"Complexity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... broader inference and laughed as if at a great joke. Kells shook his head doubtfully, as if Cleve's transparent speech only added to the complexity. And Cleve turned away, as if in an instant he had forgotten ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... towards simplicity in composition as against complexity. In backgrounds particularly, avoid detail and over-variety. Don't have the whole surface of the canvas spotted with things. If it is necessary, put it in; if it is not necessary, leave it out; and if there is the slightest doubt which it ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... my camp, full of anxious anticipations for the morrow; while the novelty of the scene, and its striking character, the complexity of the phenomena, the lake-bed, the stupendous ice-deposited moraine, and its remoteness from any existing ice, the broad valley and open character of the country, were all marked out as so many problems suddenly conjured up for my unaided solution, and kept me awake for many hours. I had never ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... utmost expedition, from whence it was transmitted by telegraph to Paris. The Emperor, surprised but not disconcerted by this intelligence, received it at St. Cloud on the 11th of April, and two hours after he was on the road to Germany. The complexity of affairs in which he was then involved seemed to give a new impulse to his activity. When he reached the army neither his troops nor his Guard had been able to come up, and under those circumstances ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... of preposterous folly that Newton would have been guilty of, had he attempted to show that there was no such thing as "gravity" in the universe; that it was only some undiscovered correlative of a thermal limit,—some unknown molecular complexity or entanglement in cosmic ether—some spontaneously occurring affinity or antagonism of ethereal molecules in the interplanetary spaces—some "potentiated potentiality" of mere sky-mist,—conditions of which he could have ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... Kosovo. While maintaining ultimate oversight, UNMIK continues to work with the European Union and Kosovo's local provisional government to accelerate economic growth, lower unemployment, and attract foreign investment to help Kosovo integrate into regional economic structures. The complexity of Serbia and Montenegro political relationships, slow progress in privatization, legal uncertainty over property rights, scarcity of foreign-investment and a substantial foreign trade deficit are holding back the economy. Arrangements with the IMF, especially ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... determining factor of vocal pitch. Sir Morell Mackenzie, however, in describing the muscles of the larynx in a passage couched in untechnical language, unconsciously gives a hint of another purpose for which the complexity of muscles in the larynx may exist. After speaking of the "innumerable little fingers of the muscles which move the vocal cords," he continues: "These fingers (which prosaic anatomists call fibres), besides ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... improvement which every day takes place in science and mechanics, I was encouraged to hope my present attempts would at least lay the foundations of future success. Nor could I consider the magnitude and complexity of my plan as any argument of its impracticability. It was with these feelings that I began the creation of a human being. As the minuteness of the parts formed a great hindrance to my speed, I resolved, contrary to my first intention, ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... groundwork, and incorporating with it as much of the two others as it had not completely superseded. I had also to unroll such of Bentham's involved and parenthetical sentences as seemed to overpass by their complexity the measure of what readers were likely to take the pains to understand. It was further Mr. Bentham's particular desire that I should, from myself, endeavour to supply any lacunae which he had left; and at his instance I read, for this purpose, the most ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... political life on a tremendous scale. Or, as these civilizations are themselves relatively complex, a study of still simpler forms of hunting, nomadic, and agricultural life in the beginnings of civilization, a study of the effects of the introduction of iron, and iron tools, reduces the complexity to ...
— Moral Principles in Education • John Dewey
... the article. First we ought to find whether it is as well made as it should be—does it give the best possible service? Then—are the materials the best or merely the most expensive? Then—can its complexity and weight be cut ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... her, there was a disturbance, a growing doubt, a something vague and troubling.... Joan had not learnt to probe her own heart. A sensation was not, or it was. She was puzzled by the feeling Prosper was beginning to cause her, a feeling of miserable complexity; but she was not yet mentally equipped for the confronting of complexity. It was necessary for an emotion to rush at Joan and throw down, as it were, her heart before she recognized it; even then she might not give it a name. She would ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... was far from comprehending the complexity of her feelings. Ditmar had not apologized or feigned an altruism for which she would indeed have despised him. The ruthlessness of his laugh—the laugh of the red-blooded man who makes laws that he himself may be lawless ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the most telling force possible to the upward struggle of our primitive and dependent people, patiently leading them by the road of sympathetic understanding into some strength to stand amidst the overpowering complexity of the civilization that surrounds them, in which they as yet are not advanced enough to become more ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... Cambridge undergraduate before his Little-Go, the London University medical student before his Preliminary Scientific Examination, are simply doing the belated work of this second stage. And there is, I doubt not, a similar vague complexity in America. But through the fog something very like the boundary line here placed about fourteen is again and again made out; not only the general requirements for efficient education, but the trend of present tendency seems to be towards a scheme of three stages in which a first stage of nine ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... for goods exported or on any other account. The existence of these two distinct modes in which money flows into a country, while other commodities are habitually introduced only in the first of these modes, occasions somewhat more of complexity and obscurity than exists in the case of other commodities, and for this reason only is any special and minute ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... group consists of the buildings erected during or since the Renaissance (i.e. revival) period, and is marked by a return to the styles of past ages or distant countries for the architectural features and ornaments of buildings; and by that luxury, complexity, and ostentation which, with other qualities, are well comprehended under the epithet Modern. This group of buildings forms what is known as Renaissance architecture, and extends from the epoch of the revival of letters in the fifteenth century, to ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... had crushed and injured this other human being, his wife, to whom he had come nearest, just as a dirty hand might soil and crumple a fine fabric. But she no longer reproached him, if she ever had; she understood the sad complexity of a fate that had brought into the hand the fabric to be tarnished. And what she could accept, others must, the world must, to whom the Prestons are ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... spread out like a spider, along half the length of the vestibule wall. Something like a huge, hairy amoeba in overall appearance, though the physical structures under the coarse, black pelt must be of very unamoeba-like complexity. No eyes were in sight, but Quillan had the impression of being regarded steadily. Here and there, along the edges and over the surface of the body, were a ...
— Lion Loose • James H. Schmitz
... devotion to her husband, the marriage vow sat but lightly on her in the early days of their separation. Her husband appears to have been for a short time more constant, but, convinced of her fickleness, to have become as unfaithful as she. And yet the complexity of emotions—ambition, self-interest, and physical attraction—which seems to have been present in both, although in widely different degree, sustained something like genuine ardor in him, and an affection ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... it is to be traced solely to the influence exerted by Hindoo religion and Hindoo literature during ages of domination in the Malay archipelago, or whether we must reconsider the hypothesis of an Indonesian migration,—this is a problem of great complexity, for which no satisfactory solution has ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... that distinguished the vendors under consideration was their identification with the customer. The size and internal complexity of the company also was an important factor. POB was looking at large companies that had substantial resources. In the end, the process generated for Yale two competitive proposals, with Xerox's the clear winner. WATERS then described the components of the proposal, the design principles, and some ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... had carefully worked out on the bony frame, are illustrated by the various individuals comprising this moving throng. But what a wonder it is, this snatch at the central life of a mighty city as it rushed by in all its multitudinous complexity of movement! Hundreds of objects in this picture could be identified in a court of law by their owners. There stands Car No. 33 of the Astor House and Twenty-Seventh Street Fourth Avenue line. The old woman would miss an ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... author's story, at least reflect his state of mind—Paul de Musset says, what everybody who has read his brother's writings carefully will feel to be true, that neither in the hero nor any other single personage must we look for Alfred's entire individuality. In the complexity of his character and emotions, and the contradictions which they united, are to be found the eidolon of every young man in his collection, even "the two heroes of Les Caprices de Marianne, Octave and Coelio," says Paul, "although they are the antipodes of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... see the same party at once a civil litigant against me in point of right and a culprit before me, while I sit as a criminal judge on acts of his whose moral quality is to be decided upon the merits of that very litigation. Men are every now and then put, by the complexity of human affairs, into strange situations; but justice is the same, let the judge be in what ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... astounding young person before her would have gone gallivanting off with one man to whom she was not married to the bedside, thousands of miles away, of another man to whom she was also not married. Such simplicity of mental processes surpassed any complexity ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... young woman, tall, slender, in a white frock, with a white cloak, an indescribable complexity of soft lace and airy ruffles, round her shoulders. She wore no hat. Her hair, brown and warm in shadow, sparkled, where it caught the light, in a kind of crinkly ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... a boy again. He did not like it now because he had felt the sweetness of having her at an advantage. There are some men who, when they see what they want, stretch out their hands to take it with no more complexity of thought than a baby has when it reaches for a toy. At other times Alec Trenholme might consider; just then he only knew that he wanted to talk longer with this stately girl who was now retiring. He arrested her steps by making a random dash at ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... A new complexity was introduced into her life. Viewed by this recent light, Mutimer's behaviour since the return from London was not so difficult to understand; but the problem of how to bear with it became the harder. There were hours when Adela's ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... his cleverness in touching the goal; but somehow these smart hits disturbed rather than amused her. Knight's complexity was a puzzle to her. She could not understand, despite his explanations, why these fireworks of dexterity were worth while. Knight was a brave figure of romance. She did not want her hero turned into an intriguer, no matter ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... and complexity of internal trade during this period render it impossible to attempt, within the scope of this paper, to give a connected account of its development. However, some idea of its wonderful expansion may be conveyed by the following ...
— Outline of the development of the internal commerce of the United States - 1789-1900 • T.W. van Mettre
... scientific journal, some fifteen years before. At the time it had seemed intensely comical to see two enraged combatants—for so I amused myself by fancying them—hurling algebraic formulae, of frightful complexity, at each other's heads. I did not then dream that I should live to be an object of the same sort of attack, and that ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... ended, and even this much tired him. The time for dinner came; Mr. Best now turned certain hand-wheels and moved certain levers. They shut off the power and gradually the din lessened, the pulsing and throbbing slowed until the whole great complexity came to a stand-still. The drone of the overhead wheels ceased, the crash of the draw-heads stopped. A startling silence seemed to grow out of the noise and quell it, while a new activity manifested itself among the workers. As a bell rang they were changed in a twinkling ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... more than that of the war, will test our national fibre. The problems we face are in extent, in character, in complexity greater than at any other period of history. The strain will be greater, for the conflict is being lifted to a higher plane, that of ideas. And ideas are the supreme realities, the dynamic forces that rule the world, the fulcrum that shifts the ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... the process of bringing forth young has become so much more exhausting as refinement has replaced savage sturdiness and callousness, and the care of them in infancy has become so much more onerous as the growth of cultural complexity has made education more intricate, that the two functions now lay vastly heavier burdens upon the strength and attention of a woman than they lay upon the strength and attention of any other female. And for another thing, the consequent disability ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... used in their teaching. They taught faith in the unity and spirituality of God, the sovereign authority of the moral law, heroic purity of soul, austere discipline of character, and the hope of a life beyond the tomb. Thus in ages of darkness, of complexity, of conflicting peoples, tongues, and faiths, these great orders toiled in behalf of friendship, bringing men together under a banner of faith, and training them for a nobler moral life. Tender and tolerant of all faiths, they formed an all-embracing moral and spiritual fellowship ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... real complexity of the situation began to develop. Some one had rung the bell and been admitted to the library and a maid came to the door of the den. When she saw us she stopped uncertainly. Even then it struck me that she looked odd, and she was not in uniform. However, I was not informed ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... had passed, almost to the week, since a brash youngster named Alan Donnell had crossed the bridge from the Spacer's Enclave and hesitantly entered the bewildering complexity ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... then by the full brass choir, with the glockenspiel and cymbals added. Into it are woven all of the other themes in inextricable whirls and whorls of sound, and in most amazing combinations and permutations of tonalities. Moreover, there is a constantly rising complexity of rhythm, and on one page of the score the time signature is changed no less than eighteen times. Several times it is 5-8 and 7-4; once it is 11-2; in one place the composer, following Koechlin and Erik Satie, abandons bar-lines altogether for half a page of the score. And ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... the moment was one of almost intolerable complexity. This tender intimacy of night—the natural intimacy of husband and wife; this sense, which would not be denied, however sternly he might hold it in check, of her dear form beside him; the little refinements and self-revelations of a woman's ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mustache. He was a handsome fellow, well dressed, and with an easy carriage, and he had an expression of intelligent good-humor which made more than one woman in the car look at him. Although Maria did not see him, he saw her at once, and recognized her, and his handsome face paled. The ridiculous complexity of his position towards her had not tended to make him very happy. He had kept the secret as well as Maria; for him, as for her, a secret was a heavy burden, almost amounting to guilt. He continued ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... employment of vast quantities of barbed wire as effective obstacles, the enormous expansion of artillery, and the provision of great masses of motor transport—have introduced new problems of considerable complexity concerning the effective co-operation of the different arms and services. Much thought has had to be bestowed upon determining how new devices could be combined in the best manner with the machinery already ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... own sake; that is a Christian product. Everything in that old world would appear to have been clean and obvious. A good man was a good man; a bad man was a bad man. For this reason they had no charity; for charity is a reverent agnosticism towards the complexity of the soul. For this reason they had no such thing as the art of fiction, the novel; for the novel is a creation of the mystical idea of charity. For them a pleasant landscape was pleasant, and an unpleasant landscape ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... shrewd appreciation of the American character,—shrewd and caustic, yet not without a good degree of justice; the sagacity of his remarks on the past, and prophecies of what was likely to happen,—prophecies which, in one instance, were singularly verified, in regard to a complexity which was then arresting the attention of ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... so far from consisting in the passive "being impressed by beauty" which unscientific aestheticians imagined as analogous to "being impressed by sensuous qualities," by hot or cold or sweet or sour, is in reality a combination of higher activities, second in complexity and intensity only to that of the ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... Allegro eroico, opens with a bold, heroic theme in spread chords, followed by a quieter subject. The music goes triumphantly on with increasing brilliance, complexity and heroic ardour. At length a great final version of the heroic theme is heard, Maestoso, and soon we come to the dramatic moment of the whole sonata. At the very height of exaltation we are overwhelmed by a shattering descent of double octaves, ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... one of those who believed that, even in the ordinary legislation of the House, and still more in a measure of such complexity, it was the utmost folly to talk of finality!"—Mr. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 25, 1893 • Various
... small affairs, reckon strictly by halfpence; and you have to solve, by a spasm of mental arithmetic, such posers as thirty-two, forty-five, or even a hundred halfpence. In the Pacific States they have made a bolder push for complexity, and settle their affairs by a coin that no longer exists—the bit, or old Mexican real. The supposed value of the bit is twelve and a half cents, eight to the dollar. When it comes to two bits, the quarter-dollar stands for the required amount. But how about an odd bit? The nearest coin ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... persecution, confiscation too truly describe its general strain; and policy is on the whole subordinated to violence as the standing instrument of government. But after, say, the reign of William III., the element of representation begins to assert itself. Simplicity is by degrees exchanged for complexity; the play of human motives, singularly diversified, now becomes visible in the currents of a real public life. It has for a very long time been my habit, when consulted by young political students, to recommend them carefully to study the characters and events of the American Independence. ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... Several attempts may be noted in modern philosophy, which confirm the view here exposed. Space and time, far from being very simple and primitive functions, are shown to be intellectual constructions of great complexity. And further, even in some of those who do not altogether deny to space and time the quality of forming or of categories and functions, one may observe the attempt to unify and to understand them in a different manner from that generally ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... Terry made the strongest impression, her part being noble and sympathetic, while Sir Henry Irving had the ungrateful part of the villain. To be sure, he was a villain of much complexity; and Tennyson thought that his subtle blend of Roman refinement and intellectuality, and barbarian, self-satisfied sensuality, was not "hit off." Synorix is, in fact, half-Greek, half-Celt, with a Roman education, and the "blend" is ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... the perfection of honesty and integrity, without the slightest affectation of interest or artificiality of manner, and it was this fresh complexity of her character that utterly baffled me. I could not determine whether, or ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... easy to postpone self-help till sheer necessity drives, or till some one in whom they believe inspires them. The work of re-equipping these with initiative, with a new interest in life, with work which they can do, is one of infinite difficulty and complexity. Nevertheless, it ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... the spires. Nothing can surpass the boldness or the simplicity of the plan; and yet, in spite of this simplicity, the clear detaching of the shafts from the slope of the spire, and their great height, strengthened by rude cross-bars of stone, carried back to the wall behind, occasion so great a complexity and play of cast shadows, that I remember no architectural composition of which the aspect is so completely varied at different hours of the day.[10] But the main thing I wish you to observe is, the complete domesticity ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... and, from man to fishes, had arranged living vertebrates very much in the modern order. But the invertebrates were a vague and ill-assorted heap of animals. It was not recognised that among them there were many series of different grades of ascending complexity, and there was no well-known form to serve as a standard of comparison for all the others in the fashion that the body of man served as a standard of comparison for all vertebrates. Here and there, a few salient types such ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... without any cultural direction at all. The chief concern of the American people, even above the bread-and-butter question, was politics. They were incessantly hag-ridden by political difficulties, both internal and external, of an inordinate complexity, and these occupied all the leisure they could steal from the sordid work of everyday. More, their new and troubled political ideas tended to absorb all the rancorous certainty of their fading religious ideas, so that devotion to a theory ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... parts of the world and is supposed to have been invented by an ancient chief of the race, named Natas, who was for many centuries after his death worshiped as a god, and whose memory is still held in veneration. The government is of infinite complexity, its various functions distributed among as many officers as possible, multiplication of places being regarded as of the greatest importance, and not so much a means as an end. The Tamtonians seem to think that the highest ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... white rabbits produced from the various recesses of his waistcloth admittedly melts the austerity of the superficial of both sexes. But can you, beneath the undeceptive light of day, turn a sere and unattractive hag into the substantial image of a young and beguiling maiden, and by a further complexity into a fruitful fig-tree; or induce a serpent so far to forsake its natural instincts as to poise on the extremity of its tail and hold a charm within ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... nearly recovered, and being, I confess, somewhat bewildered by the variety and complexity of these ingenious projects, I felt disposed to take my leave; but Vindar insisted on conducting us into an inner apartment, to see his poetry box. This was a large piece of furniture, profusely decorated with ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... is to obtain the greatest possible effect with the smallest power; if so, the more simple the language, the more matter is condensed, the nearer we approach to perfection. Flourishes and flowers of rhetoric may be compared to extra wheels applied to a carriage, increasing the rattling and complexity of the machine, without adding to either the strength of its fabric or the ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... there probably was a diminution with respect to these two practices, but only because of the large number of abstentions—merely 29 per cent. voted in Rome, 38 per cent. in Naples, and in Turin scarcely more. The people were tired of the excessive complexity and dissimulation of Italian politics. There was a good deal of violence—in Milan, Florence, Bologna and Sicily the riots were sometimes fatal—and with such an electorate, more extensive than heretofore, so that ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... itself to Bacon's mind as a huge congeries of phenomena, the manifestations of some simple and primitive qualities, which were hid from us by the complexity of the things themselves. The world was a vast labyrinth, amid the windings of which we require some clue or thread whereby we may track our way to knowledge and thence to power. This thread, the filum labyrinthi, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... is useless or unpraiseworthy, but only that it should be subsidiary to the larger way. It serves to bring out more clearly what is very wonderful in Dante, namely, the omnipresence of his memory throughout the work, so that its intimate coherence does not exist in spite of the reconditeness and complexity of allusion, but is woven out of them. The poem has many senses, he tells us, and there can be no doubt of it; but it has also, and this alone will account for its fascination, a living soul behind them all ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... of a paragraph is ordinarily from fifty to three hundred words, depending on the importance or complexity of the thought. In exposition, the paragraphs should be long enough to develop every idea thoroughly. Scrappy expository paragraphs arouse the suspicion that the writer is incoherent, or that he has not given sufficient thought to the subject. Short paragraphs are permissible, and ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... with me, and failing with me. I would have known you, now, as we sit by the fire. As it is, I do not. To that which I did know there has been added, somehow (what shall I call it?), a subtlety; complexity,—favorite words of yours,—which is ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... Conversation had drifted towards serious subjects in the course of the evening, and Mrs. St. Quentin had admitted, with a playful deprecation of her dear friend's rigid religious attitude, that no one creed, no one system, offered an adequate solution of the infinite mystery and complexity of life—as she knew it. The serene adherence of one charming and experienced woman to an authority which he had rejected, the almost equally serene indifference on the part of the other to the revelation he held as absolute and final, troubled Julius. Small ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... and although the Earthmen were not prevented from standing outside the pens and watching the ugly beasts munching grass or basking in the sun, the Arrillians always seemed nervous when the strangers were about the pens. The Earthmen had shrugged and reflected that religion was a complexity difficult enough at home, needless to probe too deeply ...
— Grove of the Unborn • Lyn Venable
... theatric air, in a manner that practically warns all other hands off the material for ever. At the same time I think I saw Miriam, and without a sacrifice of truth, that is of the particular glow of verisimilitude I wished her most to benefit by, in a complexity of relations finer than any that appear possible for the ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... science it is universally found that complexity leads to simplicity, and in narrating the history of scientific research it is often advisable to ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... There was complexity of element enough in the thing she was on her way to do, Bettina was thinking, as she was driven over the white ribbon of country road that unrolled over rise and hollow, between the sheep-dotted greenness of fields and the scented ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... us as evolution in time and complexity in space. Regarded in time, it is the continuous evolution of a being ever growing older; it never goes backwards and never repeats anything. Considered in space, it exhibits certain coexisting elements ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... assumed, mere air put in motion with an approximately uniform velocity in the same strata, is, in reality, variable and irregular in its movements beyond anything which had been anticipated, being made up, in fact, of a succession of brief pulsations in different directions, and of great complexity. These pulsations, he argues, if of sufficient amplitude and frequency, would be capable, by reason of their own "internal work," of sustaining or even raising a suitably curved surface which was being carried along by the main mean air stream. This would account for the ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... plot of Plautus, Shakespeare developed an amusing complexity of situations. These appear upon studying the progress of the story, Act ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... very highly-organized animals do continue to live at a depth of 300 and 400 fathoms, inasmuch as they have been dredged up thence; and that the difference in the amount of light and heat at 400 and at 2,000 fathoms is probably, so to speak, very far less than the difference in complexity of organisation between these animals and the humbler Protozoa and ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... with "metre superadded." "What other distinction from prose," he asks, "would we have?" We may answer that we would have what he has actually given us, viz., an appropriate and attractive music, lying both in the rhythm and in the actual sound of the words used,—a music whose complexity may be indicated here by drawing out some of its elements in detail, at the risk of appearing pedantic and technical. We observe, then (a), that the general movement of the lines is unusually slow. They contain a very large proportion of strong accents and long vowels, to suit the tone ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... used, in which the steam, after having given motion to a small piston on the principle of a high pressure engine, passes into a larger cylinder, where it operates on the principle of a condensing engine; but there is no superior effect gained by the use of two cylinders, and there is greater complexity in the apparatus. Instead of the lever walls, cast iron columns are now frequently used for supporting the main beam in pumping engines, and the cylinder end of the main beam is generally made longer than the pump end in engines made in Cornwall, so as to enable the cylinder ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... inch at a time. The women were, almost without exception, in light-coloured gowns, white, pale blue, Nile green, and pink, while over these costumes were thrown opera cloaks and capes of astonishing complexity and elaborateness. Nearly all were bare-headed, and nearly all wore aigrettes; a score of these, a hundred of them, nodded and vibrated with an incessant agitation over the heads of the crowd and flashed like ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... This complexity is, in general, very great, as is demonstrated by the examination of the luminous spectra produced by the atoms, and it is precisely because of the compensations produced between the different movements that the essential properties of matter—the ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... limousine; in its deep upholstery, its silk curtains and velvet carpet and gold mounted vanities, Mina Raff was remarkably child-like, small; her face, brightening at intervals in the rapidly passing lights outside, was touched by pathos; she seemed crushed by the size, the swiftness and complexity, of her automobile, and by the gathering imperious weight of her fame. She was still, however, appealingly simple; no matter what she might do it would be invested with the aspect of innocence which, admirable for her art, never for an ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Baker, recovering with a smile now. "But it's hardly an accurate or applicable one. The human mind is not a piece of precious metal found in a mountain of ore. Rather, it's an intricate device capable of producing computations of unbelievable complexity. And we know how such devices that are superior in function are produced, and we know what their characteristics are. We also know that such a device does not 'play out'. If it is superior in function, it can remain so for a ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... tragic and the comic, and hardly exceeding in length a single Act of the Shakespearian Drama. The interest all, or nearly all, centres in the catastrophe, there being only so much of detail and range as is needful to the evolving of this. Thus the thing neither has nor admits any thing like the complexity and variety, the breadth, freedom, and massiveness, of Shakespeare's workmanship. There is timber enough and life enough in one of his dramas to make four or five Sophoclean tragedies; and one of these might almost ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... The scraggy branches of a tree in the foreground run out at us as if they would scratch our eyes out. The elbow of a figure stands forth so as to make us almost uncomfortable. Then there is such a frightful amount of detail, that we have the same sense of infinite complexity which Nature gives us. A painter shows us masses; the stereoscopic figure spares us nothing,—all must be there, every stick, straw, scratch, as faithfully as the dome of St. Peter's, or the summit of Mont Blanc, or the ever-moving stillness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... soul becomes a stranger. There is a Holy of Holies, over the threshold of which no human feet can pass. It is safe from trespass, guarded from intrusion, and even we cannot give to another the magic key to open the door. In spite of all the complexity of our social life, and the endless connections we form with others, there is as the ultimate fact a great and almost weird solitude. We may fill up our hearts with human fellowship in all its grades, yet there remains to each a distinct and ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... of a lowly condition and poor circumstances, who had to earn his living during the formative period of his life by the simplest and hardest labour of the hand. The qualities that made him what he was were of a very simple kind, and his character owed its strength, not to any complexity or subtlety of training and education, but rather to that very bareness and simplicity of circumstance that made him a man of single rather than manifold ideas. He was not capable of seeing both sides ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... on such subjects are to be found in books, magazines, and official reports. The good you will get from arguments on such subjects lies largely in finding out how to look up material. The difficulty with them lies in their size and their complexity. When it is remembered that a column of an ordinary newspaper has somewhere about fifteen hundred words, and that an editorial article such as on page 268, which is thirty-eight hundred words long, is in these days of hurry apt to be repellent, because of its length, ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... the reader will find the aim and object of these studies set forth at length. In view of the importance and complexity of the problems involved it seemed better to incorporate such a statement in the book itself, rather than relegate it to a Preface which all might not trouble to read. Yet I feel that such a general statement does not adequately express my full ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... will not attempt in this paper to enter into any general consideration of the possible influence of art on the masses of the people. The inquiry is one of great complexity, involved with that into the uses and dangers of luxury; nor have we as yet data enough to justify us in conjecturing how far the practice of art may be compatible with rude or mechanical employments. But the question, ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... nature, early ripened under the hot Indian sun, that found itself irresistibly drawn to the widening of its humanity in the flaxen fairness of Emmeline, or the Saxon element in him seeking back to its family—it might indeed have been both, our nature admitting of such marvellous complexity in its unity,—he fell in love with her, if not in the noblest yet in a very genuine, though at the same time very passionate way; and as she had, to use a Scots proverb, a crop for all corn, his attentions were ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... this task of grouping and classifying the arts: distinguishing between art and fine art, between artist, artificer and artisan; seeking to arrange a hierarchy of the arts on the basis of their relative freedom from fixed ends, their relative complexity or comprehensiveness of effect, their relative obligation to imitate or represent something that exists in nature! No one cares particularly to-day about such matters of precedence—as if the arts were walking in a carefully ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... success was to make the mountain country accessible. Only those who have had the fortune to travel through this country can realize how difficult this endeavor has been and must continue to be, chiefly because of the great local complexity of the mountain system, but also because of the severely destructive storms of this region, with consequent torrential violence of the streams affected. But little money, too, can be, or has been, spent for the necessary road-work. In spite of the ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... less than a seeming transparency; to be shrouded in mist may mean remaining long misunderstood, but those who wish to understand will at least be thorough in their search for the truth. It is not always realised how depth and complexity may exist in a work of clear design and strong contrasts—in the obvious genius of some great Italian of the Renaissance as much as in the troubled heart of a Rembrandt and the twilight ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... and terror before this entrance into a new life, and she did not wish to speak of it, to lower that feeling with inexact words. But even later, on the morrow, and on the third day, she not only could find no words for expressing the whole complexity of these feelings, but she could not find even thoughts, in revolving which she might clearly define to herself whatever was going ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... is somewhat more complicated than the vacuum, though equally reliable and powerful. Owing to the complexity of certain parts, such as the steam air-pump and the triple-valve, it is impossible to explain the system in detail; we therefore have recourse to simple diagrammatic sketches, which will help to make clear ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... elements. It is comparatively easy for us to see that to understand the present political, economic, and social conditions of the United States we are compelled to go back to the early settlements with their simple surroundings and slowly trace up the growth and increasing complexity of government, religion, commerce, manufactures, and social life. The theory of the culture epochs implies that the child began where primitive man began, feels as he felt, and advances as he advanced, only with more rapid strides; that as his physique ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... complexity caused by a lease of the same property being apparently granted to George Gibbes, and a double fine levied[99]—i.e., parties brought in who were strangers to the title; and a double fine appears to have been levied for technical purposes when the estate was entailed[100]. These other ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... firmness of touch, the brilliancy of the key, the ease and breadth of execution without the slightest sign of hesitation or alteration, or the extraordinary perfection with which the perspective is rendered? We do not know. Despite the complexity of the subject, the one defect of which may be a slight lack of unity in the composition, the general effect of the picture is simple and powerful, and the gradation of colour harmonious and correct. ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... way of strengthening his grip upon the complexity of life. Statistics help. This method is neither so conclusive as the devotees say, nor so bad as the people who are awed by it would like to believe. Voting, as Gabriel Tarde points out, is our most conspicuous use of statistics. Mystical democrats believe that an election expresses the will ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... but the syntax of articles, which even on this principle should have formed the first of the series, is placed by Lennie as the thirty-fourth rule, and by his amender as the thirty-second. To all this complexity the latter adds twenty-two Special Rules, with an abundance of "Notes" "Observations" and "Remarks" distinguished by these titles, on some principle which no one but the author can understand. Lastly, his method of syntactical parsing is not only mixed up with etymological ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... and open up the relationships in larger and larger environments until at last a child is capable of seeing relationships for himself and of regarding the whole world in its infinite physical and social complexity, as his own environment. ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... the Judges were in general less conversant in the affairs of the world, as the sphere of their jurisdiction was less extensive, and as the matters which came before them were of less variety and complexity, the rule being in general right, not so much inconvenience on the whole was found from a literal adherence to it as might have arisen from an endeavor towards a liberal and equitable departure, for which further experience, and a more continued cultivation ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... into his discovery at Colmoor, frowning upon Loveday, ploughing the truth into his brow; proving how modern misery, in its complexity, had its cause in one simple old fault, sure as the fact that smoke ascends, or apples fall. And when he saw conviction beam in Loveday's face, he next told what had happened at the elm-tree, and what would happen-soon; whereat Loveday, like a frightened ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... Sunday. Even in his confusion Mr. Opp was aware that there was something unusual in her appearance. Her hair, ordinarily drawn taut to a prim knot at the rear, had burst forth into curls and puffs of an amazing complexity. Moreover, her change of coiffure had apparently affected her spirits, for she, too, was flurried and self-conscious and glanced continually at ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... possible that the Clementine quotation was made directly from the original document or from a secondary document parallel to our first Gospel. The question that is opened out as to the composition of the Synoptics is one of great difficulty and complexity. In any case there is a balance of probability, more or less decided, in favour of the reference ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... poor; the individual is poor. The average standard of well-being corresponds, at best, to what in peace-time one would expect from an income of 3000 marks.[13] But the requirements of the population are not mediaevally simplified—they could not be, in view of the density of the population and the complexity of industrial and professional vocations. They are manifold and diverse, and they are moreover intensified by the spectacle of extravagance offered by the profiteering class and the licence of social life. The traditional garden-city idyll of architects ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... and difficult in physics. We are not yet in a condition to grapple with it, but we shall be by-and-by. Meanwhile we may profitably glance back on the web of relations which these experiments reveal to us. We have, firstly, in solar light an agent of exceeding complexity, composed of innumerable constituents, refrangible in different degrees. We find, secondly, the atoms and molecules of bodies gifted with the power of sifting solar light in the most various ways, and producing by this sifting the colours observed in nature ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall |
