"Definitive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been and shall be. But in eternity there is no distinction of tenses; and therefore that terrible term, predestination, which hath troubled so many weak heads to conceive, and the wisest to explain, is in respect to God no prescious determination of our estates to come, but a definitive blast of His will already fulfilled, and at the instant that He first decreed it; for to His eternity which is indivisible, and altogether, the last trump is already sounded, the reprobates in the flame, and ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... We still await a definite edition of this author's works. His answer was so definitive that we no ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... won, because none as yet has proved adequate to all experience. If ever unity should be attained, our unanimity would not indicate that, as the popular fancy conceives it, the truth had been discovered; it would only indicate that the human mind had found a definitive way of classifying its experience. Very likely, if man still retained his inveterate habit of hypostatizing his ideas, that definitive scheme would be regarded as a representation of the objective relations of things; but no proof that it was so would ever be found, nor even any hint that ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... theological Latin tracts were also in this number. I turned the books upon their fore-edges, leaving their ends outwards, in order to indicate those which had been selected. M. Pallas told me that he could say nothing definitive in reply,[104] for that the matter must be submitted to the Prelate, or head of the monastery, who, at that time, was at Vienna, perhaps at the point of death. From the library we went to the church. This latter is situated between the two wings: the wings themselves forming the Saloon ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... importance for discussion of the relation between insanity and criminalism to know that there are such cases as this where the individual is unquestionably aberrational and yet does not conform in mental symptoms to any one of the definitive "forms of insanity.'' They may be lacking in normal social control and in ability to reason, impulsively inclined to anti-social deeds and therefore social menaces, but, notwithstanding this, may not be classified under the head of ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... into account, the result is to make me feel as absolutely certain as I am of any personal fact in the world that she knows things in her trances which she cannot possibly have heard in her waking state, and that the definitive philosophy of her trances is yet to be found. The limitations of her trance information, its discontinuity and fitfulness, and its apparent inability to develop beyond a certain point, although they end by arousing one's moral ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... that though I hoped to find it otherwise, I cannot but confess my passion for you is increased by it. But now, what shall I say farther, Pamela?—I will make you, though a party, my adviser in this matter, though not, perhaps, my definitive judge. ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... two weeks of geographical perplexity and come to a desert island. They land, but think it wiser, on the whole, to postpone fighting until they have finished the champagne and cigars with which their vessel is liberally stored. This takes a week. Just as they are about to begin the definitive duel they discover that they are not upon a desert island at all, they are near Margate. And the police are there, too. So once more they are chased. They land in a large garden in front of an old gentleman who assures them that he is God. He turns out to be a lunatic, and the place an asylum. ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... in the present day, to the court of Judge Cresswell, with 'dissolving views.' On one occasion he writes thus: 'I have at last done the best office that can be done to most married people; that is, I have fixed the separation between my brother and his wife, and the definitive treaty of peace will be ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... eyes most fixed upon his own person, or on others with reflection to himself. If he have done any thing that has past with applause, he is always re-acting it alone, and conceits the extasy his hearers were in at every period. His discourse is all positions and definitive decrees, with thus it must be and thus it is, and he will not humble his authority to prove it. His tenent is always singular and aloof from the vulgar as he can, from which you must not hope ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... letters—even one mainly concerned, as the Vailima Letters are, with matters of interest both remote and transitory—had been read in edition after edition: and readers had been and were continually asking for more. The time was thought to have come for a new and definitive edition, in which the two series of letters already published should be thrown into one, and as much new material added as could be found suitable. The task of carrying out this scheme fell again upon me. The new edition constituted in effect a nearly complete epistolary autobiography. It contained ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... injudicious and unpopular in the highest degree. An interview, however, is reported to have been arranged between Lord Ellenborough and Shere Singh, which is to take place in the course of the ensuing summer, and at which some definitive arrangements will probably be entered into, on the future political ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... having been differentiated with reference to the sexual element of the second species in a higher degree than in the converse case. In so complex a subject as Hybridism it is of considerable importance thus to arrive at a definitive conclusion, namely, that the sterility which almost invariably follows the union of distinct {185} species depends exclusively on differences ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... after this essay was written the first volume of the long awaited definitive edition of Mr Hardy's works (the Mellstock Edition) appeared. It was with no common thrill that we read in the precious pages of introduction the following words confirming the theory upon which the first part of the essay is ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... however, have no resemblance to any of the otherwise mentioned forms which may occur between persons. Victory is a mere watershed between war and peace; when considered absolutely, only an ideal structure which extends itself over no considerable time. For so long as struggle endures there is no definitive victor, and when peace exists a victory has been gained but the act of victory has ceased to exist. Of the many shadings of victory, through which it qualifies the following peace, I mention here merely ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... matters of controversy he ordained should stand, both might and oftentimes would be deceived in their judgment. However, better it was in the eye of His understanding, that sometime an erroneous sentence definitive should prevail, till the same authority perceiving such oversight, might afterwards correct or reverse it, than that strifes should have respite to grow, and not come speedily to ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... with definiteness that in construing and applying the law recourse must be had to the "rule of reason." He made clear the conviction of the court that it was "undue" restraints of trade which the law forbade and not incidental or inconsiderable ones. This definitive interpretation of the law, while it caused considerable criticism at the moment, in ultimate effect so cleared the air about the Sherman act as effectually to dispose of the demands for its amendment in the direction ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... pools to which one of our ministers lately referred. Everyone having become an official, everyone will realise the ideal of the official which the Goncourts have very neatly described. "The good official," they say, "is the man who combines laziness with extreme accuracy." It is a definitive definition. The country that reformed itself in this way would be conquered at the end of ten years by some neighbouring people more ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... transcription chinoise Po-lo. J'ai signale (T'oung Pao, 1914, p. 640) que des textes chinois mentionnent effectivement que Po-lo (Bolod), envoye en mission aupres d'Arghun en 1285, resta ensuite en Perse. C'est donc en definitive le Pulad ( Bolod) de Rashid-ud-Din qui serait le Po-lo qu'a la suite de Pauthier on a trop ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... eyes. It needs no dictionary of quotations to remind me that the eyes are the windows of the soul. And I know that from two open windows my soul has been leaning and signalling to you, in a code far more definitive and swifter than words of mine, that ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... lords by an overwhelming majority, after an impressive speech from Lord Clare. The second, for the suspension of the habeas corpus act in the whole United Kingdom was framed to remain in force "during the continuance of the war, and for one month after the signing of a definitive treaty of peace". ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... modern discovery, to follow its developments, and thus to prove once more how much a matter, most simple in appearance, demands extensive and complex researches on the part of an author desirous of writing a definitive work. ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... mother, whom she asked to give Mrs. Barton the note she enclosed, and in looking over her drawings, and trying to decide which she should take to the Synthesis with her. She had a good deal of tacit argument about them with Mr. Ludlow, who persisted in her thoughts after several definitive dismissals; and Monday morning she presented herself with some drawings she had chosen as less ridiculous than some of the others, and hovered with a haughty humility at the door of the little office till the janitor asked her if ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... weak in amplification of examples during an age when amplification was practiced. Sherry economizes by selecting usually one example in support of a figure while contemporary cataloguers, and ancients for that matter, are more definitive. ...
— A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes • Richard Sherry
... planned his removal, was constrained to petition for his stay. Yes, constrained!—It was do it, or!—Oh!—Be faithful to me, memory!—He was elected president of opinions and disputes, past, present and to come. Appeals must all be made to him, and his sentence was definitive. Law or gospel, physics or metaphysics; himself alone superior to college, court, or convocation. Before him sunk scholiast and schools. In his presence the doctors all must stand uncapped: the seraphic, the subtle, and the singular; the illuminated, the angelic, and the ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... stem being hairy, and in the lower part the hairs tipped with a viscid fluid, like a sundew. But the Villosa has a slender sharp spur; and in this the spur is blunt and thick at the end." (Since the hairy stem is not peculiar to Villosa, I take for her, instead, the epithet Minima, which is really definitive.) ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... to consider the other period of the mythical and scientific evolution which had its definitive conclusion in Plato and Aristotle, teachers who even now to some extent influence the two great currents of speculative science. For us, however, it is more important to consider the Platonic teaching as that in which the mythical evolution of the ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... form of government, the only one worthy of the nations. The universal Republic is inevitable in the natural course of progress. But has its hour struck in France? It is because I want the Republic that I want it to be durable and definitive. You are going to consult the nation, ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... was still reserved, when Cross asserted that Aristotle had more opportunities to acquire knowledge than the Royal Society, or all the present age had, or could have, for this definitive reason, "because Aristotle did, totam peragrare Asiam." Besides, in the Chew philosophy, where novelty was treason, improvements or discoveries could never exist. Here the Aristotelian made his stand; and at length, gently ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... had been performed at Turin. The definitive espousals, it was settled, should be accomplished at Figuieras, on Spanish soil, in order that Marie-Louise might not enter into the country, where she was destined to reign, save with the irrevocable titles of ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... converted to materialism. I can also discern in this system a very natural horror of death, which inspires in so many people, of whom I am one, both hatred and disgust. The spiritualist revolts against the prospect of a definitive annihilation of thought, and the system he adopts is largely explained as ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... man's right to be a Smith than his right to be a Briton; and wide as the diversity of rank, lineage, virtue, and genius in Britons is the diversity in Smiths. But still a name so generic often affects a definitive precursor. Jasper signed himself "J. COURTENAY SMITH." He called, and left epistle the first with his own kid-gloved hand, inquiring first if Mrs. Haughton were at home, and, responded to in the negative this time, he asked for her son. "Her son was gone abroad with Colonel ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... undesirable. Even had the Southerners been quelled by so great a disaster,—which was not likely,—they would not have been thoroughly conquered, nor would slavery have been disposed of, and both these events were indispensable to a definitive peace between the two sections. Whether the President shared this notion of his general is not evident. Apparently he was not putting his mind upon theories reaching into the future so much as he was devoting his whole thought to dealing ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... claims: Territorial sea: 12 nm in the north and 3 nm in the south; note - from the mouth of the Sarstoon River to Ranguana Caye, Belize's territorial sea is 3 miles; according to Belize's Maritime Areas Act, 1992, the purpose of this limitation is to provide a framework for the negotiation of a definitive agreement on territorial differences with the Republic of Guatemala'' Disputes: claimed by Guatemala, but boundary negotiations to resolve the dispute have begun Climate: tropical; very hot and humid; rainy season (May to February) Terrain: flat, swampy coastal plain; low ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... victory in the government of France, when they found themselves in the undisturbed possession of power. Their views were as unsettled and confused as their passions were violent; above all things, they coveted victory, for the haughty pleasure of triumph itself, for the definitive establishment of the Restoration, and for their own predominance, by holding power at the centre of government, and throughout the departments ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the offer of their sovereign to become tributary to our emperor; but requested the Mexican ambassadors to remain with him till he had concluded his arrangements with the Tlascalans, after which he would give them a definitive answer to the message of Montezuma. While conversing with the Mexican ambassadors, Xicotencatl, with fifty of his principal warriors all in uniform habits of white and red, came to wait upon Cortes with great respect, who received them very courteously, causing the Tlascalan ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... near to the miller and her mother she perceived that they were engaged in a conversation of that peculiar kind which is all the more full and communicative from the fact of definitive words being few. In short, here the game was succeeding which with herself had failed. It was pretty clear from the symptoms, marks, tokens, telegraphs, and general byplay between widower and widow, that Miller Loveday must have again said to Mrs. Garland some such thing as he had ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... thus employed when a gentleman arrived from Scotland to represent the state of that country, and to require a definitive answer from the Chevalier whether he would have the insurrection to be made immediately, which they apprehended they might not be able to make at all if they were obliged to defer it much longer. This gentleman was ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... book if I had not though it to be worthwhile. In fact I consider it to be very rewarding, informative, and entertaining. I hope you also find it rewarding, and I present it in much the same mood that I assume it was written in: not that it is fully correct or definitive, but that both the material and the lines of thought that the book comprises, are useful, thoughtful, and enjoyable, taken for what they are worth. The book certainly is based on a formidable level of erudition, however cheerful the author's ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... being seriously considered for a faculty position at an outstanding Eastern University upon completion of my thesis. Should you be interested, we now have an article in press on the Journal of Cellular Physiology entitled: "Nucleic acid synthesis in the frog liver cell: A definitive study." We have found substantial evidence which demonstrates that there is no interconversion of the two ...
— On Handling the Data • M. I. Mayfield
... that I have done To this poor woman: And I beseech your Lordship To think I have not so far lost my reason, To bring into my familie, to succeed me, The stranger—Issue of anothers Bed, By proof, this is my Son, I challenge him, Accept him, and acknowledge him, and desire By a definitive Sentence of the Court, He may be so recorded, and full power To me, to ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... his Majesty ordains and commands, and that the inconveniences which arise from this be avoided, they ordered, and they did so order, that the said taxing officer should be notified that, now and henceforth, in whatever processes shall be brought for consideration in this royal Audiencia, whether definitive or under any plea whatever, the costs shall be fixed by him (thus complying with the tenor of the royal ordinance treating of this matter), either personally, or by some other intelligent person whom he shall designate ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... of the peace are at length settled. A note has been sent from the Foreign Office to the Lord Mayor, announcing that the definitive treaty had been finally settled at Amiens, on the 27th of March, by the plenipotentiaries of England, France, Spain, and the Batavian Republic. The treaty, as it transpires, is the source of general cavil. It leaves to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... and suggests also that, as a traveller, Mr. Froude considers maligning on hearsay to be just as convenient as reporting facts elicited by personal investigation. Proceed we, however, to strengthen our statement regarding his definitive abandonment, and that without any apparent reason, of the plan he had professedly laid down for himself at starting, and failing which no trustworthy data could have been obtained concerning the character and disposition of the people about whom he undertakes ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... on the part of the public for a definitive biography of Edison was the reason for the following pages. The present authors deem themselves happy in the confidence reposed in them, and in the constant assistance they have enjoyed from Mr. Edison ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... with the same adjective; and, for a time, double comparatives and double superlatives were common; as, worser, most boldest. In "King Lear" Shakespeare uses the double comparative a dozen times.]; as, valuable, less valuable, least valuable. Most definitive and many descriptive adjectives cannot be compared, as their meaning will ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... him back, you cannot be permitted to disinherit him anew; the evidence of his not deserving it is your own admission of his worth. It is only right that the reinstatement and reconciliation should be definitive, after such abundant investigation; there have been two trials, observe: the first, that in which you rejected me; the second, that in your own conscience, which reversed the decision of the other; the fact of reversal only adds ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... of a mass of matter by mv^{2}/2, where m stands for the mass and v for its velocity. We might as well, if it were as convenient, substitute inertia for mass, and write the expression iv^{2}/2, for the mass, being measured by its inertia, is only the more common and less definitive word for the same thing. The energy of a mass of matter is, then, proportional to its inertia, because inertia is one of its factors. Energy has often been treated as if it were an objective thing, an entity and a unity; but ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... bishops, and that when a decision had been agreed to the formal decrees should be promulgated in a public session. The novel method of voting by nations, introduced for the first time at Constance and Basle, was rejected in favour of individual voting, a definitive vote being allowed only to bishops, generals of religious orders and abbots (one vote to every three abbots). Procurators of absent bishops were not allowed to vote, though later on a special concession was made in favour of some ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... profession of faith was followed, on the part of Candace, by years of the most strenuous orthodoxy. Her general mode of expressing her mind on the subject was short and definitive. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... Burton who still survive we must first mention Mr. A. C. Swinburne, Mr. Watts-Dunton and Mr. John Payne. Mr. Swinburne has, year after year, it is scarcely necessary to say, added to his fame, and all Englishmen are proud of his genius. The Definitive Edition of his works has delighted all his admirers; and just as we are going to press everyone is reading with intense interest his early novel Love's Cross Currents. Mr. Watts-Dunton is in excellent health, and his ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... air, eminently adapted for sustaining life, and throws out the azote intact. The air breathed out has lost nearly five per cent, of its oxygen, and then contains a nearly equal volume of carbonic acid, the definitive product of the combustion of the elements of the blood by the oxygen breathed in it. It happens, therefore, that in a confined space and after a certain time all the oxygen of the air is replaced by carbonic acid, an ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne |
