"Attribute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were good enough to sanction the allotment of a separate room in each soldiers' Institute for the exclusive use of the Association, where alcohol in any shape was not admitted, and to the grant of this room I attribute, in a great measure, the success of the undertaking. The success was proved by the fact that, when I left India, nearly one third of the 70,000 British soldiers in that country were members or honorary members of ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... picking up and carrying about with her pah!—that's what I call getting vulgarity into your bones and marrow. Making believe be what you are not is the essence of vulgarity. Show over dirt is the one attribute of vulgar people. If any man can walk behind one of these women and see what she rakes up as she goes, and not feel squeamish, he has got a tough stomach. I wouldn't let one of 'em into my room without serving 'em as David served Saul at the cave in the wilderness,—cut ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... startling and thrilling effect; thus, although I had now been knocking about at sea for more than three years, and had met with many queer experiences, I had never, thus far, heard a sound that I could not reasonably account for and attribute to some known source; yet on this particular night—my second night alone in the longboat—I was sitting comfortably enough in the stern-sheets, steering by a star—for I had no lantern wherewith to illuminate my compass—and thinking of nothing in particular, when suddenly a most ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... An attribute of man which is equivalent to a strong natural instinct is his disposition to "do murder." This may account for his love of "sport," or it may only be an hereditary trait derived from the period when he had not yet concerned ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... Chepewyans, speak of a race whom they call Nant-e-na, whom they say they frequently see, and who are supposed by them to inhabit the different elements of earth, sea, and air, according to their several qualities. To one or the other of these fairies they usually attribute any change in their circumstances either for better or worse; and, as they are led into this way of thinking entirely by the art of the conjurors, there is no such thing as any general mode of belief; for those jugglers ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... army. You should have seen the state of the mothers, wives, and children of the men who were going and should have heard the sobs. It seems as though mankind has forgotten the laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached love and forgiveness of injuries—and that men attribute the greatest merit to skill in killing ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... latter explained his action, Lord Eynesford did not feel that more was required than a temperately expressed surprise and a hinted disapproval of the course adopted. He declined his wife's invitation to regard the matter in the most serious light, or to attribute any heinous offence to the Premier, contenting himself with remarking that Medland had a more powerful motive to maintain order than any one else; he also ventured to suggest that the best way of considering the question was not ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... possessed in all of the branches of government; (2) survivals of the power once accruing to the king as the feudal chief of the country; and (3) attributes with which the crown has been invested by legal theory, e.g., the attribute of perpetuity popularly expressed in the aphorism "the king never dies," and that of perfection of judgment, similarly expressed in the saying "the king can do no wrong."[69] The most considerable element in the prerogative is that which Anson first mentions, i.e., the power which ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... personified him as God the Son, or second person in the sacred Triad; and recognizing the Sun as the ruling star, very appropriately made him the presiding genius of that luminary, under the title of God Sol. According homage to light as his chief attribute, he is referred to in the allegories as "The true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world," John i., 9; and, although designated as the only begotten of the Father, his co-existence with him, under the title of the Logos or Word, is shown ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... envelope, not the magnetic gaze of the many eyes, but all combined makes an assault upon nerves and imagination. You feel that Captain Cocq is a prosaic personage and is much too tall in proportion to the spry little dandy Lieutenant at his side. Invested with some strange attribute by the genius of the painter, this Dutchman becomes the protagonist in a soundless symphony of light and shadow. The waves that emanate from the canvas suffuse your senses but do not soothe or satisfy. The modern nervous intensity, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... you so far. Go on." And I was surprised to find how relieved I was at this suggested complication. I felt that if we could only attribute this amazing week of mysteries to some human agent I should be able ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... good-nature, his engaging and wonderfully easy behaviour, were enough to have made amends more than they did for his want of penetration. He was constantly wavering in his resolution, but what to attribute it to I know not, for it could not come from his fertile imagination, which was lively. Nor can I say it came from his barrenness of thought, for though he did not excel as a man of affairs, yet he had a good fund of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... him; absorbed, understood, and retained it. He left the university with his mind disciplined indeed but not drilled; he had a considerable knowledge of languages, law, literature, and history; he had not subjected his mind to the dominion of the dominant Hegelian philosophy, and to this we must attribute that freshness and energy which distinguishes him from so many of his ablest contemporaries; his brain was strong, and it worked as easily and as naturally as his body; his knowledge was more that of a man of the world than of a student, ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... the depth of his knowledge of men and women when he commented on that power of facing danger with an unruffled countenance which he was pleased to attribute to English ladies above all women. During the evening he had full opportunity ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... comes from eating them. They live in the forests with their cattle and snakes; they are not abstinent in eating nor drinking. They despise the married women, but greatly respect the girls to whom they attribute great power. They say that if a girl rubs a man with dried leaves, it ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... but averaged near-zero growth in 1998-2001 and contracted by 2.3 percent in 2002, in response to regional contagion and an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease. On a per capita basis, real income has stagnated at 1980 levels. Most observers attribute Paraguay's poor economic performance to political uncertainty, corruption, lack of progress on structural reform, substantial internal and external debt, and deficient infrastructure. Aided by a firmer exchange rate and perhaps a greater confidence in the ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... Essay, "Self-Reliance ": "This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on this, as on every topic, the resolution of all into the ever-blessed ONE. Self-existence is the attribute of the Supreme Cause, and it constitutes the measure of good by the degree in which it ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... intercede for us with the great Head of the body in which we all are members. To accept a primacy in St. Peter, and yet hold it immaterial to the organisation of the Church. To acknowledge one Church, and then divide the unity into fragments. To attribute to the Church the power of the keys, and then deny the force of her indulgences while admitting her absolutions. To approve confession, and practically set it aside. To do and hold these and many other contradictions—what is it but ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... matter of history; it is recorded in the Newgate Calendar; and we wish we could attribute this piece of daring heroism to Mr. Barker. We regret being compelled to state that it was not performed by him. Would, for the family credit we could add, that it was achieved by ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... unaffected devotion to the Queen on all occasions, and promised that no negotiations should take place, however secret and confidential, that were not laid before her Majesty. "He has the chief administration among the States," said Herle, "and to his credit and dexterity they attribute the despatch of most things. He showed unto me the state of the enemy throughout the provinces, and of the negotiation in France, whereof he had no opinion at all of success, nor any will of his own part but to please the Prince of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... nature of the world of plants which we began by considering, is far from possessing the attribute of permanence. Rather its very essence is impermanence. It may have lasted twenty or thirty thousand years, it may last for twenty or thirty thousand years more, without obvious change; but, as surely as it has followed ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... golf takes its place with the more sedately inclined. There is no game so fitted to appeal to a hardy and active people as that composite exercise prescribed by the Rugby Union, in which fifteen men pit strength, speed, endurance, and every manly attribute they possess in a prolonged struggle against fifteen antagonists. There is no room for mere knack or trickery. It is a fierce personal contest in which the ball is the central rallying point. That ball may be kicked, pushed, or carried; it may be forced onwards in any conceivable ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not in the earthquake; but behold From Sinai's caves are bursting, as of old, The flames of His consuming jealous ire. Woe to the sinner should stern Justice prove His chosen attribute;—but He in love Hastes to proclaim, "God is not in ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... the princess. The boldness of this actually took my breath, and it seems at first to have startled Mary a little, also. As you must know by this time, her "dignity royal" was subject to alarms, and quite her most troublesome attribute—very apt to receive damage in her ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... mistaken in believing that I have any talent at all, or you in the selection of the specimens of it. Yet, after all, I cannot but be conscious, in much of what I write, of an absence of that tranquillity which is the attribute and accompaniment of power. This feeling alone would make your most kind and wise admonitions, on the subject of the economy of intellectual force, valuable to me. And, if I live, or if I see any trust in coming years, doubt not but that I shall do something, whatever it may ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... fresh expansion of poetical forms, in a somewhat different direction from that of the Romanticists. But it was not in this department that M. Sainte-Beuve was destined to become the founder of a school. His poetical talent, though unquestionable, had been bestowed, not as a special attribute, but as an auxiliary of other faculties granted in a larger measure. He has himself not only recognized its limits, but shown an inclination to underrate its value. "I have often thought," he remarks in one of his later papers, "that a critic who would attain to largeness of view would be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... himself. Darwin was then but twenty-two years old, but the poise and patience of the young man won the respect and then the admiration and finally the affection of every man on board that ship. This attitude of kindness, patience and good-will formed the strongest attribute of Darwin's nature, and to these godlike qualities he was heir from a royal line of ancestry. No man was ever more blest—more richly endowed by his parents with love and intellect—than Darwin. And no man ever repaid the debt of love more fully—all ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... Flite, in "Bleak House," haunting the Law Courts in expectation of a judgment on the Day of Judgment, is certainly not compos mentis. And one may concede to M. Taine that some element of sadness must always be present when we see a human creature imperfectly gifted with man's noblest attribute of reason. But, granting this to the full, is it possible to conceive of anything more kindly and gentle in the delineation of partial insanity than the portraits which the French critic finds horrible? Barnaby ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... of the feeling which your words seem to attribute to us, my dear sir," the agent had answered. "Baron Bangletop would feel highly honored to have so distinguished a sojourner in England as yourself occupy his estate, but he does not wish you to take ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... Rats die in holes and corners, dogs run mad Man knows a braver remedy for sorrow— Revenge, the attribute of gods; they stamped it, With their great image, on our natures. Die! Consider well the cause that calls upon thee, And, if thou'rt base enough, die then. Remember Thy Belvidera suffers; Belvidera! Die!—damn first!—What! ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... return and assist her to escape. Although she was aware of the hardships and perils that would attend her flight, yet the thought of again meeting her friends was enough to nerve her for the undertaking, and she waited with anxious impatience the coming of her rescuer. But he came not. She could attribute no other design in his conduct but that of effecting her escape, and yet he neither came for her, nor beckoned her away. She had reposed confidence in his promise, for she knew that the Indian, savage ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... vouchsafed a chance of his doom being cancelled, through the merits of his son. I had also my appeal, which was for vengeance; it was granted that I should remain on earth, and thwart your will. That as long as we were enemies, you should not succeed; but that when you had conformed to the highest attribute of Christianity, proved on the holy cross, that of forgiving your enemy, your task should be fulfilled. Philip Vanderdecken, you have forgiven your enemy, and both our destinies ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... withdrawal of the troops in excess of requirements; the palmy days of the retailer had vanished, and all Manila began to complain of "depression" in trade. The true condition of the Colony became more apparent to them in their own slack time, and for want of reflection some began to attribute it to a want of foresight in the Insular Government. Industry is in its infancy in the Philippines, which is essentially an agricultural colony. The product of the soil is the backbone of its wealth. The ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... distributed to such very various organs and tissues, are in the infusoria fulfilled by the neutral plasson material of the cell, by the protoplasma, and possibly also by the nucleus (compare my treatise "The Morphology of the Infusoria." Jena, Zeitschriften, 1873, vol. vii. p. 516). And just as we must attribute to these primary animal forms an independent "soul," just as we must plainly be convinced that the single independent cell has a "psyche," we must as decidedly attribute a soul to every other cell; for the most important active constituent ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... disciple of Pythagoras affirmed that his master, descending to hell, had seen the soul of Homer hanging to a tree and that of Hesiod bound to a column to punish them for calumniating the gods. "Homer and Hesiod," Said Xenophanes, "attribute to the gods all the acts which among men are culpable and shameful; there is but one god who neither in body nor in soul resembles men." And he added this profound remark: "If oxen and lions had ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... smokers and chewers have a thousand ailments? that German physicians attribute one half of the deaths among the young men of that country to tobacco? that the French Polytechnic Institute had to prohibit its use on account of its effects on the mind? that men grow dyspeptic, hypochondriac, insane, delirious from ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... not think we have any engagement—mamma will, I am sure, be very happy"—began Fanny, with a degree of hesitation for which I could not account; but as I was afraid Oaklands might notice it, and attribute it to a want of cordiality, I hastened to interrupt her by exclaiming, "Mamma will be very happy—of course she will; and each and all of us are always only too happy to get you here, old fellow; it does one's heart good to see you beginning to look a little more like yourself again. ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... remember I asked Mr. Lincoln what attribute he considered most valuable to the successful politician," said Captain T. ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... was one of the principal disciples, called Buddha's "left-hand attendant." He was distinguished for his power of vision, and his magical powers. The name in the text is derived from the former attribute, and it was by the latter that he took up an artist to Tushita to get a view of Sakyamuni, and so make a statue of him. (Compare the similar story in chap. vi.) He went to hell, and released his mother. He also ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... at once comprehended that she was injuring herself by allowing him thus to read her soul; she collected her features, and in a complaining voice said: "In the name of heaven, sir, tell me if it is to you, if it is to your government, if it is to an enemy I am to attribute the violence ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of the most lively scenes of marital infelicity due to causes ranging from theological disputes to flagrant licentiousness. Her enemies were not so charitable as to attribute her flight from her husband to any reason so innocent as incompatibility of temper or discrepancy of religious views. The position of ex-wife was neither understood nor tolerated by contemporary society. In the words of a favorite quotation from ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... known highest cultivation. Our own Best Society is represented by social groups which have had, since this is America, widest rather than longest association with old world cultivation. Cultivation is always the basic attribute of Best Society, much as we hear in this country of an ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... afternoon to many of his political friends, and which he believed your Majesty had authorised him to do. Lord Granville in that account laid much stress on the reasons which your Majesty gave for sending for Lord Granville, as he found that attempts had been made to attribute every sort of motive which ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... afterwards painted the bier and the dead body contained therein, with the other things, so highly extolled, that are around it, in the Scuola of S. Caterina da Siena; and although certain men of Siena, carried away by love of their own country, attribute these works to others, it may easily be recognized that they are the handiwork of Timoteo, both from the grace and sweetness of the colouring, and from other memorials of himself that he left in that most ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... constrained their Father to abdicate the Government, and give up the Power into their Hands, to the great Detriment of almost all Europe: The Rise of which Mischiefs, our Historians do unanimously attribute, for the most Part, to Queen Judith in a particular Manner: The Authors of this History are the Abbot of Ursperg, Michael Ritius and Otto Frising. [Chron. 5. cap. 34.] "Lewis (says this last) by reason of the Evil Deeds of his Wife Judith, ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... dislike the Japanese chestnuts, they are at least productive and hardy (at my place). Their chief attribute is their possibility as food for stock and wildlife. Some of the same people who dislike them (among nurserymen) recommend planting oaks which certainly do not compare with C. crenata. When a very "sweet" acorn is ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... dilute sulphuric acid in the vessel A, and pure distilled water in the vessel B. By the decomposition at c, it appeared as if water was a better conductor than dilute sulphuric acid for a current of such low intensity as to cause no decomposition. I am inclined, however, to attribute this apparent superiority of water to variations in that peculiar condition of the platina electrodes which is referred to further on in this Series (1040.), and which is assumed, as far as I can judge, to a greater degree in dilute sulphuric acid ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... gown in its box] Well, even so! You attribute to people of that sort susceptibilities which they ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... beholds the passionate people, eager for the blood of one man, and he innocent, and sees, standing in their midst, the meek and lowly Jesus, calm as an evening zephyr over Judea's plains, from whose eye flows the gentle love of an infinite divinity,—his face beaming in sympathy with every attribute of goodness, faith and humanity,—all this, too, before his mad, unjust accusers, from whose eyes flash in mingled rays the venom of scorn and hate,—his mind grows strong with a sense of right. His feelings will not longer be restrained, and, unconscious of his ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... influence, almost as much as to the higher education of women, I would be inclined to attribute the really remarkable awakening of woman's song that characterises the latter half of our century in England. No country has ever had so many poetesses at once. Indeed, when one remembers that the ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... twelve, and he had entered upon the last section of his two hours, when Kennedy distinctly heard footsteps in the wood. He had heard so many mysterious sounds since his patrol began at eleven o'clock that at first he was inclined to attribute this to imagination. But a crackle of dead branches and the sound of soft breathing convinced him that this was the real thing for once, and that, as a sentry of the Public Schools' Camp on duty, it behoved him to ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... thou wilt find here is a concise, unadorned account of the wourali poison. It may be of service to thee some time or other shouldst thou ever travel through the wilds where it is used. Neither attribute to cruelty, nor to a want of feeling for the sufferings of the inferior animals, the ensuing experiments. The larger animals were destroyed in order to have proof positive of the strength of a poison which hath hitherto been doubted, and the smaller ones were killed ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... their brains fallow, as it were, for several of the first years of their existence. The mischief perpetrated by a contrary course in the shape of bad health, peevish temper, and developed vanity, is incalculable. It would not be just to attribute this altogether to the vanity of parents; they are influenced by a natural fear lest their children should not have all the advantages of other children. Some infant prodigy which is a standard of mischief throughout ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... many cases of apparently causeless unfruitfulness in marriage that even physicians, with a knowledge of all apparent conditions in the parties, cannot explain; but when, as elsewhere related in this volume, impregnation by artificial means is successfully practised, it is useless to attribute barrenness to ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... other young communities, the church and religion had their part to play in the shaping {41} of modern Canada. And yet it would be impossible to attribute to any of the Canadian churches an influence so decisive as that which religion exercised through Presbyterianism in the creation of the Scottish democracy, or through Independency in moulding the New England character. For while the question ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... distinction between a Christian life on earth and one in heaven is by no means so sharply drawn in Scripture as it generally is by us, and that death has by no means so great importance as we faithlessly attribute to it. The life here and hereafter is like a road which passes the frontiers of two kingdoms divided by a bridged river, but runs on in the same direction on both sides of the stream. The flood had to be forded ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of their existence. If copper was in such demand that the ancestors of the present race of Chippeways were induced to work so perseveringly to obtain it, why did not the children continue to work, at least enough to finish the jobs already commenced by their progenitors? We cannot consistently attribute the Herculean labor expended on these mines to the ancestors of the indolent race of North American Indians. We incline, rather, to the opinion that the miners were the mound-builders, who resided south of the mines, and ultimately found a home in Mexico. The condition in which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... any way with the political concerns of the government in which they were laboring. That there were occasional instances of the disregard of this regulation by the enthusiastic members of the order may be supposed, but it will be unjust and unfounded to attribute to this society a settled policy of interference in the affairs of the nations where ...
— Japan • David Murray
... punctual in his services, forbearing with the farmers around him, mild with his brother clergymen, and indifferent to aught that bishop or archdeacon might think or say of him. I do not name this latter attribute as a virtue, but as a fact. But all these points were as nothing in the known character of Mr. Woolsworthy, of Oxney Colne. He was the antiquarian of Dartmoor. That was his line of life. It was in that capacity that ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... of influence, one arising in the life of Jesus, and the other in the reasonings of theologians, legends of miracles grew luxuriantly. It would be utterly unphilosophical to attribute these as a whole to conscious fraud. Whatever part priestcraft may have taken afterward in sundry discreditable developments of them, the mass of miraculous legends, Century after century, grew up mainly in good faith, and as naturally as elms along water-courses ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... another House wherein the Overseer liveth. When I was there, in August last, the Valley, and the Mountains too, out of which the Mercury was dug, were of as pleasant a verdure, as if it had been in the midst of Spring, which they there attribute to the moistness of the Mercury; how truly, I dispute not. That Mine, which we went into, the best and greatest of them all, was dedicated to Saint Barbara, as the other Mines are to other Saints, the depth of it was 125. ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... that it pronounces in the most confident manner even against accumulated observation on the part of the other sex. But it has not been quite so often remarked that this power (fallible, like every other human attribute) is for the most part absolutely incapable of self-revision; and that when it has delivered an adverse opinion which by all human lights is subsequently proved to have failed, it is undistinguishable from prejudice, in respect of ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... been put forth theories so much at odds with the relations of states, as hitherto understood, that, if they be maintained seriously, it is desirable in the interests of exact definition that their supporters advance some other name for them. It is not necessary to attribute finality to the Monroe doctrine, any more than to any other political dogma, in order to deprecate the application of the phrase to propositions that override or transcend it. We should beware of being ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... are white and slender. There is no attribute of womanly loveliness that does not ...
— Marion Arleigh's Penance - Everyday Life Library No. 5 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... corps. I sought to escape, but was prevented by accident; now I simply yield to the inevitable. I feel confident you will not misconstrue these words; you surely know me sufficiently well so as not to attribute them to cowardice. I shall face him exactly in accordance with your arrangements, asking nothing upon my part, yielding him every satisfaction he can possibly desire—but I shall fire in ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... hoping that he would attribute the heightened color of her cheeks to the exertion of the ride. "We thought we'd ride out to see ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... whose endeavour has ever been to stir up Europe against England—England that shall never be forgiven for the liberalism of her institutions, for the independence of her thinkers, and for her politics, to which they attribute, not without reason, the downfall ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... animals and minerals in the mode suggested, it may be that they are to be approximated in quite a contrary fashion; namely, by attributing to mineral species an internal innate power. For, as we must attribute to each elementary atom an innate power and tendency to form (under the requisite external conditions) certain unions with other atoms, so we may attribute to certain mineral species—as crystals—an ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... inheritance and by training to meddle with the lightning as safely as human being might; and Lady Merrifield owned with a sigh that she must accept as a fact that what even the heathens owned as a Divine mystery and awful attribute, had come to be treated as a commonplace business messenger and scientific toy, though (as Mrs. Gatty puts it) the mystery had only gone deeper. So much for the peril; and for the other scruple, it was set at rest by a hospitable letter from Mrs. Underwood, heartily inviting ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... on this occasion only five minutes, thinking probably that so much time might suffice. A woman, when she is jealous, is apt to attribute to the other woman with whom her jealousy is concerned, both weakness and timidity, and to the man both audacity and strength. A woman who has herself taken perhaps twelve months in the winning, will think that ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... had the delight of being the first to taste the contents of Hardquanonne's flask. He seemed but little surprised, for astonishment is the attribute of a little mind. Besides, was it not all due to him, who had waited so long on duty at the gate of chance? Knowing how to wait, he ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... by rule, (Instinct's a brute, and sentiment a fool!) Who make poor will do wait upon I should— We own they're prudent, but who feels they're good? Ye wise ones, hence! ye hurt the social eye! God's image rudely etch'd on base alloy! But come ye who the godlike pleasure know, Heaven's attribute distinguished—to bestow! Whose arms of love would grasp the human race: Come thou who giv'st with all a courtier's grace; Friend of my life, true patron of my rhymes! Prop of my ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... be the more apt word, perhaps; you worry me, Nephew. Such impeccable virtue naturally suggests an early death—a harp—a halo! And yet you appear to enjoy robust health. Pray to what do you attribute your so great immunity from those pleasant weaknesses that are so frequently a concomitant of strength and youthful vigour—those charming follies, bewitching foibles that a somewhat rigorous convention stigmatises ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... outline the strong points and the weak points of Southern character. It exhibited Southern men as possessed of the utmost physical courage—often carried indeed to foolish audacity. It exhibited them at the same time as singularly deficient in the attribute of moral courage. When the Southern leaders knew the Confederate cause to be hopeless not a single man among them displayed sufficient heroism to brave public opinion with the declaration of his honest belief. The ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... When the grass and weeds, however, were grown sufficiently to protect the surface of the soil from the sun and wind, this effect entirely ceased; and I know not that any other inconvenience was experienced from the same source, unless we attribute to this, as may fairly be done, the destruction of the purity of the well. This formerly afforded very good water; and, since that period, it has much improved. When the corporations of Southwark and ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... sceptical with regard to the existence of the werwolf, and refuse to accept, as proof of such existence, the accumulated testimony of centuries, attribute the origin of the belief in the phenomenon merely to an insane delusion, which, by reason of its novelty, gained a footing and ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... the persecutions of the Jews, which were committed in most countries, with even greater exasperation than in the twelfth century, during the first Crusades. In every destructive pestilence the common people at first attribute the mortality to poison. No instruction avails; the supposed testimony of their eyesight is to them a proof, and they authoritatively demand the victims of their rage. On whom, then, was it so likely to fall as on the Jews, the usurers and the strangers ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... Some attribute, says the learned and eloquent feathered sage (according to Gerrans), the discovery to the sounds made by a large stone against the frame of an oil-press; and others to the noise of meat when roasting; but the sages ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... of argument, so far from being confined to Ireland, is as old as the human race itself. Of all human passions, that for political domination is the last to yield to reason. Men are naturally inclined to attribute admitted social evils to every cause—religion, climate, race, congenital defects of character, the inscrutable decrees of Divine Providence—rather than to the form of political institutions; in other words, to the organic structure ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... I would hardly attribute to him a sweet disposition. Oh, quit talking about him. He had flat feet in the war, I think it was. Jack's twin brother was killed, you know—and mine—well, you ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... sufficient to expiate the harm which he has done to France.... I will devote his name to the execration of posterity. I am glad to learn that my soldiers retain the feeling of their superiority, and that they attribute our great misfortunes to the right authors. I collect with great pleasure, from the intelligence which you have brought, that the opinion which I had formed respecting the situation of France, is correct. The family of the Bourbons is not fit to reign. ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... in such phrases as arch enemy, arch heretic, arch hypocrite, arch rogue, it acquired a depreciatory sense, which has now become so weakened that archness is not altogether an unpleasing attribute. We may compare the cognate German prefix Erz. Ludwig has, as successive entries, Ertz-dieb, "an arch-thief, an arrant thief," and Ertz-engel, "an arch-angel." The meaning of arrant is almost entirely due to association with ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... that we succeed in imaging matter. We try to image spirit. I suppose that most people have a notion as to how God looks. Anything that has not extension is as nothing to our imagination. Yet we know that our minds are real, though we cannot attribute extension to mind. Divisibility is of matter; if the infinite mind has parts, then infinity is divisible—which is ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... power of a genius which has never been matched, and which almost justified the vulgar conclusion that none but one possessed with a demon could do such things. Paganini possessed the oft-quoted attribute of genius, "the power of taking infinite pains," but behind this there lay superlative gifts of mind, physique, and temperament. He completely dazzled the greatest musical artists as well as the masses. "His ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... she will have revenge upon the name of Cunningham. She has spoken little of her gift of second-sight since ye were born; but she is often subject to long and gloomy fits of silent melancholy, as ye have all been witnesses; and I attribute it all to our foray to Simprin. But" (the old man would add in conclusion), "would that the good old times were come back again, when I could meet Cunningham in the field; and he should find the hand that unhorsed him five and twenty years ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... fro in the small room, which seemed then to grow even smaller and unfit to hold his dignity, the attribute of a supreme warrior. That swing of the shoulders that had frozen the timid when he was but a lad had increased with his growth and education at the ratio of ten to one. It, combined with the sneer upon his mouth, told mankind ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... workmanship is better. The instruments he made about this period have wood for the most part singularly plain, and different in kind from what his master used. His use of this material I am disposed to attribute to the want of means rather than choice. The purfling of these early instruments is very narrow, and many of the backs are cut slab-form. Previous to about the year 1672, we find that his whole work is in accordance with the plans of Amati (not as seen in the latter's grand pattern, but ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... and of which I have spoken, was practised long before the conquest of these isles by the Spaniards. This would seem to prove the origin I attribute to the Tagalocs, whom I believe to be descended from the Malays, and these latter, being all Mussulmans, would naturally have preserved some of the ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... concern you to know it too, I must endeavour to explain to you all the details. Dearest Fanny, I do trust that when you have heard them you will think neither worse of me on that account,—nor better. It is as to the latter that I am really in fear. I wish to believe that no chance attribute could make me stand higher in your esteem than I have come to stand already ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... only exceptions to the dramatic character of the contents of the two volumes. Yet through them all Browning's mind is clearly discernible; and even his central convictions, his working creed of life, can with no sense of uncertainty be gathered from them. To attribute to the writer the opinions and the feelings of his dramatis personae would of course be the crudest of mistakes. But when an idea persists through many poems written at various times and seasons, when it appears and reappears under various clothings of circumstance, when it is employed ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... would have softened any heart but the unfeeling Shylock's; saying, that it dropped as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath; and how mercy was a double blessing, it blessed him that gave, and him that received it; and how it became monarchs better than their crowns, being an attribute of God himself; and that earthly power came nearest to God's, in proportion as mercy tempered justice: and she bid Shylock remember that as we all pray for mercy, that same prayer should teach us to show mercy. Shylock only answered her by desiring to have the penalty forfeited in ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... men, who derided and despised him, in his character of male lady's-maid and man-milliner. Nor could he think enough of his existence from a moral point of view. Wickedness seemed to him an essentially male attribute, and to pass one's days with a delicate woman, and principally occupied about trimmings, was to inhabit an enchanted isle among the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... God, there is neither wisdom nor charity in insisting that he shall explain what he means by these terms; nor in questioning the strength and sincerity of his faith in his Saviour, because he makes too great a distinction between the Divinity of the Father and that which he allows to be the attribute of the Son.'[363] This was certainly the feeling of Tillotson[364] and many other eminent men of the same school. If an Unitarian chose to conform, as very many are accustomed to do, they gladly received him as a fellow worshipper. Thomas ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... was on sea or land." A less practical conduct, a more ideal view of right and wrong—sometimes a little fantastic even—always imbued with something of the knightliness which sat upon him as a natural attribute. Ritterlich, Karl Linders called him, half in jest, half in ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... his sister knew of the estrangement between Jean and his home. They had puzzled their heads in vain as to the reasons for Jean's retirement to the Rue St. Jacques, but were inclined to attribute it to politics or ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... as inarticulate as Cromwell. Like the great Protector he "lived silent," and like him he was often misunderstood. Stories which have been repeated by writer after writer attribute to him the most grotesque eccentricities of manner, and exhibit his lofty piety as the harsh intolerance of a fanatic. He has been represented as the narrowest of Calvinists; and so general was the belief in ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... of conduct, a law of unexampled power for enabling them to war against the law of sin in their members and not to serve it in the lusts thereof. The book which contains this invaluable law they call the Word of God, and attribute to it, as I have said, and as, indeed, is perfectly well known, a reach and sufficiency co-extensive with all the wants of human nature. This might, no doubt, be so, if humanity were not the composite thing it is, if it had only, or in quite overpowering eminence, a moral ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... the coffeehouses of London murmured at this profusion, and accused William of ostentation. But, as this fault was never, on any other occasion, imputed to him even by his detractors, we may not unreasonably attribute to policy what to superficial or malicious observers seemed to be vanity. He probably thought it important, at the commencement of a new era in the relations between the two great kingdoms of the West, to hold high the dignity of the Crown which ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... great variety of other things, which to certain minds unquestionably represent high value—the—station, the power, the prestige of a great position, with all its surroundings of deference and homage. Large as his salary is, it is the least distinctive feature of his high office. In every attribute of rank the man is a king. In his presence the wisest and the most gifted do no more than insinuate the words of their wisdom, and beauty retires curtsying, after a few commonplaces from his lips. Why, through all the employments ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... born, as Nelson's and Gladstone's were! I have considered that possibility too, and rejected it. I cannot cite all the stories about Caesar which seem to me to show that he was genuinely original; but let me at least point out that I have been careful to attribute nothing but originality to him. Originality gives a man an air of frankness, generosity, and magnanimity by enabling him to estimate the value of truth, money, or success in any particular instance quite independently of convention and moral generalization. ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw |
