"Solidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hope and confidence. That this great struggle for national existence can be conducted with so little disturbance to the prosperity of the loyal States, and, indeed, with actual increase of activity and immediate success in almost all departments of business, affords the best evidence of the solidity and greatness of our country, and of its ability finally to maintain itself against the vast and powerful conspiracy by which it has been so vigorously assailed. At this moment, the domestic foe, notwithstanding his defiant attitude, is actually writhing in the grasp of an ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... posterity. Their houses are of stone, and built for duration, not for show. If a German builds a house, its walls are twice as thick as others—if he puts down a gate-post, it is sure to be nearly as thick as it is long. Every thing about him, animate and inanimate, partakes of this character of solidity. His wife even is a jolly, portly dame, his children chubby rogues, with legs shaped like little old-fashioned mahogany bannisters—his barns as big as fortresses—his horses like mammoths—his cattle enormous—and his breeches surprisingly redundant in linseywoolsey. It matters not to him, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Pope. The solidity of thy arguments restores me to myself, and thy eloquence exalts my soul, although it makes me shudder. Francisco is dead; Caesar lives: let him live, and take his brother's place, since fate will have ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... feel ashamed of them, or ashamed of being German herself, even if, comparatively speaking, the name should imply some deficiency in polish. "The French themselves would esteem her more if they saw in her something of German solidity and frankness.[5]" ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... to-day, to-morrow he would use it in its grammatical relation to a sentence. He had no time for vacation; no mental cessation, but it was one unceasing struggle for knowledge. And no doubt his approximate relation to Shurtleff College helped to impart a certain healthy tone and solidity to his style as a writer and preacher which were ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... of youth! I could not banish them from my mind. I knew them to be crude; but believed that deliberation would bestow upon them solidity and shape. Meanwhile I imparted ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... The soul's home, the heaven of God, may be suffused throughout the material universe, ignoring the existence of physical globes and galaxies. So light and electricity pervade some solid bodies, as if for them there were no solidity. So, doubtless, there are millions of realities around us utterly eluding our finest senses. "A fact," Emerson says, "is the last issue of spirit," and not its entire extent. "The visible creation is the terminus ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... stones, the connecting links between a finished effort, and an inspiration for continued struggle. But monuments are not created after the death of those they commemorate, although they may seem to be; they are but memorials of the structure already built, the solidity of whose base and symmetry of whose lines were projected and fashioned by intensity of conviction and the unswerving courage of their prototypes in ameliorating conditions while they lived. Bereft of this, "monuments ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... the like instances the truth of the matter stands thus: having of a long time experienced certain ideas, perceivable by touch, as distance, tangible figure, and solidity, to have been connected with certain ideas of sight, I do upon perceiving these ideas of sight forthwith conclude what tangible ideas are, by the wonted ordinary course of Nature like to follow. Looking at an object I perceive ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... contract for building the new London Bridge, but it was awarded to the Rennies, under whose superintendence it was built. The bridge is nine hundred and twenty-eight feet in length, and has five arches. In this structure although utility was the first consideration, there in an elegant solidity of design which makes it pleasing and impressive in the highest degree. The rapid stream is as little obstructed as the circumstances admitted, and there does not appear to be in the bridge an atom of superfluous material. London Bridge is, I ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... granite cathedral, the only one in the world, I presume, its stern solidity, so like the country and its men, laid hold of his imagination for the first time. No doubt the necessity imposed by the unyielding material had its share, and that a large one, in the character of the building: whence else that simplest of west windows, seven lofty, narrow slits of light, ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... With respect to solidity, the different parts of the hoof vary widely. The middle layer of the wall is harder and more tenacious than the sole, for the latter crumbles away or passes off in larger or smaller flakes on its under surface, while no such spontaneous shortening of the wall ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... than art. Long labour is expended over all the portraits wrought by the hand of man, yet they never attain to such truth as is revealed by a mirror. Clay is lacking in life, marble in colour, painting in solidity, and all three in motion, which is the most convincing element in a likeness: whereas in a mirror the reflection of the image is marvellous, for it is not only like its original, but moves and follows every nod of the man to whom it belongs; its age always corresponds to that of those who look into ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... so that they will neither decay nor fade, but last till destroyed by violence. What feelings overpower the poetic mind when the glories of that interior first blaze upon the brain; what a world of brightness, softness, and richness; what grandeur, solidity, and strength; what unnumbered treasures around the altars; what grand mosaics relieve the height of the wondrous dome,—larger than the Pantheon, rising two hundred feet from the intersection of those lofty and massive piers which divide transept from choir and nave; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... experiments to this end have been numerous and varied. Thus in the elephants, which retain the originally numerous toes, the bones of these members are planted in an upright position and tied together with such strong muscles and sinews, that the foot parts have something like the solidity and strength of the upper portions of the legs. In the single-hoofed or horse-like forms, and in the cloven-footed animals, other series of experiments have been tried which in the end have proved most successful, giving us animals with the speediest movements ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... British public never wearies. The American does not clamour for telling "curtains," if the character-drawing be keen, the conversations fresh, sparkling, and humorous. John Bull likes vividness and solidity of impasto; Jonathan's eye is often more pleasantly affected by a delicate gradation of half-tones. The one desires the downright, the concrete, the real; the other is titillated by the subtle, the allusive, the half-spoken. The antithesis is between force and finesse, between ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... tapering surfaces rise directly from the tower-cornice, without mutilating the tower or violating the pure outlines of the spire. The heavenward aspiration, as it were, ascends without effort from the solidity of the tower. It seems to typify a certain fitness and adaptability to heavenly things even in the gross and earthly nature of man. One cannot fail to admire its unaffected dignity, its harmonious balance, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... climate, food, locomotion, the animals, the mechanical forces, give us sincerest lessons, day by day, whose meaning is unlimited. They educate both the Understanding and the Reason. Every property of matter is a school for the understanding, —its solidity or resistance, its inertia, its extension, its figure, its divisibility. The understanding adds, divides, combines, measures, and finds nutriment and room for its activity in this worthy scene. Meantime, Reason transfers all these lessons into its own world of thought, by ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... be expected that any harbor among the shifting sands of Cape Cod would remain precisely the same, as to depth of water, after the lapse of two hundred and fifty years. Nevertheless, the discrepancy is so slight in this case, that it would seem to be accidental, rather than to arise from the solidity or fixedness of the harbor-bed. The channel of Barnstable Harbor, according to the Coast Survey Charts, varies in depth at low tide, for two miles outside of Sandy Neck Point, from seven to ten feet for the first mile, and for the next mile from ten feet to thirty-two on reaching Beach ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... universal interest by their mode of treatment, he took what may be called cosmopolitan traditions, legends of human nature, and nationalized them, by the infusion of his perfectly Anglican breadth of character and solidity of understanding. Wonderful as his imagination and fancy are, his perspicacity and artistic discretion are more so. This country tradesman's son, coming up to London, could set high-bred wits, like Beaumont, uncopiable lessons in drawing gentlemen such as are seen nowhere else but ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... dark corridor led to the vault itself, which was by no means a large chamber, but remarkable for the extreme solidity of its building. It was concrete, as most vaults are, and lit only by a single electric light, which, when switched on, shone dully against the gray stone walls. The only ventilation it boasted was provided by means of a row of small ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... with Caesar's description of the mode in which the Gauls constructed their walls of earth, stone, and logs,[684] and it resembles the ruins of Gallic fortifications which have been discovered in France, though it is said to surpass them in the strength and solidity of its structure. No similar walls appear to be known in Britain. A great part of this interesting prehistoric fortress was barbarously destroyed in the early part of the nineteenth century, much of it being tumbled into ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... it should be done to you, and to trust to your discretion the moment, the measure, and the form of communicating it to the court of Madrid. The actual state of Europe at the time you will receive this, the solidity of the confederacy, and especially as between Spain and England, the temper and views of the former, or of both, towards us, the state of your negotiation, are circumstances which will enable you better to decide how far it may be necessary ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Quakeress, of sweet, sensible character, house-wifely proclivities, and deeply intuitive and spiritual. The other (Hannah Brush,) was an equally noble, perhaps stronger character, lived to be very old, had quite a family of sons, was a natural lady, was in early life a school-mistress, and had great solidity of mind. W. W. himself makes much of the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... us fancy with what quakings and shakings of heart Mrs. Follingsbee must have sought the alliance of these tremendously solid old Christians. They were precisely what she wanted to give an air of solidity to the cobweb glitter of her state. And we can also see how necessary it was that she should ostentatiously visit Charlie Ferfola's wife, and speak of her as a darling creature, her particular friend, whom she was doing her very best to keep out of ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... results a concerted movement that produces a feeling such as we have when we dance or when we sing in chorus. In other words, ceremonies are a sort of "get-together" exercise which pulls men together in spite of themselves, giving them a shoulder-to-shoulder feeling of solidity and power that helps to build up that confidence and spirit which ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... suggest bold hypotheses, but to construct them with any solidity they must be supported by the greatest possible number of facts. Before admitting a definite explanation of the phenomena which have their seat in the curious substances discovered by them, M. and Madame Curie considered, ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... walked insolently away and the girl, with the strain of necessity removed, sank back weakly against the cool solidity of the walnut trunk. Except for its support she would have fallen, and after awhile, hearing Elviry's voice singing off at the back of the house and realizing that she was not watched, she turned weakly and spread ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... so shadowy that a question might be raised whether the whole affair had been anything more than the thoughts of a speculative man. I had never before experienced a mood that so robbed the actual world of its solidity. It nevertheless involved a charm, on which—a devoted epicure of my own emotions—I resolved to pause, and enjoy the moral ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... suddenly terminated, to the great regret of the literary public, it becomes, I conceive, my duty to carry on the work so nobly begun, even though the superstructure be far inferior in beauty and solidity to the foundation. In pursuing these, my filial labors, I shall always keep in view the two pole stars which ever guided the senior Mr. Ashburner—first, that these letters are designed for English and not American readers, and second, that I am portraying a class, and not individuals. As I shall ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... splendid adaptation of scientific discoveries to the ends they are designed to serve; the thoroughness, the cleanliness, the beauty of everything connected with the materiel employed; the massive solidity and apparent indestructibility of the various structures erected and afloat; the method everywhere observable; the perfect organisation and the steady respectability of the light-keepers—observe and note all these ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... The Frenchman wonders at its rudeness, but soon forgets the charge; while an Englishmam broods over it in silence and mortification. It is said this distinction in character is owing to the different estimation of principles and morals in the two nations. The solidity and purity of our ethics and religious creeds may have given a superior tone to our moral feeling; but has that man a tenable ground to value himself on either, whose respect to sacred things grows ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... heavy, strong, blunt-bowed affair, awakening the ideas of primitive solidity, like the wooden plough of our forefathers. And there were, about her, other suggestions of a rustic and homely nature. The extraordinary timber projections which I have seen in no other vessel made her square stern resemble the tail end of a miller's waggon. But the four stern ports of her ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... insistence upon solidity and exactitude he went beyond the point of careful workmanship and became a putterer. He was the King of Putterers. He could out-putter a plumber. And when he had finished it was usually some unimportant piece of work that any man who handled tools could have done as ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... And the 'copter touched solidity and a great silvery cylinder touched very delicately close by, and the children ran, squealing, to be with people they'd feared they would never see again. And Soames and Gail walked a little bit diffidently ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... elocution to escape being set to work. But the hypothesis was entirely imaginary; David Gellatley was in good earnest the half-crazed simpleton which he appeared, and was incapable of any constant and steady exertion. He had just so much solidity as kept on the windy side of insanity, so much wild wit as saved him from the imputation of idiocy, some dexterity in field-sports (in which we have known as great fools excel), great kindness and humanity in the treatment of animals entrusted to him, warm affections, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... celebrate them in ships which, moved by celestial breath, glide, their sterns crowned with roses, to the sound of harps, on invisible waves. But do not believe that, not being entered in a dirty register in a shabby vestry, they would be of little solidity and could be easily torn asunder. They have for guarantors the spirits who gambol on the clouds whence flashes the lightning and roars the thunder. I reveal matters to you, my son, which be useful to you to know, because I conclude ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... these Sicilian strata than the great scallop, Pecten jacobaeus (Figure 133), now so common in the neighbouring seas. The more we reflect on the preponderating number of this and other recent shells, the more we are surprised at the great thickness, solidity, and height above the sea of the rocky masses in which they are entombed, and the vast amount of geographical change which has taken place since their origin. It must be remembered that, before they began to emerge, the uppermost strata of the whole must have been deposited ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... whatever he might lose by it, and whatever censure and contempt he might incur. He well knew how improper it was in such company to relate the extraordinary manner in which he was awakened, which they would probably have interpreted as a demonstration of lunacy, against all the gravity and solidity of his discourse; but he contented himself with such a rational defence of a righteous, sober, and godly life, as he knew none of them could with any shadow of reason contest. He then challenged them to propose any thing they could urge, to prove that a life of irreligion and debauchery was ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... achievements in the more abstract parts of astronomy. He was born at Pisa in 1564, and in 1609 the first telescope used for astronomical observation was constructed. Galileo died in 1642, the year in which Newton was born. It was Galileo who laid with solidity the foundations of that science of Dynamics, of which astronomy is the most splendid illustration; and it was he who, by promulgating the doctrines taught by Copernicus, incurred the wrath of ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... ships of war. Almost all were in a wretched condition, having but few guns, and manned by very insufficient crews. The largest vessels were the three corvettes, Confederacion, Santa Cruz, and Valparaiso. Only one ship, the schooner brig Colocolo, was distinguished for solidity and swift sailing. The fleet was commanded by an admiral of little ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... belief. Especially is this true of those whose culture is scientific. And the reason is palpable. No man can study modern Science without a change coming over his view of truth. What impresses him about Nature is its solidity. He is there standing upon actual things, among fixed laws. And the integrity of the scientific method so seizes him that all other forms of truth begins to appear comparatively unstable. He did not know before that any form of truth could so hold him; and ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... acquisition of knowledge and the practice of virtue. He came hither as an enlightened observer; and, after traversing the country, conversing with all the men in it eminent for their talents or their office, and collecting a fund of observations whose solidity and justice have seldom been paralleled, he embarked, three months ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... reception by the Duke, and with the tone and tenor of his talk, anxious for a reconciliation with France, and entering into the whole history of our mutual relations from the Restoration to the present day, as he said, with the greatest clearness, precision, and solidity. He admitted that Guizot's was a very difficult situation, and the restoration of amicable feelings between the two countries very difficult also, but a thing earnestly ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... question to the common consciousness of our race. If all men do not believe in a permanent reality—a substance which is external to themselves, a substance which offers resistance to their muscular effort, and which produces in them the sensations of solidity, extension, resistance, etc.—they believe nothing and know nothing at all about ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... believe that things as they were, this mass of hardships, cruelties, insufficiencies and heartburnings were the ultimate wisdom and possibility of human life, yet when she went from them to the projects that would replace or change them she seemed to pass from things of overwhelming solidity to matters more thin and flimsy than the twittering of sparrows on the gutter. So soon as she returned to London she started upon her search for a solution; she supplemented Mr. Brumley's hunt for books with her own efforts, she went ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... gray, yet with a hint of something better. At eight o'clock, the clouds began to lift. Their solidity broke. The lower edge of the cloud-bank that had hung in a heavy gray line, straight and ominous, grew ragged. Shreds of vapor detached themselves and moved off, grew smaller, disappeared. Overhead, the pall was thinner. Finally it broke, and a watery ray of sunlight ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... made me, denied me the good looks that are proverbial in our family—but in compensation he endowed me with a solid mind to match my solid body. The Family means a great deal to me, Barry—more than anybody has ever realised—and there are times when I wonder why the solidity of mind was given to the one member of the race who could not perpetuate it in the direct line." She sighed, and then as if ashamed of unwonted emotion, jerked her dishevelled grey head with a movement that was singularly reminiscent ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... were not imposing. One-story frames predominated, with here and there a two-storied structure, or a brick aristocrat seeming to call attention to its substantial solidity. ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... of one of which we stand. These precipices, and the razor edge, are fortified and buttressed by arms which reach out westward and form rude crescents, called by the French geologists cirques, for here the snow lodges, and is packed to great density and solidity with all the force, fervor and fury of the ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... vaporous and idealistic, withal new. It recalls one of those enchanted flasks of the magii from which on opening smoke exhales that gradually shapes itself into fantastic and fearsome figures. This Polonaise at no time exhibits the solidity of its two predecessors; its plasticity defies the imprint of the conventional Polonaise, though we ever feel its rhythms. It may be full of monologues, interspersed cadenzas, improvised preludes and short phrases, as Kullak suggests, yet there is unity in the composition, the units of structure ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... blinked, and Tick-Tock's natural bronze-brown color suddenly flowed over her head, down her neck and across her body into legs and tail. Against the side of the terrace, as if materializing into solidity at that moment, appeared two hundred pounds of supple, rangy, long-tailed cat ... or catlike creature. TT's actual origin had never been established. The best guesses were that what Telzey had found playing around in the woods five ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... we weigh this proposition, and if we recall all the observations which nature and the state of things continually lead us to do, then its importance and its solidity will become more evident. ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... then transferred in a vigorous image to the big words without strength or solidity wherewith the discourses of some were stuffed out, and has now quite forgone any other meaning. So too 'to garble' was once "to cleanse from dross and dirt, as grocers do their spices, to pick or cull out"{219}. It is ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... sacrificed everything else is in some danger of suffering in the general wreck; and perhaps it is likely to suffer the more, because you have hitherto confided more than was quite prudent in the clearness of your intentions, and in the solidity of the popular judgment upon them. The former, indeed, is out of the power of events; the latter is full of levity, and the very creature of fortune. However, such as it is, (and for one I do not think I am inclined ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... stout, with the solidity which characterises the British young girls. She was large-boned and not very graceful, but she carried herself with a patrician air that told of past generations of good-breeding. Her complexion was of that pure pink and white ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... reason for their speculations. By an observation house is usually meant a comparatively simple construction, sufficient to provide the necessary shelter from wind and weather. Our house, on the other hand, was a model of solidity, with three double walls, double roof and floor. Its arrangements included ten inviting bunks, a kitchener, and a table; the latter, moreover, had a brand-new American-cloth cover. "I can understand that they want to keep themselves warm when they're making observations," ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... importance on the battle-field is cavalry. The principal merit of this arm consists in its velocity and mobility. Cavalry has little solidity, and cannot of itself defend any position against infantry; but in connection with the other arms, it is indispensable for beginning a battle, for completing a victory, and for reaping its full advantage by pursuing ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... possessed less than a sum equal to a quarter of a million dollars, shows plainly enough what one of the most skilful despots who ever ruled mankind wisely, thought of the institution. It was intended to balance, by its solidity, the ever-unsettled instincts of the people, to prevent as far as possible the unwise passage of laws by popular acclamation, and, so to say, to regulate the pulse of the nation. It has been imitated, in one way or another, by all ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... research—the celebrated "Darby Kelly"—has openly asserted the whole affair to be decidedly of Milesian origin: and, amid a vast number of corroborative circumstances, strenuously insists upon the solidity of his premises and deductions by triumphantly exclaiming, "What, or who but an Irish poet and an Irish hero, would commence a matter of so much consequence with the soul-stirring "whack!" adopted by the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... Indeed, it is absurd to make the comparison; it is absurd to do what travellers insist on doing—that is, to judge every nation by the highest standard, and pronounce each a failure which does not exhibit the intellect of France, the solidity and power of England, or the enterprise, liberty, and order of the United States. All that should be asked is, whether a people has surpassed its own previous condition and is in the way of improvement and progress. ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... by a dinner that would have frightened a Frenchman by its massive solidity, and would have sufficed to appease the appetites of a battalion of infantry after a long march. Soup, fish, home-made bread, goose stuffed with chestnuts, boiled beef, flanked with a mountain of vegetables, a pyramid of potatoes, ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... a very serviceable and lucid style, a power of clear statement, which afterwards stood him in good stead. His official work gave him the power of seeing the point, it gave him an economy of words, an effective briskness and solidity of presentment; at the same time his literary work prevented him from degenerating into ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... sacrum, for instance, is created by the fusing together of several vertebrae into one bone for the sake of greater strength and stability. The sacrum in man is much broader than in animals, for it must supply solidity and strength to the lower part of the spine, thus adapting it to the vertical position, and in the same way the lower vertebrae generally are comparatively broader and heavier, gradually decreasing in size ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... been left behind when that establishment was broken up. They were originally introduced from the Malay islands. I was struck with the remarkable thickness of their skin, (almost an inch) and with the solidity of their bones, which contained little marrow; but that ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... objects which we seem to see and touch," went on Hitt, "we appear to see solidity and hardness, and we conceive as real objects what are only the mental signs or indications of objects. Remember, matter does not and can not get into the mind. Only thoughts and ideas enter our mentalities. We see our thoughts of hardness, solidity, and so on; and these ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... landlocked bays, where they come to a standstill as if they were bewildered and lost and were trying to remember where they were going to and whence they had come; the foam of which they are composed is yellowish-white, with a spongy sort of solidity about it. In a little bay we pass we see eight native women, Fans clearly, by their bright brown faces, and their loads of brass bracelets and armlets; likely enough they had anklets too, but we could not see them, as the good ladies were pottering about ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... the desired height, and left rooted in the ground, while the two ends of it rested upon the end walls. The walls themselves were constructed of thick mud plaster, overlaying a foundation of laced willow branches. The whole construction was of unusual solidity, and the smoke-blackened thatch yielded two holes, Indian fashion, through which the fire smoke ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... at once to Roustchouk, which he found "a fortress of vast extent; but, as it is commanded by the heights from which I was descending, it appeared to want strength if approached from the south. The ramparts were built with great solidity; but rusty old dismounted cannon, obliterated embrasures, and palisades rotten from exposure to the weather, showed that to stand a siege it must undergo a considerable repair." Several days were devoted to a general reconnoissance of the place; but the result was not satisfactory—"I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... the best tales of adventure produced by any living writer, combining the inventiveness of Jules Verne, and the solidity of character and earnestness of spirit which have made the English victorious in ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... author would have given a little more of the file, had he had leisure: and the fifth book of his AEneids seems to me the most perfect. I also love Lucan, and willingly read him, not so much for his style, as for his own worth, and the truth and solidity of his opinions and judgments. As for good Terence, the refined elegance and grace of the Latin tongue, I find him admirable in his vivid representation of our manners and the movements of the soul; our actions throw me at every ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... old-fashioned watering- place, which now, with its substantial russet-red and dun brick buildings in the style of the year eighteen hundred, looks like one side of a Soho or Bloomsbury Street transported to the shore, and draws a smile from the modern tourist who has no eye for solidity of build. The writer, quite a youth, was present merely as a listener. The conversation proceeded from general subjects to particular, until old Mrs. H—, whose memory was as perfect at eighty as it had ever been in her life, interested us all by the obvious fidelity with which she repeated a story ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... nation was exalted more, state rights subordinated, and the Constitution construed ever more broadly. Thus there was silently and gradually imparted to our governmental fabric a consistency and a solidity which were of incalculable worth against ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... James Watt, Foulis the printer, Black the chemist and Hutton of geological fame—it is an enviable circle. He had known Turgot on intimate terms and visited Voltaire on Lake Geneva. Hume had told him that his book had "depth and solidity and acuteness"; the younger Pitt had consulted him on public affairs. Few men have moved amid such happy peace within the very centre of what was most illustrious in ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... We must know that we may love; but we must love that we may know. We must believe that we may see. True, we must see that we may believe, but the preliminary vision which precedes belief is slight and dim as compared with the solidity and the depth of assurance with which we apprehend the reality and know the lustre of Him whom our faith has grasped. You will never know the glory of the light, nor the sweetness with which it falls upon the gazing eye, until you turn your face to that Master, and so receive on your susceptible ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... exceptional conduct. Roderick Anthony had begun already to suffer. That is why perhaps he was so industrious in going about amongst his fellow-men who would have been surprised and humiliated, had they known how little solidity and even existence they had in his eyes. But they could not suspect anything so queer. They saw nothing extraordinary in him during that fortnight. The proof of this is that they were willing to transact business with him. Obviously they ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... throw some illumination even on the future. Which of all types of modern men is the most habitually hopeful, the man of letters, the politician, the business man, or the man of science? There can be no question of the answer. The typical man of science is sure of the greatness and solidity of the work he shares, and confident that the future will extend and make still more beneficial its results. His forward glance is more assured because the backward reveals a course of growing strength and continuous ascent. ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... satirical character sketch,—as in the introduction to "The Scarlet Letter" which scandalized the people of Salem. If he could have made a novel out of his custom-house acquaintances, he might have given us something less immaterial. He felt the lack of solidity in his own creations: the folly of constructing "the semblance of a world out of airy matter"; the "value hidden in petty incidents and ordinary characters." "A better book than I shall ever write was there," he confesses, but "my brain ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... she may depart with that comfort, 'I have lived; neither want I anything of that which properly did belong unto me.' Again, she compasseth the whole world, and penetrateth into the vanity, and mere outside (wanting substance and solidity) of it, and stretcheth herself unto the infiniteness of eternity; and the revolution or restoration of all things after a certain period of time, to the same state and place as before, she fetcheth about, and doth comprehend in ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... no knife or sharp instrument, the window grating was of iron, but he had too often assured himself of its solidity. All his furniture consisted of a bed, a chair, a table, a pail, and a jug. The bed had iron clamps, but they were screwed to the wood, and it would have required a screw-driver to take them off. The table and chair had nothing, the pail had ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... mountain ranges, and cloud piercing peaks, was once but vapor, floating without form through limitless space, drifting as mere nebulous matter among the older creations of God. However this may be, it is regarded as quite certain, that time was when ft was entirely void of solidity, void of dry land, with no continent, island, or solid ground, with no living thing within its circumference. It was thus passing through one of the remote eras of its existence. It was then young, just emerging, as it were, from nothingness, growing into form, assuming shape, and gathering ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... faire forehead of an innocent loue, And makes a blister there. Makes marriage vowes As false as Dicers Oathes. Oh such a deed, As from the body of Contraction pluckes The very soule, and sweete Religion makes A rapsidie of words. Heauens face doth glow, Yea this solidity and compound masse, With tristfull visage as against the doome, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... project, they little consider that this fickleness and vainness is the common practice among all the people of this sublunary world; and that consequently, instead of being an objection against the project, is a concluding argument of the constancy and solidity of their sure gain by it; a never-failing argument, as he tells us, among the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... trickery, deception. soga rope. sol m. sun. solamente only. soldado soldier. soledad f. solitude. solemne solemn. solemnidad f. solemnity. soler to be accustomed. solidaridad f. solidarity, participation. solidez f. solidity. solitario solitary. solo alone; solo only; tan solo only. soltar to loosen, let go. soltero -a bachelor, unmarried person. solteron -a bachelor, old maid. sollozo sob. sombra shadow. sombrero hat. sombrio somber, gloomy. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... bricks and in the plaster of the old wall, and the amianthus in the earthen vessels. Thus we have the combination A B C, or fibro-cartilage. Again, the bones were once only gristle or cartilage, A B. To give them solidity they were infiltrated with stone, in the form of salts of lime, an inorganic element, so that bone would be spelt out by the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... backed by solidity or barricaded behind walls. There was not the reassurance of good, honest earth under their feet; they were precariously perched in space, so it seemed—standing on the stringers of the dam, peering ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... it with sculpture! No one can cavil, I grant, at the size of the great Coliseum. Doubtless the notion of grand and capacious and massive amusement, This the old Romans had; but tell me, is this an idea? Yet of solidity much, but of splendor little is extant: "Brickwork I found thee, and marble I left thee!" their Emperor vaunted; "Marble I thought thee, and brickwork I find thee!" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... a great distinction between the secondary qualities of matter, and certain others which he terms "primary qualities." These are extension, figure, solidity, motion and rest, and number; and he is as clear that these primary qualities exist independently of the mind, as he is that the secondary qualities have ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... respects the banks of Scotland, the issue of paper of that description has been found compatible with the HIGHEST DEGREE of solidity; and that there is not, therefore, while they are conducted upon their present system, sufficient ground for proposing any alteration, with the view of adding to a solidity which has been so ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... aristocratic employing) which is responsible for the Five Towns' reputation for joylessness, the class which sticks its chin out and gets things done (however queer the things done may be), the class which keeps the district together and maintains its solidity, the class which is ashamed of nothing but idleness, frank enjoyment, and the caprice of the moment. (Its idiomatic phrase for expressing the experience of gladness, "I sang 'O be joyful,'" alone demonstrates its unwillingness ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... introduced to Mr. Lyman Ford, sole owner and proprietor of the Lipsittsville Ozone. He was backed into a corner, and filled with tidings about the glories of Mr. and Mrs. Seth Appleby, their social position and athletic prowess and financial solidity, and the general surpassing greatness of Lipsittsville. In fact, Mr. Ford overdid it a little, and Mr. Hartwig began to look suspicious—like a man about to sneeze, or one who fears that you are going to try ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... complain of a letter so touching, so noble in sentiment, as the one I have just received from your hand. Accept my warmest thanks for it. How happy you are to have a son so distinguished by his talents, by the variety and solidity of his acquirements, and, withal, as modest as if he knew nothing,—in these days, too, when youth is generally characterized by a cold and scornful amour-propre. One might well despair of the world if a person like your son, with ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... there can be little doubt that we have lost prestige in the whole Mohammedan world, which is a matter of the first importance for us. It is also a reasonable assumption that the Morocco convention precipitated the action of Italy in Tripoli, and thus shook profoundly the solidity of the Triple Alliance. The increase of power which France obtained through the acquisition of Morocco made the Italians realize the importance of no longer delaying to strengthen their position in ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... King-Corinthian; an elegant Female-Composite; the Nobleman-Doric; a Member of the University-Ionic; and the Buck of Fashion-Tuscan. On the left hand may be seen a specimen of the Exquisite, a new order in high estimation at the west end of the Town; and on the right hand stands an old order of some solidity in the eastern parts of the Metropolis. Fashion, Taste, and Fame, are emblematical of the varied pursuits of life; while the Army and Navy of the country are the capitals that crown the superstructure, combining the ornamental with ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... and end but also the form of moral action depend on that which in every circle of society and at every time proves to be the most successful form. It is the proof of success or failure which gives this form a certain traditional authority and a relative solidity—but only a relative one, and only until it is displaced by ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... atmosphere: underneath the poles of our globe it is mostly solid; there it is similar to the hardest rocks, and may be cut with a chisel, like stone or marble. This great solidity is occasioned by the low temperature of the surrounding air; and in very cold countries ice may be ground so fine as to be blown away by the wind, and will still ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... often say, shall one unspeakable blessing seem attainable. This, namely: that Man and his Life rest no more on hollowness and a Lie, but on solidity and some kind of Truth. Welcome, the beggarliest truth, so it be one, in exchange for the royallest sham! Truth of any kind breeds ever new and better truth; thus hard granite rock will crumble down into soil, under the blessed skyey influences; and cover itself with ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... usefulness, in marked contrast to that of our predecessors. With a mighty advance in practical freedom, in intelligence and education, in social comfort, in material resources, the entire religious life of England has secured a solidity, an elevation, and a general influence of the most marvellous kind. In the number and wealth of our churches, in the character and position of the ministry, the Society ought to find supporters immeasurably in advance of the few but earnest friends of seventy years ago. ...
— Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society • Various
... principal works in which Pushkin employed his great powers—powers which had now reached their highest point of vigour, retaining all the freshness and vivacity of youth, while they had acquired the maturity and solidity of manhood. The subjects of these works, however, being for the most part historical, are of a nature which renders them less susceptible of analysis in our pages—and indeed their local nature ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... and cross-strategy, innuendo, vague and formless cobweb forces by which he was surrounded. He could make nothing of them. They brushed his face, he felt their influence, yet he could place his finger on no tangible and comprehensible solidity. Among these delicate and complicated cross-currents Newmark moved silent, cold, secret. He seemed to understand them, to play with them, to manipulate them as elements of the game. Above them was the hollow shock of the ostensible battle—the speeches, the loud talk in lobbies, ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... year he was awarded the Royal Medal of the Royal Society for his explanation of binocular vision, a research which led him to construct the stereoscope. He showed that our impression of solidity is gained by the combination in the mind of two separate pictures of an object taken by both of our eyes from different points of view. Thus, in the stereoscope, an arrangement of lenses and mirrors, two photographs of the same object taken from different points are so combined as to make ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... controversy with Nonconformists. If this notion were adopted only by mediaeval monks and modern Romanists, I would reckon it unworthy of notice; but it is received and uttered again as genuine at this day by grave and learned Protestant theologians of Germany, and notwithstanding the solidity and good sense which characterize his "Notes" generally, is formally reproduced in its boldest ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... (he continues) when I have been visiting my father in the palace. Many a time, as she met me on my return from school, would she examine me in my scholarship and verses; and turning with the most perfect familiarity from the solidity of grammar to the playfulness of logic, in which she was well skilled, when she had caught me and held me fast by some subtle chain, she would always direct her maid to give me three or four pieces of money, and sending me off to the royal refectory would dismiss me after my refreshment." ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... the water front under Telegraph Hill, the newest and the most squalid part of town. The shallow water was in slow process of being filled in by sand from the grading uptown and with all sorts of miscellaneous debris, Pending solidity, this sketchy real estate swarmed with squatters. There were lots sunken below the street level, filled with stagnant water, discarded garments, old boxes, ashes, and rubbish; houses huddled closely together with stale water beneath; there ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... drive from the gates to the front door of Whernside House, a long, low-lying two-storeyed, granite-built house, which was about as good a combination of outward solidity and indoor comfort as you could find in the British Islands, was covered in two and a half minutes, and the car pulled up, as Norah thought, almost at full speed and stopped dead in front of the steps leading up from the broad road to the steps leading up to the terrace which ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... the deep willow-chairs Phillida had cushioned in peacock chintz and marked especially mine by laying my favorite magazines on its arm, I studied my new trophy of the night. There was a satisfaction in its material solidity. It was real ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... peculiar interest for the man of science. In some undefined way it is expected that they should reveal the world I dwell in to be flat, formless, colourless, without perspective, with little thickness and less solidity—a vast solitude of soundless space. But who shall put into words limitless, visionless, silent void? One should be a disembodied spirit indeed to make anything out of such insubstantial experiences. A world, or a dream for that matter, to be comprehensible to us, must, I should think, have ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... also led him from an early period to study the subject of improved screw-cutting. The importance of this department of mechanism can scarcely be overrated, the solidity and permanency of most mechanical structures mainly depending on the employment of the screw, at the same time that the parts can be readily separated for renewal or repair. Any one can form an idea of the ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... senses, which deal with distant objects, and scarcely grasp these objects at all, whereas all that the touch perceives it perceives thoroughly. Besides, if to nerve-force we add muscular action, we form a simultaneous impression, and judge of weight and solidity as well as of temperature, size, and shape. Thus touch, which of all our senses best informs us concerning impressions made upon us by external things, is the one oftenest used, and gives us most directly the knowledge ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... appear as if confusedly heaped one on the other, after having been destroyed and built up again: it is, therefore, with infinite surprise that you find, on approaching nearer and nearer, that its solidity is still so great—that the melted lead inserted between the stones, which binds it so firmly, is as strong as ever, and that parts of the interior of the arch are even and smooth; much, however, of this has been restored. After looking at this magnificent arch a little ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... plastic minds. Who will deny that Hogarth was a novelist and play-wright, if not indeed a heart-rending tragedian? Who will refuse to those nameless monastic architects who planned and fashioned the fretted towers of Gloucester, the stern solidity of Durham, the fairy steeple of Strasburg, or the delicate pinnacles of Milan, the praise due to them of being genuine poets of the immortal Epic? Phidas and Praxiteles, Canova and Thorswaldsen, are ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... another world, another order of poetry altogether; here is rightly due such supreme praise as that which M. Vitet gives to the Chanson de Roland. If our words are to have any meaning, if our judgments are to have any solidity, we must not heap that supreme praise upon poetry of an order ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... illuminating the interior of the shell, lighting it with a strange radiance that seemed to extend outward from the shell in a steadily widening cone. His hand touched this cone, and it possessed a curious solidity. ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi
... about the organization. Having been out of power, the party could take only the negative position of hostile criticism; there had been no reorganization and clarification of purposes, and no new leader had appeared who combined the personal prestige of Bryan with those qualities of conservatism and solidity which the East demanded, so that from the beginning there was no doubt that Bryan would again be the candidate and that he would take the lead in framing the platform. The convention met in Kansas City, on July ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... that when the twisting was applied one runner promptly left earth, and the whole sleigh canted dangerously. A moment later, however, in response to the frantic counterbalancing of two frightened small boys and the sensible coming to a halt of the fuzzy pony, it sank back to solidity. ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... left me. At least a week!... No, I must be out long before that. Now that the pain had left me, weak though I was, I was wildly impatient to return to the Markovitches. Through all these last days' torments I had been conscious of Semyonov, seen his hair and his mouth and his beard and his square solidity and his tired, exhausted eyes, and strangely, at the end of it all, felt the touch of his lips on mine. Oddly, I did not hate Semyonov; I saw quite clearly that I had never hated him—something too impersonal about him, some sense, too, of an outside power driving him. No, ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... without moving the decorations which covered them, and the mason affirmed that it was quite impossible to get a view of the foundations of the north-west corner of the palace, which were said to be weak, without knocking a hole through a wall upon which depended such solidity as there was. It was useless, he said. The snuffy gentleman could ask the Baron, if he pleased, and the Baron could do what he liked since the property now belonged to him: but he, the mason, would not lay hand to pick or crowbar without the Baron's express authorization. ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... another occasion of forwarding it securely. Your attentions to the Leyden gazette are, in my opinion, very useful. The paper is much read and respected. It is the only one I know in Europe which merits respect. Your publications in it will tend to re-establish that credit which the solidity of our affairs deserve. With respect to the sale of lands, we know that two sales of five millions and two millions of acres have been made. Another was begun for four millions, which, in the course of the negotiation, may have been reduced to three millions, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... destroys our oldest associations: the earth, the very emblem of solidity, has moved beneath our feet like a thin crust over a fluid;—one second of time has created in the mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection would not have produced. In the forest, as ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... magazine of old clothes, old furniture, china, umbrellas, guns, fishing-rods, dirty fiddles, and split flutes. Entering the right-hand room, which had originally been that of an independent house, he was in an ordinary photographer's and print-collector's depository, to which a certain artistic solidity was imparted by a few oil paintings in the background. Charlotte made for the latter department, and when she was inside Mr. Ray appeared in person from the lumber-shop adjoining, which, despite its manginess, contributed by far the greater share ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... and the Swamp White Oak (Quercus plantanoides). They are all emblematic of great strength and grandeur, reaching the majestic height of 100 feet, with trunks four or five feet in diameter; the leaf coloring at times is indescribably beautiful and the timber owing to its great solidity and strength is of ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... intellectual efforts result only in speculations of this childlike character, is confronted with the phenomena of dreams, it is easy to see what he will make of them. His practical knowledge of psychology is too limited to admit of his distinguishing between the solidity of waking experience and what we may call the unsubstantialness of the dream. He may, indeed, have learned that the dream is not to be relied on for telling the truth; the Zulu, for example, has even reached the perverse triumph of ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... my experience and the solidity of my judgment—this would tempt me to think your mamma a very foolish person, and to advise you to disobey her; but I do not, Little ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... is, our democracy lacks calmness and solidity, the repose and self-reliance which come of long habitude and settled conviction. We have not yet learned to wear its simple truths with the graceful ease and quiet air of unsolicitous assurance with which the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... seldom contained enough attention to supply the needs of both. Both were conscious, like "Celia Chettam," that since the birth of their first child their opinions respecting literature, politics, and art had acquired additional weight and solidity, and that a wife and mother could pronounce with decision on important subjects where a spinster would do well to hold her peace. Each was fond of saying, "As a married woman I think this or that"; yet each was conscious of dislike and irritation when she heard the other say it. And there is no doubt ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... Mr. Harby's turn to make a speech to Ursula. He looked handsome, with his silver-grey temples and black brows, and his imperturbable male solidity. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... belong exclusively to the hanging tapestries and curtains. The fringe is so essential a part of hanging decoration, that we must pause and give it our best consideration. In Babylonian art it is most important. The extreme solidity of the knotted fringes in their dress and hangings show either the thickness of the woven substance, or that the fringes were made by enriching the warp and adding to it. They are almost always, on the Assyrian sculptures, simply knotted fringes; but the little portable Chaldean ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... to find something for their idle troops to do. Boats were placed at equal intervals with their heads up stream and fastened together by strong wooden planks. They also cast anchors from them to ensure the solidity of the bridge, but they allowed the hawsers to drift slack, so that when the river rose the boats might all rise with it without the line being broken. To guard the bridge a high tower was built out on the end boat, from which they could repulse the enemy with various artillery. Meanwhile ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... succession of visitors, and a considerable number of blows, scratches, and rubbing noses were the consequence. Our beach presented a most interesting and busy scene. A dozen superb war canoes were lying ready to convey the forces; and, considering their limited means, the solidity of their structure and the carved work on them are surprising. None but men of rank are allowed to work upon them, and they labour like slaves. Some canoes were to be lengthened; others patched; others were condemned to be broken up, and the fragments ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... were now called in, and ordered to produce what they had to say against the popular cry which was raised against it. They answered the objections with great strength and solidity of argument, and expatiated in very florid harangues, which they did not fail to set off and furbelow, if I may be allowed the metaphor, with many periodical sentences and turns of oratory. The chief ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... short story among us is that the sketches and studies by the women seem faithfuller and more realistic than those of the men, in proportion to their number. Their tendency is more distinctly in that direction, and there is a solidity, an honest observation, in the work of such women, which often leaves little to be desired. I should, upon the whole, be disposed to rank American short stories only below those of such Russian writers as I have read, and I should praise ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... conceive them as sharing in the common lineage. The conclusion then which is suggested by the evidence is, not that all early societies were formed by descent from the same ancestor, but that all of them which had any permanence and solidity either were so descended or assumed that they were. An indefinite number of causes may have shattered the primitive groups, but wherever their ingredients recombined, it was on the model or principle of an association of kindred. Whatever were the fact, all thought, ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... doubtless once suffused the whole, has, alas! disappeared under cruel restorations, and flatness of tone has inevitably resulted, but we may still admire the play of light on horizontal surfaces, and the chiaroscuro giving solidity and relief ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... body, strong and vigorous from constant exercise, should be nobly erect; that, as his lungs were expanded by habits of swiftness in the chase, his chest should be large and full; that his thighs, as the source of movement in his legs, should have the appearance of enlarged vigour and solidity; and that his legs, in a similar manner, should also possess uncommon strength to induce and propagate the action of the feet? The nostrils ought to be elevated, because the quick respirations of running and dancing would naturally produce that effect; and, for the same ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... Christ are so many and so great that when, as now, one wants to tell you about them, one hardly knows how to do it. Words seem like little feeble shadows of some grim rock, like little feeble shadows of the grasses growing on it, rather than of it, in its solidity; or, to revert to the old thought, all one can say is just pointing to the Dust as evidence of ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... and that a staircase has been made through them to the top, where one can sit under the lindens growing upon it or look down on the city below with the pleasant consciousness that the great mass upon which he stands is only prevented from crashing down with him by the solidity of its masonry. On one side, joining the garden, the statue of the Archduke Louis in his breastplate and flowing beard looks out ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... tendency to crumble away when parched too dry, or to soak and dissolve back into mud, when too long exposed to rain. All these defects were removed by the simple expedient of baking the bricks in kilns or ovens, a process which gives them the hardness and solidity of stone. But as the cost of kiln-dried bricks is naturally very much greater than that of the original crude article, so the latter continued to be used in far greater quantities; the walls were made entirely of them and only protected ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin |
