"Uniqueness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of this to anyone clearly impressed by the uniqueness and the unique significance of individualities. Races are no hard and fast things, no crowd of identically similar persons, but massed sub-races, and tribes and families, each after its kind unique, and these again are clusterings ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... development, due to the mountains' challenge to every man's spirit as he passed, to the isolation which compelled him to work out his own salvation, and to the constant struggle, largely single-handed, with frontier forces—as well as the uniqueness of background—that gave the west a character which identifies it to discerning minds quite as much as its geographic boundaries. It is this fact which makes the French pioneering preface to a civilization ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... entanglement of military operations at this time formed a puzzle that, had the British not been too gravely interested, would have afforded them entertainment. The rules of no known military war game could be applied to the situation, and its uniqueness was a matter as incomprehensible to the tactician as to the ignoramus. For instance, from Maritzburg to Ladysmith one side alternated with the other at intervals along the line. There were British troops at Maritzburg, Boers at Balgowan; British ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... is a growing body of people who are beginning to hold the converse view—that counting, classification, measurement, the whole fabric of mathematics, is subjective and deceitful, and that the uniqueness of individuals is the objective truth. As the number of units taken diminishes, the amount of variety and inexactness of generalisation increases, because individuality tells more and more. Could you take men by the thousand billion, you could generalise about them as you do about ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... another point, besides lack of universality and necessity, which it is important to realize as regards causes in the above sense, and that is the lack of uniqueness. It is generally assumed that, given any event, there is some one phenomenon which is THE cause of the event in question. This seems to be a mere mistake. Cause, in the only sense in which it can be practically applied, means "nearly invariable antecedent." We cannot in ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... is termed by the miners, "silky spar."—This mineral is quite abundant and in fine masses, not of the great beauty and size of those taken from the Erie Tunnel, but still of great uniqueness. The mineral is recognized by its peculiar appearance, as is shown in Fig. 6, where it may be seen that it is in groups of fine delicate fibers about an inch long, diverging from a point into fan-shaped groups. The ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... uniqueness of points of view that startled Ruth. Not only were they new to her, and contrary to her own beliefs, but she always felt in them germs of truth that threatened to unseat or modify her own convictions. Had she been fourteen instead of twenty-four, she ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... relationship between Jesus and His mother, or between Him and Joseph, had the fact of His divinity been always dominant or even prominently apparent. Mary appears never to have fully understood her Son; at every new evidence of His uniqueness she marveled and pondered anew. He was hers, and yet in a very real sense not wholly hers. There was about their relation to each other a mystery, awful yet sublime, a holy secret which that chosen and blessed mother hesitated even to tell over to herself. Fear must have ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... Napoleon. He was a king and, even if you did not envy him his trade, you had to envy him his throne. He was a man you would have liked to meet at dinner, not for the sake of his conversation, but for the sake of his uniqueness. One remembers how one stood with heart in mouth as he set out with his balancing-pole in his hand on his journey across the rope blindfolded and pretending to stumble every ten yards. A single false step and he would have fallen from the height of a tower to certain death, for there was no net to ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... Talys, of which the copy above described has a fair pretention to the distinction of uniqueness, were first printed by John Rastell, without date but circa 1525, in folio, 24 leaves. Whether Rastell printed more than one edition is an open question. The book was not reprinted, so far as we know at present, till 1558, when John Walley or Waley paid two shillings ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... harpooneers, with the great body of the crew, were a far more barbaric, heathenish, and motley set than any of the tame merchant-ship companies which my previous experiences had made me acquainted with, still I ascribed this—and rightly ascribed it—to the fierce uniqueness of the very nature of that wild Scandinavian vocation in which I had so abandonedly embarked. But it was especially the aspect of the three chief officers of the ship, the mates, which was most forcibly calculated to allay these colourless misgivings, and induce confidence and ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... and he took the chair at her side, his eyes on her face. As usual, she was beyond him; and despite her exclamations of surprise, of appreciation and pleasure she maintained the outward poise, the inscrutability that summed up for him her uniqueness in the world of woman. She sat as easily upright in the delicate Chippendale chair as though she had been born to it. He made wild surmises as to what she might be thinking. Was she, as she seemed, taking all this as a matter of course? She imposed on him an impelling necessity to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... into other men's histories, and does not give to his own word the common sanction of other men's summaries and conclusions. Therefore I bind Innocence and Experience in one, and take them as a sign of the necessary and noble isolation of man from man—of his uniqueness. But if I had a mind to forego that manner of personal separateness, and to use the things of others, I think I would rather appropriate their future than their past. Let me put on their hopes, and the colours of their confidence, if I must borrow. Not that I would burden my ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... said that the vases are Italian medicine jars—literally that. They were once used by the Italian chemists, for their drugs, and some are of astonishing workmanship and have great intrinsic value, as well as the added value of age and uniqueness. ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... Aunt Martha and I have a battle royal over it. I verily believe that Aunt would like me to dress in the fashions in vogue in her youth. There is always a certain flavour of old-fashionedness about my gowns and hats. Connie used to say that it was delicious and gave me a piquant uniqueness—a certain unlikeness to other people that possessed a positive charm. That is only Connie's view of ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... had developed. She was thrown back on books for friendship, and through these and through hard work and through very routine she developed personality—grew sensitive, mentally quick, metropolitan. She had, as it were, her own personal flavor—one felt in her presence a difference, a uniqueness ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... Brinkley two months ago, and states that he has no objection at all to its reproduction. When a personal story of this kind is offered for use it is as well to use it in its original form, but this so rarely happens in this work that for its uniqueness alone it would be worth while to put it before you. With some notable exceptions, the men patients who have been operated upon by Dr. Brinkley feel ashamed of the fact. Not for anything would they let their friends or acquaintances know anything about it. The veil of secrecy ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... have been always obvious, was in fact established quite deliberately at a definite historical moment. We have seen how this applies to our knowledge of the gaseous state of matter; it applies also to the idea of the uniqueness of gravity. About half a century after van Helmont's discovery a treatise called Contra Levitatem was published in Florence by the Accademia del Cimento. It declares that a science firmly based on observation has ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... alike have series, with repetition or counter-change for their ruling motive. It is hardly necessary to draw the distinction between this motive and that of the Japanese. The Japanese motives may be defined as uniqueness and position. And these were not known as motives of decoration before the study of Japanese decoration. Repetition and counter-change, of course, have their place in Japanese ornament, as in the diaper patterns for which these people have so singular an invention, but here, too, uniqueness and ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... Green Dragon," "The Three Horseshoes," "The Bird-in-Hand," "The Spare Rib," "The Old Cock," "Pop goes the Weasel." There are wide spaces between these names which may be filled up from actual life with numbers of equal uniqueness. But it is not in architecture nor in name that the country inn presents its most attractive characteristic. These features merely specialise its outward corporeity. The living, brightening, all-pervading soul of the establishment is the LANDLADY. Let her name be written in capitals evermore. ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... wanderer, and with facile wit and quick vivid description he leaped from episode and place to episode and place, relating his experiences seemingly not because they were his, but for the sake of their bizarreness and uniqueness, for the unusual incident or the laughable situation. He had gone through South American revolutions, been a Rough Rider in Cuba, a scout in South Africa, a war correspondent in the Russo-Japanese war. He had mushed ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... back to the fireside he watched the play of the flames on their shining surfaces, delighting greedily in their beauty; in the long history attaching to each one of them, every detail of which he knew; in the sense of their uniqueness. Nothing like them of their kind, anywhere; and there they were in his hand, after these years of fruitless coveting. He had often made Mackworth offers for them; and Mackworth had ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... horses stood the journey better than their comrades; thus gradually they began to be in the leading troops while on the march. The old- style cut of Louis's armour had caused him some heartaches when he was with his plate-armoured mates, but the very uniqueness of it caused the leading knights to rest their eyes on him when scanning their men for a good one to send out as a scout, and after one or two trials they began to learn that in all their host they had no swifter horseman, nor a keener eye for an ambush; nor, when it came to the point, ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... all thinkers who reach below the surface of human life, means many different things to men of various temperaments. Collectors of human novelties, like Stevenson, rejoice in his uniqueness of flavor; critics, like Lowell, place him, not without impatient rigor. To some readers he is primarily a naturalist, an observer, of the White of Selborne school; to others an elemental man, a lover of the wild, a hermit ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... left letter-writing also. Even if the Platonic epistles are taken as genuine, which Mr. Coleridge, to my surprise, was inclined to believe, they can hardly interfere, I think, with the uniqueness of the truly incomparable collections from the ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... any direct and literal assistance in the composition of his books and stories: her gifts were wholly unsuited to such employment, and no one apprehended more keenly than she the solitariness and uniqueness of his genius, insomuch that she would have deemed it something not far removed from profanation to have offered to advise or sway him in regard to his literary productions. She believed in his inspiration, and her office ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold |
