"Problem" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for mankind—the problem which underlies all others, and is more deeply interesting than any other—is the ascertainment of the place which Man occupies in nature and of his relations to the universe of things. Whence our ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... pages which describe him read like a quintessential distillation of the Florentine story of the time and of the human results which it had availed to produce. The character of Savonarola, of course, remains, and must remain, a problem, despite all that has been done for the elucidation of it since Romola was written. But her reading of it is most characteristically that which her own idiosyncrasy—so akin to it in its humanitarian aspects, so superior to it in its methods of considering ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... which God has never revealed; hence they find no solution of their difficulties; and such as are actuated by a disposition to doubt and cavil, seize upon this as an excuse for rejecting the words of Holy Writ. Others, however, fail of a satisfactory understanding of the great problem of evil, from the fact that tradition and misinterpretation have obscured the teaching of the Bible concerning the character of God, the nature of His government, and the principles of ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... fosterer of our young visions of purity and passion: embarked in its pursuits, and acquainted with its pleasures, while the latter sated me with what is evil, the former made me incredulous to what is pure. I considered your sex as a problem which my experience had already solved. Like the French philosophers, who lose truth by endeavouring to condense it, and who forfeit the moral from their regard to the maxim, I concentrated my knowledge of women into aphorism and antitheses; and I did not dream of the exceptions, ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had perceptibly declined. Mr. Hedges then suggested that, as there was no food already cooked in the camp, we take each a wing of one of the partridges and broil it over our small fire. It was a "beautiful thought," as Judge Bradford of Colorado used to say from the bench when some knotty legal problem relating to a case he was trying had been solved, and was speedily acted upon by both of us. But I was disappointed in finding so little meat on a partridge wing, and believed that Hedges would have chosen a leg instead of a wing, if he had pondered a moment, so I remedied the omission, and, as ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... this little junket was the very thing she needed—open spaces, long walks in which to think out her problem. She hurried home and spent the morning packing. When this heartrending business was ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... was your offence, and perhaps you were not altogether mistaken. Yet posterity declines to read a line of yours, and, as we think of you, we are again set face to face with that eternal problem, how far is popularity a test of poetry? Burns was a poet: and popular. Byron was a popular poet, and the world agrees in the verdict of their own generations. But Montgomery, though he sold so well, was no poet, nor, Sir, I fear, was your verse made of the stuff of immortality. ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... laughed, and Tom said: "Well, after paying my kid brother such a left-handed compliment, I feel I must continue my work on that mine problem." ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... abruptly to her own problem. "I dread to go back to my mother, but I must. Oh, how I hate that hotel! I loathe the flies, the smells, the people that eat there, the ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... French we are loth to omit the symphonies of Chausson and of Dukas. In our own America it is a still harder problem. There is the masterly writing of a Foote; the older Paine has never been fully valued in the mad race for novelty. It would have been a joy to include a symphony of rare charm by ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... walrus. Wade then got into it. I made him a pillow of the geese-feathers by piling them into the bow under his head, and spreading over them my pocket-handkerchief. I next had him take off his boots, and set a hot rock from the fire at his feet. What to cover him up with was something of a problem. I managed it by putting on a layer of the moss, and laying the thwarts of the boat over this. Then, feeling somewhat fatigued after my labors, I crept in with him; and, ere long, we both went to sleep. The hunting-party ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... reagents, we review the field, it will be seen that with all the alkaloids mentioned, except the last four, a more or less immediate connection with the pyridine and quinoline bases has been indicated. The conviction accordingly forces itself upon us that, if we want to attack the problem of building up any of these important alkaloids artificially, we must turn to these ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... the author has indubitably established his claim to be reckoned among the few living novelists who count." But stay! What should this novel of Henry's be about? It would be necessary to describe it. For an hour he wrestled with the problem, and then he had another inspiration. Henry's novel would be about a boy called Thomas who had lived in Cornwall and who came to London and wrote a novel {about a boy called Stephen who had lived in Cornwall, and who came ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... behind his desk and sucked on his pipestem. He regarded Johnny impassively, seeming to consider some problem ...
— Sound of Terror • Don Berry
... had been to die when the wheel of his fortune had turned over and down. Ernestine and Lute, little tots, had been easy enough for Desten's sisters to manage. But Paula, who had fallen to Mrs. Tully, had been the problem—"because of that Frenchman." ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... the nature of an injunction, which will prevent the aggressor from further action until arbitration has settled the rights of the parties. How this can be done in a practical way I have not attempted to work out, but the problem is not easy, especially the part which relates to the enforcement ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... The problem of sorrow in a Christian life is a very serious one. It is important that we have a clear understanding upon the subject, that we may receive blessing and not hurt from our experience. Every sorrow that comes into our life brings us something good from God; but we ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... meet at the pump, quite accidentally, after the former had made half a dozen five-minute-apart trips for a drink. It was Miss Van Kamp, this time, who had been studying on the mutual acquaintance problem. ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... I stood still. Yes, the thread of light was there as it always was, only—only somehow it seemed broader to-night than I had ever noticed it as being before. It was broader. I could not be mistaken. While I was still pondering over this problem, and wondering what it might mean, my eye was taken by the dull gleam of some small white object about half way up the door. My eyes were taken by it, and would not leave it till I had ascertained what it really was. I approached ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... a good deal; but nothing more was said about Eustacia inside the house at that time. Whether this romantic martyr to superstition and the melancholy mummer he had conversed with under the full moon were one and the same person remained as yet a problem. ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... in favor of Germany over the territory affected by it. But in this particular case the indefensible duress employed by the German Government to compel China to enter into the treaty introduces another factor into the problem and excepts it from any general rule that treaties of that nature are merely suspended and not abrogated by war between the parties. It would seem as if no valid argument could be made in favor of suspension because the effect of the rule would be to revive and perpetuate an inequitable ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... a problem at once suggests itself. In these communities, comparatively populous, how could spirits so fierce, and in many respects so ungoverned, live together in peace, without law and without enforced authority? Yet there were towns where savages lived together in thousands with a harmony which civilization ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... he resolved the great problem of a southern continent, having traversed that hemisphere, between the latitudes of 40 deg. and 70 deg., in such a manner as not to leave a possibility of its existence, unless near the Pole, and out of the reach of navigation. During this voyage be discovered New Caledonia, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... meditatively. "We sit in the dark for an hour and a quarter, with our hands solemnly spread out upon a table; we don't talk; the table doesn't move; we hear no sound; we see nothing; we feel nothing that we have not felt before. And yet we find the function interesting. This problem of sensation is simply insoluble. I cannot work ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... steps in those ice-blocks, over them, around them, on the sheer sides of them, under them—whatever seemed to our judgment the best way of circumventing each individual block. Every ten yards presented a separate problem. Here was a sharp black rock standing up in a setting of ice as thin and narrow and steep as the claws that hold the stone in a finger-ring. That ice must be chopped down level, and then steps cut ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... in his chair and gazed straight before him for one moment—just that much space of time he allowed before the next problem of the day came before him—then he rang one of the row of electric bells ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... by this problem grew to be Aristide's main solicitude. He felt strangled, choked, borne down by an intolerable weight. What could he do to stir their vitality? Should he fire off pistols behind them, just to see them jump? But would they jump? Would not Mr. Ducksmith merely turn his rabbit-eyes, ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... have been deeply disappointed in this meeting. This is a great audience, and it is a great occasion; that is why the lack of an overwhelming conviction, the lack too of anything like vision of the inwardness of the problem under discussion is so saddening. I had hoped for a message to the heart of the nation; I had waited to hear the Voice of God, without which all such gatherings as this must be ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... uninterrupted use. As in the heroic hexameter the Asiatic colonies of Greece invented the most fluent, stately, and harmonious metre for continuous narrative poetry which has yet been invented by man, so in the elegiac couplet they solved the problem, hardly a less difficult one, of a metre which would refuse nothing, which could rise to the occasion and sink with it, and be equally suited to the epitaph of a hero or the verses accompanying a birthday present, a light jest or a ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... twisted as by a spasm; but whether of paralysis, or grief, or inward laughter, nobody but himself could possibly explain. The expression of a man's face is commonly a help to his thoughts, or glossary on his speech; but the countenance of Newman Noggs, in his ordinary moods, was a problem which no ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... was quite pleased by this unlooked-for addition to his family is a problem. He was very kind always to Miss Abigail, and seldom opposed her; though I think she must have tried his patience sometimes, especially when she interfered ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... my time the quarrel between the Drayton-Hall people and the Hampden-Hill folks was a factor in every neighborhood problem or proposition from a "church dressing" or a "sewing society meeting" to a political campaign. It had to be considered in every invitation and in ...
— The Christmas Peace - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... pressed, he seized and lifted up the celestial globe, wherewith to beat down his opponents; but being a very absent man, and the ruling passion being always dreadfully strong upon him, he began, instead of striking down his adversaries, to solve a problem upon it, but, before he had found the value of a single tangent, the orb was beaten to pieces about his skull, and he then saw more stars in his eyes than ever twinkled in the Milky Way. In less than two minutes, Mr Root to his crest added gules—his nose spouted blood, his eyes were blackened, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... to assist in visiting the sins of the fathers upon the sons? Frankly I could not say. The thing seemed to me to be a part of the problem of life, neither less nor more. So I shrugged my shoulders sadly and consoled myself by reflecting that very likely the issue would go against me, and that my own existence would pay the price of the venture ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... more eager did I become to solve the problem. When my eye began to ache with watching the chase, Nol took the glass. I had had my breakfast brought on deck. I ate my dinner there also. I was just washing down the cold salt junk and biscuit with a glass of rum ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... Five men climbed out of the wagon which had appeared from the road, and now they began a careful reconnoissance of the house. As they stood on the edge of the woods looking toward us I marked each one of them, and the problem uppermost in my mind concerned what I should do myself, for I was fairly cornered. I could not run away, for they were watching every exit from the cabin, and there was not one of them who would not recognize me did I flee over the open. ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... like that of all other children, had been exercised by the great problem of the mystery of our coming into the world. I was no longer satisfied with the explanation that children were brought by the stork, or with that other, advanced with greater seriousness, that they drifted up in boxes, which ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... be so very gracious and attentive as to inspire him with too much assurance. It was a difficult game to play. I must boldly risk making a bad impression, and at the same time keep him at a respectful distance. Well, I succeeded in solving the problem within the pale of legitimate curiosity, offering to share with my companion in misfortune a box of ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... between conceit and disgust, fancying myself one day a great new poet, and the next a mere twaddler, I got so puzzled and anxious, that I determined to pluck up courage, go to Mackaye, and ask him to solve the problem for me. ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... had thought only of overtaking the hikers. Now he was face to face with the problem of what he should say to them. He laid his bicycle at the side of the road and advanced with ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... have resulted in the sacrifice of ecclesiastical harmony, and have inflicted a death-blow on modern music, the committee agreed to refer their difficulties to Palestrina. On the principle of solvitur ambulando, he was invited to study the problem, and to produce a trial piece which should satisfy the conditions exacted by the Congregation as well as the requirements of the artists. Literally, he received commission to write a Mass in sober ecclesiastical style, free from all impure and light suggestions ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... legitimacy of the son of the duchess, the posthumous child of the Duc de Berri. The queen of France, who was almost a saint, had been fond of her young relative for her many engaging qualities; and what to do with her, in justice to France, was a difficult problem. ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... order is, then, the problem now before us. Can it be accomplished? President Roosevelt thinks that it can, and those who stand with him and support him assume that the existing competitive regime can be moralized and made to represent the interests of equity ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... The hardest problem which confronted the givers was how to hang their offerings and slip away before the recipient opened her door and nabbed the stealthy donor. As there was only one door knob to each door, the gift baskets must perforce be set in a row before it. Each girl had private ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... a puzzled look in the Rangar's eyes—of a subtle wonderment that might be intentional flattery (for Art and the East are one). Whenever the East is doubtful, and recognizes doubt, it is as dangerous as a hillside in the rains, and it only added to his problem if the Rangar found in him something inexplicable. The West can only get the better of the East when ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... life and wishing naturally to take a part in social functions and to become a member of that body indefinitely known as society, is confronted with the problem of clothes. A few years ago the ordinary changes of morning, afternoon, and evening were all that were requisite, but to-day, with special costumes for various sports and pastimes, the outlook at first glance to ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... sight just the tip of the ears, in which there glittered two diamonds, worth four to five thousand francs each. How it was that her ardent life had left on Marguerite's face the virginal, almost childlike expression, which characterized it, is a problem which we can but state, without attempting to ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... in the Yesterdays! Quickly mother's arm went around him. Lovingly she drew him close. And mother's work waited still as she considered the serious problem. There was no feeling of not being wanted in the boy's heart then. As he looked up at her he felt already renewed hope ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... to the Australian of ultrasocial development, and I am not aware that anything equal has been produced by other similar primitive peoples. However, it seems not improbable that allied tribes (say, of Malayan stock) which have solved the problem of subsistence in a like way have a similar currency, although I find no mention of it among four score of writers whose observations on similar tribes of Borneo have come to hand, and nothing similar has yet been found in ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... grossly ultra vires—illegal, that's to say. But you've put your finger on the point. If the treasure should be found—as it might be—somewhere hidden on that little plot of ground with a palace on it on our side of the river, our problem would be fairly easy. There'd be some way of—ah—making sure the fund would be properly administered. But if Gungadhura found it in the hills, and kept quiet about it as he doubtless would, he'd have every sedition-monger ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... the landscape when the flowers are in bloom. It is a beautiful place when once the tourist is able to land there, but the wharf arrangements are not so good as they might be. Once landed, the visitor usually first proceeds to solve the great zoological problem the island has long presented to the outer world, and finds that the Isle of Man does really possess a breed of tailless cats, whose caudal extremity is either altogether wanting or at most is reduced ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... Mechanics have I seen such a Problem as this of hoisting to their feet the heavy-bottomed Dutch. The cunningest leverage, every sort of Diplomatic block-and-tackle, Carteret and Stair themselves running over to help in critical seasons, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... it but to clear out (through a portrait of the All-Highest), leaving Kit in the safe to suffocate. Enter police (comic). Where is Kit? Brain-wave. In the safe, behind secret panel. Problem: how to open it. The service was evidently so secret that it had never told one of its brightest young men about combination letter-locks. But the dancer remembers that the chief spy had carefully explained to her the letters of the combination. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various
... Empire, research laboratories worked tirelessly at the problem of transmuting commoner elements into Gold-197, but thus far none of the processes was commercially feasible. There was still, after thousands of years, only one way to get the power metal: extract ...
— Despoilers of the Golden Empire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... we come to unformulated nature—to the vast world of complex forms, ever changing their aspect, full of life and movement, trees, flowers, woods and waters, birds, beasts, fishes, the human form—the problem how to represent any of these forms, to express and characterize them by means of so abstract a method as line-drawing, seems ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... enough to alledge for him to men of moderate minds, that what he there said was published before a book of poetry; and so ought rather to be esteemed as a problem of his fancy and invention, than as a real image of his judgement; but his defence in this matter may be laid on a surer foundation. This is the true reason to be given of his delivering that opinion: Upon his coming over he found the state of ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... question. They sat around the cage, brooding over the problem, until the Monkey fell asleep. Seeing this, the Canary tucked her head under her wing and also slept, and the Tin Owl and the Brown Bear did not disturb them until morning came ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... escape, if one is fortunate enough to discover the point of weakness and possesses sufficient time in which to work. Yet as I lay there, my eyes anxiously scanning those bare, solid walls, my brain working coolly, the problem appeared unsolvable. The door, of hard-wood, fitting tightly into the jambs, was hopeless,—particularly with Billie outside, loaded revolver in hand, nerved to the shooting point. I climbed again to the window, but the casing was solidly spiked into position, and I could barely ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... explained, but I am satisfied with your side of it," said Col. Zane. "Now I'll go to Sam and see what has become of that letter. I am glad I am justified in thinking of you as I have. I imagine this thing has hurt you and I don't wonder at it. Maybe we can untangle the problem yet. My advice would be—but never mind that now. Anyway, I'm your friend in this matter. I'll let you know the result of my ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... banking, and defense industries. Meanwhile, large tracts of fertile land, the application of modern technology, and subsidies have combined to make France the leading agricultural producer in Western Europe. Persistently high unemployment will continue to pose a major problem for the government; a 35-hour work week is being introduced. France has shied away from cutting exceptionally generous social welfare benefits or the enormous state bureaucracy, preferring to pare defense spending and raise taxes to keep ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of my life, and perhaps of any life at the age of twenty-one, was the problem of sex instinct. I have often wondered why that problem is discussed so meagrely. I have often wondered why, for instance, Kipling and Frank Bullen and W. Clark Russell, in discussing the life of soldiers and sailors with whom this is a specialized ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... analysis of our problem shows that our real objective is to reach the surface, and that need not be done the most obvious way, by returning over the course ...
— The Death-Traps of FX-31 • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... proceed to the solution of our proper problem. There are no general reasons, either against the figurative, or against the literal interpretation; neither of them has any unfavourable prejudice which can be urged against it. A devastation by real locusts is threatened, in the Pentateuch, against the transgressors ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... consumed by the rage to know, and insisted upon dragging Diavolo on with her. It was interesting to see them sitting side by side, the dark head touching the fair one as they bent together intently over some problem. When Diavolo was not quick enough, Angelica would rouse him up in the old way by knocking her head, which was still the harder of the two, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... supply the city with water—a project easy of execution from the natural conformation of the locality. But his scheme received no encouragement from the old-fogyish authorities. They were at that moment entertaining one which for simplicity reminded Garnier of the egg problem of Columbus. This was to distill the sea-water. He made a calculation of the cost of thus supplying each of the sixteen hundred inhabitants with five quarts of water a day, which showed that the proposition was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... is that Pyramid had wanted us to do some good turn for this old goat, to sort of even up for that spill of years gone by, and we'd done our best. Whether the money was to be used wise or not accordin' to our view was a problem that don't worry me at all. Might have once, when I was dead sure my dope on things in gen'ral was the only true dope. But I'm getting over that, I hope, and allowin' other folks to have theirs now and then. In fact, I proceeded to forget this pair as quick as possible, ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... had seen with Amroth, on that day of wandering, filled me with a strange restlessness, and a yearning for I knew not what. I plunged into my studies with determination rather than ardour, and I set myself to study what is the most difficult problem of all—the exact limits of individual responsibility. I had many conversations on the point with one of my teachers, a young man of very wide experience, who combined in an unusual way a close scientific knowledge of the subject with a peculiar ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in the deeps of the earth purred his machinery fulfilling all his needs, there was no more toil for man. There he sat at ease discussing the Sex Problem. ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... Pembroke's pistol solved his problem effectively. Pembroke tossed his third victim onto the pile, then opened a can of lager, quaffing it appreciatively. Seating himself once more, he leaned back in the chair, both ...
— The Perfectionists • Arnold Castle
... that problem Which has never yet been solved, How to live and be contented In the scenes life has evolved, Though in every operation Much must be inferred, We will find this root's extraction Will ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... connection with India took place in the earlier part of the year. Lieutenant Waghorn, whose enterprising genius led him to prosecute the problem of an overland route to India, saw his labours at last crowned with success. The government resolved, with certain modifications, to adopt the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... been placed, the problem of forming civil society has been in its main outlines the same; and in its earlier stages it has been approached in pretty much the ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... coasting party on Gallows Hill when his father brought him a fat letter from England. He went home at once to read it. The letter was from Margaret Hare—a love-letter which proposed a rather difficult problem. It is now a bit of paper so brittle with age it has to be delicately handled. Its neatly drawn chirography is faded to a light yellow, but how alive it is ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... robbers, disguised as three log-choppers, with axes upon their shoulders, approached a large, comfortable and rather imposing residence. In this house, to judge from the cautious looks of the party, dwelt the object of the expedition. How to obtain the girl was the problem that ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... write a history of furniture in a fairly short space is almost as hard as the square peg and round hole problem. No matter how one tries, it will not fit. One has to leave out so much of importance, so much of historic and artistic interest, so much of the life of the people that helps to make the subject vivid, and has to take so much for granted, that the task seems almost impossible. In spite ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... cannot be done. This information is very useful to him, and he does not begrudge the labor by which it has been obtained. All this is an excellent preparation for the twenty-first attempt, which may possibly reveal the way it can be done. When thousands of good heads are working upon a problem ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... waters. I broke away, too, from several "acts of contrition" to conjecture whether the dark, shadowy inequalities which terminated the horizon, and penetrated, methought, into the very skies far beyond the lake, were mountains or clouds: a dark problem, which to this day I have not been able to solve. Nay, I was taken twice, despite of the most virtuous efforts to the contrary, from a Salve Regina, to watch a little skiff, which shone with its snowy sail spread before the radiant evening sun, and glided over the waters, like an angel sent ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... The problem was not easy. And when things were not easy to him, Bill's temper invariably suffered. Besides, scheming was never pleasant to him. He was so essentially a man of action. An open battle appealed to him as nothing else in the world appealed to him. Force of arms—that ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... was too improbable. Suddenly I leapt up with the idea of seeking Astley and forcing him to speak. There could be no doubt that he knew more than I did. Astley? Well, he was another problem for ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... run upon something, and by degrees Fitz worked out the mental problem in his mind, as with his heart beating fast he watched the glowing light, in expectation of some sign that the smoker had heard the ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... reporters hunt him in vain. As Ashley, a reporter, is "combing" the neighborhood of Newhall's home for evidence, a young girl draws him inside a house, where he finds the banker dead, a pistol beside him. The police call it suicide, but Ashley thinks differently, and ultimately he solves a problem quite new in the annals ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... part of the dark ages, I am not without some grounds for suspecting that there yet remains a fair sprinkling even of "philosophic thinkers" to whom it may be a profitable, perhaps even a novel, task to descend from the heights of speculation and go over the A B C of the great biological problem as it was set before a body of shrewd artisans ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... and dangerous. And perhaps the poet in this passage has solved that problem of the philosophers, and stated the difference between being under the influence of wine and being drunk, mirth being the condition of the former, foolish talk of the latter. For as the proverb tells us, "What is ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... of the country has been directed to the culture of the Chinese sugar-cane; and merchants, economists, and statesmen, as well as the farmers themselves, are interested in the speedy and satisfactory solution of so important an industrial problem. Had the attention of a few local societies in different parts of New England been directed to the culture, with special reference to its feasibility and profitableness, a definite result might ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... visions of a later period is interesting, as evidence of the latter's remote ancestry, and of the development in the use of primitive material to suit a completely changed political outlook. But those are points which do not concern our problem. ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... had taken up arms against what he believed to be the cause of liberty. Then faction had destroyed his friends whom he believed to be its standard bearers. What was in the world, in religion, in morality that such things could be? In the face of this tremendous problem, Wordsworth, unlike Hamlet, was resolute and determined. It was, perhaps, characteristic of him that in his desire to get his feet on firm rock again he fled for a time to the exactest of sciences—to mathematics. But though he got certainties there, ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... all the animals living in the Gulf of Mexico. But behind this lies a question not so easily settled, as to the origin of the extensive deposits of limestone found at the very beginning of life upon earth. This problem brings us to the threshold of astronomy, for limestone is metallic in character, susceptible therefore of fusion, and may have formed a part of the materials of our earth, even in an incandescent state, when the worlds were forming. But though this investigation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... bravest of the Union Army against the flower of the Confederacy, the best and bravest of Lee's army, and losing nothing in the contrast. Never again while time lasts will the doubt arise as in 1861, "Will the Negro fight?" As a problem, it has been solved; as a question, it has been answered; and as a fact, it is as established as the eternal hills. It was the Negroes who rang up the curtain upon the last act of the bloody tragedy at Petersburg, Va., June 15, 1864, and ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... Custer was supposed to be would be northwest, leading ever deeper into the lonely wilderness, and toward more imminent peril. Then, at the end of that uncertain journey, they might easily miss Custer's column. That which would have been quickly decided had he been alone became a most serious problem when considered in connection with the insane, helpless scout. But then, there were the despatches! They must be of vital importance to have required the sending of Murphy forth on so dangerous a ride; other ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... should the discovery of this great source of all the forces, vital and physical, have been delayed to the present time? Master minds have been engaged for ages in efforts to solve the wonderful problem. ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... already passed into the annals of the camp, and there it rested. Had the murderer appeared, the men of Nome would certainly have stopped stampeding long enough to see justice done, whereas the whereabouts of Fortune La Pearle was no longer an insistent problem. There was gold in the creek beds and ruby beaches, and when the sea opened, the men with healthy sacks would sail away to where the good things of life ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... unflinching determination to prosecute the war to a successful conclusion. All that they could hope for after that was some fortuitous accident, or unexpected foreign recognition that would give them peace with victory. The prisoners were non-important factors in the military problem. Had they all been turned loose as soon as captured, their efforts would not have hastened the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... strength of diamonds, has gone from generating 25% of GDP in 1980 to over 50% in 1988. No other sector has experienced such growth, especially not that of the agricultural sector, which is plagued by erratic rainfall and poor soils. The unemployment rate remains a problem at 25%. A scarce resource base ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... question, the most serious problem that confronts the people of America to-day is that of rescuing their cities, their States and the federal government, including the federal judiciary, from absolute control of corporate monopoly. How to restore the voice of the citizen in the government ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... favor shown to me in it is extreme, and I am as grateful as I ought to be. Shall I ask the 'Note and Query' magazine why the 'Athenaeum' does show me so much favor, while, as in a late instance, so little justice is shown to my husband? It's a problem, like another. As for poetry, I hope to do better things in it yet, though I have a child to 'stand in my sunshine,' as you suppose he must; but he only makes the sunbeams brighter with his glistening curls, little darling—and who can complain of that? ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... his private room at the Embassy, a knitted brow and tightly-closed lips showing that he was deeply occupied in a problem which either baffled him altogether, or which, having been solved, gave him considerable anxiety. He had pushed his chair back from the table, and his attention was concentrated on the papers he held ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... scientific Scriptural exegesis also led to historico-critical investigations, that accordingly Origen and his disciples were also critics of the tradition, and that scientific theology, in addition to the task of remodelling Christianity, thus began at its very origin the solution of another problem, namely, the critical restoration of Christianity from the Scriptures and tradition and the removal of its excrescences: for these efforts, strictly speaking, do not come up for consideration in the ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... when applied to a given administrative problem, as Mr. Chamberlain took occasion to point out (June 19th), meant, for practical purposes, the opinions which prominent members of the Liberal party were known to hold upon the matter in question. Lord (then Mr.) Courtney was for autonomy—"the re-establishment of the ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... come away from the fields, pleased with his dreams, but still as far from a solution of his problem as ever. ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... had its origin in the most direct pressure of the problem of government upon the minds of men continues the course of thought on which Machiavelli's "Prince" had formed one famous station, and ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... told Ann that the room Mr. Penreath had slept in would do very well, and assured her that she was not to bother on his account. But Ann was determined to worry, and her mind was no sooner relieved about the bedroom than she propounded the problem of dinner. She had been taken unawares in that direction also. There was nothing in the house but a little cold mutton, and some hare soup left over from the previous day. If she warmed up a plateful of soup—it ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... and told friend wife about it. She approved eagerly because she felt that it might solve the servant problem. ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart
... of absolute power. But this mode of treatment was not sufficient; for such was Bonaparte's situation between the Jacobins and the Royalists that he could not strike a blow at one party without strengthening the other. He, however, contrived to solve this difficult problem, and weakened both parties by alternately frightening each. "You see, Royalists," he seemed to say, "if you do not attach yourselves to my government the Jacobins will again rise and bring back the reign of terror and its scaffold." To the men ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... ceased and a pale sun had dried the gravel, she went out into the grounds by herself and faced the problem. She sighed again—many times. If only they would let her have her fun out and give ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... in the picture is so delightfully natural that we do not at first realize how difficult a problem is solved in the arrangement of the four figures. An amateur photographer places his sitters in a stiff row and directs them all to look towards a single point. The master artist conceives of some action which shall engage the attention of all, and form a natural ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... mistake, Phil, when you interrupted me. No, do not speak," he raised his hand. "I was in possession of what sanity I've had since Arthur——" He did not complete the sentence. "I've deliberately decided that a quick shot was the only solution of my problem. Boy gone; home gone; my dearest ambition frustrated; hopelessly ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... affairs of his people; likes to see the bright and sunnyside of his character portrayed; so he often turns from the great journals (who are if saying anything at all concerning him, worrying over the "Negro Problem" (?)) to look at the bright side presented by the Negro newspaper. A few days ago while worried and disconsolate over the aspersions heaped upon a defenseless people that floated upon the feotid air from the Alabama Conference, The ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... appear to be not symbolic or mystical, at least not exclusively symbolic or mystical, but truly representative of successive periods, strongly distinctive in their character, and capable, with the three geologic days as given points in the problem, of being treated geologically. Another of the questions raised, both by the German doctor and the writer in our own country, must be recognized as eminently suggestive. "We treat the history of creation," says Dr. Kurtz, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... in place and it contains background information on a problem in Cultural Engineering all set out the way we are taught to do it in Class. The Problem concerns developments on a planet got settled by two groups during the Exodus ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... Marien himself had said: "There is a great interval between a dream and its execution." These words had thrown cold water on her sudden joy. She wanted to force him to keep his promise— to paint her portrait immediately. How to do this was the problem her little head, reclining on Madame de Nailles's lap after the departure of their visitors, had ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... interesting to ascertain what this instrument—which is frequently delineated—may really be. It might be a musical production of the bagpipe character, or a head-dress, or a warlike weapon. An extensive museum or collection of very ancient implements should solve the problem. ...
— The Coinages of the Channel Islands • B. Lowsley
... hardly any canon save those of the private judgment, which philosophic cant, maudlin sentimentality, or fear of public opinion, may happen to have forged, the man is a phenomenon, only less confused, abnormal, suspicious than his biographers' notions about him.' Again I say, I have not solved the problem: but it will be enough if I make some think it both soluble and worth solving. Let us look round, then, and see into what sort of a country, into what sort of a world, the young adventurer is going forth, at seventeen years of ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... stands in hardly closer relation to the conditions of life than does life itself. If this be so, and the occurrence of the same unusual character in the child and parent cannot be attributed to both having been exposed to the same unusual conditions, then the following problem is worth consideration, as showing that the result cannot be due, as some authors have supposed, to mere coincidence, but must be consequent on the members of the same family inheriting something in common in their constitution. Let it be assumed that, in a ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... no more difficult problem for the writer, no harder task than to decide how far he should allow himself to go in picturing human weakness. We have all come from the animal and can all without any assistance from books imagine easily enough the effects of unrestrained self-indulgence. Yet ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... solution of our troubles than we had any idea of. I say solution, although it but substituted one mystery for another. It gave tangibility to the intangible, indeed, but I can not see that our situation was any better. I, for one, found myself in the position of having a problem to solve, and no ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... could be enforced. We find, therefore, a well-defined movement toward relaxing this rigor of the law. The beginning appears in Hermas, who admits the possibility of one repentance after baptism. A special problem was presented from the first by the difference between the conceptions of marriage held by the Christians and by the heathen. The Church very early took the position that marriage in some sense was indissoluble, that so long as both parties to a marriage lived, neither could ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... as to the power of his bow and the range of his arrows, Grom set himself next to the problem of marksmanship. Selecting a plant of prickly pear, of about the dimensions of a man, he shot at it, at different ranges, till most of its great fleshy leaves were shredded and shattered. With his straight eye and his natural ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... old Fog, wonderingly; 'who'd have thought it!' Then, giving up the problem as something beyond his reach,—'Don't trouble yourself if you hear me stirring in the night,' he said; 'I am often mighty restless.' And rolling himself in his blanket, he soon became, at least as regards the ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... thoughtful, well conceived, admirably written and intensely interesting. The story 'works out' well, and though it is made to sustain the theory of the writer it does so in a very natural and stimulating manner. In the writing of the 'problem novel' Mr. Phillips has won a foremost place among ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... of the conservation problem is not a systematic treatise upon the subject. Some of the matter has been published previously in magazines, and some is condensed and rearranged from addresses made before conservation conventions and other organizations ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... general in many parts of the world admitted indeed in some English Colonies, in an increasing number of the American states, in some of the minor European countries—to share the public powers and responsibilities of men? Had he ever faced the problem, as it concerned England, with any thoroughness or candour? Yet perhaps Englishmen—all Englishmen—had ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was a puzzle to all who knew her. She was a puzzle even to herself, and was wont to say, indifferently, that the problem was not worth a solution. For this beautiful girl of fifteen was somewhat bitter and misanthropic, a condition perhaps due to the uncongenial atmosphere in which she had been reared. She was of dark complexion and her big brown eyes held a sombre and unfathomable expression. Once ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... of the traditional material can be regarded as historical; it is even very uncertain whether the Galilean prophet really paid the supreme penalty as a supposed enemy of Rome on the shameful cross. Even apart from the problem referred to, it is more than doubtful whether critics have left us enough stones standing in the life of Jesus to serve as the basis of a christology or doctrine of the divine Redeemer. And yet one feels that a theology without a theophany ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... to be recommended if it did not involve occasional pangs of consciousness to the legs of their neighbours. We see in our cousins West of the great water, who are said to exaggerate our peculiarities, beings labouring under the same difficulty, and intent on its solution. As to the second problem: that of drinking without discomposure to the subservient limbs: the company present worked out this republican principle ingeniously, but in a manner beneath the attention of the Muse. Let Clio record that mugs and glasses, tobacco ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that had fallen to their lot. Callahan, the chess-player on the Overland lines, the man who could hold large combinations of traffic movement constantly in his head and by intuition reach the result of a given problem before other men could work it out, was, like Morris Blood, the master of tonnage, of middle age. But McCloud, when he went to the mountain division, in youthfulness of features was boyish, and ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... reader by attempting to describe in detail my plan of operations, for it involved a mathematical problem of some complexity, only interesting to and comprehensible by a mathematician. Suffice it to say that what I had undertaken to do was to make three separate sets of observations from as many chosen ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... of campaign was settled, they all felt better. For some time they had known that this problem must come up for solution sooner or later, and truth to tell, it had been rather a load on their minds. There is a positive relief in knowing the worst. Means for meeting the difficulty can then be discussed; and as a rule most obstacles lose much of ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... the second convention in October, 1869; but when the third convention in October, 1870, adopted a new insurance plan, provision was made that disability insurance should be paid in an amount equal to that paid in case of death. Not until 1881, however, did the Conductors satisfactorily solve the problem. ...
— Beneficiary Features of American Trade Unions • James B. Kennedy |
