"Positive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and everything that belongs to it, that the more I have to do with it, the better I like it, and I really begrudge the time that I spend in the city. You do not know with what pleasure I look forward to helping Miriam get breakfast to-morrow morning. I consider it a positive lark. By the way, Mr. Haverley, do ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... aloof. It was perfectly clear to Sara, that with Armitage, strong and clever in a wholesome masculine way, Anne was the light-hearted, mischievous, pure-minded girl—his ideal of American young womanhood. But now she caught the other note of her character—an untrue note, but none the less positive—and the other look in her eyes. Her voice was deeper, more womanly, more surcharged with underlying things, as she spoke to the Russian, and Sara could see ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... outward harmony there was something at once more intangible and yet more vital and positive that made the man a piece with the natural world about him. Perhaps it was that he had lived so many months of so many years in the open that he had grown to be true brother of the wild; that he had shed coat after coat of artificial veneer as he took on the layers of tan; that in ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... both were fair. Dora had long sleek curls that never got out of order. Davy had a crop of fuzzy little yellow ringlets all over his round head. Dora's hazel eyes were gentle and mild; Davy's were as roguish and dancing as an elf's. Dora's nose was straight, Davy's a positive snub; Dora had a "prunes and prisms" mouth, Davy's was all smiles; and besides, he had a dimple in one cheek and none in the other, which gave him a dear, comical, lopsided look when he laughed. Mirth and mischief lurked in every ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... increase and with the growth of the city. But almost from the beginning, probably the environing white group has segregated the Negroes into separate neighborhoods. The figures available for Brooklyn do not permit a positive inference, but in Manhattan, while the areas populated by Negroes have shifted somewhat from decade to decade, there have been distinctively ...
— The Negro at Work in New York City - A Study in Economic Progress • George Edmund Haynes
... However plausible, when disencumbered of its poetical drapery, the theory of Coleridge may be, and however convincing, so far as it goes, of the truth of his principles, we can not forget that the final tendency of the critical philosophy of Kant is, if not a positive approach to skepticism, at least to afford a scientific basis for it. But the formula of the author of Christabel was the pure exponent of his creed. The terror of metaphysics vanished as the oft-repeated words met the eye of the wary and suspicious investigator. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... this whole movement, by which a small force had been separated from the main body by the width of Louisiana and Texas, with the enemy's army between the two, and the reinforcements were not forthcoming; but recurring to his favorite plan of operating by the Red River and Shreveport, without giving positive orders to adopt it, the inducement was held out that, if that line were taken up, Steele's army in Arkansas and such forces as Sherman could detach should be directed to the same object. The co-operation of the Mississippi ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... religious duty. All were acting under the orders and by command of their Church leaders. The immediate orders for the killing of the emigrants came from those in authority at Cedar City. I and those with me moved by virtue of positive orders from Brother ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... Ignorance, what we will call Beautiful Knowledge, a knowledge useful in a higher sense: for what is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance? What we call knowledge is often our positive ignorance; ignorance our negative knowledge. By long years of patient industry and reading of the newspapers—for what are the libraries of science but files of newspapers?—a man accumulates a myriad facts, lays them up in his memory, and then when in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... religious life; and if Mr. Browning has meant to say—as he so often did say—that religious certainties are required for the undeveloped mind, but that the growing religious intelligence walks best by a receding light, he denies the positive basis of Christian belief, and is no more orthodox in the one set of reflections than in the other. The spirit, however, of both poems is ascetic: for the first divorces religious worship from every appeal to the poetic sense; ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... serious work of the campaign. For instance, in the makeup of many of the League teams of 1894, the blunder of getting together six or eight pitchers and occupying the whole of the early part of the season's campaign in experiments with them was positive folly. It has never paid in a single instance. It was, in fact, death to the success of at least four League teams last season, Cincinnati in particular. Many of last year's team managers failed to realize the important fact that in testing the merits of pitchers in the spring season they need ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... existence &c. 161. abide, continue, endure, last, remain, stay. Adj. existing &c. v.; existent, under the sun; in existence &c. n.; extant; afloat, afoot, on foot, current, prevalent; undestroyed. real, actual, positive, absolute; true &c. 494; substantial, substantive; self-existing, self-existent; essential. well-founded, well-grounded; unideal[obs3], unimagined; not potential &c. 2; authentic. Adv. actually &c. adj.; in fact, in point of fact, in reality; indeed; de facto, ipso facto. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... quarrelling with some fool who had missed fire with a medium and was saying that the modern world wanted positive unmistakable appearances: he said he ought to know, because he had begun the modern world. Lucian said it would fail just as much as any other way; Rabelais hotly said it wouldn't. He said he would come to London and lecture at the London School of Economics and establish ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... mankind from one common father obliged them, in the first generation, to marry in the nearest degrees of consanguinity. Instances of a like nature occur among the patriarchs; and the marriage of a brother's widow was, in certain cases, not only permitted, but even enjoined as a positive precept, by the Mosaical law. It is in vain to say that this precept was an exception to the rule, and an exception confined merely to the Jewish nation. The inference is still just, that such a marriage can contain no natural or moral turpitude; otherwise ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... developing Fluid.—Since I sent you the new formula for MR. SISSON'S positive developer, which you published in Vol. viii., p. 301., MR. SISSON has written to me to say that if, instead of the acetic acid, you add two drachms of formic acid, the new agent proposed by MR. LYTE, you certainly obtain the sweetest-toned positives ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... had grown up together from childhood. He was an only son and she an only daughter. It had always been an understood thing between the two families that the boy and girl should marry. But Marian's father had decreed that no positive pledge should pass between them ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... going to carry the tent or send it up by the camp wagon?" Roy Blakeley asked, as he and the others crowded each other off the train at Catskill Landing. "Answer in the positive or negative." ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... should try her social experiments as she pleased—she should plan Utopias, and he would be her hodman to build them. The man perplexed with too much thinking remembered the girl's innocent, ignorant readiness to stamp the world's stuff anew after the forms of her own pitying thought, with a positive thirst of sympathy. The deep poetry and ideality at the root of him under all the weight of intellectual and critical debate leapt towards her. He thought of the rapid talk she had poured out upon him, after ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... would still do him justice. He explained that even if never a dollar were to come to him from the other house he would nevertheless cherish this one; and he dwelt, further, while they lingered and wandered, on the fact of the stupefaction he was already exciting, the positive ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... until the seventeenth century, but Bishop Wilson judged it un-Christian, and never practised it. The old Roman canon law of Purgation, a similar ordeal, he used not rarely. It was designed to meet cases of slander in which there was no direct and positive evidence. If a good woman had been accused of unchastity in that vague way of rumour which is always more damaging and devilish than open accusation, she might of her own free choice, or by compulsion of the Bishop, put to silence her false accusers ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... getting himself to be good, proceeds to upon the opposite principle. Even if the good thing he tries for is merely a negative good thing like economy, he instinctively seeks out some positive way of ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Switzerland. Statesmen as well as scholars acknowledged this. The city had neglected nothing in order to make clear its honor, its rectitude and its hospitality. The government had exhibited firmness on all sides. To the Emperor himself, who in a very earnest tone had issued a positive command to abolish the Conference, it had been replied respectfully, but decidedly, that the preparations had already gone too far ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... craft after us in no time; but, in any case, I should say we had better stay here for a week. If the Tiger got safely through that gale, you may be sure the captain will be cruising about looking for us. He has sufficient faith in his boats to feel pretty positive that if we have not been cast ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... boys, together with Henry Tufts, constitute the preparatory class of Rossville Academy. Henry is mild in his manners, and a respectable student, but possesses no positive character. He comes from a town ten miles distant, and boards with the principal. Frank, though the youngest of the three, excels the other two in scholarship. But there is some doubt whether he will be able to go to college. ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Peruvian polity could have resulted only from the combined authority of opinion and positive power in the ruler to an extent unprecedented in the history of man. Yet that it should have so successfully gone into operation, and so long endured, in opposition to the taste, the prejudices, and the very principles of our nature, is a strong proof of a generally wise and temperate administration ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... action will learn that activity becomes a habit, and at last excludes the possibility of rest, and the desire for it; and his lot is the best, for the momentary gladness in a great deed well done is worth a millennium of sinless, nerveless tranquillity. The positive good is as much better than the negative "non-bad," as it is better to save a life than not to destroy a life. But whatever temper of mind we choose will surely become chronic in time, and will be known to those among whom we live as our temper, our own particular temper, ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... triumph into more concrete speech. The essential lesson of experience, then, is that no device, plan, or policy adopted by England for the subjugation of Ireland has ever been anything except an abject failure. And the positive of this negative is that every claim that ever formed part of the national programme of Ireland has won its way against all enmities. No plough to which she ever put her hand has been turned back or stayed eternally in mid-furrow. It ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... any positive intention of giving up Mr. Sponge, at least not until she saw further, had nevertheless got an idea that she was destined for a much higher sphere. Having duly considered all the circumstances of Mr. Spraggon's visit to Jawleyford Court, conned over ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... careful enough to harmonise the two styles—it was merely an odd coincidence that the reviewer, struck naturally enough by the disparity, should have pitched upon him as the offender. By-and-by he grew to believe it a positive compliment that the reviewer (no doubt a dull person) had simply singled out for disapproval all the passages which were out of his depth—if there had been nothing remarkable about them, they would not have ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... behind the palisades. But if she had gone and found any of the enemy there she would first have offered them peace. Of this her subsequent behaviour within the city walls is positive proof. Her mission was not to contribute to the defence of Orleans plans of campaign or stratagems of war; her share in the work of deliverance was higher and nobler. To suffering men, weak, unhappy, and selfish, she brought the invincible ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... child as far as the Speech-room, where a policeman accepted a shilling, and gave in return a positive assurance that he would see woman and child to their destination. When the boys ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... constitute one positive," said he. "Two sinners together arouse virtue. It seems to me we might as well have converted ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... seemed to think that no one could keep her in any house against her own will without positive bolts, bars, and chains. ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... not like to tell her the chief reason for my distrust—that mysterious relation between Angus Egerton and Mrs. Darrell. The subject was a serious—almost a dangerous—one; and I had no positive evidence to bring forward in proof of my fancy. It was a question of looks and words that had been full of significance to me, but which might seem to Milly to ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... events than the fruitless efforts made by the young man to obtain from his mother her consent to his marriage. He talked to her sometimes for hours together. She listened and made no answer to his entreaties, other than by Breton silence or a positive denial. ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... times. Beets and various tubers. Fattening properties. Nitrogenous matter. The load of cane. Making a sugar mill. Lime in sugar-cane juice. Clarifying sugar. A candy pulling. Granulating sugar. The earth as a magnet. Electricity. Positive and negative. Magnetic poles. Likes and unlikes. Making a magnet. Retaining magnetism in ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... and tired after an exhausting day. It chanced that at a meeting of the Ministry, which he attended late in the afternoon, the question of Beliani's appointment as Minister of Finance came up for settlement. It was not determined without some bickering, and an undercurrent of dislike if not of positive hatred of the man quickly made ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... that ensued Gale did not have anything to say; but his mind was forming a conclusion. When he found his old saddle and bridle missing from the peg in the barn his conclusion became a positive conviction, and it made him, for the moment, cold and sick ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... allied species having been aided by Natural Selection. It appears to me that, given a differentiation of a species into two forms, each of which was adapted to a special sphere of existence, every slight degree of sterility would be a positive advantage, not to the individuals who were sterile, but to each form. If you work it out, and suppose the two incipient species a...b to be divided into two groups, one of which contains those which are fertile when the two are crossed, the other being slightly ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... tramp along the edge of the woodland in winter, and come suddenly upon a group of Alders? What brightness seemed to radiate from their spikes of scarlet berries! The effect is something like that of a flame, so intense is it. It seems to radiate through the winter air with a thrill of positive warmth. So strong an impression do they make upon the eye that you see them long after you have passed them. They photograph themselves there. Why should we not transplant this bit of woodland glory to the garden, and heighten ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... returned the Doctor. 'She was a staid little woman, was Grace, and a wise housekeeper, and a busy, quiet, pleasant body; bearing with our humours and anticipating our wishes, and always ready to forget her own, even in those times. I never knew you positive or obstinate, Grace, my darling, even then, ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... and rising writer, whose article is perhaps chiefly interesting as showing the kind of effect produced by Amiel's thought on minds of a type essentially alien from his own. There is a leaven of something positive and austere, of something which, for want of a better name, one calls Puritanism, in Amiel, which escapes the author of "Une Cruelle Enigme." But whether he has understood Amiel or no, M. Bourget is fully alive ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... disbelieve, to demand "a quoi bon?" and that took the heart out of him. He was rather fond of exposing abuses, a habit that appears in those witty letters to the Gaulois which in 1878 obliged him to suspend that journal. His was a positive mind, interested in political affairs, and with something always ready to say upon them. In 1872 he founded a radical newspaper, Le XIXme Siecle (The Nineteenth Century), in association with another aggressive spirit, that of Francisque Sarcey. For many years he proved his ability ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... this; that though the pens of Mr. Cartwright and the Bishop were now at rest, yet there was sprung up a new generation of restless men, that by company and clamours became possessed of a faith, which they ought to have kept to themselves, but could not: men that were become positive in asserting, "That a papist cannot be saved:" insomuch, that about this time, at the execution of the Queen of Scots, the Bishop that preached her Funeral Sermon—which was Dr. Howland,[21] then Bishop of Peterborough—was reviled for not being positive for her damnation. ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... or negotiable bullion, in the language of my friend, amounted to about three hundred pounds, which we set aside as a joint fund for speculation. Bob, in a series of learned discourses, had convinced me that it was not only folly, but a positive sin, to leave this sum lying in the bank at a pitiful rate of interest, and otherwise unemployed, whilst every one else in the kingdom was having a pluck at the public pigeon. Somehow or other, we were unlucky ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... hold fast by a deeper wisdom than is born of sense; and though men, nowadays, seem to be willing to go back to the 'eternal sleep' of the most unspiritual heathenism, and to cast away all that Christ has brought us concerning that world where He has been and whence He has returned, because positive science and the anatomist's scalpel preach no gospel of a future, let us try to feel as well as to believe that it is life, with all its stunted capacities and idle occupation with baseless fabrics, which is the sleep, and that for us all the end ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... along the street and heard men calling upon the people in loud, strident voices to come and buy. At other places the grateful glow of coal fires shone from half-opened doorways, and the faint but positive click of ivory chips told that games ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... calculated to a certainty on, and with every prospect of not being disappointed, from his daughter. Isabel Howell was pretty, mild, and timid, and unused to oppose any of her father's commands; but George Denbigh was haughty, positive, and self-willed, and unless the affair could be so managed as to make him a willing assistant in the courtship, his father knew it might be abandoned at once. He thought his son might be led, but ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... truth, Doctor, you speak like a supernatural being, and there's verily no need for us to say anything! We have now, ready at hand, in our household, a good number of medical gentlemen, who are in attendance upon her, but none of these are proficient enough to speak in this positive manner. Some there are who say that it's a genital complaint; others maintain that it's an organic disease. This doctor explains that there is no danger: while another, again, holds that there's fear of a crisis either before or after the winter solstice; but there is, in one word, nothing certain ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... baffled aspirant become the scheming rival and the secret foe. But now,—thoroughly aware of the gravity of his father's objects, seeing before him the chance of a settled establishment at Laughton, a positive and influential connection with Lucretia; and on the other hand a return to the poverty he recalled with disgust, and the terrors of his father's solitary malice and revenge,—he entered fully into Dalibard's sombre plans, and without scruple or ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Sleight would not pay three times the value of the ship to-day if he were not positive! And that positive knowledge was gained last night by the villain who broke into ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... of two kinds, positive and negative. The difference is, I presume, that one kind comes a little more expensive, but is more durable; the other is a cheaper thing, but the moths get ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... child at the time, Harry," said Mr. Wyllys, "eight or ten I believe, still, I should think you must remember the anxiety to discover the real fate of William Stanley. I have numbers of letters in my hands, answers to those I had written with the hope of learning something more positive on the subject. We sent several agents, at different times, to the principal sea-ports, to make inquiries among the sailors; it all resulted in confirming the first story, the loss of the Jefferson, and all on board. Every year, of course, made the ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... quick sharpness, divining, I am positive, the strides I was making in my education, and poured himself whisky from his private bottle. This hit me for a moment on my thrifty side. He had taken a ten-cent drink when the rest of us were drinking five-cent drinks! But the hurt was only for a moment. I dismissed it as ignoble, remembered ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... most pathetic products of Greek idyllic poetry; and the transmutation of their material into the substance of highly spiritualized modern thought, reveals the potency of a Prospero's wand. It is a metamorphosis whereby the art of excellent but positive poets has been translated into the sphere of metaphysical imagination. Urania takes the place of Aphrodite; the thoughts and fancies and desires of the dead singer are substituted for Bion's cupids; ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... to spread a report that the Turks were threatening an invasion of Christendom, and that he knew for a positive fact that before the end of the summer Bajazet would land two considerable armies, one in Romagna, the other in Calabria; he therefore published two bulls, one to levy tithes of all ecclesiastical revenues ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... "since Jessie wishes it. But as a clergyman, and to prevent any future misunderstanding, I should like you to give me a statement in writing that you buy them on my distinct and positive declaration that they are made of paste—old Oriental paste—not genuine stones, and that I do not claim any ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... frivolous and shallow, simply because they excel all other nations in the difficult art of giving literary interest to philosophy; while, on the other hand, the ponderous Germans, who living in clouds of smoke have a positive genius for making the obscure obscurer, are thought to be original, because they are so chaotic and clumsy. But we have yet to learn that lead is priceless because it is weighty, or that gold is valueless because it glitters. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... the day passed, Edwin began to ask himself: "Has he had the letter?" There was no sign of the letter in his father's demeanour, which, while not such as to make it credible that he ever had moods of positive gay roguishness, was almost tolerable, considering his headache and his nausea. Letters occasionally were lost in the post, or delayed. Edwin thought it would be just his usual bad luck if that particular letter, that letter of all letters, should be lost. And the strange thing is that ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... violent proceedings all my neighbours shall cry aim. [Clock heard.] The clock gives me my cue, and my assurance bids me search: there I shall find Falstaff: I shall be rather praised for this than mocked; for it is as positive as the 40 earth is firm that Falstaff is there: ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... had now got one of his fingers into the infant's hand, which, by its gentle pressure, seeming to implore his assistance, certainly outpleaded the eloquence of Mrs. Deborah. Mr. Allworthy gave positive orders for the child to be taken away and provided with pap and other things against it waked. He likewise ordered that proper clothes should be procured for it early in the morning, and that it should be brought to himself as soon as ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... however, was of too positive a character to be long sustained by a person of Dr. Dolliver's original gentleness and simplicity, and now so completely tamed by age and misfortune. Even before he turned away from the grave, he grew conscious of a slightly cheering and invigorating effect from the tight grasp of the child's ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... him to repeat and verify these experiments. He soon began to devise new forms of investigation for himself, and at length made the great discovery, which may be said to be the foundation of electrical science, that there is a positive and negative state of electricity. By this fact he explained the phenomenon of the Leyden phial, which at that time excited great attention in Europe, and had foiled the sagacity of its principal philosophers. In the course of his investigations he was led to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... of the exercise and generalization of thought. In order to show the efficacy of the mythical and scientific faculty of thought comprised in the systems of ancient and modern philosophy, and its slow progress towards positive and rational science, we will adduce an instance from the people in whom such an evolution was accomplished, aided by all the civilized peoples in reciprocal communication with them. Let us see how this faculty was manifested in the Greeks at a time when they first attempted ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... it of extreme importance to possess positive knowledge as to their future condition and the events which fate held in store for them. They managed to be secretly taken to a woman famed for her talent in casting the horoscope. But on seeing how overwhelmed by chagrin they both were after consulting the oracle, I felt fearful as ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Yorick, after the fire, enters a home where he finds a boy weeping over a dead dog and refusing to be comforted with promises of other canine possessions. The critics united in praising this as being a positive addition to the Yorick adventures, as conceived and related in Sterne's finest manner. After the lapse of more than a century, one can acknowledge the pathos, the humanity of the incident, but the manner is not that of Sterne. It is a simple, ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... any good, the original prospectus was a positive hindrance to Mr. Waddington. It took all the wind out of his sails; it took, as he justly complained, the very words out of his mouth and the ideas out of his head; it got in his way and upset him at every turn. Somehow or other he had got to stamp ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... very practical instruction and you will obtain much positive benefit from it. It is not always the girl who is most beautiful on the street or in the parlor who makes up best. Often the contrary is the case, and the girl with the ordinary street appearance becomes very attractive looking on the stage with the proper makeup. ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... innocence, and purity, and sweetness, that lay about her small mouth and beautifully rounded chin. Her form was symmetry itself, and a glimpse of the small, but beautiful foot and ankle, left no doubt upon the mind as to the general harmony of her whole figure. On this occasion there was a positive air about her which added to the interest she excited; for, we believe, it may be truly observed, that beauty never appears so impressively or tenderly fascinating, as when it is slightly overshadowed with care. We need scarcely say, that there was a great deal ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... women. They were not permitted to know of the ugly thing that sweltered in the dark corridor below their very feet. Late in the night, a small body of men, acting under orders, carried the unfortunate guard down into the valley and buried him. Only the most positive stand on the part of the white men prevented the massacre of the prisoners by the friends and fellow-servants of the murdered man. A secret trial by jury, at a later day, ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... in the dense darkness, under cover of that merciful noise. Eustace was not the least afraid of thunder and lightning; he was used to tremendous storms, and loved nothing better than to stand out on the veranda to watch one raging round among the hills or out at sea. Now it was a positive blessing. Every flash showed him where he was, and he took care to have a tree trunk between himself and the camp. Then during the thunder bursts he made his way swiftly forward, groping cautiously like a blind man. ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... appears at first as a criticism, sometimes even as a destructive and revolutionary criticism. Its negative aspect is for centuries foremost. Its business seems to be not so much to build up as to pull down, to remove obstacles which block human progress, rather than to point the positive goal of endeavour or fashion the fabric of civilization. It finds humanity oppressed, and would set it free. It finds a people groaning under arbitrary rule, a nation in bondage to a conquering race, industrial enterprise obstructed by social privileges or crippled by taxation, and it offers relief. ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... any one to presume that my mule and I had become reconciled by our lengthened companionship. Discomfort amounting to positive agony had taught me to adopt more attitudes, graceful or ungraceful, than all the combined systems of Delsarte and other physical culturists could ...
— Six Days on the Hurricane Deck of a Mule - An account of a journey made on mule back in Honduras, - C.A. in August, 1891 • Almira Stillwell Cole
... The positive and negative plates are giving me considerable trouble, though. But I guess we can solve the problem. Did ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... quickly when the response brings actual pain; the animal makes the avoiding reaction to the pain and quickly comes to make this response to the place where the pain occurred; and thus the positive reaction to this ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... Dionysius, not because the truth falls short of them, but because it so infinitely excels them. It is above them. It is SUPER-lucent, SUPER-splendent, SUPER-essential, SUPER-sublime, SUPER EVERYTHING that can be named. Like Hegel in his logic, mystics journey towards the positive pole of truth only by ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... sir; and my firm opinion is, that if the rascals had found us unprepared, she would have been alongside us before now. She had more people on board her than when she left Malta harbour this morning, though where they came from I can't say; and I'm positive as to the craft, though the young man denied having been there for many a day. I can't make ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... drawn to Doctor Entman. He found, in the ugly little scientist, a rapport that seemed to exist nowhere else. At the moment, Entman was having a fine, stimulating time dissecting the cadaver of the android. His ugly little eyes were bright. "It's a miracle, my friend! A positive miracle. The thing these people have been ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... felt absolutely positive that the man had really been watching me, and was now endeavouring to escape recognition, yet at the next I saw the absurdity of such a thought. Sir Charles's face had, I suppose, been impressed upon my memory ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... novel. Happy Hawkins tells his own story with such a fine capacity for knowing how to do it and with so much humor that the reader's interest is held in surprise, then admiration and at last in positive affection. ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... accordance with his freedom-loving, cosmopolitan preconception; and his study was not to correct this preconception by a survey of all the evidence, but rather to select that which would confirm his view in a striking manner. On the whole, however, the tale of his positive error, as brought to light by the critics, is not as large as one might expect. This chapter will not deal with it at all, but rather with his general method and ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... however, with which we utter those little qualifiers, 'free' and 'happy,' observed to stand here in the positive or absolute degree, and not in any degree of comparison, is noticeable. For 'degrees of comparison' are always concessions of steps down, even when they most stoutly present themselves as steps up. Were all men simply wise and just, all predicating of certain men that they were ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... is not here asserted, that present possession or conquest are sufficient to give a title against long possession and positive laws but only that they have some force, and will be able to call the ballance where the titles are otherwise equal, and will even be sufficient sometimes to sanctify the weaker title. What degree ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... reduce public debt levels, and an export-oriented growth focus. Ongoing economic problems facing President URIBE range from reforming the pension system to reducing high unemployment. New exploration is needed to offset declining oil production. On the positive side, several international financial institutions have praised the economic reforms introduced by URIBE, which include measures designed to reduce the public-sector deficit below 2.5% of GDP. The government's economic policy and democratic security strategy have engendered ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... after: instead of that, he appeared not only to have forgotten all former offences, but to be impenetrable to all present incivilities. Formerly, the slightest hint, or mere fancied coldness in tone or glance, had sufficed to repulse him: now, positive rudeness could not drive him away. Had he heard of my disappointment; and was he come to witness the result, and triumph in my despair? I grasped my whip with more determined energy than before—but still forbore to raise it, and rode ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... for the future, for no one could tell what a day might bring forth. It was evident to the young exiles that the lake settlement had been destroyed, and the greater portion of the people killed, though they had no positive knowledge of the extent of the horrible massacre. They did not know, what was really true, that the onslaught of the savages extended over hundreds of miles of territory, and that its victims were numbered ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... matters go as they please, they are willing not to know it. And those of them who are at the Fresh River have desired to enter into an agreement and to make a yearly acknowledgement or an absolute purchase, which indeed is proof positive that our right was well known to them, and that they themselves had nothing against it in conscience, although they now, from time to time, have invented and pretended many things in order to screen themselves, or thereby to ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... good for an hour at a time, several hours occasionally, but to be good overnight—to waken in the morning with one's resolutions and aspirations as crisp and fresh as they were the evening before—is proof positive of regeneration. ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... seemed to be. He was no ordinary boy, this bright, keen, New York lad, with a form of rare build, tall and straight as a young Indian. He showed in every movement, and in the manner of his speech, that his character was a positive one, and that nature had endowed him with the ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... I found garrison life tedious. I began reading novels, and that kind of reading proved interesting. I made an attempt at writing some; this task gave range to my imagination. It took hold of my knowledge of positive facts, and often I found amusement in giving myself up to dreams in order to test them later by the standard of my reasoning powers. I transported myself in thought to an ideal world, and I sought to discover wherein lay ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... the restitution of Silesia, which he politely offered to her (though he had previously granted it on the Czar's request), but to Madgeburg and its environs west of the Elbe. On July 7th he said to Goltz, the Prussian negotiator, "I am sorry if the Queen took as positive assurances the phrases de politesse that one speaks to ladies" (Hardenberg's "Mems.," ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... is a very great hinderance to the demand for books. We have eight millions who cannot write yet!" Mr. Edwards, in his evidence, also points to the same deficiency of elementary education, "In addition," he says, "to the positive want of schooling on the part of large numbers of the population who are now growing up, those who do get some partial education, habitually neglect to improve what they get from the want of cultivating a taste for reading. Unless good books are made accessible ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... and have taken part in this revolt, should be punished with the greatest rigor; and also those who will not turn out, that they may be imprisoned and their whole property taken from them or destroyed.... I have ordered in the most positive manner that every militia man, who has borne arms with us, and afterwards joined the enemy, shall be ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... theology, in undertaking its task, always starts, as Clement and Origen also did, with the conscious or unconscious thought of emancipating itself from the outward revelation and community of cultus that are the characteristic marks of positive religion. The place of these is taken by the results of speculative cosmology, which, though themselves practically conditioned, do not seem to be of this character. This also applies to Origen's Christian Gnosis or scientific ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... hat, instantly, and stepped forward. He was not tall, but broad and muscular, with keen, dark eyes that sparkled under shaggy white eyebrows; a most vigorous, positive-looking old gentleman. ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... Paris, and the other places where they were made up, to the sea ports, at the expense of the commissioners; that they cost something more than 34 livres, exclusive of the transportation, as I am positive the accounts themselves will show. I must therefore presume, if my information is right, that you may be under some mistake as to this matter, and therefore pray you, if you have the copies of these accounts, that ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... was dressed in a mottled gown of light blue and gold, and so subtly blended were the colours that she and her gown seemed to be part of the same created thing. But on Grauble's left sat a woman whose gown was flashing crimson slashed with jetty black. Her skin was white with a positive whiteness of rare marble and her cheeks and lips flamed with blood's own red. The sheen of her hair was that of a raven's wing, and her eyes scintillated with the blackness ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... Jesus; for with all his divine tact and convincing authority, he was not able to win the leaders of Judaism to the acceptance of his revolutionizing teachings. Yet one cannot escape the conviction that if in this age of enlightenment and open-mindedness, the positive results of modern scholarship had been presented first, this latest chapter in God's revelation of himself to man would have been better understood and appreciated by the leaders of the Church, and its fruits appropriated by those whose interests are fixed on that which is of practical ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... conventions they discard. So it is difficult to say whether humanity is more in danger from the red-handed radicalism which destroys the precious fruit of long experience, or from the obstinate obstructionists who by the dead weight of their apathy or the positive pull-back of their antagonism delay the remedying of existing evils. The ideal lies in keeping morality plastic while giving its approved forms our hearty allegiance. Widely different ideals are theoretically conceivable; but we live in a specific ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... such as prevented her from determining whether the incidents alluded to had occurred previous to Sullivan's murder, or afterwards. There remained, however, just enough of suspicion to torment her own mind, without enabling her to arrive at any satisfactory conclusion as to Donnel's positive guilt, arising from the mysterious incidents in question. A kind of awakened conscience, too, resulting not from any principle of true repentance, but from superstitious alarm and a conviction that the Prophet had communicated to Sarah a certain secret connected with her, which ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... the palace late, and found the shack by its location next the river on the main road. Midnight had come, no creature stirred as I opened the door. The few stars in the black velvet pall of the sky seemed to ray out positive darkness, and the spirit of Po, the Marquesan god of evil, breathed from the unseen, shuddering forest. I tried to damn my mood, but found no profanity utterable. Rain began to fall, and I pushed ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... the Murderer was to be tried that day. I THINK that, until I was so helped into the Old Court with considerable difficulty, I did not know into which of the two Courts sitting my summons would take me. But this must not be received as a positive assertion, for I am not completely satisfied in my mind ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... forces inefficient by producing disunion. Ascertaining the beginning, the middle and the end of his foes,[309] a king should in secret cherish feelings of hostility towards them. He should corrupt the forces of his foe, ascertaining everything by positive proof, using the arts of producing disunion, making gifts, and applying poison. A king should never live in companionship with his foes. A king should wait long and then slay his foes. Indeed, he should wait, expecting ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... thing positive," admitted Mr. Princeman. "Mr. Turner, would you mind sending some samples of your material to my factory with ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... in telepathy," asserted Mrs. Quigg, a very positive journalist who sat at his right. "I think even that ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... the Peer; and he fixed his eyes as earnestly and expressively as he possibly could upon his young companion. "Well, I thought not. I was positive it was not true," continued the Marquess ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... that a nurse should lay this down as a positive rule to herself, never to speak to any patient who is standing or moving, as long as she exercises so little observation as not to know when a patient cannot bear it. I am satisfied that many of the accidents which ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... or soldiers of the United States in and about Manila, male or female, staff or supply, signal or hospital corps, Red Cross or crossed cannon, rifles, or sabres, this indomitable woman was now the most sought after—the most in demand. Her identification of the dead man had been positive ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... "I'm never positive, Sir Hilary, when it is a question of circumstantial evidence. But there can be no question that if he is not guilty himself he knows who is. I am so certain that I had a schedule of witnesses made out for the Treasury. Here ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... other code or system. It was "to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness." The Greeks and Romans never thought of considering others, but as they were Greeks or Romans, as they were bound to them by certain positive ties, or, on the other hand, as separated from them by fiercer antipathies. Their virtues were the virtues of political machines, their vices were the vices of demons, ready to inflict or to endure pain with obdurate and remorseless inflexibility of purpose. But ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Sabbath, but, on the contrary, a confirmation of the universal and merciful appointment. It does not give permission to keep or neglect it, according to whim or for the sake of amusement, but it does draw, strong and clear, the distinction between a positive rite which may be modified, and an unchangeable precept of the moral law which it is better for a man to die ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... 'Immediate,' consigned to the custody of Luigi, with positive orders to deliver it personally to Sir Lucius; and, if not at home, to follow ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... regained its every-day limitations, and she could make no sense of their words. At last, seeing that the door was barred and the hut was innocent of any other opening, she stood upright, and signified by a gesture that she wished to go out. There could be no mistaking the distress, even the positive alarm, created by this demand. The girl clasped her hands in entreaty, and the older woman evidently tried most earnestly to dissuade her visitor from a proceeding fraught with ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... Garnett, in the slow and sententious manner he adopted, "is a radical and a demagogue, a positive scourge to the town. As you say, Quirk ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... of one opinion. The Directory had no share in renewing the project of this memorable expedition, the result of which did not correspond with the grand views in which it had been conceived. Neither had the Directory any positive control over Bonaparte's departure or return. It was merely the passive instrument of the General's wishes, which it converted into decrees, as the law required. He was no more ordered to undertake the conquest of Egypt ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... to be ascribed to the fact that, in virtue of successive treaties with previous sovereigns of the country, Great Britain had obtained a concession of the right to cut mahogany or dyewoods at the Balize, but with positive exclusion of all domain or sovereignty; and thus it confirms the natural construction and understood import of the treaty as to all the rest of the region ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce
... letters, on the contrary, are a positive delight to me. One of the reasons why I should not like to interfere is the feeling that it might put ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various
... dissolve it, and grant a charter to a new company. He said it was an affair of great importance to the trade of the kingdom; therefore, he would consider the subject, and in a little time return a positive answer. The parliament was likewise amused by a pretended conspiracy of the papists in Lancashire, to raise a rebellion and restore James to the throne. Several persons were seized, and some witnesses examined: but nothing appeared to justify the information. At length one ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... and positive. He held the centre of the stage now, and he looked from one to the other of the serious faces around him with an expression of ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... in his hands positive evidence of Maud Deaves' treachery. But upon consideration he decided not to put it before her husband at least for the present. In the first place, he didn't relish taking the responsibility of breaking up the Deaves family, and in the second place it was ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... of the troops to the Del Norte was made by the commanding general under positive instructions to abstain from all aggressive acts toward Mexico or Mexican citizens and to regard the relations between that Republic and the United States as peaceful unless she should declare war or commit acts of hostility indicative of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... plays, which are printed in 6 vol. 12mo. and likewise a collection of some of the best Spanish and Italian plays, from Calderon, Aretin, Ricci, and Lopez de Vega. Whether any of these plays, translated from the Spanish, were ever printed, we cannot be positive. Mr. Ozell's translation of Moliere is far from being excellent, for Moliere was an author to whom none, but a genius like himself, could well do justice. His other ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... positive, decided, she can not fail to give you plenty of exercise. An attentive and caressing woman would weary you; you must be handled in a military fashion, if you are to be amused and retained. As soon as the mistress assumes ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... resemblance to them.... A person utterly ignorant of the practices of a spiritual life can no more do justice to the life of a saint, than a blind man could adjudicate on the merits or demerits of a painting." He adds that, with regard to the religious occupations of the Middle Ages, "the positive bounds of history could not be kept, digressions were made on all sides, and thus around the true history of saints, like a poetic wreath, wonder and amazement were both entwined. Christianity has had its denominated legendary ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... endeavored to impress upon the Belgian Government the needlessness and positive harmfulness of its restrictions upon the importation of certain of our food products, and have strongly urged that the rigid supervision and inspection under our laws are amply sufficient to prevent the exportation from this country of diseased ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... that "Some antecedents there must necessarily have been, that it's a tarnation shame of the said lioness not to assist them to do her honour, but that as she is so blind to her own advantage, and it's a positive necessity that an article about her should appear next morning, the deficiency must be made up." Well he, or some one he deputes, sits down at the last moment (for there are many on watch, and information may drop in during the night) to write the article, which in any case is highly ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... of the two first-rates, Real Carlos and San Hermenegildo, in the engagement of the 12th July last, to red-hot balls from his Majesty's ships under my command, I take this present opportunity to contradict, in the most positive and formal manner, a report so injurious to the characteristic humanity of the British nation, and to assure your Excellency that nothing was more void of truth. This I request you will be pleased to signify in the most public way possible. To assuage, ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... did rather indicate a disposition to take away my gun—which I certainly should never have relinquished without a struggle—and so I forked out the dibs, in order to keep the piece! I'm quite positive, however, that the vagabond over-charged me, and I kicked, as was quite natural, you ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour |
