"Solvent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is a sure solvent of distress. There whirls not for him in the night any so hideous a phantasmagoria as will not become, in the clarity of next morning, a spruce procession for him to lead. Brief the vague horror of his awakening; ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... know me," she said with the modern laugh. "I'm Mark Ambient's sister." Whereupon I shook hands with her, saluting her very low. Her laugh was modern—by which I mean that it consisted of the vocal agitation serving between people who meet in drawing-rooms as the solvent of social disparities, the medium of transitions; but her appearance was—what shall I call it?—medieval. She was pale and angular, her long thin face was inhabited by sad dark eyes and her black hair intertwined with golden ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... pursuance of this recommendation, parliament voted L50,000 for the relief of distressed unions, a sum utterly disproportioned to the necessities of the case. A bill was brought in for levying "a rate in aid," as it was termed, the object of which waa to levy a rate upon solvent parishes to aid insolvent parishes. This was both inequitable in its conception and application, and was one of those make-shifts of the government which, while it raised opposition, failed in accomplishing ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... to be angry with me, Hugo!" she said. And she lifted her eyes again upon me—irresistible, compelling, solvent of dignities, and able ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... friend! You overpower me with obligation! Shall I admit the officer? (Turns and goes to the door, opens it.) Enter myrmidon! Hats off, in the presence of a solvent debtor and a lady. (Heeps pays ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... possibly with a flute or horn.] That music must be heard, is not essential—what it sounds like may not be what it is. Perhaps the day is coming when music—believers will learn "that silence is a solvent ... that gives us leave to ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... you wot it is,' said Mr. Weller, after a short meditation, 'this is a case for that 'ere confidential pal o' the Chancellorship's. Pell must look into this, Sammy. He's the man for a difficult question at law. Ve'll have this here brought afore the Solvent Court, directly, Samivel.' ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... IN THE BODY.—Water supplies no energy to the body, but it plays a very important part in nutrition. In fact, its particular function in the body is to act as a solvent and a carrier of nutritive material and waste. In doing this work, it keeps the liquids of the body properly diluted, increases the flow of the digestive juices, and helps to carry off waste material. However, ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... The other solvent which Mr. Darwin most freely and, we think, unphilosophically employs to get rid of difficulties, is his use of time. This he shortens or prolongs at will by the mere wave of his magician's rod. Thus the duration of whole epochs, during which certain forms of animal life prevailed, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... bits of sponge down the throats of young crows, and retracting them by a string in the manner of Spallanzani? or putting pieces of calculus down the throat of a living crow, or pike, and observing if they become digested? and lastly could not gastric juice, if it should appear to be a solvent, be injected and born in the bladder without injury by means of catheters of elastic ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... fact he was almost benignly human, even humourous. And I concluded that if intimacy with the League of Nations could work such a change in the average man connected with it, there is surely some function for the League as a cheerful solvent ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... NaOH, or potassium hydroxide KOH, have a most deleterious action on wool. Even when very dilute and used in the cold they act destructively, and leave the fibre with a harsh feel and very tender, they cannot therefore be used for scouring or cleansing wool. Hot solutions, even if weak, have a solvent action on the wool fibre, producing a liquid of a soapy character from which the wool is precipitated ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... unless given in very minute quantities, and kills and precipitates its pepsin. It also coagulates both albumen and fibrine, converting them into a solid substance, thus rendering them unfit for the action of the solvent principles of the gastric juice. Hence, any considerable quantity of alcohol taken into the stomach must for the time retard the ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... out of the liquids of the body. We cannot taste, much less assimilate, a solid until it becomes a liquid; and your great idea, your sermon or moral, lies upon your poem a dead, cumbrous mass unless there is adequate heat and solvent, emotional power. Herein I think Wordsworth's "Excursion" fails as a poem. It has too much solid matter. It is an over-freighted bark that does not ride the waves buoyantly and lifelike; far less so than Tennyson's ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... aluminum oxide before it could be smelted," George said. "And you can't smelt aluminum ore in an ordinary furnace—only in an electric furnace with a generator that can supply a high amperage. And we would have to have cryolite ore to serve as the solvent ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... listen to another syllable they are lost; if they let the innocent interlocutor say so much as that a piece of well-nourished healthy brain is more living than the end of a finger-nail that wants cutting, or than the calcareous parts of a bone, the solvent will have been applied which will soon make an end of common sense ways of looking at the matter. Once even admit the use of the participle "dying," which involves degrees of death, and hence an entry of death in part into a living body, and common sense ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... convenience—embezzlers, blackmailers, and so forth—there is still a large number of recorded cases where the subjects have dropped out of sight without apparent cause or reason and have left behind them untarnished reputations and solvent back accounts. Of these, a small percentage are found to have met with violence; others have been victims of suicidal mania, and sooner or later a clue has come to light which has established the fact. The dead are often easier to ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... account, you should go to the bank on which the check is drawn and have the cashier certify it by stamping "Accepted" or "Certified" across the face over his signature. That formality makes the paper as good as money so long as the bank accepting it is solvent. ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... the Jews were persecuted because they were rich. If the Senate were to allow this sort of thing to go on unrebuked, the whole population of Rhode Island might say of their solvent Senator, "Come, let us kill him, and the Pequashmeag Mills shall be ours." Let the Senate think what an awful ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various
... felt for a moment some conscientious scruples about accepting so splendid a post. And when Lady Hilda in her emphatic fashion promptly over-ruled these nascent scruples by the application of the very simple solvent formula, 'Bosh!' he felt bound at least to stipulate that he should be at perfect liberty to say whatever he liked in the new paper, without interference or supervision from the capitalist proprietor. To which the Radical member, in his business capacity, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... so far subsided that they recognised us for solvent human beings, encouraging concoctions were set before us. Bridgley, fearing the after effects, acquired a further quart bottle of protection, and when we had gathered force for the last dash we plunged out once more toward our several goals. As the door of 111 slammed behind ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... impaired the traditional authority both of the records themselves, and of the central doctrines which all churches had in one shape or another agreed to accept. The Trinitarian controversy of the sixteenth century must have been a stealthy solvent. The deism of England in the eighteenth century, which Voltaire was the prime agent in introducing in its negative, colourless, and essentially futile shape into his own country, had its main effect as a ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... New York City is not often quoted as an example of purity. To the philosopher her atmosphere is cleaner than that of a country village. As the air of a contracted space may grow poisonous by respiration, while pure air rests over the entire surface of the earth in virtue of being the final solvent to all terrestrial decompositions, so it is possible that a few good, but narrow people may get alone together in the country, and hatch a social organism far more morbid than the metropolitan. In the latter instance, aberrations counterbalance ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... coming, and I believed, a trifle regretfully, that that great solvent of all mysteries would display these emotions of the night as ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... the one human figure sitting in the midst of them. The gloom has not entered from without; it has brooded here all day, and now, taking its own inevitable time, will possess itself of everything. The Judge's face, indeed, rigid and singularly white, refuses to melt into this universal solvent. Fainter and fainter grows the light. It is as if another double-handful of darkness had been scattered through the air. Now it is no longer gray, but sable. There is still a faint appearance at the window; neither a glow, nor a gleam, nor ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... inquire whether there are not strong grounds for thinking that the common law has never known such a rule, unless in that period of dry precedent which is so often to be found midway between a creative epoch and a period of solvent philosophical reaction. Conciliating the attention of those who, contrary to most modern practitioners, still adhere to the strict doctrine, by reminding them once more that there are weighty decisions ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... Te duce, si qua manent sceleris vestigia nostri Irrita, perpetua solvent formidine terras. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... geological specimen and more like ordinary "hard tack," The favourite method of dealing with these biscuits was to smash them with an ice-axe or nibble them into small pieces and treat the fragments for a while to the solvent action of hot cocoa. Two important proteins were present in this food: plasmon, a trade-name for casein, the chief protein of milk, and gluten, a ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... returned the other. "It is the other way. Enjoyment is the universal solvent of all arguments. No reason can resist its mordant action. It will dissolve any philosophy not founded upon it and modelled out of its substance, as Aqua Regia will dissolve all metals, even to gold itself. Enjoyment? ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... of better crops. "Give us good times," said Reed to Richard Watson Gilder, "and all will come out right." Inflation was not to be desired by the citizen who had in hand the funds to pay his debts. When he became solvent he could understand the theories of sound finance. It is probable that nature as well as gold was a potent aid to Hanna in procuring ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... lacks pedantry. His stream, to resume the simile, carries in solution more reading as well as more wit, more knowledge of life and nature, more gifts of almost all kinds than would suffice for twenty men of letters, yet the very power of its solvent force, as well as the vigour of its current, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... Life and Nature; they will recreate Art for us, and send the red blood coursing through her veins; they will shoe her feet with swiftness and make her hand strong." But, alas! we are mistaken in our amiable and well-meaning efforts. Nature is always behind the age. And as for Life, she is the solvent that breaks up Art, the enemy that lays waste ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... the mass of steel but in the form of an iron carbide, Fe{3}C, a definite product, capable of resisting the action of an oxidizing solution (if the latter is not too strong), which exerts a rapid solvent action upon the iron through which the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... have seen,) that much of the ethereal part of the new formed, or, rather, the scarcely-formed spirit, is carried off with it in a gaseous state. This is much assisted by the agency of the atmosphere, which is the solvent and receptacle of ethereal products, whose affinity for them must be as great as it is perfect and immediate—which demonstrates the necessity of having air-tight vats. When we consider the composition of the atmosphere, and ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... whether efficient or final. But this goal cannot be reached, it seems, by a sudden or abrupt transition from the Theological to the Atheistic creed. There must be an intermediate stage,—the era, in short, of Metaphysics,—during which the process of Criticism will operate as a solvent on all previous beliefs, and by producing Skepticism, in the first instance, in regard to all other systems, will tend at length to concentrate the attention of mankind exclusively on the truths of Inductive Science. The Metaphysical Philosophy is held to be the necessary, ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... ounces of water had been first poured on the iodide of silver, 680 grains, as I stated in my former paper, would have been required, and perhaps 734. The rationale is, I suppose, that in a concentrated form the salts act on each other with greater energy, and a smaller quantity of the solvent is required than if it is diluted. Many analogous cases occur in chemistry. I hope this little experiment will be useful to others, as a saving of 15 per cent. on the iodide of potassium is gained. As a large body of precipitated iodide of silver can be more completely ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various
... concern is accurate as far as pesticide residues being translocated into the seed. However, the chemical process used to extract cottonseed oil is very efficient The ground seeds are mixed with a volatile solvent similar to ether and heated under pressure in giant retorts. I reason that when the solvent is squeezed from the seed, it takes with it all not only the oil, but, I believe, virtually all of the ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... and logical nexus between the payment of taxes and the control of the public revenue is that the solvent and selfsupporting citizens, and only these, are entitled to direct its ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... something that wholly alters the result. I put the leg to soak for a quarter of an hour in disulphide of carbon, the best solvent of fatty matters. I wash it carefully with a brush dipped in the same fluid. When this washing is finished, the leg sticks to the snaring-thread quite easily and adheres to it just as well as anything else would, the ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... Beausire, laughing ironically, "write to him, and ask if M. de Souza is solvent, and if her majesty be good ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... night, and a tin cup, which Jim let fall when he first tasted the water, discovered its secret. It's just the same principle as those lime springs that incrust things with lime. This one must percolate through a bed of ore. There's some quality in the water which acts as a solvent of the silver, you know, so that the water becomes charged ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... arrived at as to the condition of the Powell family before the Civil War was (Vol. II. p. 499) that they were then "an Oxfordshire family of good standing, keeping up appearances with the neighbour- gentry, and probably more than solvent if all their property had been put against their debts, but still rather deeply in debt, and their property heavily mortgaged." During the war, we have now to record, on the faith of a statement afterwards made by Mr. Powell ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... one living principle? Does organized existence, and perhaps all material existence, consist of one Proteus principle of life capable of gradual circumstance-suited modifications and aggregations without bound, under the solvent or motion-giving principle of heat or light? There is more beauty and unity of design in this continual balancing of life to circumstance, and greater conformity to those dispositions of nature that are manifest to us, than in total destruction and new ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... redemption of man from their tyranny by the growth of his will into perfect strength and self-confidence; and both finish by a lapse into panacea-mongering didacticism by the holding up of Love as the remedy for all evils and the solvent of all social difficulties. ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... it was never intended. It may be accidentally the means of the conversion of individuals; but a book, after all, cannot make a stand against the wild living intellect of man, and in this day it begins to testify, as regards its own structure and contents, to the power of that universal solvent, which is so successfully acting ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... not for this outward beauty that Widow Shanks, stuck to her house, and paid the rent at intervals. To her steadfast and well-managed mind, the number of rooms, and the separate staircase which a solvent lodger might enjoy, were the choicest grant of the household gods. The times were bad—as they always are when conscientious people think of them—and poor Mrs. Shanks was desirous of paying her rent, by the payment of ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... booty—it is easy to understand, I say, how this morality has been accused of being dry and prosaic. The reproach is true without being just. It is equivalent to saying that political economy is not everything, does not comprehend everything, is not the universal solvent. But who has ever made such an exorbitant pretension in its name? The accusation would not be well founded unless political economy presented its processes as final, and denied to philosophy and ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... sorrowful mockery;—the gist of his teaching is this: that men bear a false relation to the world; and he desired to teach the true relation. He loved the Universe, and had a sublime confidence in it as the embodiment and expression of Tao; and would apply this thought as a solvent to the one false thing in it: the human personality, with its heresy of separateness. Dissolve that,—and it is merely an idea; in the words of a modern philosopher, all in the mind,—and you have the one true ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... disappear, add more water. When cool, touch a drop of the liquid to the tongue. Evidently the sugar remains, though in a state too finely divided to be seen. This is called a solution, the sugar is said to be soluble in water, and water to be a solvent of sugar. ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... action and does not evaporate so completely, leaving a slight residuum of resin. Alcohol of any degree of strength must be kept quite away from the work, as even supposing it specially adapted as a solvent for removing the objectionable material that may be found clinging anywhere, it has such destructive action upon the old Italian varnishes that the slightest drop on the surface will cause irreparable injury. Keep it quite clear of your repairing work, it is not absolutely necessary ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... over one's head on this poplar. One year the tree under my observation swelled and swelled its buds, which were shining more and more in the sun, until I was sure the next day would bring a burst of leaves. But the weather was dry, and it was not until that wonderful solvent and accelerator of growing things, a warm spring rain, fell softly upon the tree, that the pent-up life force was given vent. Then came, not leaves, but these long catkins, springing out with great rapidity, until in a few hours the tree glowed with their ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... all this there was a defalcation traceable to Hope Mills or the Eastmans. The money had gone in that direction. On the other hand, it was proven by the income of Hope Mills, and the amount paid out for labor, that there was no reason why they should not be solvent to-day. ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... is good advice in any man's league, there is just a little more reason why the military officer should adopt a system of accounting whereby he can keep his record straight, his affairs solvent and his situation mobile than if he ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... you have performed the wonderful, the impossible," Lindsay said; "that Llewellyn Stanhope goes home solvent." ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... almost any open vessel will serve as a receptacle for the liquor, always excepting glazed or metal ones, in which vinegar must never be allowed to stand. Owing to the solvent effects of the acid, the liquor is, in these cases, liable to ...
— The Production of Vinegar from Honey • Gerard W Bancks
... evaporate, or evaporate them rapidly over a stove or spirit-lamp. Try to dissolve sand, sulphur, charcoal, in water. Obtain crystals of iodine and show how much better, in some cases, alcohol is as a solvent than is water. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... pipe in mouth, idly talking; these were men who had already got rid of their week's earnings, or of that portion they had reserved for their own pleasures, but were not yet prepared to go home, and so miss the chance of a last half-pint of beer from some passing still solvent acquaintance. There were other larger groups and little crowds gathered round the street auctioneers, minstrels, quacks, and jugglers, whose presence in the busier thoroughfare was not tolerated ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... solve the problem nearest at hand. We must make our old work luminous with a new devotion. We must battle up over every inch. And as fast as we solve and dissolve the difficulties and turn our burdens into blessings, we find love, the universal solvent, shining out of our lives. We find our spiritual influences going upward. So the winds of earth are born; they rush in from the cold lands to the warm upward currents. And so as our problems disappear and our life currents ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... as happy years will do; the harvest of the earth was gathered, the winter fell, the clinging mists, the still and deadly cold. But they were a happy household at Brattalithe, for Gudrid was found to be a solvent of much domestic ferment. Her sweet manners drew even Theodhild to come in and out of the house, and hushed the storms which periodically swept over Freydis the Wild. At Yule there was a feast of many days, singing, eating and drinking, and games in the snow for ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... very honourable and highly creditable manner, Mr. Hawkehurst," exclaimed the lawyer, with sudden cordiality; "and I beg distinctly to withdraw any offensive observations I may have made just now. Your own affairs are, I conclude, in a sufficiently solvent state?" ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... the sacred theory with the Deluge of Noah as a universal solvent for geological difficulties was evidently dying, there still remained in various quarters a touching fidelity to it. In Roman Catholic countries the old theory was widely though quietly cherished, and taught from the religious press, the pulpit, and the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... looking little fellow," commented Ned. "But even if he were bent on tricking us, this contract would hold him. He is solvent and so is his road—as yet. If it has a bad name in the market that is more because of slander by the Montagne Lewis crowd than from any real cause. I've found that ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... They have made a discovery that is useful as a separatory process. This that the "B" vitamine is not only soluble in water, but also olive oil and in oleic acid. By shaking an autolysed yeast extract with those solvents in the proportion of 1 cc. of solvent to which 4 cc. of extract the vitamine passes into the oil. When this activated oil is filtered and taken up with eight to ten volumes of ether it in possible to concentrate the ether extract in vacuo and extract from it with 0.1 per cent. HCl an active fraction. Aside from ...
— The Vitamine Manual • Walter H. Eddy
... alembic mixed of bitter with the sweet. In that moment he faced an acknowledged regret that he had not lived the normal life of marriage at the start, the quieting of foolish fevers, the witness of children. We are not, he reflected, quite solvent unless we pay tribute before we go. He mused off into the vista of life as it accomplishes itself not in great triumphal sweeps, but fitful music hushed at intervals by the crash of brutal mischance, and only, at the end, ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... melted. Not even a heart of stone could withstand the solvent power of such love. Her head dropped upon ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... to this necessity by the pressure of want, and contracting debt as a desperate resource, without any fair prospect of ability to repay: debt and famine run together in the mind of the poet Hesiod. The borrower is, in this unhappy state, rather a distressed man soliciting aid than a solvent man capable of making and fulfilling a contract. If he cannot find a friend to make him a free gift in the former character, he will not, under the latter character, obtain a loan from a stranger, except by the promise of exorbitant interest, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... daughters who all married titles; but she was their ladyships' "dear Mamma" throughout; and Coutts himself saw to it that where he dined she dined also. There's nothing in caste in our country, given the essential solvent. ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... exercises and employments of children, etc. Whether she is conscious of it or not, she must mingle a knowledge of chemistry, psychology, physiology, medicine, sanitation, the physics of light and air, with the traditional household virtues in a sort of universal solvent from which she can bring forth all good things in their proper time and place. As Spencer says, education should be a preparation for complete living; or, according to the old Latin maxim, we learn non scholae sed ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... quickly come to an end. But particular traits and tendencies of the Hedda type are very common in modern life, and not only among women. Hyperaesthesia lies at the root of her tragedy. With a keenly critical, relentlessly solvent intelligence, she combines a morbid shrinking from all the gross and prosaic detail of the sensual life. She has nothing to take her out of herself—not a single intellectual interest or moral enthusiasm. She cherishes, in a languid way, a petty social ambition; and even that she finds ...
— Hedda Gabler - Play In Four Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... partnership. If one of the partners advanced money on account of the partnership, each of the partners were bound to contribute to the indemnity in proportion to his share of the concern; and if any of them became insolvent, the solvent shareholders were obliged to make up the deficiency. [Footnote: D. 17, 2, 67.] An agent could be employed to transact business for another, but was required to act strictly according to his orders, and the mandant, who gave the ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... "as a matter of fact, I was thinking less of myself than of that poor devil of a Jack Rutter. There's a fellow who does things by halves; he's only half gone to the bad; and look at the difference between him and us! He's under the thumb of a villainous money-lender; we are solvent citizens. He's taken to drink; we're as sober as we are solvent. His pals are beginning to cut him; our difficulty is to keep the pal from the door. Enfin, he begs or borrows, which is stealing by halves; and we steal outright and are done with it. Obviously ours ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... escritoire Seco, sectum cut secant, dissect Sedeo, sessum sit supersede, obsession Sentio, sensum feel presentiment, consensus Sequor, secutus follow sequence, persecute, ensue Signum sign insignia, designate *Solus alone solitude, desolate Solvo, solutum loosen solvent, dissolute *Somnus sleep somnambulist, insomnia *Sono sound consonant, resonance *Sors, sortis lot sort, assortment Specio, spectum look despicable, suspect Spiro, spiratum breathe perspire, conspiracy *Spondeo, sponsum promise respond, espouse Sto, steti, statum stand constant, establish ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... no light upon this subject three hundred years ago. We must therefore turn to Shakespeare—human nature's universal solvent—for light on this as we would on any other question of his time. Was he troubled with insomnia, then, is the first problem ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head
... be so potent. But see what growth there is in them. The education of a man of open mind is never ended. Then, with openness of soul, a man sees some way into all other souls that come near him, feels with them, has their experience, is in himself a people. Sympathy is the universal solvent. Nothing is understood without it. The capacity of a man, at least for understanding, may almost be said to vary according to his powers of sympathy. Again, what is there that can counteract selfishness like sympathy? ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... had proved to be interested, curious, understanding and clever, an unexpectedly successful King. She described how he was breaking out of the narrow official limits that had kept his mother in a kind of social bandbox, extending his solvent informality of friendliness to all sorts of men. He had won the heart of Will Crooks, the labor member for Poplar, for example, made John Burns a social success and warmed all ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... triumphant, exquisite artist, there might, in spite of the unheroic travesty of a man in which he was invested, have been some cause for pride in extraordinary, crowd-compelling achievement. The touch of genius is a miraculous solvent. But here was something second-rate, third-rate, half-hearted—though I, who knew, saw that the man was sweating blood to exceed his limitations. Here was merely an undistinguished turn in a travelling circus which folk like Lady Auriol ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... are coming to see that to prepossess is better than to dispossess. Prevention is found to be a surer and cheaper solvent of our child problems than punishment. The child's own resources for self development and self mastery prove to be greater than all the repressive measures to obtain and maintain our control over him. Thus our very disciplinary measures have ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... abstract entities, as substance, force, Being in se, the Infinite, the Absolute, in the place of theological conceptions. During this period all theological opinions undergo a process of disintegration, and lose their hold on the mind of man. Metaphysical speculation is a powerful solvent, which decomposes and ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... the more respectable were Jews. The absurdity of supposing a population of eight millions all sprung from gentle loins in the course of a century and a half is too manifest for confutation. But of what use to discuss the matter? An expert genealogist will provide any solvent man with a genus et pro avos to order. My Lord Burleigh used to say, with Aristotle and the Emperor Frederick II. to back him, that 'nobility was ancient riches,' whence also the Spanish were wont to call their nobles ricos ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... out his special affinities in this way, there is an end of his genius as a real solvent. No more effervescence and hissing tumult—as he pours his sharp thought on the world's biting alkaline unbeliefs! No more corrosion of the old monumental tablets covered with lies! No more taking up of dull earths, and turning them, first into clear ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... the head of the German nation. It would be hard to know in what they consist. The passport system is enforced with all its rigours and impertinences; an annual conscription is taken of its inhabitants, and the more solvent of them perform military service (this may perhaps be considered a liberty), as a national guard, with the additional luxury of providing their own weapons and equipments. Moreover, they were, at the time I write of, called upon to render certain services in case of an outbreak ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... penitence, you may frighten them into remorse; and the remorse may or may not lead on to repentance. But bring to bear upon a man's heart the thought of the infinite and perfect love of God, and that is the solvent of all his obstinate impenitence, and melts him to cry, 'I have sinned.' And along with that element there is the other, the plain striking away of all disguises from the ugly fact of the sin. The prophet gives it ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the situation would be true so far as it went; yet it would omit to take account of a third factor, a solvent far less obvious in its workings, but far more disintegrating in its effects. The factor to which we are referring is philosophy; while science and criticism have overthrown certain traditional ramparts, a type of philosophy has sprung up, slowly undermining ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... think she has no money. But she will pay you as she would have paid Boehmer. Only if she had paid him all Paris must have known it, which she would not have liked, after the credit she has had for her refusal of it. You are a cashier for her, and a solvent one if she becomes embarrassed. She is happy and ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... experiment that most fixed and, to a less degree, essential oils have little or no solvent action on shellac, and I suspect that the same remark applies to the treacle-glue mixture, but I have not tried. Turpenes act on shellac slightly, but mineral oils apparently not at all. The tests on which these statements are based were continued for about two years, during which time kerosene ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... that very finely powdered slag was dissolved in carbonic acid water to the extent of 36 per cent, while, similarly treated, phosphorite only dissolved to the extent of 8 per cent.[235] Another very important solvent is citrate of ammonia. Reverted (or precipitated) phosphate is entirely soluble in it, and phosphate soluble in it ought to be valued as worth more than that which is not. Now, the solubility of Thomas-slag in ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... both fresh and cooked. Fruits supply a variety of flavors, sugar, acids, and a necessary waste or bulky material for aiding in intestinal movement. They are generally rich in potash and soda salts and other minerals. Most fresh fruits are cooling and refreshing. The vegetable acids have a solvent power on the nutrients and are an aid to digestion when ...
— Canned Fruit, Preserves, and Jellies: Household Methods of Preparation - U.S. Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin No. 203 • Maria Parloa
... deposits confined to a single bed or formation of limestone, of which the joints, and sometimes planes of bedding, enlarged by the solvent power of atmospheric water carrying carbonic acid, and forming crevices, galleries, or caves, are lined or filled with ore leached from the surrounding rock, e.g., the lead deposits of the Upper ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... substance throughout, from which alone, after all, could the true spirit and worth and seriousness of his words be apprehended. Impecuniosity may revel in unqualified vows and brim over with confessions as blithely as a bird of May, but such careless pleasures are not for the solvent, whose very dreams are negotiable, and are expressed with ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... shape, but smaller, up to the gaugemark on the neck. [Footnote: We had to avoid filling the small flask completely, for fear of causing some of the liquid to pass on to the surface of the mercury in the measuring tube. The liquid condensed by boiling forms pure water, the solvent affinity of which for carbonic acid, at the temperature we employ, is well known. This smaller flask had been previously filled with carbonic acid. The carbonic acid of the fermented liquid was then expelled by means of heat, and collected over mercury. In this ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... that thought. Instinctively he knew, through the restraints that parted them, that Laura was pure woman, a creature ripe for the subtleties and poetries of passion. Would not all difficulties find their solvent—melt in a golden air—when once they had passed into the freedom ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... eager to question some one and was aware of the value of tobacco as a social solvent. He said, "I've got some ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... with the secret foes, symbolized by the Twelfth House and Pisces. The idols, false ideas, and vampires of his own creation, are to be cleansed and washed away by the Waters of Love, the universal solvent that is ever seeking to bring about change and new forms; born again of water to make the round of the astral Zodiac, until, having again reached the equator of the ascending are, where he is reunited to ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... only for a little while. In an evil hour he discovered that a cheque from another man's book answered all purposes if it bore that magic tracery, and Happy Dick was never solvent again. Gaily he signed cheques, and the foreman did all he could to keep pace with him on the cheque-book block; but as no one, excepting the accountant in the Darwin bank, knew the state of his account from day to day, it was ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... this I am quite clear. I can be a conscience to myself. However, there is no hurry. Time's a great solvent." ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... foretelling of persecution, broken for a moment, goes on and becomes even more foreboding, for it speaks of dearest ones turned to foes, and the sweet sanctities of family ties dissolved by the solvent of the new Faith. There is no enemy like a brother estranged, and it is tragically significant that it is in connection with the rupture of family bonds that death is first mentioned as the price that Christ's ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... alkaline solvent for silk, which, however, leaves undissolved cotton and wool, is prepared as follows: 16 grains of copper sulphate ("blue vitriol," "bluestone") are dissolved in 150 c.c. of water, and then 16 grains of glycerin are added. To this ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... combined in various proportions, the results differing widely from the elements of which they consist. Oxygen and hydrogen unite to form water, and water forms more than 2/3 of the weight of the whole body. In all the fluids of the body, water acts as a solvent, and by this means alone the circulation of nutrient material is possible. All the various processes of secretion and nutrition depend on the presence of ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... ragged Englishmen arrived in Tien-tsin; and so bronzed and disreputable did they appear that they could obtain accommodation nowhere until they had proved, by the exhibition of some of their gold, that they were not up-country robbers, but solvent citizens, of merely ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... specie payments at such a time and under such circumstances as we have lately witnessed could not be other than a temporary measure, and we can scarcely err in believing that the period must soon arrive when all that are solvent will redeem their issues in gold and silver. Dealings abroad naturally depend on resources and prosperity at home. If the debt of our merchants has accumulated or their credit is impaired, these are fluctuations always incident ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... to blow the smoke out of one's head. Now that women have taken to tobacco we live in a bath of nicotine. It would be a curious thing to study the effect of cigarettes on the relation of the sexes. Smoke is almost as great a solvent as divorce: both tend to obscure the ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... they were all the while working away with marine salt. This substance they continued to rectify for eight months without finding any change in its nature. It will be seen, that the object of all these experiments was to find a solvent powerful enough to separate the essence of gold from its material, the spirit from the body; but it now struck him like a flash of lightning, that aqua fortis must be the thing; and throwing himself upon this substance in its state of greatest intensity, he tried it first upon silver, then upon ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... solve, resolve, dissolve, solution, dissolute, resolute, absolute; (2) solvent, absolution, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... things of the past; but he loves with his whole heart the institutions rooted in the past and rich in historical associations. He transferred to poetry and fiction the political doctrine of Burke. To him, the revolutionary movement was simply a solvent, corroding all the old ties because it sapped the old traditions, and tended to substitute a mob for a nation. The continuity of national life seemed to him the essential condition; and a nation was not a mere aggregate of separate individuals, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... commonly confounded together under one name. I was indeed led to this examination of the absorbent earths, partly by the hope of discovering a new sort of lime and lime-water, which might possibly be a more powerful solvent of the stone than that commonly used; but was ...
— Experiments upon magnesia alba, Quicklime, and some other Alcaline Substances • Joseph Black
... of the gods, which lures man as a universal solvent of his sorrow, the great solution to the great enigma! Where was it? Bessie asked when Rob passed her door in the morning on his way to his solitary breakfast without a word of greeting or a kiss, and finally left the house without remembering to go upstairs again. And Falkner asked himself ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... its matter, or rather in its first matter, coincide with the appetites; viewed from the outside, they may seem to be nothing higher than hunger or thirst, or sexual or parental impulse, but their form is different. They are changed as by a chemical solvent, which dissolves and renews them; nay, as by a new principle of life, whose first transformation of them is nothing but the beginning of a series of transformations both of their matter and their ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... did years ago are just overtaking us. At the beginning of railway transportation in the United States, the people had to be taught its use, just as they had to be taught the use of the telephone. Also, the new railroads had to make business in order to keep themselves solvent. And because railway financing began in one of the rottenest periods of our business history, a number of practices were established as precedents which have influenced railway work ever since. One ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... accounts; although Fisher minor had to own to himself he was not a grand hand at finance, and that if he was appointed treasurer of the School clubs, as well as of his House clubs, he would have his work cut out for him to keep both funds clear and solvent. ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... Even those who might later call the President's action shrewd politics now felt that it was dictated by unaffected humanity, and their carefully nursed attitude of criticism melted for the time in the warmth of that solvent personality. ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... Mr. Skimpole, receiving this new light with a most agreeable jocularity of surprise. "But every man's not obliged to be solvent? I am not. I never was. See, my dear Miss Summerson," he took a handful of loose silver and halfpence from his pocket, "there's so much money. I have not an idea how much. I have not the power of counting. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... of your young philosopher. If I can understand his books, I am not to take him." This Hegelian fever was very much like what we have passed through ourselves at the time of the Darwinian fever; Darwin's natural evolution was looked upon very much like Hegel's dialectic process, as the general solvent of all difficulties. The most egregious nonsense was passed under that name, as it was under the name of evolution. Hegel knew very well what he meant, so did Darwin. But the empty enthusiasm of his followers became so wild that Darwin himself, the most humble of all men, became ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... are much used chiefly because they are good emulsifiers or good solvents (dissolve things well). Soap is a first-rate emulsifier; water is the best solvent in the world; but it will not dissolve oil and gummy things sufficiently to be of use when we want them dissolved. Turpentine, alcohol, and gasoline find one of their chief uses as solvents for gums and oils. Almost all cleaning is simply a process of ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... may only be recorded as lengthening the lives of Raymond Ironsyde, Sabina Dinnett and their son, together with those interested in them. Time, the supreme solvent, flows over existence, submerging here, lifting there, altering the relative attitudes of husband and wife, parent and child, friend and enemy. For no human relation is static. The ebb and flow forget ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... she kept an equipment of theatrical disguises; very natural-looking moustaches which could be easily applied and which remained firmly adhering save under the application of the right solvent; pairs of tinted spectacles; wigs of credible appearance; different styles of suiting, different types of women's dress. She sometimes sat in trains as a handsome, impressive matron of fifty-five, with ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... himself known to me as Mr. Bela Tiffany, and I rejoiced at the oddity of the name, because it gave his image and character a sort of individuality in my conception. The old gentleman's draught acted as a solvent upon his memory, so that it overflowed with tales, traditions, anecdotes of famous dead people and traits of ancient manners, some of which were childish as a nurse's lullaby, while others might have been worth the ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... themselves when in the maturity of our growth we have assimilated what is good in our accretions, and disencumbered ourselves of what is vain. It is the American principle, and it will not down; it is a solvent of all foreign substances; in its own way and time it dissipates all things that are not harmonious with itself. No lesser or feebler principle would have survived the tests to which this has been subjected; but this is indestructible; even we could ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... which are used for the ordinary purposes of life, and judge of them by the above tests, we shall find them to differ considerably from each other. Some contain a large quantity of saline and earthy matters, whilst others are nearly pure. The differences are produced by the great solvent power which water exercises upon most substances. Wells should never be lined with bricks, which render soft water hard; or, if bricks be employed, they should be bedded in and ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... themselves of the knowledge of M. Gazzeri, who, concluding that those who committed the fraud would be satisfied by the disappearance of the colouring matter of the ink, suspected (either from some colourless matter remaining in the letters, or perhaps from the agency of the solvent having weakened the fabric of the paper itself beneath the supposed letters) that the effect of the slow application of heat would be to render some difference of texture or of applied substance evident, by some variety in the shade of colour which heat in such circumstances ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... would be to place it with the printed side downwards upon a stone or other substance, on which, by passing it through a rolling-press, it might be firmly fixed. The next object would be to discover some solvent which should dissolve the paper, but neither affect the printing-ink, nor injure the stone or substance to which it is attached. Water does not seem to do this effectually, and perhaps weak alkaline or acid solutions ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage |
