trifles, but the Bookseller has not rejected ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... was quite sure that the flashes were made by French guns. From a point perhaps a mile in front of the prisoners masked German batteries were replying. Fleury with his extraordinary power of judging sound was able to locate these guns with some degree of approximation. ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in vain to obtain even a tolerable approximation of the velocity at which the Projectile was now moving. He had to content himself with the knowledge that it was diminishing at a uniform rate—of which indeed a little reflection on a well known law of Dynamics readily convinced ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... information which elsewhere allow us to obliterate the injuries worked by time and human enemies. The foot of every wall is heaped about with such formless masses of brick and brick dust, that it is almost impossible to make full explorations or to take exact measurements. One must be content with an approximation to ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... independently of the court and nobles, of the most active and stirring spirits who had not been regularly educated, or who, from mischance or otherwise, had forsaken the beaten track of preferment,—and the universities on the other. The latter prided themselves on their closer approximation to the ancient rules and ancient regularity—taking the theatre of Greece, or rather its dim reflection, the rhetorical tragedies of the poet Seneca, as a perfect ideal, without any critical collation of the times, origin, or circumstances;—whilst, in the ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... identity of many of the species which flourished apparently at the same time in all or in the most widely-separated parts of the world, in the tertiary epoch, on the contrary, along with the increasing specialization of climates and their approximation to the present state, we find abundant evidence of increasing localization of orders, genera and species, and this localization strikingly accords with the present geographical distribution of the same groups of species Where the imputed forefathers lived their relatives ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... 1. "Vpon Good Friday last there was about twentie persons."] This meeting, if not a witches' Sabbath, was a close approximation to one. On the subject of the Sabbath, or periodical meeting of witches, De Lancre is the leading authority. He who is curious cannot do better than consult this great hierophant, (his work is entitled Tableau de l'Inconstance des mauvais Anges et Demons. ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... art preservative of all arts from its rude beginnings to its present approximation to perfection. It has engravings representing ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... of partisanship from the natural firmness and vigour of his mind. In this respect Milton resembles Dante, (the only modern writer with whom he has any thing in common) and it is remarkable that Dante, as well as Milton, was a political partisan. That approximation to the severity of impassioned prose which has been made an objection to Milton's poetry, and which is chiefly to be met with in these bitter invectives, is one of its great excellences. The author might here turn his ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... If the ship had arrived before dusk they would have seen the men and women in the viewscopes. If after dusk, they still might have spotted them in the infrared viewers which picked up the heat differentials and gave a fair approximation ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... interrupted only by occasional questioning of the sentinels whom they passed in their circuit, was carried on in an audible whisper, which the close approximation of the parties to each other, and the profound stillness of the night, enabled them to ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... that the she-ape had left her cub alone among the grasses. He moved his tail again, as though this closest approximation of lashing in which he dared indulge might stimulate his momentarily waned courage. The cry of the victorious ape-man still held his nerves beneath its spell. It would be several minutes before he again could bring himself to ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... teach me purity I would go to seek him forthwith. "A command over our passions, and over the external senses of the body, and good acts, are declared by the Ved to be indispensable in the mind's approximation to God." Yet the spirit can for the time pervade and control every member and function of the body, and transmute what in form is the grossest sensuality into purity and devotion. The generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... theories of science, be its consequences whatever they may. If, on the other hand, Mr. Darwin has erred, either in fact or in reasoning, his fellow-workers will soon find out the weak points in his doctrines, and their extinction by some nearer approximation to the truth will exemplify his ...
— Time and Life • Thomas H. Huxley
... lost in amazement. "But," he exclaims, "you must admit that. By what theory of approximation can you show that we do not attain to such perfectibility of number; unless you would say, as I have heard advanced by the Budengen school, that the expression is but a formula adapted ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... approximation of Hungary's standards in waste management, energy efficiency, and air, soil, and water pollution with environmental requirements for EU accession will require large investments, estimated by the Government of Hungary ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... excerpts, often seems devoid of metrical regularity. The reason for this is that in long poems much greater freedom is possible because the ear and the attention, accustomed for longer periods to the formal pattern, hold it more easily where it becomes faint. Examples of this approximation to prose have been given above, pages 43, 44. The famous first lines of Paradise Lost, if printed after the contemporary fashion of free-verse, would by very few be recognized as blank verse; and the same is true of many ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... Canterbury (Vol. ii., p. 199.).—Your correspondent PHILO-CHAUCER, I presume, desires to know the old route to Canterbury. I should imagine that at the time of Chaucer a great part of the country was uncultivated and uninclosed, and a horse-track in parts of the route was probably the nearest approximation to a road. At the present day, crossing the London road at Wrotham, and skirting the base of the chalk hills, there is a narrow lane which I have heard called "the Pilgrims' road," and this, I suppose, is in fact the old Canterbury road; though how near to London or Canterbury it has a distinct ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 45, Saturday, September 7, 1850 • Various
... of a bit of coast with a fishing-boat in the distance, and asks me how far off that boat is, I am utterly stumped because I do not know how the artist was able to judge the distance. But if I understand the principle, I give my friend a very fair approximation of the distance of the boat. I work it out like this. I say:—the immediate foreground of the picture shows an amount of detail which could not be seen more than twenty yards away, and the average size of such details in nature shows that the bottom edge of the picture ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... safe opportunity for putting a complete end to what is at the root of the question, this it will take; for to remain forever in the state now existing is what nobody can or ought to hope for. And there is no such near approximation to a complete victory as to take the persons. For to surprise what they (the Reformers) hold, to put down their religion, and to break off all at once the alliances which support them—this is impossible. Thus there is no way but to take the chiefs all together ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... fluoride is used in the carbons of the yellow flame-arc which emits excessive red and green rays causing by visual synthesis the yellow color. The radiant energy emitted by the snow-white flame-arc is a close approximation to average daylight both as to visible and to ultra-violet rays. Its carbons contain rare-earths. The uses of the flame-arcs are continually being extended because they are of high intensity and efficiency and they afford a variety of color ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... elements known only to myself. For the known elements, however, these groups and series are now perfectly recognised by all scientists; they are determined by the fixed weight of the atom, and there is a close approximation to regularity. ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... bound to him by an iron chain which his jailer has forged for his safe keeping. This is not union; and the term "United Kingdom" is in fact a most miserable misnomer. Unity requires something more than a mere material approximation. I believe it to be possible that England and Ireland may become united; and if ever this should be accomplished, let no man forget that the first link in the golden chain issued from the hands of the right ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... principal strength, were still devoted to the See of Rome with that blind obedience which, ever since the days of the Gothic dynasty, had been the peculiar characteristic of the Spaniard. The slightest approximation, in a Spanish prince, to the obnoxious tenets of Luther and Calvin, would have alienated for ever the affections of his subjects, and a defection from the Pope would have cost him the kingdom. A Spanish prince had no alternative but ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the electric-resistance thermometers about the chamber has, after a great deal of experimenting, been made such as to permit the measurement as nearly as possible of the average temperature in the chamber. But this is at best a rough approximation, and we must rely upon the assumption that while the temperatures which are actually measured may not be the average temperature, the fluctuations of the average temperature are parallel to the fluctuations in the temperatures measured. Since every effort is made to keep these ...
— Respiration Calorimeters for Studying the Respiratory Exchange and Energy Transformations of Man • Francis Gano Benedict
... We might for the same reason dig among our rocks for the scattered grains of gold and silver which might be found there. The true inquiry is, Can we produce the article in a useful state at the same cost, or nearly at the same cost, or at any reasonable approximation towards the same cost, at ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... tenderness—may be shown to characterize all truly Christian sculpture, as compared with the antique, or the pseudo-classical of subsequent periods. We agree with Lord Lindsay in thinking the Psyche of Naples the nearest approach to the Christian ideal of all ancient efforts; but even in this the approximation is more accidental than real—a fair type of feature, further exalted by the mode in which the imagination supplies the lost upper folds of the hair. The fountain of life and emotion remains sealed; nor was the opening of that fountain due to any study ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... A rough approximation to the average duration of these mountain lakes may be made from data already suggested, but I cannot stop here to present the subject in detail. I must also forego, in the mean time, the pleasure of a full discussion of ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... however, with all its imperfections, is perhaps the nearest approximation to the truth that has yet been published upon the subject of political economy; and is upon that account, well worth the consideration of every man who wishes to examine with attention the principles of that very important science. Though in representing the labour which ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... is impossible," says Humboldt, "to form an exact enumeration of the cattle in the Pampas, or even to give an approximation to it, so immensely have they augmented during the three centuries which have elapsed since they were first introduced; but some idea of their number may be formed from the following facts in regard to such portions ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... description of the silence that fell before the first speaking of the Grand Lunar become confusingly predominant in the record. These undulations are evidently the result of radiations proceeding from a lunar source, and their persistent approximation to the alternating signals of Cavor is curiously suggestive of some operator deliberately seeking to mix them in with his message and render it illegible. At first they are small and regular, so that with a little care and the loss of very few words we have been able to disentangle ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... year, he met the girl after a long interval, and saw her with changed eyes. She had something more than prettiness; her looks undeniably improved. It seemed, too, that she bore herself more gracefully, and even talked with, at times, an approximation to the speech of a lady. These admissions signified much in a man of Tarrant's social prejudice—so strong that it exercised an appreciable effect upon his every-day morals. He began to muse about Miss. Lord, and the upshot of his musing was that, having ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... and the form of the one contain not the fully developed types or characters of the species, while the form of the other presents the greater part of them, then the latter is said to be a form more ideal than the other, as a nearer approximation to the general idea ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... expenditures, including in the latter the fifty millions expended for the Panama Canal, was one hundred and ninety million dollars for the six years, an average of about thirty-one millions a year. This represents an approximation between income and outgo which it would be hard to improve. The satisfactory working of the present tariff law has been chiefly responsible for this excellent showing. Nevertheless, there is an evident and constantly ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Relation. — N. relation, bearing, reference, connection, concern,. cognation ; correlation &c. 12; analogy; similarity &c. 17; affinity, homology, alliance, homogeneity, association; approximation &c. (nearness) 197; filiation &c. (consanguinity) 11[obs3]; interest; relevancy &c. 23; dependency, relationship, relative position. comparison &c. 464; ratio, proportion. link, tie, bond of union. V. be related &c. adj.; have a relation ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Dutch connections, which have generally supplied it; and our representations in favour of the Polish Hebrews, a numerous race, but the most suffering and degraded of all the tribes, have not been very agreeable to the Czar. However, circumstances drew to an approximation between the Romanoffs and the Sidonias. I resolved to go myself to St. Petersburg. I had, on my arrival, an interview with the Russian Minister of Finance, Count Cancrin; I beheld the son of a Lithuanian Jew. ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... you steadily keep in view that this is the FIRST step. Lord John Russell's proposal was an approximation to a right principle, which, if it had been properly supported, might have given the fairest opening for greater reforms. If the Conservatives had voted for a really Conservative measure like this it would have been carried, but as it was brought forward by ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... close as to leave no space between two individuals, know, Stranger, that this offence is punishable in my dominions by death. And the reason is obvious. The frail form of a Woman, being liable to be shattered by such an approximation, must be preserved by the State; but since Women cannot be distinguished by the sense of sight from Men, the Law ordains universally that neither Man nor Woman shall be approached so closely as to destroy the interval between ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... the light of a nineteenth century, can close up the breaches of so deadly a disunion. A Hebrew is nowhere congenial to me. He is least distasteful on 'Change—for the mercantile spirit levels all distinctions, as all are beauties in the dark. I boldly confess that I do not relish the approximation of Jew and Christian, which has become so fashionable. The reciprocal endearments have, to me, something hypocritical and unnatural in them. I do not like to see the Church and Synagogue kissing and congeeing in awkward postures of an affected civility. If they are converted, why do they not ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... The product of the atomic weight of a substance by its specific heat. This product is approximately the same, 6.4; this approximation is so close that it is of use in determining the valency and atomic weights of substances. The atomic weight of a substance therefore represents the approximate number of gram-calories required to raise one gram-atom, ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... Doctor, doffing his hat, "how would you recofer from a blace when the smallest approximation which I haf yet been able to make puts the depth from the surface to the bed of the gletscher at vrom sixteen hundred to sixteen hundred and sixty metres in distance?" Doctor Zimmermann spoke very good English; and ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... numerous and splendid. The occasional tendency of the later "flowing" decorated towards "flamboyant" forms, to be seen in some of the churches of Northamptonshire, marks the culminating point of this fresh approximation of French and English architecture. But the division between the two countries brought about by war was illustrated before the end of the reign in the growth of the most local of our medieval architectural ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... change and dissolution shall draw the curtain of death over his sleep—shall prove his apparent sleep to be veritable death. The prolonged interchange in Adonais between the ideas of death and of sleep may remind us that Shelley opened with a similar contrast or approximation his first considerable (though in part immature) ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... about is the nearest approximation to the universal form of life, but this is constantly marred by a stray thought of permanence and the confusing hint of the passive mind that we suppose the balance to be the law, and are glad to accept night with day, ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... a general view of solution; but, for want of particular facts, and sufficiently exact experiments, it is still nothing more than an approximation towards a particular theory. The means of compleating this part of chemical science is extremely simple; we have only to ascertain how much of each salt is dissolved by a certain quantity of water at different degrees of temperature; and as, by the experiments published by Mr de la Place and ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... and the highest existing ape, [73] is too great to admit of one being possibly the direct descendant of the other." The ape, then, is not a man whose development is arrested. "The negro in some respects makes a slight approximation, ... still he is essentially a man, and separated by a wide gulf from the chimpanzee or gorilla. Even the idiot is ... an arrested man and, not ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... of civilization. Real monogamy, real faithfulness of the male parent, belongs to a comparatively advanced stage; but in the early stages the knitting together of permanent relations between mother and infant, and the approximation toward steady relations on the part of the male parent, came to bring about the family, and gradually to knit those organizations ...
— The Meaning of Infancy • John Fiske
... the chemistry of neroli oil is now very fully known, and it is therefore possible to prepare an artificial product which is a very good approximation to the natural oil, and many such are now on the market, which, on account of their comparative cheapness, commend themselves to the soap-perfumer. These consist chiefly of linalol, geraniol, linalyl acetate, methyl anthranilate, ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons
... mechanism which serves to place in relief the moral destruction of humanity under the monopoly system; but this official exhibition is far from including the whole extent of the evil. Here are other figures which will lead us to a more certain approximation. ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... living in the world. I have assumed the elevation of Jigatzi to be 13-14,000 feet, using as data Turner's October mean temperature of Teshoo Loombo, and the decrement for elevation of 400 feet to 1 degree Fahr.; which my own observations indicate as an approximation to the truth. Humboldt ("Asie Centrale," iii., p. 223) uses a much smaller multiplier, and infers the elevation of Teshoo Loombo to be between 9,500 and 10,000 feet. Our data are far too imperfect to warrant any satisfactory conclusions on this interesting subject; but the accounts I have received ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... taken some pains to assure myself of the accuracy of the above table: at different periods of the years quoted the prices may have varied; but I believe it may be considered as a fair approximation. In the course of my enquiries I have been favoured with another list, in which many of the same articles occur, but in this last instance the prices quoted are separated by an interval of twenty years. It is extracted ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... first time I had ever seen that of a murderer. I looked upon it with an impression which it is difficult, if not impossible, to describe. I felt my nerves tingle, and my heart palpitate. To a young man, fresh, and filled with the light-hearted humanity of youth, approximation to such an object as then lay before me is a singular trial of feeling, and a painful test of moral courage. The sight, however, and the reflections connected with it, rendered a long contemplation of it impossible, and, besides, I had other ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... heroes to be, in some way or other, partakers of a divine nature; akin to the gods; usually, either they, or some ancestor of theirs, descended from a god or goddess. Those who have read Mr. Gladstone's "Juventus Mundi" will remember the section (cap. ix. 6) on the modes of the approximation between the divine and the human natures; and whether or not they agree with the author altogether, all will agree, I think, that the first idea of a hero or a heroine was a godlike ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... imitations of natural objects. For there is a certain order or rhythm belonging to each of these classes of mimetic representation, from which the hearer and the spectator receive an intenser and purer pleasure than from any other: the sense of an approximation to this order has been called taste by modern writers. Every man in the infancy of art observes an order which approximates more or less closely to that from which this highest delight results; but the diversity ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... been translated, to the best of my ability, verbatim. In the not infrequent instances where I have been unable to extract any intelligible meaning, on grammatical principles, from the words of my author, I have put in the text the nearest approximation that I could discover to his meaning, and placed the unintelligible words in a note, hoping that my readers may be more fortunate in their ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... twelve days before the storm had sufficiently abated to leave the vessel manageable in the hands of the captain and crew, and then the captain's reckoning was gone. He could get his latitude correctly, but not his longitude, except by a remote approximation. His first observation, when the sky gave an opportunity, showed us to be in latitude forty-five degrees south. This he explained to me, and also the impracticability of now making the Cape, pointing out upon the map ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... short? That this grand Product of Nature was even grand, and new, in that it came not to range itself under old recorded Laws-of-Nature at all; but to disclose new ones? In that case, History renouncing the pretention to name it at present, will look honestly at it, and name what she can of it! Any approximation to the right Name has value: were the right name itself once here, the Thing is known thenceforth; the Thing is then ours, and ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... for ascertaining relatively large differences in altitudes than for purposes where any great nicety is required. For hills under 2000 ft., the following rule will give a very close approximation, and is easily remembered, because 55 degrees, the assumed temperature, agrees with 55 degrees, the significant figures in the 55,000 factor, while the fractional correction contains ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... and the coming man go back. At the Goose Pool and Early Nook, it was common for these coaches to stop; and there, as Jonathan would say, passengers and coachmen 'liquored.' One coach, introduced by an innkeeper, was a compound of two mourning coaches, an approximation to the real railway coach, which still adheres, with multiplying exceptions, to the stage coach type. One Dixon, who drove the 'Experiment' between Darlington and Shildon, is the inventor of carriage lighting on the rail. On a dark winter night, having compassion on his ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... possible. "When we attempt to measure the gap between man and the lower animals in terms of the form of movement, the wonder is no less great than when we use the term of mentality."[3] The degree of approximation to human intelligence in anthropoid animals follows very closely the degree of approximation to ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... no attempt is made to indicate the exact pronunciation of foreign names; but in the case of those from the Anglo-Saxon a rough approximation is given, as being often essential to the reading of the metrical versions. In these indications the letters have their ordinary English values; [)e] indicates the very light, obscure sound heard in the indefinite article in such a phrase ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... relations among its constituent parts would, for this reason, begin to be established. "Given a rare and widely diffused mass of nebulous matter,... what are the successive changes that will take place? Mutual gravitation will approximate its atoms, but their approximation will be opposed by atomic repulsion, the overcoming of which implies the evolution of heat." That is to say, the condensation of the nebula as a whole of necessity implies at least the origination of these new material and dynamical relations ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... exceptionally keen consciences, they find what is called "sin" an easier fact than starvation; and so the story goes on, and out of greed is born the misery, which, at last, compels greed to heavier poor rates, and thus an approximation to the distribution of the profit which should ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... rise of a toy balloon." Seaton threw down the papers and picked up his slide-rule, a twenty-inch trigonometrical duplex. "You'll concede that it is allowable to neglect the radial component of the orbital velocity of the earth for a first approximation, won't you—or shall I figure that ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... and philosophy of the future will be distinguished by their mastery of the realm of mind, and the closer approximation of the human to the Divine, not only in ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... it is in the narratives which were introduced very late into the history, such as Judges xix.-xxi.; 1Samuel vii. viii. x. 17 seq. xii.; 1Kings xiii., and the apocryphal additions in 1Kings vi.-viii. that we recognise most readily some linguistic approximation to the Priestly Code. And as in the historical so also in the prophetical literature. The speech of Amos, Isaiah, Micah, answers on the whole to that of the Jehovist, not to that of ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... value of naval bases, one may be pardoned perhaps for a feeling of surprise that the United States has no real naval base, home or distant. Our large navy-yards are our nearest approximation to real bases. The yards at Norfolk and Bremerton seem to combine the three factors of position, strength, and resources better than do any other stations; though both are surpassed in resources by New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. Bremerton has the greatest natural military ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... as a rough approximation, let us omit the odd hundreds, and we have two thousand pounds expended in plates only on ONE branch of science, and for one person! Without calling in question the importance of the discoveries contained in those papers, it may be permitted to doubt ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... Evolution", page 47.) But "life requires us to apprehend things in the relation they have to our needs." ("Laughter", page 154.) Hence comes the fundamental utilitarianism of common-sense. Therefore if we wish to define it in itself and for itself, and no longer as a first approximation of such and such a system of metaphysics, it appears to us no longer as rudimentary science and philosophy, but as an organisation of thought in view of practical life. Thus it is that outside all speculative opinion it is effectively lived by ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... infinitesimal calculus and in his own way performed an integration. The third invaluable construction was the trigonometry by which Hipparchus for the first time made a scientific astronomy possible. The fourth, the optics of Ptolemy based on much true observation and containing an approximation to ...
— Progress and History • Various
... difficult, but because they are temperamentally incapable of ridding themselves of the notion that certain things should be done in a certain way, and because if an ingredient lacks, they cannot bring themselves to substitute an approximation. They would rather abandon the dish than do violence to the ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... whom the value was determined. For the purpose of a calculation in Chapter III. the specific heat at constant pressure was assumed to be 0.25, which, in the absence of precise information, appears somewhat more probable as an approximation to the truth. The ratio (k or Cp/Cv ) of the specific heat at constant pressure to that at constant volume has been found by Maneuvrier and Fournier to be 1.26; but they did not measure the specific heat itself. [Footnote: The ratio 1.26 k or (Cp/Cv) has been given in many ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... bilingual texts do not give exact information. Thus alongside GIS-GU-ZA we find a number of other ideograms, all of which are in certain connections rendered kussu, adequately enough no doubt, but that they all denoted exactly the same article of furniture is far from likely. A closer approximation to an exact rendering may come with the knowledge of a large number of different contexts, each of which may shade off something of the rough meaning. One of the great difficulties of the translator is that the same word ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... fathers, he said again, had never intended any such obvious untruth as that equality actually existed, or that any action of theirs could immediately create it; but they had set up a standard to which continual approximation could be made. ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... an infinite number of aberrations. This number is only finite if the object and aperture are assumed to be "infinitely small of a certain order''; and with each order of infinite smallness, i.e. with each degree of approximation to reality (to finite objects and apertures), a certain number of aberrations is associated. This connexion is only supplied by theories which treat aberrations generally and analytically by means of indefinite ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a legend extant (a veritable legend, which emanated from one of the fraternity who had been engaged three weeks at her Majesty's theatre, as one of twenty in an unknown chorus, the chief peculiarity of the affair being the close approximation of some of his principal foreign words to "Tol de rol," and "Fal the ral ra"), in which it was asserted, that from a violent quarrel with a person in the grass-bleached line, the body corporate determined to avoid any unnecessary ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... every age and condition, except perhaps the highest condition, and they seemed none the worse for being more like Americans of the middle of the last century than of the beginning of this. Their fashions were of an approximation to those of the present, but did not scrupulously study detail; their manners were those of simpler if not ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... existing Birds the tail is long, and is made up of separate vertebrae, and the same character is observed in many existing Reptiles. The tail of Archoeopteryx, therefore, is to be regarded as the permanent retention of an embryonic type of structure, or as an approximation to the characters of the Reptiles. Another remarkable point in connection with Archoeopteryx, in which it differs from all known Birds, is, that the wing was furnished with two free claws. From the presence of feathers, Archoeopteryx ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... and the expense of redrawing and reproduction, these seven tables are printed instead of Mr. Sherman's graphic charts. With a ruler and pencil, lines can be drawn through the "D's of Duke", and so forth, to give an approximation of ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... the partition, and that which we perceive of them is but a fraction of the whole. Nevertheless, the more developed and consistent and harmonious our character becomes, the less liable is it to random outbreaks, and the more certainly can we be depended on. We thus, even now, can exhibit some approximation to the highest state—that conscious unison with the entire scheme of existence which ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... peculiar to it, that is, have not yet been found in any other part of Australia. In the 170 are included some occasional and rare visitants to our shores, but several others will, no doubt, have hereafter to be added; this is, however, a close enough approximation for all ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... For the approximation we have of late made towards the solution of this problem, we are mainly indebted to the invaluable labours and active brains of Charles Darwin ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... charms of danger. Such a case I heard of, a man of unquestioned ability, who it was rumored boasted that he would get just above 2.5, and as near as he could. He was read dispassionately, and in the event came out 2.47. As an effort at approximation, this may be considered a success; but for passing it was inadequate, and his general character did not bias the final appeal in his favor. He was not dropped, indeed, but had to undergo a second examination three weeks later: a circumstance calculated to cloud his summer. ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... The nearest approximation which can be generally made to exact evidence in this case, is the word of some individual who has had the story, it may be, from the person to whom it has happened, but most likely from his family, or some ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... least an approximation to ascribe the primacy of realism to Courbet, though ascriptions of the kind are at best approximations. Not only was he the first, or among the first, to feel the interest and importance of the actual world as it is and for what it is rather than for what it suggests, ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... had a general conversation, opened by me, upon Education, in its largest sense, and on what we can do for ourselves and others. I took my usual ground:—The aim is perfection; patience the road. Our lives should be considered as a tendency, an approximation only.... Mr. R. spoke admirably on the nature of loyalty. The people showed a good deal of the sans-culotte tendency in their manners, throwing themselves on the floor, yawning, and going out when they had heard enough. Yet as the majority differ with me, ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... their friends or boarded out, or 18,900 at the present time, in consequence of the increase of population. We have, however, but scant faith in the correctness of these relative amounts. All we really know is the number receiving definite teaching or training, and an approximation—nothing more—to the gross number of idiots and imbeciles in the land. The next point is to determine the number who belong to the class, already indicated, which we have to legislate and provide for—the poor and the class immediately ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... in fact only if there is some rough approximation in similarity in stature among the men composing it. One of us can deal in our private lives with the grocer or the butcher or the carpenter or the chicken raiser, or if we are the grocer or carpenter or butcher or farmer, we can deal with our customers, because we ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... devotional exercises in which they then engaged. The Sabbath day was a season of great delight. She did not know that on the following her translation was to take place; but had she foreseen it, scarcely could she have passed the day in communications more fitted to her near approximation ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... the world? Every person of common observation, knows that, as a general rule, they who approach the nearest to a pure vegetable and water diet, are most exempt from disease, and the longest-lived and most happy. How, then, can it otherwise happen than that a still closer approximation will afford a greater exemption still, and so on indefinitely? At what point of an approach toward such diet and regimen, and toward perfect health at the same time, is it that we stop, and more temperance still will injure us? In short, where do ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott |
