"Reduce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there. I feverishly began drawing designs, and the chief carpenter and I undertook this fine-art and literary corner at once, so that it might be finished and a surprise for Elizabeth and the others when they came. It was well that we did so, for it was no light matter to reduce the width of those shelves. Whitewood is not hard when fresh, but this had seasoned with the generations until it was as easy to saw as dried horn—just about—and we took turns at it, and the sweat got in my eyes, and I would have sent for the ax and ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Friday." He pressed his head tightly in his hands and said miserably: "Why, why have you cured me? Preparations of bromide, idleness, hot baths, supervision, cowardly consternation at every mouthful, at every step—all this will reduce me at last to idiocy. I went out of my mind, I had megalomania; but then I was cheerful, confident, and even happy; I was interesting and original. Now I have become more sensible and stolid, but I ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... right, else it wouldn't ha' come down"; yet he believed in dreams and prognostics, and to his dying day he bated his breath a little when he told the story of the stroke with the willow wand. I tell it as he told it, not attempting to reduce it to its natural elements—in our eagerness to explain impressions, we often lose our hold of ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... Louvois, who carefully abstained from imitating the noble and daring remonstrances against excessive expenditure which Colbert addressed to his master, and through which he lost his influence at court. Still, with a self-abnegation really heroic, Colbert begged, urged, supplicated the King to reduce his outlay. He represented the misery of the people. "All letters that come from the provinces, whether from the intendants, the receivers-general, and even the bishops, speak of it," he wrote to the King. He insisted on a reduction of the taille by five or six millions; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... and deep that the region is almost depopulated, not only because man can with difficulty find room for the sole of his foot, but because the gases which lie over the Maremma in vapors thick enough to destroy life in a single night rise up to the top of these cliffs and reduce the dwellers there to fever-worn shadows. Even the scattered olive-trees that have taken root in the thin layer of soil are of the same hue, and the few clumps of cypresses add to the pallor of the scene with their dark funereal shafts. The ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... closed upon us; but even now we had no time to lose: to have taken the cattle without any prospect of relief until they should arrive at Flood's Creek, would have been to sacrifice almost the whole of them, and to reduce the expedition to a condition such as I did not desire. The necessary steps to be taken, in the event of Mr. Browne's bringing back good tidings, had engaged my attention during his absence, and with his assistance, ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... us only a moderately warm climate, for the theory of a central fire remained in my estimation the only one that was true and explicable. Were we then turning back to where the phenomena of central heat ruled in all their rigour and would reduce the most refractory rocks to the state of a molten liquid? I feared this, and said to ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... ecclesia Romana.... Post mortem domni Innocentii reversus est in Italiam, et promissa satisfactione et obediencia Romane ecclesie, a domno Eugenio receptus est apud Viterbum." And it is more likely that the fear of relics caused them to reduce his body to ashes than merely to throw the ashes into ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... intellect; they reduce a wise man to the level of a fool; and fifty years hence there won't be a sensible trader left. For national purposes they are very well, and government ought to have kept them to themselves, for those objects; but they play ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... his reasoning may appear, it unfortunately happened that he possessed the power to reduce his aversion to practice, and he may be considered as the author of that unwarrantable persecution of the tobacco plant, which under varying circumstances, has been injudiciously ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... was all. Until now no single real thing had occurred, nothing that Vanamee could reduce to terms of actuality, nothing he could put into words. The manifestation, when not recognisable to that strange sixth sense of his, appealed only to the most refined, the most delicate perception of eye and ear. It was all ephemeral, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... occupation of the Zhob valley, the foundation of the central cantonment of Fort Sandeman, and the extension of a line of outposts which, commencing at Quetta, may be said to rest on Wana north of the Gomal. The effect of these expeditions, and of this extension of military occupation, has been to reduce the independent Pathan tribes of the Suliman mountains to effective order, and to put a stop to border raiding on the Indus plains south of the Gomal. In 1893 serious differences arose between the khan of Kalat and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... on Motion by LEGH to reduce Foreign Office Vote. Ministerial majority run up at a jump to 225. Time by Westminster clock, 6.10 P.M.; in twenty minutes, sitting will be suspended; Vote must be through Committee to-day; TOMMY BOWLES (who hasn't made a speech for a quarter of an hour) on his feet; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various
... think. You know that man—what's his name?—he's a stock broker, who sits down the right aisle? Well, you know there was a talk once of dismissing the quartette, and retaining only the chorus (under my direction) to reduce expenses. That man declared if the quartette were dismissed he would leave the church. He is not a member anyway, I think, but he pays! There is worship for you! I tell you, the people glut their own souls with good music, and go home thinking they have worshiped God. Oh, I wish ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... like a person gradually increasing the burthens of a young bullock. Acting with care and mildness, he should at last put the reins on them. If the reins are thus put, they would not become intractable. Indeed, adequate measures should be employed for making them obedient. Mere entreaties to reduce them to subjection would not do. It is impossible to behave equally towards all men. Conciliating those that are foremost, the common people should be reduced to obedience. Producing disunion (through the agency of their leaders) among the common people who ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... given them. Lord Gerard is likely to meet with ill, the next sitting of Parliament, about Carr being set in the pillory; and I am glad of it. And it is mighty acceptable to the world to hear, that among other reductions the King do reduce his Guards: which do ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... you that for your happiness Solan will give up his life? If you escaped, Salensus Oll would know that only through my connivance could you have succeeded. Then would he send for me. What would you have me do? Reduce the city and myself to ashes? No, fool, there is a better way—a better way for Solan to keep thy money and be revenged ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of his life at Overton had anything to do with it, whether contact with other children of his own age would reduce him to the normal. She took the risk, and sent him at the age of twelve, to a preparatory school in Cheltenham. Before the first term was half over they sent for her and asked her to remove him. The head master confessed that the case was beyond him. On the ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... the interrogative sentence, the subject is frequently after the verb. Either the verb is the first word of the sentence, or an interrogative pronoun, adjective, or adverb that asks about the subject. In analyzing such sentences, always reduce them to the order ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... Professor Harmon several minutes to reduce the noisy enthusiasts to the decorous state of order in which they had entered the gymnasium. Far from being elated over her triumph, Constance Stevens received the ovation with the shyness of a child brought before an audience against its will ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... writing to him about the same question, and beg you to choose a good moment to hand him the letter and to let me know how he looks at the whole matter and whether there is hope that he may consent to reduce the term ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... are usually worked in the barber's shop, and many attempts have been made to reduce the hours of labour. We must not forget that compulsory early closing is by no means a new cry, as witness the following edict, issued in the reign of Henry VI., by the Reading Corporation: "Ordered ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... time you will improve, my friend, When of scholastic forms you learn the use; And how by method all things to reduce. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... medical care are not available to enough of our citizens. Clearly our nation must do more to reduce the impact of accident and disease. Two fundamental problems confront us: first, high and ever-rising costs of health services; second, serious gaps and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... in stone or marble, yet ultimately attaining the exquisite beauty of line and modelling of the capitals of the Erechtheion at Athens. Two things seem fairly certain as to the origin of this capital; first, that it was derived from the wooden horizontal head-pieces fixed on posts to reduce the bearing of the primitive wooden lintels; and, secondly, that the first suggestion of the volute reached the Ionian Greeks from the East. A crude anticipation of the volute is found in Phoenician work, and it also appears on a Hittite relief at Boghaz Keui in ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... the Hall (which there is a ball to be in to-night before the King) be guarded, as the Queene-Mother's is, by his Horse Guards; whereas heretofore they were by the Lord Chamberlain or Steward, and their people. But it is feared they will reduce all to the soldiery, and all other places be taken away; and what is worst of all, will alter the present militia, and bring all to a flying army. That my Lord Lauderdale, being Middleton's enemy, [John Earl of Middleton, General of the Forces ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... whole creation," he said. "We can let you have those to-day," and he lowered his voice to a whisper, and put his hand up beside his mouth, "to close out stock—for six dollars. They cost us only last week eight-fifty, but we are obliged to reduce stock prior to removal. The building is ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... never paid a bill in the first instance, with the natural result that those who had sent him honest bills before, after one or two experiences with him, made it a practice to add thirty per cent. or so to the total, in order that they might later on gracefully reduce their demands without loss. Thus my client, by his peevishness, actually created the very condition regarding which, out of an overactive imagination, he had ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... its hostility, or indifference, to art and refinement, it more than compensated for this by the moral earnestness that it impressed on the people. To bring the genius of the Bible into English life and literature, to impress each man with the idea of living for duty, to reduce politics and the whole life of the state to ethical standards, are undoubted services of Puritanism. Politically, it favored the growth of self-reliance, self-control and a sense of personal worth that made democracy ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... beyond dispute I too have the cowslips dewy and dear. Punctual as Springtide forth peep they: But I ought to pluck and impound them, eh? Not let them alone, but deftly shear And shred and reduce to—what may ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... he will perceive their footprints upon them like a cock's tread. If any one wish to see them, he must take the after-birth of a black cat, which has been littered by a first-born black cat, and whose mother was also a first-birth, burn and reduce it to powder, and put some of it on his eyes, and he will see them." (Vol. i. pp. 104 and 111). And this is the stuff which the author would have us believe was the real origin of the supernatural ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... Governor. The plan of the campaign was settled. The French were to be attacked at four points at once. The two British regiments lately arrived were to advance on Fort Duquesne; two new regiments, known as Shirley's and Pepperell's, just raised in the provinces, and taken into the King's pay, were to reduce Niagara; a body of provincials from New England, New York, and New Jersey was to seize Crown Point; and another body of New England men to capture Beausejour and bring Acadia to complete subjection. Braddock himself was to lead the expedition ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... elevates the ideal standard to which we aspire. Self-confidence in youth is an overweening insolence towards time and Nature. If the feeling of the superiority of others is a delusion, it is at least a delusion which raises human nature, and is better than that which lowers it. Alas, we but too soon reduce it to its ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... these here two guns and this belt jest to reduce my shape?" queried Williams in a rather ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... good and economical sachet, and simply consists of the ground wood. Santal-wood is to be purchased from some of the wholesale drysalters; the drug-grinders are the people to reduce it to powder for you—any attempt to do so at home will be found unavailable, on account ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... is like Lloyd George, who is not logical but achieves his successes through two or three senses which ordinary men have not; however, unlike Lloyd George, he cannot simulate logic and, after jumping to his conclusions, reduce them to the understanding of the three-dimensional mind. It is a grief to him that he cannot; for if he could make a speech, that is to say, translate himself, that figure of Disraeli would, he thinks, be less remote. But when your mental operations are a succession ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... about the trees; but to swallow it, we cutt the stick some 2 foot long, tying it in faggott, and boyle it, and when it boyles one houre or two the rind or skinne comes off with ease, which we take and drie it in the smoake and then reduce it into powder betwixt two graine-stoans, and putting the kettle with the same watter uppon the fire, we make it a kind of broath, which nourished us, but becam thirstier and drier then ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... would be more agreeable to all his subjects than that of the emperor; as securing them from the danger of falling under the dominion of a great and distant potentate, who might bring them into subjection, and reduce their country to the rank of a province: but the barons were displeased that a step so material to national interests had been taken without consulting them [l]; and Henry had too sensibly experienced the turbulence of their disposition, not to dread the ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... made all the great historical powers-behind-the-throne, such as Talleyrand, Mrs. de Pompadour, and Loeb, look as small as the minority report of a Duma. I could talk nations into or out of debt, harangue armies to sleep on the battlefield, reduce insurrections, inflammations, taxes, appropriations or surpluses with a few words, and call up the dogs of war or the dove of peace with the same bird-like whistle. Beauty and epaulettes and curly moustaches and ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... naturally enough begin to think it high time to try a fresh experiment. The animal man, finding that the ethical man has landed him in such a slough, resumes his ancient sovereignty, and preaches anarchy; which is, substantially, a proposal to reduce the social cosmos to chaos, and begin the brute struggle for existence ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... making compensation for fugitive slaves; but if this section is to be adopted, and the Government pays the owner the whole value of the fugitive, upon every principle of equity and justice the fugitive should be discharged, and the master should have no right to reduce him again to slavery. You make the measure of the owner's damages in such a case the value of the slave. Do you intend, after he has secured that, he shall still have the right of capture—that after ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... we passed, and see the cavalcade, told me that the deficient tillage and population arose from his being in opposition to Government and diligently employed in plundering the country generally, and his own estates in particular, to reduce the local authorities to his own terms. The Government demand upon him is twenty thousand rupees. He paid little last year, and has paid still less during the present year, on the ground that his estate yields nothing. This is a common and generally successful practice among ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... a word! If he can stake his all upon the lightest object, I can stake my all upon a greater purpose. Let him go where he will, with the means that my love has secured to him! Does he think to reduce me by long absence? He knows his mother very little if he does. Let him put away his whim now, and he is welcome back. Let him not put her away now, and he never shall come near me, living or dying, while I can raise my hand to make a sign against it, unless, being rid of her for ever, he comes ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... strange waif he came to know; many strange things he heard, and saw some that were abominable. It was to one of these last that he owed his deliverance from the Domain. For some time the rain had been merciless; one night after another he had been obliged to squander fourpence on a bed and reduce his board to the remaining eightpence: and he sat one morning near the Macquarrie Street entrance, hungry, for he had gone without breakfast, and wet, as he had already been for several days, when the cries of an animal in distress ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... of rough diamonds from the external appearance, even when the crystals, as found, are complicated modifications of the simple crystal form. He can thus take advantage of the cleavage to speedily reduce the rough material in size and shape to suit the necessity of the case. The cleaving is accomplished by making a nick or groove in the surface of the rough material at the proper point (the stone being held by a tenacious wax, in ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... was the best Glenlivat, had failed to mollify him. It might be dangerous to go too far with Dick, for he had a way of turning around and defending himself that somewhat embarrassed Mr. Mayne, but with his wife there would be no such danger. He would dominate her by his sharp speeches, and reduce her to abject submission in a moment, for Bessie was the meekest of wives. "Take care how you side with him," he continued, in a threatening voice. "He thinks that I am not serious in what I said just now, and is for carrying it off with a high hand; but I tell you, and you ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... for the dogs were right on the line he would have himself taken to reach the spring which ran down to the tunnel-like cavern. Certainly it was miles away, but, going at a pretty good speed, Nic felt that the dogs would quickly reduce the distance, and ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... unconquerable reluctance to look upon the face of his companion. Beset by conflicting desires, therefore, and the prey of unwonted emotion, he sat like one paralyzed, listening always to the faint ticking of the clock, and striving to reduce what was almost like chaos ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the faithful pair, which after the solemnities of marriage very seldom remain long unoccupied. The first consul considers such separations as unfriendly to morals. A few months since, by a well timed display of assumed ignorance, he endeavoured to give fashion to a sentiment which may in time reduce the number of these family accommodations. The noble palace of St. Cloud was at this time preparing for him; the principal architect requested of him to point out in what part of the palace he would wish to have his separate sleeping ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... Somerset?' said Abner Power, with sardonic geniality: he had been far enough about the world not to be greatly concerned at Somerset's apparent failing, particularly when it helped to reduce him from the rank of lover to his niece to ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... these mental conditions a vivid imagination, and a high sense of honour, nourished in childhood by the reading of the old knightly romances, and then put the youth in a position in which action is imperative, and you have elements of strife sufficient to reduce that fair kingdom of his to utter anarchy and madness. Yet so little, do we know ourselves, and so different are the symbols with which the imagination works its algebra, from the realities which those symbols represent, that as yet the youth felt no uneasiness, ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... she probably will reduce many persons to the same degraded state, her partaking of it ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... I daresay, that overmuch scruple about our propositions and the evidence for them will reduce men, especially the young, to the intellectual condition of the great philosopher, Marphurius, in Moliere's comedy. Marphurius rebukes Sganarelle for saying he had come into the room;—'What you should ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 1: On Popular Culture • John Morley
... in this portion of the field one-third of the crop was destroyed. All this seems to reduce the experiment to little more than guess-work; and it will, probably, be very difficult to persuade those who did not see the field when it was cut, to credit this report of the devastation made by the birds; even when they are ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... great thing to live in a land like this where the people can, at the polls, select one of their number and lift him to this pinnacle of power? And is it not greater still that the people are able to reduce a President to the ranks as well as to lift him up? When they elevate him he is just common clay, but when they take him down from his high place they separate him from those instrumentalities of government which ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... present administration of law and the carrying on of prosecutions. Sir Robert could fancy this to be very much improved by the appointment of a public prosecutor by the State, which would give the State a power to prevent vexatious, illegal, and immoral prosecutions, and reduce the expenses in an extraordinary degree. Part of the maintenance of the poor, according to the Poor Law, might be undertaken by the State. A great calamity must be foreseen, when the innumerable railroads now in progress shall have been terminated, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... take the necessary measures; but, as if reluctant to enter upon their arduous struggle with the "vested interests," they first waited on Mr. Bradshaw, the Duke of Bridgewater's canal agent, in the hope of persuading him to increase the means of conveyance, as well as to reduce the charges; but they were met by an unqualified refusal. They suggested the expediency of a railway, and invited Mr. Bradshaw to become a proprietor of shares in it. But his reply was—"All or none!" The canal proprietors, confident in their imagined security, ridiculed the proposed ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... What required most alteration was our heavy outfit. The sledges were constructed with a view to the most difficult conditions of ground. The surface here was of the easiest kind, and consequently permitted the use of the lightest outfit. We ought to be able to reduce the weight of the sledges by at least half — possibly more. Our big canvas ski-boots were found to need thorough alteration. They were too small and too stiff, and had to be made larger and softer. Foot-gear had such an important bearing ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... the government does not itself need it, and while the money is performing no nobler office than that of rusting in iron boxes. The natural effect of this change of policy, every one will see, is to reduce the quantity of money in circulation. But, again, by the subtreasury scheme the revenue is to be collected in specie. I anticipate that this will be disputed. I expect to hear it said that it is not the policy of the administration to collect ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... coming from the machinery, or from the rims of buttons left in the rags when being reduced to pulp, and thus a single button chopped up will contaminate a large portion of paper; occasionally these particles are so large that they reduce the silver solutions to the metallic state, which is formed on the paper; at other times they are so minute as to simply decompose the solution, and white spots are left, much injuring the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... grandmother Fromm were not knitting stockings on this occasion; it seemed they were prepared for this appearance. They too received my parents very quietly and solemnly: as if everyone were convinced that the first word addressed by anyone to this broken-down, propped up figure would immediately reduce it to ashes, as the story goes about some figures they have found in old tombs. And yet she had come on this long, long journey. She had not waited for the weather to grow warmer. She had started ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... enough of a poet to understand this and reduce it to practice. As his son said, he delighted to have some intelligent man or woman for a guest at his table, for the improvement of his children. But when there was no guest at the table, he led the way alone by calling the attention of his sons and daughters to some ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... could be better fed, clothed and educated. Again, fewer children in the families of the workers would tend to check the rise in the prices of food, which are forced up as the demand increases. Within a few years it would reduce the number of workers competing for jobs. The worker could the more easily force society to give him more of the product of his labor—or all of it. And while these things are taking place, the slums, with their disease, their moral degradation and all their sordid accompaniments, would ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... work their spell in such a material desert, in conditions intrinsically so charmless, so bleak and bare. The conditions gave nothing of what we regard to-day as most indispensable—since our present fine conception is but to reduce and fill in the material desert, to people and carpet and curtain it. We may be right, so far as that goes, but our predecessors were, with their eye on the essence, not wrong; thanks to which they wear the crown of our now thinking of them—if we do think of them—as in their ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... of this charming circle. As it is I am a possibility—unfulfilled, it is true, yet a possibility—to twenty men or more. So I am unwilling to give up all of my Pleasures just for the sake of any one particular Pleasure, who might in six months, aye six days, reduce himself into a miserable Platitude. I may and I may not be a great number of things; but alas, above all, I am critical. Platitudes as Platitudes may constantly afford even considerable interest, but Platitudes do not make ideal husbands for women of my peculiar temperament ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... people. In one of these he represents the Apostle St. Peter as being greatly perplexed by the disorder and injustice prevailing in the world. Peter longs to have the reins of government in his own hand, and believes that he could soon reduce the world to order. While he is thinking thus, a peasant girl comes to him and complains that she has to do a day's work in the field, and at the same time to keep within bounds a frolicsome young goat. Peter kindly takes ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... skirmish with a pirate which occurs is not quite so absurd as that ready-made series of encores which was described above (pp. 181-2), there is something a little like it in the way in which the hero and his men alternately reduce the enemy to extremity, and run over the deck to rescue friends who are in the pirates' power from being butchered or flung overboard. "Sapho's" invention, though by no means sterile, was evidently somewhat indiscriminate, and she would ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... and we are merely about to anticipate it. When this improvement was mooted, all agreed that the EXTREMES of heat and cold could well be spared. 'Balance those of summer against those of winter by partially straightening the axis; reduce the inclination from twenty-three degrees, thirty minutes, to about fifteen degrees, but let us stop there,' many said. Before we had gone far, however, we found it would be best to make the work complete. This will reclaim and make productive the vast areas of Siberia and the northern ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... greater upon a double account; first, that he was a person fitted with dexterity to vindicate school divinity and practical theology from the superfluity of vain and fruitless perplexing questions wherewith latter times have corrupted both, and had it upon his spirit, in all his way to reduce(134) that native gospel simplicity, which, in most parts of the world where literature is in esteem, and where the gospel is preached, is almost exiled from the school and from the pulpit,—a specimen whereof the judicious reader may find in ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... is as true, that if Mr. Pitt had not exerted the spirit and activity that he has, we should ere now have been past a critical situation. Such a war as ours carried on by my Lord Hardwicke, with the dull dilatoriness of a Chancery suit, would long ago have reduced us to what suits in Chancery reduce most people! At present our unanimity is prodigious— you Would as soon hear No from an old maid as from the House of Commons—but I don't promise you that this tranquillity will last.(984) One has known more ministries overturned ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... one of the big guns, and two of the smaller ones were in place, with the apparatus designed to reduce the recoil shock, and then Tom decided to have a test ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... and return for it in the morning. Should bad weather come on, the chances are that the timber, at all events, will be washed on shore, though we may lose the stores; but that will not matter so much, although we may be compelled to reduce the dimensions of our craft." Tom and Jerry took charge of the raft, having contrived two large paddles to propel it, while Desmond and the rest went in the boat and pulled ahead. More progress was made ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... twenty-second day of April, the governor sent a drummer to the French general with a letter, desiring to know his reasons for invading the island. To this an answer was returned by the duke de Richelieu, declaring he was come with intention to reduce the island under the dominion of his most christian majesty, by way of retaliation for the conduct of his master, who had seized and detained the ships belonging to the king of France and his subjects. If we may judge from the first operations of this nobleman, he was but indifferently ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... govern the people well, to procure them ease, to excite and to favor industry and trade, to permit them to enjoy in safety the fruits of their labors, than to oppress them under a despotic yoke, to impoverish them by senseless wars, to reduce them to mendicity in order to gratify an immoderate luxury, and afterward build sumptuous monuments which can contain but a very small portion of those whom they have rendered miserable? Religion, by its virtues, has but given a change to men; instead of foreseeing evils, it applies but ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... together with so vast a number of injunctions, prohibitions, and laws that it became almost impossible to master the subject. The task of scholars now was to arrange the accumulation of material and reduce it to a system. Rabbi after rabbi undertook the task, but only the fourth attempt at codification, that made by Yehuda the Prince, was successful. His compilation, classifying the subject-matter under six heads, subdivided into sixty-three tractates, containing five hundred and twenty-four chapters, ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... incessantly shifting through recurring cycles of production and destruction, in each of which every human being has his transmigratory [67] representative, Gautama proceeded to eliminate substance altogether; and to reduce the cosmos to a mere flow of sensations, emotions, volitions, and thoughts, devoid of any substratum. As, on the surface of a stream of water, we see ripples and whirlpools, which last for a while and then ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... fighting on with the same weapons, perfectly unmindful of the disorder and confusion which reigns around them in their own ranks. Thus, for example, D'Aubigne says, "It were easy to demonstrate that the doctrine of the reformers did not take away from man the liberty of a moral agent, and reduce him to a passive machine." Now, how does the historian so easily demonstrate that the doctrine of necessity, as held by the reformers, does not deny the liberty of a moral agent? Why, by simply producing the old effete notion of the liberty of the will, as ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... science, to enter within its portals, to contemplate its treasures, and to feast their minds on the entertainments there provided. Several moral maxims have been impressed on their memories; but they have seldom been taught to appreciate them in all their bearings, or to reduce them to practice in the various and minute ramifications of their conduct. Besides, although every rational means were employed for training the youthful mind till the age above named, no valid reason can ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... have been written to meet the needs of the large proportion of our population who are acutely affected by the constantly increasing cost of food products. Notwithstanding that by its valuable suggestions this book helps to reduce the expense of supplying the table, the recipes are so planned that the economies effected thereby are not offset by any lessening in the attractiveness, variety or palatability ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... afterwards Lucina professed herself tired of riding so fast, though it had not been fast for him, and reined her little white horse into a walk. The sorrel plunged and jerked his head obstinately when the Squire tried to reduce ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... his studio he opened the door slowly, sat down with great deliberation, and then remained motionless until the least sign of agitation produced by the exercise had ceased. Then he began to paint, using concave glasses to reduce the objects in size. This continual effort ended by injuring his sight, so that he was obliged to work with spectacles. Nevertheless, his coloring never became weakened or less vigorous, and his pictures are equally strong whether one looks at them ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... Everything I possess is lying on the floor. All the things I have accumulated on my way out and since I came to Calcutta lie in one heap waiting to be packed; shoes, dresses, hats, books, photographs are scattered madly about, and in the middle, almost reduced to idiocy, and making no effort to reduce chaos to order, sits Bella. I can't help her, for I must get my home letters written and posted before we leave Calcutta, for before I reach my first halting-place ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... round with neat splints made of thin slips of bamboo tied in parallel series. Little effort is made to bring the broken ends of the bones into their proper positions or to reduce dislocations. Abscesses are not usually opened with the knife, but are rather encouraged to point, and are then opened by pressure. A cold poultice of chopped leaves is applied to a bad boil or ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... which can register time, and odometers which can register distance, but there has been the double weight to carry of the two instruments; and, while every effort is being made to reduce the weight of the bicycle as much as possible, every ounce or fraction of an ounce tells. Consequently all cyclists are indebted to the man whose happy thought it was to combine the two, and who had the skill to do it. An instrument can now be ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 29, May 27, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... none was made. The chief Southern armies with which we have to deal are that of Lee, lying south of the Rapidan, and that of Bragg, now superseded by Joseph Johnston, at Dalton, south of Chattanooga. The Confederacy, it is thought, was now in a position in which it might take long to reduce it, but the only military chance for it was concentration on one great counter-stroke. This seems to have been the opinion of Lee and Longstreet. Jefferson Davis clung, even late in the year 1864, to the belief that disaster must somehow overtake any invading Northern army ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... Constantinople, with a strong breeze in their favor. The war-galleys of the Sultan immediately got under way to capture them. The Sultan himself rode down to the point of Tophane to witness a triumph which he considered certain and which he thought would reduce his enemy to despair. The Greeks crowded the walls of the city, offering up prayers for their friends and trembling for their safety in the desperate struggle that awaited them. The Christians had several advantages ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... wine, sending thousands of minstrels to sing it about the country until the people should memorize it. Now Chuff threatens to forbid singing and the memorizing of poetry. At this moment he has fifty thousand zealots working in the countryside collecting and burning dandelion seeds so as to reduce the ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil? At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... encounter of their lances, the language of the lovers to their ladies was still in the exalted terms which Amadis would have addressed to Oriana, before encountering a dragon for her sake. This tone of romantic gallantry found a clever but conceited author, to reduce it to a species of constitution and form, and lay down the courtly manner of conversation, in a pedantic book, called Euphues and his England. Of this, a brief account is given in the text, to which it may now be proper to ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... against both high and low ground, and the most that can be said without examining a particular piece of ground is: Our natural inclination is to select high ground, but, as a rule, this choice will reduce our fire effect, and if there is a covered approach to our fire trenches and very little dead ground in front of it, with an extensive field of fire, there is no doubt the lower ground is better. However, if these conditions do not exist to a considerable ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... happy one. The passing weeks had not brought reconciliation to them nor to the conditions. It had come almost to open warfare. "And," declared the troubled man, "if she does not render obedience I will reduce her to bread and water, and subject her to a lonely place, till she comprehends who is the ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... when it may have been, I do not know that there is any clue to be found. Modern criticism has been at work, of course, to reduce all things to as commonplace and brain-mind a basis as possible; but its methods are entirely the wrong ones. Mr. Romesh Dutt, who published abridged translations of the two poems in the late nineties, says of the Mahabharata ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... was recognized in your day just as was its duty to safeguard their lives, but with the same limitation, namely, that the safeguard should apply only to protect from attacks by violence. If it were attempted to kidnap a citizen and reduce him by force to slavery, the state would interfere, but not otherwise. Nevertheless, it was true in your day of liberty and personal independence, as of life, that the perils to which they were chiefly exposed were not from force or violence, ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... look at it," asked the boy. "I've picked up some knowledge of medicine, and perhaps I can do something to make it seem better; if nothing else, cold water may reduce the ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... laughing; "what do you term long established? Have you not been absent a dozen years, and do not these people reduce everything to the level of their own habits. I suppose, now, you fancy you can go to Rome or Jerusalem, or Constantinople, and remain four or five lustres, and then come coolly back to Templeton. and, on taking possession of this house again, call ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... Hebrew metre and partly to the variety of possible readings of the text. Nor is even that all. The claim has been made not only to confine Jeremiah's genuine Oracles to the metrical portions of the Book, but, by drastic emendations of the text, to reduce them to ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... indeed ask why so much Labour is made of building the Square only to reduce it, to despoil it, and to force it to hide or to part with so many of its Sevens—as by a sudden Slaughter or a Panic or a Plague. But it is held that by such prior Shufflings, Dealings, and Placings are much cherished the accidentall Declarings ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... to certain radical republicans who wished to reduce all ranks and classes to the same level with respect to political power and privileges. [2] "Come-outers": those who abandoned all established ways in government ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... that you do not know? Besides, the request is ironical. You allow yourself no intercourse with social life; you trample on its conventions, its laws, its customs, sentiments, and sciences; you reduce them all to the proportions such things take when viewed by ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... much better off in the matter of elephants, which had been so carelessly selected that only 33 out of the 157 sent with our column were of any use. All this resulted in our being obliged to still further reduce our already small kits. Officers were allowed only forty pounds of baggage, and soldiers twenty-four pounds, limits within which it was rather difficult to keep. A couple of blankets were essential, as we should have to operate over mountains five and six thousand feet high; so was a ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... she paid a humble home in that city where the head of a large family told her that her husband was going to vote for me because it would mean cheaper bread. My God, gentlemen, just think of the responsibility an expectation of that kind creates! I can't reduce the price of bread. I can only strive in the few years I shall have in office to remove the noxious growths that have been planted in our soil and try to clear the way for the new adjustment which is necessary. That adjustment ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... soon as two stars approached within a few million miles their speed would be enormously increased by their reciprocal attractions and, if their motion was directed radially with respect to their centers, they would come together with a crash that would reduce them both to nebulous clouds. It is true that the chances of such a "head-on'' collision are relatively very small; two stars approaching each other would most probably fall into closed orbits around their ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... that we should receive no compensation until after his merchandise had safely reached Basel, but then our remuneration was to be large. Max had no doubt as to the safe arrival of the caravan at Basel, and he rejoiced at the prospect. I tried to reduce the rosy hue of his dreams, but failed. I suggested that we might have fighting ahead of us harder than any we had known, though we had given and taken some rough knocks on two of our expeditions. Max laughed and longed for the ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... were actually charged a franc each for four small mutton cutlets, and three francs (2s. 6d.) for a cauliflower! Of course I complained, and got one or two francs knocked off. I believe most of the landlords are fully prepared to reduce their bills, but Englishmen as a rule pay the exorbitant prices charged, contenting themselves with a hearty growl at the same on departure. I told the landlord plainly myself, that the English seldom objected to pay liberally, but hated extortion. The charge of ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... fames!" thought Fanshawe with, a sickening heart, looking at the motionless corpse upon the bed, and then at the wretched being, whom the course of nature, in comparatively a moment of time, would reduce to ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... distances just mentioned are, they are considerably reduced, when the navigation of the Trinidad on the one side, and of the Caymito on the other, are taken into account. These reduce the greater distance at least one-half; and in it, as well as the lesser distance, the nature of the country, for a considerable (p. 095) portion of the distance, if not throughout the whole distance, overcomes ...
— A General Plan for a Mail Communication by Steam, Between Great Britain and the Eastern and Western Parts of the World • James MacQueen
... direction, and leaving it for him to find out what objects will be encountered by the way, and where the journey will end. We propose to finish the work that is thus left incomplete, and to set forth the doctrine in its plainest terms. We would reduce the theory at once to its narrowest compass and simplest expression; but at the same time, would incorporate into it every doctrine which properly belongs to it, and follow out each hypothesis to its remote, though necessary, inferences ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... insurgents, and on the twenty-fifth of September he issued a second proclamation, in which he vividly described the perverse spirit in which the lenient propositions of the government had been met, and declared his determination to reduce the refractory and lawless ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... any kind arises from the existence of a rich idle class. Their incomes must be paid, though inconsistent with the public good. To illustrate, the London and Southwestern railroad contemplated a reduction of fares in cars of the third-class. It was defeated because it might reduce the dividends. The poor could not be relieved lest it should reduce ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... Are we then to reduce the works of a man of genius to a mere sport of his talents—a game in which he is only the best player? Can he whose secret power raises so many emotions in our breasts be without any in his own? A mere actor performing a part? Is he unfeeling when he is pathetic, indifferent ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... theories underlying the cures are concerned, occultists are able to reduce them all to a single working theory or principle, which includes all the rest. Brushing aside all technical details, and all attempts to trace back the healing process to the ultimate facts of the universe, I may say that the gist of the principle ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... that though psychology can criticize these experiences, and help us to separate the wheat from the chaff—can tell us, too, a good deal about the machinery by which we lay hold of them, and the best way to use it—it cannot explain the experiences, pronounce upon their Object, or reduce that Object to ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... 1894," by the United States Strike Commissioners, 1895.—Throughout all subsequent years, and at present, the Pullman Company has continued charging the public exorbitant rates for the use of its cars. Numerous bills have been introduced in various legislatures to compel the company to reduce its rates. The company has squelched these measures. Its consistent policy is well known of paying its porters and conductors such poor wages that the 15,000,000 passengers who ride in Pullman cars every year are virtually obliged to make ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... isle of Mathan, the inhabitants of which go quite naked, except a slight covering in front, all the males wearing gold-rings hanging to the preputium. This island was governed by two kings, one of whom refused to pay tribute to the king of Spain, on which Magellan determined to reduce him by force of arms. The Indian had an army of between six and seven thousand men, armed with bows and arrows, darts and javelins, which Magellan attacked with sixty men, armed with coats of mail and helmets. The battle was for a long time doubtful, when at last Magellan ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... Gaboon stamps, each decorated with the fuzzy head of a spear-bearing native warrior. It speaks volumes for the power and courage of our French allies that they should have been able to overcome these savage and formidable tribesmen, and reduce them to the order that is implied by the existence of a post-office ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... consider the race of Struldbugs who never die, we are able to acquiesce in imagination. But a world where two and two make five seems quite on a different level. We feel that such a world, if there were one, would upset the whole fabric of our knowledge and reduce us to ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... going of our clocks, and then we have to determine what the observations would have been had our telescopes been absolutely perfect, and had our clocks been absolutely correct. There are also many other matters which have to be attended to in order to reduce our observations so as to obtain from the figures as yielded to the observer at the telescope the actual quantities which it ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... "I'd like to reduce the whole earth to dust," dreams Orlov, "or get up a crowd of comrades and kill off all the Jews ... all, to the very last one! Or, in general, do something that would place me high above all men, so that ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... they work on with a certain continuity from beginning to end, only on a larger or smaller scale. Inflection does not put a sudden end to combination, nor combination to juxtaposition. When even in so modern a language as English we can form by mere combination such words as man-like, and reduce them to manly, the power of combination cannot be said to be extinct, although it may no longer be sufficiently strong to produce new cases or new personal terminations. We may admit, in the development of the Aryan language, previous to its division, three successive strata of formation, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... and which brings back the impression already conveyed by the morbid sensitiveness, the frenzied violence, the moody torpor of his youth, that there was something abnormal in Alfieri's whole nature. He was now employing that very hysterical satisfaction in pain and impatience of half measures, to reduce himself, by heroic means, to at least such moral and mental health as would permit the full exercise of his faculties. There exists a diary of his, written in 1777, which is an almost unique example of the seemingly cold, but really excited and hysterical kind of self-vivisection ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... flavor, a good Bourbon Santos is considered the best coffee for its price, and is the most satisfactory low-cost blending coffee to be obtained. It is used with practically any of the high-priced coffees to reduce the cost of the blend. When properly made, this coffee produces a drink that is smooth and palatable, without tang or special character, and is suitable to the average taste. When aged, Bourbon Santos decreases in acidity, and increases somewhat in ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... about concerning him. The one is, what is he aiming at? and the other, how does he aim at it? In regard to the means, the men of the world bear the bell, and carry away the supremacy. Let in the thought of the end, and things change. Two questions reduce all the world's wisdom to stark, staring insanity. The first question is, 'What are you doing it for?' And the second question is, 'And suppose you get it, what then?' Nothing that cannot pass the barrier of these two questions satisfactorily is other than madness, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... stairway the atmosphere of the place seemed a reply to his conjectures. The same numbing air fell on him, like an emanation from some persistent will-power, a something fierce and imminent which might reduce to impotence every impulse within its range. Wyant could almost fancy a hand on his shoulder, guiding him upward with the ironical intent of confronting him with the evidence of ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... American War, when the price was high, and the price was kept up still. I have some goods that were given to me to supply Mr. Bruce's fishermen with including some of that cotton, and I have never been told to reduce the price. ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... joy, and constructed (out of those bones) with great attention and care the fierce weapons called Vajra. And having manufactured it, he joyfully addressed Indra, saying, 'With this foremost of weapons, O exalted one, reduce that fierce foe of the gods to ashes. And having slain the foe, rule thou happily the entire domain of heaven, O chief of the celestials, with those that follow thee.' And thus addressed by Twashtri, Purandara took the Vajra ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the criticisms a biologist would have to make on the method of their ascertainment and validity, not to mention their significance, such lists can easily do—and probably have done—more harm than good. One simple and reasonable criterion would reduce this catalogue to fairly modest proportions, so far as social science is concerned: Which ones have an obvious or even probable social significance? Over and above that, while such contrasts may be of speculative interest, they lead imaginative ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... frightened me to death by chasing me around the dressing-room at the opera till I was out of breath and black and blue from pushing the chairs and tables in his way. And what do you suppose he gave as an excuse? Why, he just said he was exercising me to reduce my figure, and hadn't the remotest notion of kissing me. Oh, no, he hadn't, had he?" She pealed with laughter, her companion regarding her with tense lips. "No one but a Yankee girl would have thought of ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... destroyed. Once, it is true, when he overheard his father telling his mother that the bill for repainting and varnishing the car was going to be very large, his conscience smote him. But what, he argued, could he do? Even were he to come forward now and shoulder the blame it would not reduce the expense of which his father complained. He had no money. Therefore he decided it was better to close his ears and try and forget the entire affair. His father had evidently accepted the calamity with resignation and made up his mind to bear the consequences ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... intellectual ardour,—is even painful. And when, by our Hebraising, we neither do what the better mind of statesmen prompted them to do, nor win the affections of the people we want to conciliate, nor yet reduce the opposition of our adversaries but rather heighten it, surely it may be not unreasonable to Hellenise a little, to let our thought and consciousness play freely about our proposed operation and its motives, ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... robustness; their desolate, bare heights and sky-scraping ridges are rosy in the dawn and violet at sunset, and their profound green gulfs are still mysterious. Powerful as man is, and pushing, he cannot wholly vulgarize them. He can reduce the valleys and the show "freaks" of nature to his own moral level, but the vast bulks and the summits remain for the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... think not," Ursula cried, tossing back her head in merry defiance. "Besides, we are young, we have few wants, and we can easily reduce our wants ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... of these spots would be hidden by the satellites forming the dark ring, and in every case where a spot was wholly or partially hidden by a satellite, the effect (at our distant station where the separate satellites of the dark ring are not discernible) would simply be to reduce pro tanto the darkness of the grey belt of shadow. But certainly more than half the shadows of the satellites would remain in sight; for the darkness of the ring at the time of its discovery showed that the satellites were very sparsely strewn. And these shadows ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... Gods have their own sisters {in marriage}. Thus Saturn married Ops,[50] related to him by blood; Ocean Tethys, the ruler of Olympus Juno. The Gods above have their privileges. Why do I attempt to reduce human customs to the rule of divine ordinances, and those so different? Either this forbidden flame shall be expelled from my heart, or if I cannot effect that, I pray that I may first perish, and that when dead I may be laid out on my bed, and that my brother may give me ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... republic, where the general diffusion of knowledge is of so much importance, for this not only applies to the introduction of French and English, but also of Spanish newspapers. Seors Gutierrez Estrada and Canedo used every effort to reduce this duty on newspapers, but in vain. The post-office opposes its reduction, fearing to be deprived of an imaginary rent—imaginary, because so few persons, comparatively, think it worth their while to go to this expense. There is but one daily newspaper in Mexico, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... into a weasel-skin purse, and then into her pocket. With much ceremony she put a powder into the fire, which caused a blue flame to arise. In its midst the living form of the murdered baron appeared. The witch tried to reduce the spirit to her power, but the task proved a difficult one, for more than once it was nigh breaking through the circle she had formed. At last her magic charms prevailed, and the spirit descended into the bowels of the earth, exclaiming, "Murderer, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... running in to drag him from his work; he must come with her and look at something or other—one could get it so cheap—but quickly, quickly, before it should be gone! On her "off" Sundays she would reduce the little home to order, and afterward they would walk arm in arm through the city, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... of the heavy load of taxation which our people have already borne, we may well consider whether it is not the part of wisdom to reduce the revenues, even if we delay a little the payment ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... I don't see how we can reduce it if we are to live as people in our circumstances might reasonably be ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... character of their position. Still, we can, upon this occasion, afford to be a little liberal with the statements of Cortez, as we have had to cut his hundreds of thousands of warriors down to a few thousand of miserably-armed Indians, and reduce his magnificent cities to small Indian villages. In order to make the island of Mexico at all inhabitable, we have had to reduce his lakes from navigable basins of twelve feet or more in depth to mere evaporating ponds. His floating islands have been transformed into garden-beds built upon the mud; ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... as I cannot too often repeat, examine for yourself; make use of your own understanding; seek the truth in the sincerity of your heart; reduce prejudice to silence; throw off the base servitude of custom; be suspicious of imagination; and with these precautions, in good faith with yourself, you can weigh with an impartial hand the various opinions concerning religion. ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... Dutch risked a quarrel with the English. They refused, however, any assistance from Law, who, far away as he was, heard all about it. They were defeated at Biderra on the 25th of November. The effect of this was to reduce Bengal to such tranquillity that Clive considered it safe to visit England. The Shahzada, however, thought the opportunity a favourable one for another invasion, and on the 28th of February, 1760, Law again started ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill
... However, in Germany, if you are under a capable Badearzt, there may be some salvation for you, since he orders your baths, measures your walks, and limits your diet so strictly. At one of the well-known places where people who eat too much all the year round go to reduce their figures, there is in the chief hotels a table known as the Corpulententisch, and a man who sits there is not allowed an ounce of bread beyond what his physician ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... of Novara, King Victor Emmanuel sought out Marshal Radetzky and came to terms. Venice and the Italian duchies had to be relinquished to the Austrians. Austrian troops, in conjunction with those of Piedmont, occupied Alessandria. Piedmont was to reduce its army to a peace footing, to disperse all volunteers, and to pay a war indemnity of 75,000,000 francs. The Austrian demand that Victor Emmanuel should annul the liberal constitution granted by his father was unconditionally refused. For this Piedmont ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... she intended to speak, but stood with her dish-pan and said nothing. Isabelle could see through her tears the bent figure and battered face of the old woman,—a being without one line of beauty or even animal grace. What a fight life must have been to reduce any woman's body to that! And the purpose,—to keep the breath of life in a worn old body, just ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... take the whole history of philosophy, the systems reduce themselves to a few main types which, under all the technical verbiage in which the ingenious intellect of man envelops them, are just so many visions, modes of feeling the whole push, and seeing the whole drift of life, forced ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... not nearly observed. And yet the argument is full of fallacies: and the very position that he assumes appears to me to be unsound. It is well enough to record a dialect, nor will any one grudge him credit for his observation and diligence, but to reduce a dialect to theoretic laws and then impose those laws upon the speakers of it is surely a monstrous step. And in this particular instance the matter is complicated by the fact that Southern English is not truly a natural dialect; Mr. Jones himself denotes ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... fluids act differently on the sapid bodies presented to them. Those subject to water soften, dissolve, and reduce themselves to boilli. The result is bouillon and its extracts. Those on the contrary treated with oil harden, assume a color more or less deep, and finally ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... lived earlier in the century she might easily have become the centre of a mythos. As it is, many of the anecdotes commonly repeated about her are made up largely of fable. It is, therefore, well, before it is too late, to reduce the true story of her career to the lowest terms, and this service has been well done by the author ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... celebrated Williams murders, on the contrary, he was entirely taken up, since these proceeded in accordance with designs not traceable to the cursory glance, but which tasked the skill of a decipherer to interpret and reduce to harmony. Here were murders that revolved musically, that modulated themselves to master-principles, and that at every stage of progress sought alliance with the hidden mysteries of universal human nature. I know of no writer but De Quincey who invests mysteries of this tragic order with their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various |
