"Defining" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... British action, it was but natural that Russia and Austria should come to a private understanding. This came about at Reichstadt in Bohemia on July 8. No definitive treaty was signed, but the two Emperors and their Chancellors framed an agreement defining their spheres of influence in the Balkans in case war should break out between Russia and Turkey. Francis Joseph of Austria covenanted to observe a neutrality friendly to the Czar under certain conditions that will be noticed later on. Some of ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... Prince of Wales was the man for the post. But the British constitution contained no provision for making the appointment. After much deliberation, the English Parliament decided to pass an Act appointing the Prince Regent and defining his powers, the Royal assent being given by Commission. The two houses of the Irish Parliament, however, without waiting for the Prince to be invested with the Regency in England, voted an address to him asking him to undertake the duties of Regent, ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... not so much in the book of her visions which may not be always effectual, as in the wonderful life which she dictated to Brother Armand, her confessor. She too explains, and much earlier than Saint Teresa, the principles and effects of Mysticism; but if she is less profound, less clever in defining shades, on the other hand she is wonderfully effusive and tender. She caresses the soul; she is a Bacchante of divine love, a Maenad of purity. Christ loves her, holds long conversations with her; the words she has retained surpass all literature, ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... movement than on matters of detail; and so, by following the main lines as closely as possible, we shall be sure of not going astray. Moreover, they alone are important to us; for we do not aim, like the naturalist, at finding the order of succession of different species, but only at defining the principal directions of their evolution. And not all of these directions have the same interest for us: what concerns us particularly is the path that leads to man. We shall therefore not lose sight of the fact, in following one direction and another, that our main business is to determine the ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... a widow, who with two beautiful whelps infested the forest where he resided. He knocked at the open door, sent in his card, and was duly admitted to the presence of the lady, who inquired his purpose. By way of "defining his position" he held up his foot, and snuffled very dolorously. The lady adjusted her spectacles, took the paw in her lap (she, too, had heard the tale of Androcles), and, after a close scrutiny, discovered ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... undiscouraged fancy, they declared that he must be some of cousin Silas's connections from Omaha; but even before Amelia had time to deny that, his ignorance of local tradition denied it for him. He must have heard of this or that, by way of cousin Silas; but he owned to nothing defining place or time, save that he had been in the war—"all through it." He seemed to be a man quite weary of the past and indifferent to the future. After a half hour's talk with him, unseasonable callers were likely to withdraw, perhaps into ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... poetic beauty, or of the ideal, in things; as but one voice, in a world where there were many voices it would be a moral weakness not to listen to. And yet this voice, through its forcible pre-occupation of his childish conscience, still seemed to make a claim of a quite exclusive character, defining itself as essentially one of but two possible leaders of his spirit, the other proposing to him unlimited self-expansion in a world of various sunshine. The contrast was so pronounced as to make the easy, light-hearted, unsuspecting exercise of himself, among the temptations of the new ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... copyright everything, charter everything, secure the rightful and proper credit to herself for everything she does, and everything she thinks she does, and everything she thinks, and everything she thinks she thinks or has thought or intends to think, is illustrated in Sec. 5 of Art. IV., defining the duties of official ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... distaste for living near a woman he had once loved, with another whom he loved with all the passion he had once lavished on Myra, and something that was truer and tenderer. He wanted to shut the doors on the past forever. That was why he did not wish to go back to the Toba. He only succeeded in clearly defining that feeling when it seemed that he must go—unless this prospective sale went through—because he had to use whatever lever stood nearest his hand. He had a direct responsibility, now, for material success. ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... in the business structure growing out of the increasing prosperity of the people was next provided for. When an enterprise became so large as to necessitate several owners for its conduct, the prescribing and defining of the relation of these owners to each other and to the common property became a task of increasing difficulty. So the idea arose of welding the enterprise itself into a separate entity which could do all the things the individual might, and yet exist apart ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... be that part of the personal or home premises devoted to ornament, and to the growing of vegetables and fruits. The garden, therefore, is an ill-defined demesne; but the reader must not make the mistake of defining it by dimensions, for one may have a garden in a flower-pot or on a thousand acres. In other words, this book declares that every bit of land that is not used for buildings, walks, drives, and fences, should be planted. What we shall plant—whether ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... as a heartfelt love of all that is beautiful, and joyous, and healthy in itself. Then the gods will indeed return and live again among us; not as literal beings, however, but as blessings in all that is best for man. Nor will 'Romance' be wanting—that influence which the age, without defining, still declares is essential to poetry. In Science, in Humanity, and in perfecting human ties and interests by the influence of love, there exists a romance which is exquisitely fascinating, and which lends itself to tenderer and more graceful dreams than Trouveur or ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to the medieval, it will be strange if we do not discover many differences between the two that can hardly be covered by any single phrase. Dr. Hedge himself enumerates several qualities of romantic art which it would be difficult to bring under his essential and defining category of wonder or aspiration. Thus he announces that "the peculiarity of the classic style is reserve, self-suppression of the writer"; while "the romantic is self-reflecting." "Clear, unimpassioned, impartial presentation of the subject . . . is the prominent feature of the classic style. The ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... and still gave her the keenest anxiety, Madame Jules took particular pains with her toilet for the night. She wanted to make herself, and she did make herself enchanting. She belted the cambric of her dressing-gown round her waist, defining the lines of her bust; she allowed her hair to fall upon her beautifully modelled shoulders. A perfumed bath had given her a delightful fragrance, and her little bare feet were in velvet slippers. Strong in a sense of her advantages ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... on a day not differing by more than two or three days at most from the date on which the actual moon is full. This may seem, at first sight, a very clumsy arrangement, but it has the advantage of defining the date of Easter precisely, without introducing any question as to the special meridian where the moon might be supposed to be observed. Thus, in 1905, the moon was full at 4{h} 56{m} Greenwich mean time on the morning of March ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... as to guard them from applying it inconsistently. This was the object of logicians when they laid down that a species must be defined per genus et differentiam, meaning by the differentia one attribute included in the essence, i.e. in the connotation. And, in fact, one attribute, e.g. in defining man, Rationality (Swift's Houyhnhms having not been as yet discovered) often does sufficiently mark out the objects denoted. But, besides that a definition of this kind ought, in order to be complete, to be per genus et differentias, i.e. by all ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... it had become matter of honourable pride and lucrative advantage to be a citizen of Athens, it was natural that the laws defining and limiting the freedom of the city should increase in strictness. Even before the time of Themistocles, those only were considered legitimate [307] who, on either side, derived parentage from Athenian citizens. ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... stiff in the tastes is that spiritual grace which is the very antidote, the very antithesis of egotism. Up to a certain point, a certain time, we are usefully employed in cultivating our tastes, in refining them, and in defining them. We cannot be too strenuous in defining them; and, as long as we are young, the catholicity of youth will preserve us from a bigoted narrowness. In aesthetic matters—and I imagine we both understand that we are dealing with these—the youngest youth has no tastes; it ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... apply federal law in the same way throughout the Union: errors of construction, and divergencies of judgment involving the national Constitution, laws, and treaties, are corrected through this power of appeal to one central supreme tribunal. A little later an Act was passed defining crimes against the United States. The courts were speedily organized, and John Jay of New York was made the ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... idea conveyed by the verb to diddle—is sufficiently well understood. Yet the fact, the deed, the thing diddling, is somewhat difficult to define. We may get, however, at a tolerably distinct conception of the matter in hand, by defining—not the thing, diddling, in itself—but man, as an animal that diddles. Had Plato but hit upon this, he would have been spared the affront of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... otherwise; the thoroughly trained Londoner can enjoy no other excitement than that to which he has been accustomed, but asks for that in continually more ardent or more virulent concentration; and the ultimate power of fiction to entertain him is by varying to his fancy the modes, and defining for his dullness the horrors, of Death. In the single novel of "Bleak House" there are nine deaths (or left for death's, in the drop scene) carefully wrought out or led up to, either by way of pleasing surprise, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... truth. I haven't squealed." He gave a detailed account of his midnight interview with Firmstone, defining sharply between his facts and his inferences. He finally concluded: "The old man's sharp. There isn't a corner of the mine he doesn't know, and there isn't a chink in the mill, from the feed to the tail-sluice, that he hasn't ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... erection by ecclesiastical authority, is qualified by Canon 1418 which prescribes that benefices should be erected by a legitimate document defining the place of the benefice, its endowment and the duties and ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... based on the conviction that violence and the taking of human life, being themselves wrong, cannot lead to anything but evil."[7] Thus he defines the absolute pacifist as one who accepts the ends and means argument of Huxley, which is really an argument based upon expediency, rather than defining him correctly as one who insists that violence and the taking of human life are the greatest evils, under any conditions, and therefore cannot be justified, even if they could be used for the ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... the beginning. It is asserted that a correspondence took place last week between Major Milroy and yourself; in which you cast a very serious suspicion on Miss Gwilt's respectability, without defining your accusations and without (on being applied to) producing your proofs. Upon this, the major appears to have felt it his duty (while assuring his governess of his own firm belief in her respectability) to inform her of what had happened, in order that she might have no future ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... DEFINITIONS:—In defining words, that meaning is given which is appropriate to them in the connection in which they are used. The pupil should look in the dictionary for the meaning of all the others with which he ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... treats literature as if it were life itself, and gives a new and delightful form to what seer or singer has shown us; in the former we have merely a translation which misses the music and adds no marvel. As for subject, Mr. Image protested against the studio-slang that no subject is necessary, defining subject as the thought, emotion or impression which a man desires to embody in form and colour, and admitting Mr. Whistler's fireworks as readily as Giotto's angels, and Van Huysum's roses no less than Mantegna's gods. Here, we think that Mr. Image might have pointed out ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... than his great influence in the university, at once gave us a position and a name. He taught us that there ought to be more sense of responsibility in the tracts and in the whole movement. Under his influence I wrote a work defining our relation to the Church of Rome, namely, "The Prophetical Office of the Church viewed relatively to Romanism and to Popular Protestantism." The subject of this volume, published in 1837, is the "Via Media." This was followed ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... and dignity. On the 26th of October following a provisional treaty of peace was concluded at Adis Ababa, annulling the treaty of Uccialli and recognizing the absolute independence of Abyssinia. This treaty was ratified, and followed by other treaties and agreements defining the Eritrean-Abyssinian and the Abyssinian-Italian Somaliland frontiers (see ITALY, History, and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... he had put her down for "a foreigner," convenient term for defining something which you do not quite understand. She had none of his language, evidently; she was undersized, some three feet six inches by the look of her,[4] and yet perfectly proportioned. She was most curiously dressed in a frock cut to the knee, and actually in nothing else at all. It left her ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... others on whose records we are dependent have been so shy of touching these subjects, and so ignorant of the main points for investigation, that it is very difficult to discover sexual inversion in the proper sense in any lower race. Travellers have spoken vaguely of crimes against nature without defining the precise relationship involved nor inquiring how far any ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... I had in view, what were my prospects of widening and defining their meaning? The prospect was encouraging; there was no doubt at all of the elasticity of the Articles: to take a palmary instance, the seventeenth was assumed by one party to be Lutheran, by another Calvinistic, though the two interpretations were contradictory to each ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... boundary between what is prohibited and what is permitted, and that the act is not within the prohibited class. The Constitution has fixed no such boundary, therefore they can pretend to no power over the press, without claiming the right of defining what is freedom and what is licentiousness, and that would be to claim a right which would defeat the Constitution; for every Congress would have the same right, and the freedom of the press would fluctuate according to the will of the ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... obliged by his tenure to obey the moral law." Now, although, in a theological sense, the ten commandments are said to embrace and constitute the moral law, because they are its best exponent, yet jurists have given to the term a more general latitude, in defining the moral laws to be "the eternal, immutable laws of good and evil, to which the Creator himself, in all dispensations, conforms, and which he has enabled human reason to discover, so far as they are necessary for the conduct of human actions."[96] Perhaps the well known summary ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... no doubt he's an angel with pin-feathers sprouting all over him," retorted Dad. "But it isn't business, which I take the liberty of defining as the way of making the best of one's opportunities instead of frittering them away. He has unquestionably done a few dozens of poor devils a lot of good, including myself. But he could find many more cripples in any big city, and a few of them ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... on into wordy unseemliness; their skill in forensics became a passion, and to embarrass and defeat the antagonist became the thing desired, not the pursuit of truth. They fell victims to their facility in syntax and prosody—semi- Solomons in Scriptural explanations, waxing wise in defining the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... must soon give it contradiction. But men make strange distinctions between speech and action, not to be accounted for without long investigation and disquisition. There are cases where people shrink from defining in words their purposes, or giving voice to their feelings, even when they are prepared by acts to stamp them for eternity. There are cases where men do acts which they dare not cover by ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... whole in one word, and to banish any conception except as it arises in relation to others. Thus in many American tongues there is, in fact, no word for father, mother, brother, but only for my, your, his father, etc. This has advantages and defects. It offers marvellous facilities for defining the perceptions of the senses with the utmost accuracy, but regarding everything in the concrete, it is unfriendly to the nobler labors of the mind, to abstraction and generalization. In the numberless changes of these languages, their bewildering flexibility, their variable forms, and their rapid ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... BONUS. A premium for a loan or other privileges. BROKER. An agent or middleman between the buyer and the seller. BULLION. Uncoined gold or silver. CHARTER. A written authority from the proper National or State authority defining the rights and privileges of corporations. CHARTER PARTY. A written contract for the hiring or chartering of a ship. CHATTEL. Any kind of property except real estate. COLLATERAL. Pledges of stocks, notes, or chattels as security for the payment ...
— Business Hints for Men and Women • Alfred Rochefort Calhoun
... up and down the room. Her thoughts were not yet coherent, and instinct prompted her to get the blood out of her head if she could. A vague sense of danger possessed her, but she was not capable of defining it. Suddenly she stopped and held her breath. She had become aware of a recurring footstep on the sidewalk. Her window abutted some thirty feet away. She craned her head forward, listening so intently that the blood pounded in her ears. She expected to hear the gate ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... assembled thousands. These reforms were threefold: The first guaranteed security to life, honor, and property; the second is a new system of taxation; the third, a remodelled plan for levying soldiers, and defining their time of service. The subject can best be illustrated by quoting a few extracts from ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... mystery, and suggest more than you can see. So also with Turner, the true head of Pre-Raphaelitism. You shall see the spots of the trout lying dead on the rock in his foreground, but not count them. It is only the Germans and the so-called masters of drawing and defining that are ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... sufficiently large for most cases; if not, however, it can easily be prolonged either upwards or downwards. The surgeon must now devote his attention to exposing the neck of the sac, and in so doing, defining the external inguinal ring. The safest method of doing so is carefully to pinch up, with dissecting forceps, layer after layer of connective tissue, dividing each separately by the knife held with its flat side, not its edge, on ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... he regarded them as an unnecessary interference of Parliament with the authority of the Sovereign in his Council. The Sovereign might undoubtedly have created a Committee of the judicial members of the Privy Council: but the Bill went further, and by extending and defining the power of the Judicial Committee as a Court of Appeal it undoubtedly proved a very useful and ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... Some authors, in defining the primary races of mankind, have separated these Indians into two classes; but this is certainly incorrect. Among the young women or chinas, some deserve to be called even beautiful. Their hair was coarse, but bright and ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... three parts; the first deals with the external environment out of which Socialism is growing and by which it is being shaped, the second with the internal struggles by which it is shaping and defining itself, the third with the reaction of the movement on its environment. I first differentiate Socialism from other movements that seem to resemble it either in their phrases or their programs of reform, ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... explained; defining the duties he sought to undertake, as those of general superintendent, or manager, or overlooker, or ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... subdividing work closely, and entrusting a large variety of machinery and fitting to women, with the help of the fullest possible equipment of jigs and all available appliances for mechanically defining and facilitating the work, and of instruction by skilled men. By this means an output has been obtained that will compare favorably with that of any class of workers in any country. Comparing, for instance, our women's figures of output on certain sizes of shell and types of fuses with those of ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... present session willingly so absolved or reconciled to the See of Rome, shall be guilty of High Treason." The way in which the vast powers conferred on the Crown by this statute were used by Elizabeth was not only characteristic in itself, but important as at once defining the policy to which, in theory at least, her successors adhered for more than a hundred years. No layman was brought to the bar or to the block under its provisions. The oppression of the Catholic gentry was limited to an exaction, more or less rigorous at different times, ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... (Mu. Up. I, 1, 9); 'His high power is revealed as manifold, as essential, acting as force and knowledge' (Svet. Up. VI, 8); 'He whose wishes are true, whose purposes are true' (Ch. Up. VIII, 1, 5); how can these passages, which clearly aim at defining the nature of Brahman, be liable to refutation?—Owing to the greater weight, we reply, of those texts which set forth Brahman as devoid of qualities. 'It is not coarse, not fine, not short, not long' (Bri. ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... persist in defining and analysing their (and everybody else's) moral qualities, motives and what not, at once in the narrowest spirit and the most lumbering manner;—as if one should put up an enormous scaffolding for the ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... the fight is all over in two hours—three at the outside—the battle really won or lost in the first ten minutes, if you only knew it: when you get in your first strokes, really defining your composition and planting your big high light and your big dark. It is all right after that. You can taper off on the little lights and darks, saving your wind, so to speak, sparring for your ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... not so clear," said Sir Vavasour solemnly; "and indeed, although we have been firm in defining our rightful claims in our petitions, as for 'honorary epithets, secondary titles, personal decorations, and augmented heraldic bearings.' I am not clear if the government evinced a disposition for a liberal settlement of the question, I would not urge a too stringent ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... him of golden chariot and sun-steeds crossing the peaks and the lakes; and his disappointment became consternation on hearing Clotilde's English friend (after objection to his pagan clothing of the solemn reality of sunrise, which destroyed or minimized by too materially defining a grandeur that derived its essence from mystery, she thought) announce the hour for her departure. He promised her a positive sunrise if she would delay. Her child lay recovering from an illness in the town below, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and, whether in ancient time or modern, the same sort of thing the world over. To the argument that this involves denial of a supernatural Revelation they reply that it is mere reasoning in a circle. For if one begs the question at the outset by defining supernatural Revelation as revelation necessarily evidenced by miraculous divine intervention, then, of course, denial of this is denial of that, and how is the argument advanced? But, besides this, ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... physician, and in 1741 became professor of medicine at the University of Upsala, but in the following year exchanged his chair for that of botany. To Linnaeus is due the honour of having first enunciated the true principles for defining genera and species, and that honour will last so long as biology itself endures. He found biology a chaos; he left it a cosmos. He died on January 10, 1778. Among his published works are "Systema Naturae," "Fundamenta ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... differences were left to the adjudication of others; but reason said, "That power will come with the need for it." And so courts of law and equity arose, based on the need of humanity; laws were passed defining rights and limiting aggression; and when one man wronged another, that wrong was settled in court by the power of the whole people and not in personal combat with the bludgeon or ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... and cannot be easily erased from it. Gathered out of the confusion of nature, built up of fragments of the old Devonian rock and shale, laid with due regard to the wear and tear of time, well- bottomed and well-capped, establishing boundaries and defining possessions, etc., these lines of stone wall afford a good lesson in many things besides wall building. They are good literature and good philosophy. They smack of the soil, they have local colour, ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... entrances supplied the place of doors. Each house was comparted by screens of willow matting or unhaired skins suspended from the rafters, with spaces between for storage. These slightly-constructed apartments opened towards the central fire like stalls, thus defining an open central area around the fire-pit, which was the gathering place of the inmates of the lodge. This fire-pit was about five feet in diameter, a foot deep, and encircled with flat stones set up edgewise. ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... and connexion that has not place in voluntary actions of intelligent beings. Now whether it be so or not, can only appear upon examination; and it is incumbent on these philosophers to make good their assertion, by defining or describing that necessity, and pointing it out to us in the ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... of "rather a novel nature," explained at the same time that it was so far from being new in the powers which it gave, that Magna Charta distinctly recognized "the power and right of the crown to prevent foreigners from entering or residing within the realm." All that was really new was the defining of the manner in which that power should be exercised, since it had been so rarely needed that doubts might exist as to the proper mode of putting it in action. The bill, which was adopted in both Houses by ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... York train, ran to the distance where the crystal glaze of the stream shrunk to a silver thread imbedded in green velvet. There was a final point where green and silver converged in a blinding dazzle, and over this the sun hung, emerging from a nebulous glare to a slowly defining sphere. ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... after careful and mature deliberation, there appeared an imperial decree, not only organizing the Jewish Church and regulating its relations with the state, but defining the civil and political status of Hebrews. They were pronounced to be citizens like other men; but they could not exact higher interest than five per cent., while if they should demand over ten they should be punished for usury. Every Jew in the northeastern department must have a license ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... her return to Bertram was a blur now. There were hasty talks, Bertram defining for her her future position, one of dignity it must be—he insisted on that; Hugh perfectly understood her wish for the present, quite fell in with it; but, eventually, she must take her place in her husband's home again. Even Bertram, intent as he was ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... of nature. Law, in such an aspect, is clearly a means to the realization of freedom in the same way that the rule of the road will, by its common acceptance, save its observers from accident. It promotes the initiative of men by defining in terms which by their very statement obtain acknowledgment the conditions upon which individual caprice may have its play. Property Locke derives from a primitive communism which becomes transmuted into individual ownership whenever a man has mingled his labor with some object. ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... Ghoorkhas, the ruling body in Nepal, became strained. They made raids into our territory beneath the hills, and murdered and robbed our subjects. The Marquess was extremely desirous to avoid a rupture with them. Remonstrances were addressed to them, and proposals made to settle differences by the better defining of the boundaries between their country and ours. These proposals were regarded as a proof of weakness, and the bold demand was made we should give up to them the great fertile region north of the ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... that, for a thing to admit of definition, the idea of it must be complex. Simple ideas baffle definition, but at the same time do not require it. In defining we lay out the simpler ideas which are combined in our notion of something, and so explain that complex notion. We have defined 'triangle,' when we analyse it into 'figure' and 'contained by three lines.' Similarly we have defined 'substance' when ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... ranges where men not infrequently died, she would have exerted all her strength. As it was, however, and because of her pride in him, she suddenly determined that she would let him win his spurs. Though it was beyond defining, there was a subtle change in her manner when she leaned back ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... harmony alone do not constitute beauty, while on the other hand beauty may take very complicated forms. A third element one may suggest is essential, and its indescribable nature causes all the difficulty there is in defining beauty. This third element is—charm. A work of art, to be beautiful, must charm, and to different people different things are charming. Plato's theory is that the sense of beauty is a dim recollection of a standard we have seen in a heavenly pre-existence. Accepting it ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... part, as the girl was quite aware, glanced often at her. She did not, however, meet his gaze, for once Alton was on the way to recovery, she had left the ranch somewhat hastily, and there had been as yet no defining of the relations between them, while neither she nor her father were cognizant of the actual cause of his wound. In the meanwhile she made the most of Thorne, and by degrees Alton lost his grip of the conversation. He had never ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... would give up the debatable counties, Tyrone and Fermanagh, in which the Nationalists had a clear though small majority of the population, but in which the Ulster Volunteer organization was very strong. On Friday, July 24th, Mr. Asquith announced the failure of the attempt. "The possibility of defining an area for exclusion from the operation of the Government of Ireland Bill was considered, and the Conference being unable to agree either in principle or in detail on ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... man's creating—be it a bureau or a battleship—the process is as above described. First, a pattern to scale; next, an actual linear framework; then planes defining a solid. Consider almost any of the industries practiced throughout the ages: they may be conceived of thus in terms of dimensions; for example, those ancient ones of weaving and basket making. Lines (threads in ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... was brought up a Quaker and his attitude coincided with that of many others who manifested sympathy for the American cause, yet hesitated at complete independence. In defining high treason to the April Grand Jury of 1776, the last held under the Crown, he stated that "an opposition by force of arms to the lawful authority of the King or his Ministry is high treason, but in the moment when the King, or his Ministers, shall exceed the authority vested in them by the Constitution, ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... reading the page in which this sentence is found, that it has no reference whatever to the power of Congress over rights of person or rights of property—but relates altogether to the power of establishing judicial tribunals to administer the laws constitutionally passed, and defining ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... something that attempts to make one feel the inexpressible truth, rather than a series of definitions which imply that it can be exactly stated in words; it held that truth is larger than any form which attempts to express it; it images and reflects truth instead of defining it. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... really obtained any interest in her heart. On this last point particularly, I could now, without hazard of a mortifying refusal, or of a precipitate engagement, decide. Add to these distinct reasons, many mixed motives, which acted upon me without my defining or allowing them in words. I had spoken and thought with contempt of Lord Mowbray's chance of success; but in spite of my pride in my own superiority of principle and character, in spite of my confidence in Berenice and in myself, I had my secret, very secret, quailings ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... The black veil crept gradually on, until it shrouded the whole firmament, and left us in as dark a night as ever poor devils were out in. By-and-by a narrow streak of bright moonlight appeared under the lower-edge of the bank, defining the dark outlines of the tumbling multitudinous billows on the horizon as distinctly as if they had been pasteboard waves ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... the terms of EFFICACY, AGENCY, POWER, FORCE, ENERGY, NECESSITY, CONNEXION, and PRODUCTIVE QUALITY, are all nearly synonymous; and therefore it is an absurdity to employ any of them in defining the rest. By this observation we reject at once all the vulgar definitions, which philosophers have given of power and efficacy; and instead of searching for the idea in these definitions, must look for it in the impressions, from which it ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... privileged to work held that species were not permanent as a fact established inductively on a wide basis of observation, by which comparative osteology had been created. Camper and Hunter suspected the species might be transitory; but Cuvier, in defining the characters of his anaplotherium and palaeotherium, etc., proved the fact. Of the relation of past to present species, Cuvier had not an adequate basis for a decided opinion. Observation of changes ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... Earl Rosse at Parsonstown was the successful means by which nebulae of this form were discovered. This powerful telescope was capable of defining with greater accuracy the structural formation of those objects than any other instrument in use. It was ascertained that spiral coils and convoluted whorls enter into the structure of most nebulae, indicating a similarity ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... normally exercise for the whole state. The payments and services which the lord's vassals made to him, while they were of the nature of rent, were not rent in the economic sense; they were important to the suzerain less as matters of income than as defining his political power and marking his rank in this hierarchical organization. The state as a whole might retain its geographical outlines and the form of a common government, but it was really broken up into fragments of varying size, whose ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... so near and dear to me as you. Men don't usually talk about these things to one another, you know, Boy; but, though I am a bachelor, you see, I feel toward you as most men feel toward their sons. What does the mere defining of the relationship matter? Could we possibly be any more to ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... end at twelve o'clock of another; and from beginning to end, the mind must be kept in a state of tension by the effort not to think any of its usual thoughts or do any of its usual works. The fact is, that the metaphysical, defining, hair-splitting mind of New England, turning its whole powers on this one bit of ritual, this one only day of divine service, which was left of all the feasts and fasts of the old churches, made of it a thing straiter and ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... may be taken to add a few explanatory words on the Academical designations which so frequently occur in the footnotes to this volume. There is likewise considerable difficulty in defining such titles; and the following explanations may require to be modified. The three Universities in Scotland founded during the course of the 15th century, were formed on the model of those of Paris and Bologna. The general name applied to students of all ranks was Supposita, or Supposts; ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... March 2005 over concessions to the Ambalat oil block; the ICJ decision has prompted Indonesia to assert claims to and to establish a presence on its smaller outer islands; Indonesia and Singapore pledged in 2005 to finalize their 1973 maritime boundary agreement by defining unresolved areas north of Batam Island; Indonesian secessionists, squatters, and illegal migrants create repatriation problems for Papua New Guinea; piracy remains a problem ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... of Paul III. (Farnese) which was designed to put an end to further disputes concerning the status of the Indians, by defining their rights once for ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... then said, dully at first, but with a growing cheerfulness that made Gorgo's blood run cold: "Did I say 'nothingness'? Did I speak of the great void, my child? You are quick of hearing. Nothingness—well, you have learnt to think; are you capable of defining the meaning of the word—a monster that has neither head nor tail, neither front nor back—can you, I say, define the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to Leo, bishop of Rome. Leo, abandoning the traditional Roman alliance with Alexandria, on which Dioscurus had counted, supported Flavian, sending him June 13, 449, a dogmatic epistle (the Tome, Ep. 28) defining, in the terms of Western theology, the point at issue. A synod was now called by Theodosius at Ephesus, August, 449, in which Dioscurus with the support of the court triumphed. Eutyches was restored, and the leaders of the Antiochian party, Flavian, Eusebius, ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... feet, huge unformed masses, covered with what seems drapery, are supported on a square pedestal, which is again sustained by one larger, which projects from the angle of the building. The veil, the ample mantle, and two under-garments, all flowing in graceful folds, and defining the shape, may be clearly distinguished. No features are visible, nor are the limbs actually apparent, except through the uninterrupted waving lines of the drapery, or what may be called so. A part of the side ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... contained in the subject. There are propositions that do no more than this; they are analytical, i.e. they merely analyze the subject. Thus, when we say: Man is a rational animal, we may merely be defining the word "man"—unpacking it, so to speak. But a synthetic judgment is one in which the predicate is not contained in the subject; it adds to one's information. The mathematical truths are of this character. So also is the truth that ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... supply the varying senses in which the word is used in literature and in common speech, but they suffice to show that it is used by different persons with different significations, each person apparently gauging first his own position, and defining superstition as something which cannot be brought to tell ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... latter have this principle within them, as a law of thought, controlling their conception of the universe, and doing this almost unconsciously; the former, by an analysis of thought, succeeded in defining and formulating the ideas and laws which necessitate the cognition of a God. The function of philosophy is simply to transform alethes doxa into itisteme—right opinion into science,—to elucidate and logically present the immanent ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... and shriek her hatred into the evil face of the man who had tricked her. She wanted to frighten him, to threaten, to lash him with her tongue. For she was conscious all the while of her own inability to harm him. Without defining the thought, her common-sense taught her one lamentable, unjust fact; namely, that unless a woman is loved by the object of her wrath she can hardly ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... systematic statement of facts, and philosophical deductions. Some other author, with sufficient energy and industry, will—not finish the work of Mr. Buckle, but—write another in which the faults of the original will be corrected, and the omissions filled; who will go farther in defining the relative influences of the three powers which control civilization, during the different ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... ensure the perpetuity and safety of the Government against the strangers within its gates seemed to the Federalists incomplete while this seditious press remained unbridled. The crowning measure of the session of 1798, therefore, took the shape of an addition to the early act defining crimes against the United States. It provided fine and imprisonment for conspiring to oppose measures of the Government, for advising insurrection, and for libelling the Government, either House of Congress, or the ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... Dr. Barry read a paper at the Catholic Conference on June 30th, 1890, from which I take the following extracts as illustrative of the rising feeling of this subject in the Catholic Church. The Rev. Dr. Barry began by defining the proletariat as those who have only one possession—their labour. Those who have no land, and no stake in the land, no house, and no home except the few sticks of furniture they significantly call by the name, no right to employment, but at the most a right to poor relief; and who, ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... Professor C. J. Galpin of University of Wisconsin has done precise work of great value, in defining the country community, as it centers in the village. See his pamphlet, "A Method of Making a Social Survey of the Rural Community," a bulletin of the Agricultural Experiment Station ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... rush is not a charge in the sense that it is an attack on a definite object. It may not, and probably will not, amount to a charge at all, for the beast will blunder through without ever defining more clearly the object of his blind dash. That dash is likely, however, at any moment, to turn into a definite charge should the rhinoceros happen to catch sight of his disturber. Whether the impelling motive would then ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... strong ethical and didactic flavour, yet the great philosophic and religious systems concern themselves little with ethics. They discuss the nature of the external world and other metaphysical questions which seem to us hardly religious: they clearly feel a peculiar interest in defining the relation of the soul to God, but they rarely ask why should I be good or what is the sanction of morality. They are concerned less with sin than with ignorance: virtue is indispensable, but ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... of a Kingdom upon its members is not peculiar to Christianity. It is the law in all departments of Nature that every organism must live for its Kingdom. And in defining living FOR the higher Kingdom as the condition of living in it, Christ enunciates a principle which all Nature has prepared us to ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... of Smith's and Rigdon's conferences came a "revelation" to them both (Sec. 35), delivered as in the name of Jesus Christ, defining somewhat Rigdon's position. How nearly it met his demands cannot be learned, but it certainly granted him no more authority than Smith was willing to concede. It told him that he should do great things, conferring the Holy ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... the rights of any citizen to apply for such redress, was adopted by a vote of 69 yeas to 27 nays. On this vote Harper voted yea. Griswold, Otis, Bayard, and Goodrich were found among the nays. Gallatin succeeded in carrying an amendment defining the bill, after which it was passed by a vote ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... evening forth, through the sickening years which followed, I saw all round the narrow room of this woman's soul—saw petty artifice and mere negation where I had delighted to believe in coy sensibilities and in wit at war with latent feeling—saw the light floating vanities of the girl defining themselves into the systematic coquetry, the scheming selfishness, of the woman—saw repulsion and antipathy harden into cruel hatred, giving pain only for the ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... all sides that Ferdinand Lopez was a "gentleman." Johnson says that any other derivation of this difficult word than that which causes it to signify "a man of ancestry" is whimsical. There are many, who in defining the term for their own use, still adhere to Johnson's dictum;—but they adhere to it with certain unexpressed allowances for possible exceptions. The chances are very much in favour of the well-born man, but exceptions may exist. It was not generally believed ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... necessary and expedient." The circumstances under which I now meet you will acquit me from entering into that subject further than to refer to the great constitutional charter under which you are assembled, and which, in defining your powers, designates the objects to which your attention is to be given. It will be more consistent with those circumstances, and far more congenial with the feelings which actuate me, to substitute, ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... Jewish multitude. (2) This will be recognized by all who give any thought to the subject, for they will see that a person who accepted promiscuously everything in Scripture as being the universal and absolute teaching of God, without accurately defining what was adapted to the popular intelligence, would find it impossible to escape confounding the opinions of the masses with the Divine doctrines, praising the judgments and comments of man as the teaching of God, and making a wrong use of Scriptural authority. (3) Who, I say, does not ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part III] • Benedict de Spinoza
... tragedy, and mean people as in a comedy.' One would hardly have supposed it necessary to define tragi-comedy to the English public in 1610, and even had it been necessary, this could hardly be accepted as a very satisfactory definition. The audience, 'having ever had a singular gift in defining,' as the author sarcastically remarks, concluded a pastoral tragi-comedy 'to be a play of country hired shepherds in gray cloaks, with curtailed dogs in strings, sometimes laughing together, and sometimes killing one another'; and after all, so far as tragi-comedy is concerned, their belief ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... have been defining that combining operation of the imagination, which appears to be in a sort mechanical, yet takes place in the same inexplicable modes, whatever be the order of conception submitted to it, though I chose to illustrate it by its dealings with mere matter before taking cognizance ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... of its own in that, next to itself, it loves to think about something which it can think about forever. For that reason the life of the cultured and thinking man is a constant study and meditation on the beautiful riddle of his destiny. He is always defining it in a new way, for just that is his entire destiny, to be defined and to define. Only in the search itself does the human mind discover the secret that ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... of the sun of May 29, resulted in a striking confirmation of the new theory of the universal attractive power of gravitation developed by Albert Einstein, and thus reinforced the conviction that the defining of this theory is one of the most important steps ever taken in the domain of natural science. In response to a request by the editor, I will attempt to contribute something to its general ...
— The Einstein Theory of Relativity • H.A. Lorentz
... harmful, mere use in violation of a valid police power regulation has been held to justify summary destruction. Thus, in the much criticized case of Lawton v. Steele,[745] the destruction, without prior notice and hearing, of fishing nets set in violation of a conservation law defining them to be a nuisance was sustained on the ground that the property was not "of great value." Conceding that "it is not easy to draw the line between cases where property illegally used may be destroyed summarily and where judicial proceedings are necessary for its condemnation," ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... incidental ideas which Mrs. Eddy has added to Quimbyism are her theory that the Godhead is more feminine than masculine, and her qualified disapproval of matrimony. Quimby himself had a large family and saw nothing unspiritual in marriage. In defining the real purpose of marriage Mrs. Eddy says nothing about children; "to happify existence by constant intercourse with those adapted to elevate it, is the true purpose of marriage." In her chapter on ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... by defining two kinds of writers. First, those whose power is their keen observation. They see things accurately and they secure their effects by recording just what they see. Second, those writers who do not merely see external phenomena with the external eye, but who, ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... these terms, there are certain things that you must do. You must make the definition clear, or it will be no better than the term itself. This is not always easy. In defining "moral force" a gentleman said: "Why, moral force is er—er—moral force." He did not get very far on the way toward making his term clear. Be sure that your definition really explains ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... or geologic basins. Even where real chains of mountains rise like rocky dykes issuing from a crevice, spurs more or less considerable, seem to indicate a lateral upheaving. While I admit the difficulty of properly defining the groups of mountains and the basins or continuous plains, I have attempted to calculate their surfaces according to the statements contained ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... looked up at Rickman's, blazing with all its lights, he felt that he had hit on the satisfying, the defining phrase. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... never permitted them to go beyond a certain well-defined line. The argument that he had been generous, even philanthropic, in his days of prosperity was invariably met by the quaint contention that while the Good Book teaches charity, the dictionary makes a point of defining it, and "you can't spell charity, my friend, with the letters that are allotted to generosity. So don't ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... earlier chapters describing glacial action, and the traces of it in North America—especially the defining of its limits, such as the terminal moraine of the great movement itself—are of great interest and value The maps and diagrams are of much assistance in enabling the reader to grasp the vast extent of the ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... We have power in ourselves to do it, but it is a power that we have no power to do] [Warburton saw this as "a ridicule on the Augustine manner of defining free-will."] A ridicule may be intended, but the sense is clear enough. Power first signifies natural power or force, and then moral power or right. Davies has used the same word ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... he talked, with quick, observant glances; a face weather-beaten, but not rough, a typical Anglo-Saxon fighting face, but kindly withal; certainly not truculent. Miss Howland had met young army and navy officers who had aroused in her similar impressions; she had, in fact, no difficulty in defining Merrithew's type. He was of the class which does strong things out of the beaten track; men who in the process of civilization have retained some of the wandering or combative or predatory instincts of earlier ages and have been set apart in the scheme of natural selection to fight battles, ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... to him who sticks Unto his work and never kicks, Who watches neither clock nor sun To tell him when his task is done; Who toils not by a stated chart, Defining to a jot his part, But gladly does a little more Than he's remunerated for. The man, in factory or shop, Who rises quickly to the top, Is he who gives what can't be bought: Intelligent ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... concept is statable or definable without its opposite; one involves the other. One cannot speak of motion without implying rest; one cannot mention the finite without at the same time referring to the infinite; one cannot define cause without explicitly defining effect. Not only is this true, but concepts, when applied, reveal perpetual oscillation. Take the terms "north" and "south." The mention of the north pole, for example, implies at once the south pole also; it can be distinguished only by contrast with the other, which it ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... were heard on the staircase. The ladies all looked up, the light defining the corner of a forehead, the outline of a nose and chin, bathing a neck in warm shadow, modelling a shoulder with grey tints, sending a thousand rays flashing through the diamonds on the bosom, touching the finger-rings, and lastly dying away ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... to adopt a patronising attitude or make it appear that he is talking down to the audience. Such a feature would be at once detected and deeply resented. A well-known Professor lectured to a Bute audience on Electricity, and out of ignorance, spoke in a very elementary way to the audience, defining the simplest terms, and interspersing a great many "you know's" and "you see's." The chairman, in proposing a vote of thanks, slyly remarked: "We have listened to-night to a very good discourse, and I'm only sorry there are so few young people here. Next ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes |
